Word: soiling
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...rise. But his chagrin turned to excitement near a crater named Shorty (after a character in Richard Brautigan's novel Trout Fishing in America). Suddenly, as his space boots scuffed some of the gray topsoil from the crater's rim, he exclaimed: "Hey, there is orange soil. It's all over." Chugging toward him, Cernan shouted: "Well, don't move until I see it!" The astronauts' enthusiasm on the moon was shared by scientists watching in Mission Control's "back room." Caltech's Gerald Wasserburg jumped up from his fourth-row seat...
...scientists had suspected earlier that Shorty Crater (which resembles volcanic vents on earth) had been created volcanically rather than by the impact of a meteorite (which is how most of the moon's craters are believed to have been formed). As they await the precious samples of orange soil, some scientists are now speculating that Shorty may in fact be no more than 200,000 or 300,000 years old. That would suggest surprisingly recent volcanic activity on the moon, which was believed to have been largely dormant for the past three billion years...
...Even so, reports Simms after extensive interviews with government and Pathet Lao leaders in Vientiane, the odds seemed heavily weighted in the direction of a North Vietnamese fiefdom. Government leaders, says Simms, seemed "completely despairing" about the possibility of being left with North Vietnamese forces still entrenched on Laotian soil. The Communists, by contrast, eagerly welcomed a ceasefire. The Pathet Lao spokesman in Vientiane, Soth Pethrasy, said confidently, "We are the party of victory...
...kinkiest divisions in the army of culinary skeptics, the health-food addicts, should operate with almost religious conviction. Believing that good health, not to mention beauty, longevity and even sexual potency, depend on the proper foods, they spurn most pre-packaged products. Instead they insist upon vegetables grown in soil that has been enriched with manure rather than chemical fertilizers, meat from animals raised without growth-stimulating hormones, bread from which no grain particles have been removed...
...that would help reveal its origin and history, to say nothing of providing new insights about the evolution of the earth and other planets. Now, after five successful landings, many of their fondest hopes have been realized. The Apollo missions have brought back 594 lbs. of lunar rocks and soil, thousands of photographs and a flood of data that have changed some of man's basic concepts about the moon. But many of the mysteries remain. Indeed, the very act of exploration has created new lunar puzzles. "The moon," says Geophysicist Gerald Wasserburg, whose laboratory at Caltech has dated...