Word: venusized
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...darkness engulfed Nantucket, sparrows and ospreys began to roost, and Venus and some stars became visible. In the island's interior, the heavy wind suddenly died out, and when the moon obscured the sun's disc, the entire island erupted in a spontaneous gasp as clusters of eclipse watchers reacted simultancously...
...moon will completely cover the sun off the Massachusetts coast. The sky will grow so dark that photographers may need a flashlight to change their camera settings. Venus, Mercury, and some of the stars will be visible. The faint corona will appear to extend about four solar diameters from the sun's edge, and reddish prominence of glowing hydrogen gas will occasionally bubble up around the moon. Ground temperatures may drop ten or 15 degrees, and even in Cambridge, the partial eclipse may cause a drop of a degree or two. Greenhouse flowers may lose their petals. Some birds will...
...Leap. The trip would avoid many of the difficulties of planetary exploration. Traveling in highly eccentric orbits, some of the miniature planets occasionally pass millions of miles closer to the earth than either Mars or Venus. A spacecraft would have to use only a small amount of fuel to land on an asteroid and blast off again; a twelve-mile-wide asteroid, for example, would exert about one ten-thousandth of the earth's gravitational pull. Even if a ten-ton spacecraft turned over as it touched down, it could be easily righted...
...thinks that polywater could pose a threat to all life. Once it is let loose, the stuff might propagate itself, feeding on natural water. The proliferation of such a dense, inert liquid, warns Donahoe, could stop all life processes, turning the earth into a "reasonable facsimile of Venus." Lippincott considers that danger slight. But he concedes that until scientists know more about polywater, they should handle it with care...
...Jimmy Miller. 241 pages. Knopf. $5.95. After the virtual depopulation of the U.S. and Russia by a Chinese poison plague in A.D. 2004, a tough New Yorker, a beautiful Parisian aristocrat and a hippie from Venus hunt for the missing Chinese war criminals. An overstrained, social-satire freak...