Word: orbitings
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Mercury's orbit is sharply elliptical, and its long axis wheels around the sun. The wheeling motion was too fast to fit astronomical theories, and astronomers tried to account for this speedup in ingenious ways: e.g., the influence of an undiscovered planet between the sun and Mercury. None of their explanations worked. But in 1915, Albert Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity. Then all was -relatively- simple. According to Einstein, a body gains mass as it gains speed. When Mercury is approaching the sun on its elliptical orbit, it speeds up a lot. This makes it slightly more...
...them a symbol of failure. Communism has been forced into ideological retreat inside its own empire. Eight years of striving to Bolshevize East Germany in the Soviet image failed in the uprising of June 17. In the westernmost, and in many ways the most strategic, outpost of the Kremlin orbit, people rose up, without arms or organization or leaders, against the whole strength of a totalitarian regime and the Soviet army of occupation. They were suppressed, and not one inch of ground was wrenched from beneath the Red flag. But in their audacity, the East Germans 1) exposed their bosses...
...Shook the hand of plump Elizabeth Hess, 13, the national spelling champion, and confessed that, as a small boy he had been spelled down on "syzygy." The President further obliged Elizabeth with a definition: "Having to do with the orbit of the moon" (pretty close to Webster's "The point of an orbit, as of the moon, at which the planet is in conjunction or opposition...
...Unità: "Facile prophets have declared that Picasso doesn't give a hoot for ideological content. But Picasso has again shamed and belied them." Party-liners are not likely to say the same of Portinari, who seems to be drifting out of the Communist orbit. His murals have "no party intention," he explains. "They are the point of view of mankind...
...military alliance with the West would harden for good the division of West and East Germans. It would do the opposite, said Dulles; a strong West Germany would provide such an "attraction" to East Germany and other satellites that it might in time pry them away from the Eastern orbit. Perhaps even now, in the convulsions of a new purge, said Dulles, the Communists are showing "stress and strain." Dulles made the shrewd move of conferring with Socialist Party Leader Erich Ollenhauer (the only opposition leader he saw on the trip), listened to the Socialist's counterarguments, then firmly...