Word: pluto
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...agent that could explain the apparent clockwork regularity of the celestial barrages. Some suggest that a companion star to the sun periodically comes close enough to nudge comets gravitationally out of their natural habitat--a cloud of comets that circles the sun far beyond the orbit of Pluto--sending them hurtling toward earth. Others assign that role to Planet X, while some insist that the slow, bobbing ride of the sun and its planets around the Milky Way galaxy is responsible. Whatever the details, declares Paleontologist J. John Sepkoski Jr. of the University of Chicago, the evidence for periodic mass...
...advantage over Nemesis as a promising candidate because astronomers have been predicting its existence since the late 19th century, first as the ninth planet and then as the tenth. Reason: its existence and gravitational pull might explain discrepancies in the movements of Neptune and Uranus. Even the discovery of Pluto in 1930 did not fulfill the gravitational force needed to justify Uranus' meanderings, and some astronomers have long thought that a tenth planet is somewhere out there. Astronomer Robert Harrington of the U.S. Naval Observatory has gone so far as to paint a description of the suspect...
Aumann and Gillett quickly realized that the heat was coming not from the star but from the region around it, extending out about 7.4 billion miles, or twice the distance to Pluto, the sun's outermost known planet...
...haunting text by Andre Gide the piece tells a variant of the old seasonal myth: In this version, Demeter's daughter sees in a vision the sadness of Pluto's Shades and descends to comfort them. Deceived by Mercury into eating six pomegranate seeds, she is bound forever to the Underworld but then seems another vision the sorrow of Winter brought about by her absence. The poem's reaffirmation of cyclical obligations shines through in the last scene, as Persephone miraculously returned home descends again to Hades to fulfill her eternal responsibilities...
...Ordinarily, Pluto is the outermost planet, but because of its lopsided pathway, it will be traveling inside Neptune's orbit for the next 17 years...