Word: starke
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...computer terminals, trying to contain his mounting frustration. The British-born astronomer, now at Caltech, has been granted a single precious night to use one of the twin Keck telescopes, among the most powerful in the world. Last night he and his observing partner, a graduate student named Dan Stark, flew 3,000 miles, from Southern California to Hawaii, where the Kecks are located. And during most of the afternoon and early evening today, they've made their final plans for the "run," as astronomers call a night of peering into the heavens...
...problem is that Keck 2, the scope Ellis and Stark have been assigned for the night, stubbornly refuses to focus. Time and again, the professional telescope operator who sits in a control room up on the summit and actually runs the mammoth instrument has issued the command that tells it to focus. Time and again, the focusing routine has responded to his commands by crashing. For half an hour, engineers have been trying to figure out what is going on--while the first of the precious celestial objects on Ellis and Stark's observing schedule sinks inexorably toward the horizon...
...seen--and not the farthest by just a little bit. The current record for distance, held by another giant Mauna Kea observatory, Japan's Subaru telescope, is for a galaxy whose light started its journey to Earth a billion years or so after the Big Bang. But Ellis and Stark suspect they have found not one but six galaxies from an astonishing half a billion years earlier still. Tonight's run could confirm...
...discovery like that would give Ellis bragging rights at astronomy conferences for years to come, and it would let Stark finish his dissertation with a dramatic flourish. But far more important, it would give astrophysicists their first real glimpse into a crucial and mysterious era in the evolution of the cosmos. Known as the Dark Ages of the universe, it's the 200 million-year period (more or less) after the last flash of light from the Big Bang faded and the first blush of sun-like stars began to appear. What happened during the Dark Ages set the stage...
...where Switzerland's largest banks?and costliest jewelers?are housed. "Asians love history," says Meier. "If you can show them 120 years of history, it gives them an enormous level of comfort." Other firms find their own ways to impress, not least with a seductive patina of opulence. A stark, cool modernism pervades Credit Suisse's Singapore office, while the Persian rugs and somber oakwood in Citigroup's office across town convey a reassuring, grandfatherly solidity...