Word: planetful
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...craft had been in space for 16 months and was nearly out of steering fuel. Yet flight controllers at Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory last week managed to keep Mariner 10 alive and performing well through its third -and closest-encounter with the solar system's innermost planet. As it passed only 200 miles above Mercury's scorched surface, the half-ton robot swooped over the planet's north polar region, sent back some 300 closeup pictures and confirmed a puzzling fact-that Mercury has an innate magnetic field
Close Look. The four-hour flyby was an unexpected bonus at the end of an already successful $100 million mission. Three months after its launch in November 1973, Mariner 10 passed Venus and took the first closeup pictures of the cloud-shrouded planet. Then slowed by Venusian gravity, it plunged toward the sun, approaching Mercury in March and again in September 1974. On those flybys, Mariner got the first close look at the planet and detected a weak magnetic field that some scientists thought might be caused by Mercury's interaction with the solar wind, a stream of charged...
...distinctly its own. Scientists believe that the earth's magnetism is generated by a dynamo-like motion within its liquid outer core caused by the earth's rotation. But whether Mercury also has a liquid core is a subject of debate. Even if it does the planet probably rotates too slowly (once every 58⅔ earth days) for the dynamo effect to occur. Thus, as Mariner fell silent in its eternal orbit of the sun, it left behind a major mystery: How did Mercury acquire its magnetic field...
...Devil's Rain, an occult thriller just filmed in Durango, Mexico, gives eyesore new meaning. In the movie, which co-stars Ida Lupino and William Shatner, Borgnine returns from the dead as a disciple of Satan-with help from a three-hour facial by the makeup experts for Planet of the Apes. The citizens of Durango have seen 65 movies shot in their town, but this one has managed to unnerve them. Because of the film's supernatural goings on, people working near the sets have blamed the devil's rainmakers for everything from bad weather...
...destroyed physically, emotionally and artistically you can't expect him to rebound in a few easy steps. Most of us lost touch with Bob Dylan about the time of John Wesley Harding, released just prior to a motorcycle accident that warped his whole development. Planet Waves came out a few months ago, and brought little cause for rejoicing. But Blood on The Tracks, his newest album, seems to be a symbol of Dylan's long-hoped-for recovery, like a medical sign that we can't help making too much of. It's not an unqualified success, but it gives...