Word: planets
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Those astronomers who specialize in planetary lore are enjoying a treat since Mars is now at its closest point to the earth. The actual date of nearest approach is Aug. 23. At this time the planet is only 35 million miles away as against a possible distance of about 63 million miles when the two planets are at opposite sides of their orbits. These approaches, such as the present, occur every 26 months or so, but there is a variation of some 2 million miles in the nearness depending on what part of their eliptical orbits the two planets...
...usual the flood of newspaper buncombe about Mars and its inhabitants appears. The actual knowledge of the planet is considerable, as astronomical knowledge goes, but the amount of conjecture, most of it baseless, is 10,000 times greater...
Mars is the planet whose orbit lies just outside that of the earth. Its mass is about one-ninth that of the earth. Its atmosphere has probably less than one-seventh the density of that of the earth. Because of its smaller mass, its gravity is much less and objects on its surface weigh only about one-third as much as the same objects would on the surface of the earth. It has also distinct polar caps, which increase and decrease with seasonable variations. It has also no marked clouds in its atmosphere. It has no surface elevations probably...
...explains the razor man's moustache. What he proposes is, in effect, a socialistic world-state, the abolition of private capital. His means of attaining it and his reasons for seeking it are unique. He begins in the approved socialistic manner: "No sane man can live on this planet 20 years without realizing that something is very seriously wrong with the world." But he does not proceed with the usual tirade against the capitalist who "squeezes the last drop of profit" from the laboring classes. He enumerates the economic hardships of the race and then proceeds to trace them...
Schiaparelli, in 1890, and Percival Lowell, at the Flagstaff Observatory from 1896 to 1909, reached the conclusion from a study of the markings on the planet Venus that the period of rotation of Venus on her axis is the same as her revolution around the sun. Slipher confirmed this by spectroscopic analysis. Now if Venus turns on her axis once while she is revolving once around Old Sol, it is obvious that the same face of the planet is always turned toward him. In other words, one side has been baked by the sun's heat for countless aeons...