Word: wonderments
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Many of the students say that things that seem negative at the time become part of the learning process. Vittimberga, for example, recalls a rainy day on his rafting trip when he questioned what he was doing. "When you're out there working in the rain for hours, you wonder why did I come here when I could be nice and warm in Cambridge," he says...
...little wonder, then, that within hours of 1987A's discovery, an extraordinary array of scientific brainpower and hardware was brought to bear on the celestial phenomenon. Throughout the southern hemisphere (the supernova is not visible in northern skies), in South America, Australia and South Africa, telescopes of every size were focused on the bright newcomer in the Large Magellanic Cloud. NASA promptly ordered some of its satellites to do the same. On its way to a rendezvous with Neptune in 1989, the Voyager 2 spacecraft pointed its two ultraviolet-light detectors at the supernova. The Solar Max satellite turned...
...rules: it jumped from near invisibility to respectable brightness literally overnight, and while its wave-front speed was high, its spectrum revealed the unmistakable hydrogen-bearing signature of a Type II. But when the International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite reported a rapid drop in ultraviolet light, scientists began to wonder. Says Robert Kirshner, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: "The spectrum we're seeing in the ultraviolet resembles the spectrum of a Type I. That's a puzzle." Admits Texas' Wheeler: "There are some funny features in this supernova...
...least as far back as Sir Walter Scott's Waverley, novelists have been interested in setting imaginary characters loose against a background of authentic, tumultuous events. Small wonder. History is, after all, drama readymade, an endless pageant playing at all hours in the public domain. Writers who elect to fuse their private inventions with the collective memory of an actual past can create electrifying effects. Witness the towering achievements of War and Peace or the enduring popular appeal of Gone With the Wind. The formula has its pitfalls, of course, in the hands of the inept: cardboard people posing stiffly...
...Yankees Owner George Steinbrenner considered it a two-sided delight to lure away an American League East pitcher like Boston's Luis Tiant. Suddenly he has no interest in Detroit's Jack Morris, the decade's winningest pitcher. Montreal Outfielder Tim Raines, the National League batting champion (.334), must wonder whether he has bad breath. So frustrated was Teammate Andre Dawson, he signed a blank contract with the Cubs and is now working for $350,000 less than the Expos offered. World Series Hero Ray Knight cut a similarly shrewd deal while transferring from the champion Mets to the last...