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Sagan

(Encyclopedia)Sagan: see Żagań, Poland.

(Encyclopedia)Sagan, Françoise kwärĕzˈ [key], 1935–2004, French novelist, b. Françoise Quoirez. She became famous with her precocious first book, Bonjour tristesse (1954, tr. 1955), a bittersweetly amoral po...

Sagan, Carl Edward

(Encyclopedia)Sagan, Carl Edward sāˈgən [key], 1934–96, American astronomer and popularizer of science, b. New York City. Early in his career he investigated radio emissions from Venus and concluded that the c...

Żagań

(Encyclopedia)Żagań zhäˈgänyə [key], Ger. Sagan, town (1991 est. pop. 27,800), Lubuskie prov., W Poland, on the Bóbr River. It has lignite mines, textile mills, and glassmaking industries. Founded in the 12t...

nuclear winter

(Encyclopedia)nuclear winter, theory holding that the smoke and dust produced by a large nuclear war would result in a prolonged period of cold on the earth. The earliest version of the theory, which was put forwar...

Shklovsky, Iosif Samuilovich

(Encyclopedia)Shklovsky, Iosif Samuilovich yôsˈĭf səmo͞oēlˈəvĭch shklŏfˈskē [key], 1916–85, Soviet astronomer. He was head of the department of radio-astronomy at the Sternberg Astronomical Institute,...

comet

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Comet: Whatever the direction of a comet's flight, its “tail” always points away from the sun. The tail disappears when the comet is far from the sun. comet [Gr.,=longhaired], a small cele...