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Geological Survey, United States

(Encyclopedia)Geological Survey, United States, bureau organized in 1879 under the Dept. of the Interior to unify and centralize the work already undertaken by separate surveys under Clarence King, F. V. Hayden, Ge...

Muscovy Company

(Encyclopedia)Muscovy Company mŭsˈkəvē [key] or Russia Company, first major English joint-stock trading company. It began in 1553 as a group supporting exploration of a possible northeast passage to Asia. An ex...

Tereshkova, Valentina Vladimirovna

(Encyclopedia)Tereshkova, Valentina Vladimirovna, 1937–, Soviet cosmonaut. She was the first woman to orbit the earth, in Vostok 6 on June 16–19, 1963. She left the Soviet space program soon after and married c...

York University

(Encyclopedia)York University, at North York, Ont., Canada; nondenominational; coeducational; founded 1959 as an affiliate of the Univ. of Toronto, became independent 1965. It has faculties of administrative studie...

Giacconi, Riccardo

(Encyclopedia)Giacconi, Riccardo, 1931–2018, Italian-American astrophysicist, b. Milan, Italy, Ph.D. Univ. of Milan 1954. He was a researcher at American Science and Engineering Corporation (1959–73), professor...

Flavin, Dan

(Encyclopedia)Flavin, Dan flāˈvĭn [key], 1933–96, American sculptor, b. New York City. In the early 1960s, Flavin experimented with fluorescent lights, bending them into complex, angular shapes. His sculptures...

air lock

(Encyclopedia)air lock, compartment connecting two different environments, usually at different pressures, that enables personnel to transfer from one environment to the other. Space capsules have air locks to enab...

Braille

(Encyclopedia)Braille brāl [key], in astronomy, a small asteroid notable because it has the same atypical geologic composition as the larger asteroid Vesta. In 1999 the space probe Deep Space 1 passed within 16 mi...

infrared astronomy

(Encyclopedia)infrared astronomy, study of celestial objects by means of the infrared radiation they emit, in the wavelength range from about 1 micrometer to about 1 millimeter. All objects, from trees and building...

relativity

(Encyclopedia)relativity, physical theory, introduced by Albert Einstein, that discards the concept of absolute motion and instead treats only relative motion between two systems or frames of reference. One consequ...