Word: starlight
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...while, as the facetious film references (to everything from E.T. to The Seventh Seal pile up, Hero turns into the industry's all-time costliest inside joke. Watching it is as enervating as being on a real movie set. You see all of the sweat and none of the starlight...
Really Useful Holdings has certainly proved useful to tunesmith Andrew Lloyd Webber. Last week he sold a 30% interest in his company to European record giant PolyGram for more than $130 million. The London-based creator of Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Starlight Express and other theatrical sensations has been criticized for shallowness, but no one questions Lloyd Webber's status as a cash machine. For PolyGram, the investment in Really Useful is the latest step in an aggressive and costly drive to buy up independent entertainment companies, following the acquisition of A&M and Island Records. While...
Adaptive optics depends on taking starlight focused by a telescope's main mirrors and bouncing it off yet another mirror before studying the image. The additional mirror is made of a superflexible material -- plastic, in the Johns Hopkins device. A light sensor monitors a reference star within the telescope's field of view and looks for the shimmering caused by currents in the atmosphere. When the sensor detects disturbances, it sends signals to electrodes flanking the plastic mirror. The electrodes create electric fields that make the plastic bulge or dip, canceling out the flicker. Both the Hawaii and Johns Hopkins...
...nighttime march. A cooling breeze begins to blow across the desert, making the harsh terrain suddenly seem soft and welcoming. The men head for a road 1 1/2 miles away, where they plan to practice digging in for an ambush. There is no talking and no illumination except for starlight. In the darkness the silhouettes ahead could belong to a band of desert nomads. A hundred yards away a herd of camels shuffles by, urged on by its Bedouin master as he gruffly shakes his crop at an American photographer...
...visible starlight that Hubble is now able to collect and magnify is no better than that seen by landlocked observatories. It is impossible for Hubble to find a planet circling a distant star or detect a black hole at the center of a galaxy. At least 40% of the experiments planned for the telescope will have to be postponed until engineers can make lenses for the craft's instruments that will compensate for the mirror's flaw. Astronauts will then have to ride the shuttle into orbit and space walk to the telescope, where they will fit the new lenses...