Word: solarization
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...SOLAR SYSTEM: NASA scientists are warning satellite operators and power companies to prepare for a large-scale geomagnetic storm that may be capable of disrupting telecommunications and power grids. A major solar eruption on Monday sent more than a million tons of ionized particles hurtling outward; the solar wind should wash over the Earth Wednesday night and Thursday. The eruption was first recorded two days ago by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, a two year old satellite stationed in solar orbit. Astronomers credit a similar storm with knocking out a $200 million AT&T communications satellite in January. Though solar...
...March 22, around the time that the disciples of Heaven's Gate were just beginning their quiet and meticulous self-extinction, a small cottage in the French Canadian village of St.-Casimir exploded into flames. Inside the burning house were five people, all disciples of the Order of the Solar Temple. Since 1994, 74 members of that group have gone to their death in Canada, Switzerland and France. In St.-Casimir the dead were Didier Queze, 39, a baker, his wife Chantale Goupillot, 41, her mother and two others of the faithful. At the last minute the Queze children, teenagers...
...cross around a queen-size bed, only to rise in bleary frustration when the detonator fizzled. Finally, they blew themselves to kingdom come. For them that would be the star Sirius, in the constellation Canis Major, nine light-years from Quebec. According to the doctrines of the Solar Temple, they will reign there forever, weightless and serene...
...these intellectual chain gangs: just about anybody. Applicants require only an unsatisfied spiritual longing, a condition apt to strike anyone at some point in life. Social status is no indicator of susceptibility and no defense against it. For instance, while many of the dead at Jonestown were poor, the Solar Temple favors the carriage trade. Its disciples have included the wife and son of the founder of the Vuarnet sunglass company. The Branch Davidians at Waco came from many walks of life. And at Rancho Santa Fe they were paragons of the entrepreneurial class, so well organized they died...
...intervening two decades, astronomical hardware has improved markedly, giving scientists the chance to study comets in unprecedented detail. They want to know precisely what these bodies are made of, since comets are believed to be the only objects that have remained unaltered since the solar system was born, 4.5 billion years ago. The planets and the asteroids have been heated and cooled, smashed apart and re-formed, but the comets, lingering on the solar system's periphery, have stayed relatively pristine...