Word: pluto
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Lopsided Orbit. Usually obscured by the bright glare of the sun, Mercury remains almost as much a mystery as the most distant planet, Pluto. Half again as large as the moon, Mercury may be almost twice as dense. Traveling in a lopsided orbit, it comes as close to the sun as 29 million miles, then sweeps as far away as 43 million miles. To anyone standing on Mercury's surface, the sun would seem to stand still at times, then move backward briefly, in the Mercurian sky. Another oddity: Mercury's trip around the sun takes 88 earth...
There is less debate about where comets originate. The most widely accepted explanation is that of Dutch Astronomer Jan Oort, who says that comets exist by the billions in a vast swarm of debris beyond Pluto that stretches halfway to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri. The debris, called Oort's Cloud, coalesced from the swirling dust and gases in the original solar nebula, from which the sun, earth and other planets and moons were formed. Thus comets are primordial matter, largely unchanged since the solar system's birth. (Lyttleton ascribes a different origin to the comets: he thinks...
...like a battleship's with gas pipes and power mains, more ducks and mice are disappearing into the mask room. REMOVE YOUR HEAD AND PLACE ON TABLE AFTER ENTERING, a notice Commands; the racks are full of familiar visages, the icons of one's childhood, Mickey and Pluto and the others blown up to preternatural size, then guillotined; their eyes goggle from the shelves like big affable poached eggs. There is even a set of coolant waistcoats, their design a spin-off from NASA; they circulate a chemical refrigerant round the body. In this humid and swampy acreage...
...from a comet. Above the earth's obscuring blanket of air unmanned satellites-perhaps even Skylab's sophisticated observatory-may make the most fruitful observations of all. All the observations will be aimed at determining the structure of the comet and its origin-probably beyond the planet Pluto, where billions of comet-like objects are believed to be orbiting as remnants from the solar system's creation...
Early on in the first act, this season's femme fatale, a witch named Helza Poppins, starts casting spells on a Greek shipping magnate (Pluto Cratopoulos), a Canadian Mountie (Major Assburn) and his troops, Assburn's liberated-bopper of a charge (Mary Wanna), a hefty schoolmarm (Hortense Prune) and her maidens, One-Eyed Jack and his faithful Indian Toronto, two refugees from the frontiers of the 1840s. While they're all stomping around in Helza's "enchanted forest," Strong's unflattering imitations of Shakespearean romance require that they fall in love with each other in various un-lovely combinations until...