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synthetic textile fibers

(Encyclopedia)synthetic textile fibers have revolutionized the textile industry. Such artificial fibers are usually long-chain polymers, produced industrially by the condensation of many small units. Orlon is the t...

sunbittern

(Encyclopedia)sunbittern, common name for a graceful, stout-bodied, bitternlike bird, Eurypyga helias. It is named for its wing markings, an orange-chestnut shield set in an orange-buff circle, which looks like a s...

zodiacal light

(Encyclopedia)zodiacal light or zodiacal band, a faint band of light sometimes seen in the western sky just after sunset in the spring, extending up from the horizon at the point where the sun has just set, or in t...

ultraviolet astronomy

(Encyclopedia)ultraviolet astronomy, study of celestial objects by means of the ultraviolet radiation they emit, in the wavelength range from about 90 to about 350 nanometers. Ultraviolet (UV) line spectrum measure...

X-ray astronomy

(Encyclopedia)X-ray astronomy, study of celestial objects by means of the X rays they emit, in the wavelength range from 0.01 to 10 nanometers. X-ray astronomy dates to 1949 with the discovery that the sun emits X ...

space probe

(Encyclopedia)space probe, space vehicle carrying sophisticated instrumentation but no crew, designed to explore various aspects of the solar system (see space exploration). Unlike an artificial satellite, which is...

MacLeod, Alistair

(Encyclopedia)MacLeod, Alistair məkloudˈ [key], 1936–2014, Canadian fiction writer, b. John Alexander Joseph MacLeod, Ph.D. Notre Dame, 1968. He taught at the Univ. of Windsor from the late 1960s until his reti...

Eddington, Sir Arthur Stanley

(Encyclopedia)Eddington, Sir Arthur Stanley, 1882–1944, British astronomer and physicist. He was chief assistant (1906–13) at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and was from 1913 Plumian professor of astronomy a...

Dazai, Osamu

(Encyclopedia)Dazai, Osamu sho͞oˈjē tso͞oˈshĭmä [key], 1909–48, Japanese novelist. Considered one of the foremost fiction writers of 20th-century Japan, Dazai was noted for his ironic and gloomy wit, his o...

Farah, Nuruddin

(Encyclopedia)Farah, Nuruddin, 1945–, Somali novelist, playwright, and essayist. Educated in Ethiopia, India, and England, he writes in English. His first novel, From a Crooked Rib (1970), was about a girl who fl...