Word: planetful
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...irony of it all. The rings of Saturn and beyond-and here we are diligently seeking ways with which to destroy ourselves and the tiny planet on which we live...
...Foreseeing a day when oil would run out and other fossil fuels would become scarce, he suggested placing two giant arrays of solar cells, each about half the size of Manhattan, 22,300 miles above the earth in geosynchronous orbit; there the structures' orbital speed would match the planet's rotation, thus holding the solar powerhouses over the same spot on the ground. Bathed in almost perpetual sunshine, the cells, like those already used to power weather and communications satellites, would convert the sun's energy into electricity, which would then be beamed to earth as microwaves...
...perspective a traveler might get by approaching from the stars, rather than from the interior reaches of the solar system. Re-created bit by electronic bit in computers at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and released last week, the shot is so detailed that patches of the planet can be glimpsed through the rings, which are believed to consist of bits of dust and ice trapped by Saturn's gravitational and magnetic fields...
...becoming much less mysterious. As late as 1750, the Bishop of London told his flock that two recent quakes were warnings from an angry deity. Today, scientists prefer another explanation, an all-encompassing view of the earth known as the theory of plate tectonics. It holds that the planet's surface consists of a dozen or so restless plates, each about 70 miles thick. Their movements explain volcanoes, the rise of mountains and the drift of continents. They account for quakes as well, most of which seem to occur where the great plates meet-at the so-called Ring...
...space programs. The most spectacular, of course, is the Voyager 1 robot, which traveled 1.3 billion miles to Saturn. Almost equally impressive is the Mars Rover being built by CalTech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which will be able to wheel itself about on the rugged planet, look at rocks with its TV eyes and dig up samples with its shovel. Engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., now are working on a robot that will be able to take off from the space shuttle, reach an ailing satellite in orbit and repair...