Word: solar
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Discussing the hazards of space travel, Whipple discounted solar radiation, X-rays and ultraviolet light. He said that the effects of such radiation on spaceships could be controlled by regulatory reflection...
...house was like none ever built before. Its roof was a honeycomb of tiny solar cells that used the sun's rays to heat the house, furnish all the electric power. Doors and windows opened in response to hand signals; they closed automatically when it rained. The TV set hung like a picture, flat against the wall-so did the heating and air-conditioning panels. The radio was only as big as a golf ball. The telephone was a movielike screen, which projected both the caller's image and voice. In the kitchen the range broiled thick steaks...
...long as these "dirty snowballs" stay far enough from the sun, as most of them do, they lead peaceful lives, but a plunge toward the center of the solar system is a wild adventure. As a comet approaches the sun, its surface is warmed by the strengthening sunlight. Layer after layer, the ices turn into gas. Soon the nucleus is surrounded by a rapidly growing cloud, of gas and dust boiled out of the solid nucleus. This cloud, the comet's head, may be many thousands of miles in diameter. It is so transparent that stars show through...
...forms the tail, which always points away from the sun no matter how the head is moving. It may become many millions of miles long. The light from the head and tail is partly reflected sunlight; the rest of it comes from atoms or molecules made to fluoresce by solar radiation...
Radical Tail. During its plunge toward the sun, Comet Arend-Roland developed a respectable head and tail, and there is good reason to hope that it will come through its solar ordeal without too much loss of substance. Astronomers have plenty of questions to ask it; their instruments and understanding have improved enormously since...