Word: solarized
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Scientists and solar-rock fans get set for an eclipse
Winnipeg is jumping. Airline reservations to the frostbitten Canadian city (pop. 560,000) have been booked for months. Hotels are full up too. The cause of this midwinter madness: the last solar eclipse over the continental U.S. until 2017. On Monday, Feb. 26, the moon will slip between the earth and sun, and progressively blot out the solar disc along a so-called path of totality that begins in the Pacific Ocean west of Washington State, cuts northeast over Canada, then darts off and away toward Greenland...
...tests of Einstein's theory. M.I.T.'s Shapiro and his colleagues have been sending radio signals past the rim of the sun, bouncing them off other planets and clocking their return to earth to an accuracy of better than a millionth of a second. The object: to see if solar gravity slows the signals down by the amount forecast by Einstein. So far, general relativity has passed these and other tests without exception. Says Yale Physicist Feza Gursey: "Einstein's theories tend to become stronger with time...
...paper explained a laboratory curiosity called the photoelectric effect, which occurs when a light beam hits a metallic target and causes it to give off electrons. (This phenomenon makes possible a host of today's electronic gadgetry, ranging from electric-eye devices to TV picture tubes and solar panels for spacecraft.) In this paper Einstein borrowed from a theory by German Physicist Max Planck, who had solved a vexing problem about the radiation of heat and light from hot objects by proposing that this radiant energy is carried off or absorbed in tiny packets, or quanta. Planck himself was dissatisfied...
...test of this effect, expanded from the hypothetical elevator into a global picture by his field equations, that finally brought Einstein worldwide attention. General relativity indicated that when light from a distant star passes very close to the sun on its way to earth, it should be deflected by solar gravity, thereby shifting the star's position in the sky. The amount of shift, Einstein calculated, should be 1.75 seconds of arc?a small variation, but one discernible by astronomers of the day. But how could astronomers photograph a star nearly in line with the sun when it would certainly...