Word: planetful
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...13th-and what may prove to be the 14th-moon of Jupiter, and 80 supernovas, or exploding stars. Last week Kowal announced an even more remarkable sighting: a small, faint object orbiting the sun between Saturn and Uranus. It could be the solar system's tenth planet...
Then what is "Object-Kowal," as it has been temporarily dubbed? Kowal says that his discovery "really doesn't resemble anything else we have seen," and tentatively describes the mystery object as a "miniplanet." If scientists decide that it can indeed qualify as a planet, Kowal, in keeping with astronomical tradition, will be accorded the honor of proposing its permanent name. He already has a name in mind. But for now he is keeping it secret, saying only that it is "based on traditional mythology...
...fairly primitive vastness, although some industrialization had begun. Despite its bloody civil war (1918-22) Stalin's savage purges in the '30s and the devastations of World War II, the Soviet Union has risen to rival American influence around the world. Russia has become the planet's leading producer of crude oil, coal, steel, pig iron, locomotives mineral fertilizers and other products. Soviet scientific accomplishments - from Sputnik to Soyuz to two-headed does - are uneven but often dazzling...
Though scientists have established that the earth was born some 4.6 billion years ago, formed from debris orbiting the sun, they are less certain about when -and under what conditions-life began on the planet. Only last month, a Harvard University paleobiologist pushed back the dawn of life by announcing the finding of what appeared to be fossils of single-celled organisms dating back 3.5 billion years. Now biologists working under grants from NASA and the National Science Foundation have identified living creatures that may be little changed from organisms that lived during the first billion years of the earth...
Brian G. Marsden, professor of Astronomy and researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said a reference in yesterday's New York Times to "Object-Kowal" as a possible tenth planet was "nonsense...