Word: igneous
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Apollo 12 mission also preceded the astronauts to Houston. Some 80 Ibs. of lunar rock were delivered by midweek to eager scientists at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL). Although a thick coat of clinging dust prevented immediate detailed observation, geologists could see that several of the rocks were igneous-formed out of molten material like lava. They were also of a lighter hue than the brownish gray Apollo 11 rocks from the Sea of Tranquility-and much larger. The biggest of these "grapefruits," as Conrad had called them, weighed as much as four pounds and were about six inches long...
...more disappointed than Nobel Laureate Harold Urey, 76, when the 55 Ibs. of lunar samples brought back by the Apollo 11 astronauts turned out to be igneous or heat-formed rock, possibly of volcanic origin. Long a champion of a "cold" moon-the theory that it has never had a molten core like the earth's-the University of California chemist sadly admitted that he could have been wrong. The moon, he conceded in the face of the rocks, might be hot, or geologically active, after all. "Poor old fellow," said one of NASA's younger geologists several...
...written with iridescent precision. Like Eliot, he was infected with the century's accidia, sank into morbid pessimism, rose again in religious hope. Unlike Eliot, however, Montale has not trained his spirit to the lattice of traditional theology; his God is a rough diamond hewn from the igneous rock of experience...