Word: solarized
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Once Pluto, king of all the netherworld, got some respect among astronomers. In 1930, he joined his brethren as the namesake for the farthest planet in our solar system. But among some astronomical ingrates, Pluto has recently fallen out of favor. Two years ago Pluto was almost reduced to a mere "minor planet" by the International Astronomers Union, and last February New York's Rose Center for Earth and Space left Pluto off the list entirely, relegating him instead to a disk of icy comets known as the Kuiper Belt. One year later, passions still rage in the astronomical community...
...cost that the Congressional Budget Office is still calculating, to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil from 56 percent to 50 percent and set Americans free of pesky high energy prices forever. How? More oil - more drilling, more exploration. More natural gas, too, more windmills and more solar panels. And did we mention more...
...Opponents, of course, say this is a Bush-donor giveaway, and some additional tax credits for alternative energy sources - from solar and wind down to coal and nuclear - won't insulate him from that criticism. In fact, critics may have some reluctant support from Bush himself as he tries to sell a for-the-people tax-cut plan without loading it down with "goodies." Some taxpayer groups estimate the bill would cost at least $21 billion in subsidies and tax breaks to energy companies...
...whenever a shuttle launches from Cape Canaveral. This time, though, the shift may be permanent. Since the first segments were launched in 1998, the U.S. components have had to depend on Russian modules for power and navigation. With Destiny in place, that will change. Electricity generated by 240-foot solar paneled "wings" installed in December will now power most of the station. And Destiny carries the computers that will drive four large gyroscopes mounted beneath those wings. The gyros will control the station's position as it hurtles through space at five miles per second, doing the work previously done...
Discovered in northwestern Australia, the prize specimen was dated by two separate scientific teams as either 4.3 billion or 4.4 billion years old. That puts it within a geological blink of Earth's fiery birth out of a swirling cloud of solar dust and gases 4.56 billion years ago. But how could any crystalline object solidify under such torrid conditions? The answer, the scientists reported in Nature, is that the planet was already bathed in cooling water...