Word: tritons
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...field of academic study. In addition to weekend field trips, she has supplemented her extensive library research with materials obtained through that remarkable tool of educational technology, television. Her subject is football, and strange as it may seem, she is currently teaching a course in the pro game at Triton College in the Chicago suburb of River Grove. Her class is made up of "football widows," who want to learn the fine points of game watching in order to enjoy Sunday afternoons with their husbands...
...Acanthaster plague baffles scientists. It could be a periodic natural phenomenon; many species mysteriously multiply for a time, then inexplicably decline in number. A more probable explanation is that man has upset the reefs delicate ecological balance. By relentlessly hunting for a rare trumpet-shaped mollusk called the giant triton, some scientists say, shell collectors have taken a devastating toll of one of the crown-of-thorns' few natural enemies. Other scientists speculate that the imbalance may have been caused by dredging and underwater blasting, lingering pesticides or even radioactive fallout...
Neptune's Tides. McCord's calculations seem to support what other scientists have suspected. Long ago, as it sank from a higher orbit, Triton passed close to Nereid. The smaller moon, buffeted by Triton's more powerful gravity, may have been hurled into the elliptical orbit it now follows...
Carrying his analysis further, McCord discovered that the forces that acted on Triton to make it sink to its present orbit will continue to affect the larger moon at an accelerating rate. Tides raised on Neptune's surface by the pull of Triton's gravity exert a drag on the satellite that causes its orbit to decay. The tidal action on Neptune also creates friction that dissipates energy from the rotating Neptune-Triton system, further depressing Triton's orbit...
...little as 10 million years-a brief interlude in the solar system's 4½-billion-year history-Triton could begin its final plunge toward Neptune's surface. Only one event could prevent the terrible impact, says McCord: a phenomenon that may have occurred before in the solar system. Neptune's gravity could break Triton into little pieces as it draws near, turning the satellite into a set of Saturnlike rings...