Word: pluto
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Where does the solar system end? At Pluto, most folks would reply. Or at Neptune, the cognoscenti might say, because thanks to Pluto's odd, egg-shaped orbit, the eighth planet has been outermost since 1979 and will be through 1998. But astronomers suspect that the sun's family actually extends far beyond either of these two planets. Out there in the frigid darkness beyond any known planet, they believe, lies the Kuiper belt, a ring of dusty ice chunks that surrounds the solar system. Beyond that, astronomers say, is the similarly composed Oort cloud, which forms a vast sphere...
...belt ever observed. The body, known for now as 1992 QB1, is about 200 km (120 miles) across, and a preliminary calculation puts it at more than 5.1 billion km (3.2 billion miles) away. That doesn't necessarily make it the most remote object in the solar system, since Pluto retreats to more than 7 billion km from the sun. But it does imply that the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud really exist and that the solar system's boundary may lie 10,000 times as far away as Pluto ever ventures...
Walt Disney's World on Ice--Through Feb.23. Boston Garden, Causeway St., Boston. Call(800) 828-7080 for tickets. Pluto and the gang...
...convention will take place in Orlando instead of its familiar site: Las Vegas -- the magic kingdom that was built illegally with the union's money. The Teamsters are putting on a new face. Even the workers at Disney World who walk around wearing Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck or Pluto costumes are card-carrying members of the International Brotherhood. More important, the union is at last cleaning up its act, thanks to the prodding of court-appointed officers who have forced dozens of Mob-connected officials out of the union...
...episode. Loggia is wary but tolerant of her chirpy spirituality; the kids are overtly & skeptical. At one family dinner, TT describes her woozy mix of religion and environmentalism ("The natural world is the largest sacred community to which we all belong"). Comments one daughter: "She just turned left at Pluto...