Word: spectacularity
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...board the shuttle Challenger last week, Physicist Don Lind could not contain his wonder. "The streaks of light we're seeing are really spectacular stuff," he radioed to Mission Control in Houston. The shuttle, about 200 miles above the ocean south of New Zealand, was passing through the top of a green-and-pink aurora--a huge, glowing band of light generated by charged solar particles hitting the atmosphere. It was the first time that the shuttle had actually flown through an aurora...
Unfortunately, the seven-man Challenger crew also saw an abundance of less spectacular stuff during the first half of their planned seven-day mission: a literal flood of foul-smelling particles of food and feces spewing from the pens of 24 rats and two squirrel monkeys in the $1 billion, 15-ton, European- built Spacelab stowed in Challenger's cargo bay. So pervasive was the odiferous tide that it was carried through a connecting tunnel into the shuttle's cockpit. "This isn't very much fun, guys," complained Commander Robert Overmyer to Mission Control...
These quests are all part of the controversy and ferment that have been bubbling through the scientific community since the rise of a spectacular new theory that attempts to explain the mass extinctions--most notably the one in which the dinosaurs perished--that have punctuated the history of life on this planet. Every 26 million years or so, the theory holds, a rain of comets that lasts hundreds or thousands of centuries bombards the earth. The impact of some of the larger comets spews enough debris into the atmosphere to block the sun for months. As the skies darken, temperatures...
Even now, more than three-quarters of a century after the spectacular event at Tunguska, scientists are certain only that a celestial intruder was responsible. Some argue that it was an asteroid as large as 500 ft. across and weighing 7 million tons, which rapidly heated as it entered the earth's atmosphere and exploded about five miles above ground. Others believe it was a small comet. Whatever the cause, the destructive power of the object from space rivaled that of a very large nuclear warhead; scientists gauge the explosion at twelve megatons...
...Blumenthal's saucy Paquette and Chase's delightfully egotistical--and yet, by the end, humbled-Maximilion. Shining out from the rest, however, is Hughes Cunegonde. In her last prominent Harvard production, Hughes displays her talent as perhaps the best undergraduate soprano in recent years. She brings to Cunegonde a spectacular verve and vibrancy most noticably her awe-inspiring solo, "Glitter and be Gay." Here, she mixes her characters sorrow and desolation at being separated from Candide and at being a where with her absolute glee with the baubles and jewels given her. Her vocal strength during the song combines with...