Word: solarization
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...tail of a comet is about as close as you can get to nothing at all, a banner of dust so tenuous that a cubic mile's worth wouldn't fill a shoebox. Yet that near nothingness holds many secrets. Comets are leftovers from the creation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago; they also delivered organic chemicals and water--the crucial building blocks of life--to the young Earth. Scientists would love, therefore, to get a bit of comet into the lab for analysis...
...part of the space agency's "fast and cheap" Discovery series (Mars Pathfinder with its robot rover was another). Like Pathfinder (and unlike the instrument-packed billion-dollar probes of the 1970s and '80s), Stardust is as stripped down as it can be. The 848-lb. spacecraft carries just solar panels, a camera, a radio, a spectrometer to analyze sunlight bouncing off the comet, a few sensors and the all-important sample-collecting system...
...course, once the exam is over, we are far too tired to protest or even remember these people who seem to venture down from the outer reaches of the solar system in order to administer our finals. Yet every year, they return, renewing our faith that there is indeed life after college and that people exist in the universe who do not care about exams...
...plan. They are just sure something bad is coming. One of the best known is Ed Yourdon, a computer theorist whose book Time Bomb 2000 is in its 12th printing. Yourdon and his wife are moving from Manhattan to an adobe house near Taos, N.M., that has solar panels and soon a windmill to provide power. "There are so many things that can go wrong in Manhattan," he says. "[In Taos] I can control my environment." Near Boulder, Colo., Paloma O'Riley, an ex-Navy computer security specialist, has helped organize more than 200 groups nationwide through her Cassandra Project...
...millennium-insulated community on a high plateau surrounded by mountains. "'Safe haven' is the buzzword," says Trosper. "People want to move here from Chicago, Florida, Ohio." If he can get $50 million in financing, he hopes to accommodate the nervous newcomers with a "smart" community of PC-operated, solar-heated homes...