Word: polarity
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...This is an awful place. " So wrote the English explorer Robert Falcon Scott after he reached the South Pole in 1912. Scott, who was just beaten to the pole by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, had good reason to complain. Temperatures regularly drop to -100º F. during the polar winter. Sudden storms bring gale-force winds, and visibility frequently drops to zero during a "whiteout," making it impossible to see perilous crevasses ahead. Yet in spite of its hostile environment, Antarctica is becoming the object of increasing worldwide interest. Its shrimplike krill and millions of seals make it a veritable...
...atmosphere, monitoring of auroral displays ("the southern lights"), and other observations that may answer many questions about the earth's day-to-day weather and overall climate. In a new experiment, for instance, scientists from the University of California at Davis are seeking to learn precisely how the polar region-a so-called heat sink-sheds the excess energy it receives from...
Died. Hugh Auchincloss Brown, 96, engineer who believed that vast polar icecaps would wipe out civilization in this century; in New York City. Brown, author of Cataclysms of the Earth (1967), predicted that the accumulation of ice at the Antarctic would upset the planet's equilibrium and cause it to flip, reversing the North and South Poles. If the catastrophe comes to pass, New York, according to Brown, will be buried under 13 miles of water...
...will be braked by retrorockets for what is hoped will be a gentle setdown near the mouth of a 2,500-mile-long canyon, perhaps the site of a former drainage basin. (Viking II's lander is targeted for an area near the planet's north polar hood, where moisture may still exist.) Instead of jet fuel, which would contaminate Mars with hydrocarbons, the landers' descent rockets are powered by purified hydrazine, a nitrogen-hydrogen compound. This, explains Richard S. Young, chief program scientist for the mission, will cause minimal pollution of the Martian environment...
...write better baseball books. Pat Jordan, a frequent contributor to SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, is a failure by all professional baseball standards. But it is in the dissection of that failure that his book discloses the dimensions of a man and a game. The young pitcher's career was the polar opposite of Durocher's. A native of Bridgeport, Conn., Jordan was a spectacular Little Leaguer; by the time he reached high school, the Milwaukee Braves awarded him a $35,000 bonus. Sent to the Braves' farm club hi Mc-Cook, Neb., Jordan saw himself as the world...