Word: solarity
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...denial of responsibility. Climate change is a global problem that needs a global solution. David G. Wright Sturbridge, Massachusetts, U.S. There are solutions that can reduce global-warming pollution and preserve a healthy climate for our kids. We must invest in innovative clean-energy sources - from wind turbines and solar panels to biofuels such as ethanol - and use off-the-shelf technologies to make more fuel-efficient cars. Those technologies will stimulate new markets, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, save consumers money, enhance our national security and reduce global-warming pollution. The time to act is now. Julie Anderson...
...wonder. The solar system most of us studied in school was a deceptively simple place. There were the sun, a few asteroids and comets and, as of 1930, when Clyde Tombaugh spotted Pluto on a telescopic photograph, nine planets. Memorizing those nine names has long been a childhood rite of passage, up there with learning to tie your shoes. Yes, Pluto was always an oddball: not only is it tiny (two-thirds the size of our moon), but it has a weird, elongated orbit that is tilted at a sharp angle to the plane the other planets inhabit. Still...
...roundness rule would add lots of planets to the solar system in one fell swoop: not just Sedna, Quaoar and 2003 UB313 but also two more icy worlds spotted by Brown and Trujillo--2004 DW, a little bigger than Quaoar, and 2003 EL61, probably about seven-tenths the size of Pluto. The latter made headlines when it was formally announced to the world by Spanish astronomers who, according to Brown, knew where to look because they had used the Internet to tap into his telescope logs (the Spaniards deny the charge). At least five or six asteroids would also qualify...
...forever; Brown and Trujillo have even more discoveries waiting in the pipeline (they've put their logs behind a firewall to keep prying competitors away) and they're not done yet. Just about all the new worlds have been found by looking even farther outside the plane of the solar system than Pluto's orbit. "Nobody really expected to see anything way up there," says Brown. "But based on what we've found so far, we expect to find at least two or three more of these...
...questions to figure out what it actually is." As an educator as well as a scientist, though, he is thrilled that the question of planethood has been opened for freewheeling public discussion. "The point," says Tyson, who is working on a book about the Pluto debacle, "is that the solar system is a lot more interesting than just a list of nine planets." And thanks to Michael Brown and his associates, that fact is impossible to avoid...