Word: slow
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...trip through space, the earth reaches its maximum speed each January, when it makes its closest approach to the sun. According to Einstein, the earth's increased velocity, along with its passage through a more intense part of the sun's gravitational field, causes terrestrial time to slow down in relation to time outside the solar system...
...practical proof of January slow time has never been possible. How can the slowing of time be measured if all the available timing devices on earth are similarly affected by relativity? Last summer, when the regularly beeping signals of pulsars were first detected coming from outer space, Queens College Physicist Banesh Hoffmann figured that they might supply an answer. Though their source was unknown, the precisely spaced radio pulses coming from light-years away seemed to be the distant clock needed to measure earth time. In a letter to Nature, Hoffmann suggested that the pulse rate of pulsars be taken...
Match with Cesium. If earth time does indeed slow down relative to the pulsar clock in January, and speed up correspondingly in June, the pulsar signals (which have blipped at a constant frequency since they were discovered) would appear to increase their repetition rates as earth clocks slowed down and decrease them as earth time speeded up. Hoffmann's plan was immediately snapped up by Dror Sadeh, a Tel Aviv University physicist currently attached to the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory at Washington...
Back to the potting shed went IR8's developers at the U.S.-sponsored International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. By slow, painstaking crossbreeding with other varieties of rice, they gradually enhanced IR8's strong qualities and got rid of its weaknesses. As a result, IR8 is now beginning to live up to its potential. A few months ago, it was joined by IR5-47-2, a related variety that requires less fertilizer and is less susceptible to disease. Delighted with their new hybrids, the researchers are convinced that some biological kin of IR8 will eventually become Asia...
...Slow Luggage. The crisis causes five ground delays for every holding pattern in the air. "Ground technology," says Logan's director, Richard Mooney, "is far behind airplane technology." The majority of the delays come from slow luggage handling. Last year 340 million pieces of passenger baggage were handled; by 1970 that figure will reach 545 million. Despite automated equipment, luggage usually arrives inside the terminal well after its owner. To speed delivery, many airports have stopped insisting on claim checks-with devastating results. Pilferage is up, sometimes because of organized rings of thieves. "We caught one guy with...