Word: planetful
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While the U.S. space program has concentrated on the exploration of the moon and Mars, Soviet scientists have trained their sights on cloud-enshrouded Venus. Since 1961, Russia has launched at least ten missions to Venus, most of them intended to land instrumented packages on the surface of the planet; by comparison, the U.S. has undertaken only two less ambitious flyby probes. The persistent Soviet effort has paid off. After careful analysis of data from Venera 8, which transmitted signals for 50 minutes after making a landing in July, Russian scientists have lifted still more of the veil from...
...gamma-ray spectrometer determined that the landing area contained radioactive potassium, uranium and thorium in approximately the same ratio in which they appear in many volcanic rocks on earth. This, in turn, indicates that Venus, like the earth, Mars and the moon, is "differentiated"; that is, the planet was once hot enough for its material to soften and flow. During this period, the heavier elements settled toward the core while the lighter ones, taking radioactive elements with them, rose to the surface to form a crust...
...long (about 116 earth days) period of daylight as well as a lengthy nighttime on the surface of Venus, which revolves on its axis only once every 243 earth days. Surprisingly, the surface does not cool during the long period of darkness; the "greenhouse effect" of the planet's atmosphere (consisting largely of carbon dioxide) keeps heat from radiating away at night...
...miles, comparable to the speed of the earth's jet streams. Near the surface, however, they clocked winds of only about four m.p.h. Some scientists believe that the winds are stirred up by Venus' rotation, since they seem to blow only in the direction of the planet's spin...
Alas, the Promethean gift has come to appear cruelly ironic, if not demonic, to a post-technology age that possesses-or is possessed by-the ultimate fire: nuclear power. Today, weary hindsight makes "progress" seem a mocking, self-defeating process by which men promise to improve themselves and their planet right out of existence...