Word: ways
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...many cases, though, the ground-based giants can find their own way through the universe. Geoff Marcy, for example, leader of the world's most prolific planet-hunting team, began his research at the relatively modest 3.5-m telescope at Lick Observatory in California. Then, in 1996, he moved most of his project to the Keck, with dramatic results. "We've discovered 35 planets orbiting sunlike stars so far," says Marcy, who holds joint appointments at the University of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco State University. "And the majority of them have been with the Keck...
George Djorgovski is using the Keck as well, but where Marcy's quarries are no more than 200 light-years way, Djorgovski's are closer to 10 billion. A professor at Caltech, Djorgovski has lately been concentrating on gamma-ray bursts--mysterious flashes of high-energy radiation that have baffled astronomers for nearly 40 years. If these blips of electromagnetic energy can be seen from far across the universe, as some astronomers believe, then they must briefly shine as bright as the rest of the stars in the universe put together--a seemingly preposterous assertion...
UCLA astronomer Andrea Ghez, meanwhile, has focused her attention on the center of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, far closer than Djorgovski's gamma-ray bursts but hundreds of times farther away than Marcy's planets. Shrouded in thick clouds of dust, the galactic core is invisible to ordinary light detectors. But among the Keck's suite of specialized instruments is an electronic camera sensitive to infrared light--the same kind of invisible light that your remote control uses to communicate with your TV. Infrared light of some wavelengths can penetrate dust as though it weren't there, giving...
Adaptive-optics systems do have limitations. To start with, they work well only with infrared radiation. That's not a huge problem, given that infrared is ideal for spotting new planets and for studying the early universe, the core of the Milky Way and the formation of stars. A bigger drawback is that adaptive optics can currently correct only for a small patch of atmosphere at the center of the telescope's field of view. But pockets of atmospheric turbulence are small enough that a slight change in viewing angle means a whole different pattern of distortions, which in turn...
...could very well include a face-off between the two classmates. It's conceivable that despite Davenport and that pesky No. 1 ranked Martina Hingis, Venus, with her superior court coverage, and Serena, with her greater power, could spend the next few years swapping the two top spots the way they would sweaters...