Word: pluto
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...most famous discovery of the late Percival Lowell '76--Planet Pluto--may not be a bona fide planet after all. Dr. Gerard P. Kuiper of the University of Chicago's Yerkes Observatory has declared to the scientific world that Pluto is not a planet, but instead only one of Neptune's satellites...
Astronomers are cosily familiar with stars quadrillions of miles from the earth, and with galaxies much more distant. But Pluto, a member of the sun's own planetary family, and only 3½ billion miles away, has little personality for them. The outermost member of the solar system, it shines only feebly by reflected sunlight. Even in the biggest telescopes it looks like a faint star; only its motion among the real stars and a slight fuzziness prove it to be a planet. Astronomers are not sure how big it is (probably midway between Mercury and Mars), but recently...
...Merle F. Walker and Robert Hardie, at the Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Ariz., measured Pluto's light with photoelectric apparatus. They found that it varied slightly in brightness and that the variations repeated themselves regularly, as if dark markings were passing across Pluto's disk. The period turned out to be 6.390 earth days, so Walker and Hardie concluded that this is the length of Pluto...
French Lick, Ind. (pop. 2,000), a quiet spa, has a special place in the nostalgia of the Democratic Party. There the pre-F.D.R. generation of Democratic leaders were wont to gather before and after election-time, consuming mint juleps, Pluto water ("If nature won't, Pluto will") and the salty wisdom of Indiana's late boss, Tom Taggart. Last week the Democrats, their blood up, went back to French Lick to consider how their party might be reinvigorated for 1956. "There is no question but what we will focus our guns on the President himself...
...grow they did. Hands grew more skillful and inventions multiplied.* So Pluto fell off a cliff-what next? His ears whirled around like propellers, his front legs spread like wings, and back he roared to safety. In Disney's hands the laws of physics turned to taffy. Shadows walked away from bodies. Men got so angry they split in two. Trains ate cookies. Autos flirted. People stretched like rubber bands. But it became harder and harder to outwit the public. Disney gags got downright erudite. In one cartoon Donald Duck might walk over the edge of a cliff...