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Broca's Brain: The Romance of ScienceIt would nevertheless be of great interest to examine, with the full armory of modern laboratory techniques, a small fragment of the Kaaba. Its composition could be determined with precision. If it is a meteorite, its cosmic-ray-exposure age-the time spent from fragmentation to arrival on Earth-could be established. And it would be possible to test hypotheses of origin: such as, for example, the idea that some 5 million years ago, about the time of the origin of the horninids, the Kaaba was chipped off an asteroid named 22 Kalliope, orbited the Sun for ages of geological time, and then accidentally encountered the Arabian Peninsula 2,500 years ago. CHAPTER 16 THE GOLDEN AGE OF PLANETARY EXPLORATION The unquiet republic of the maze Of Planets, struggling fierce towards heavenБЂ™s free wilderness. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, Prometheus Unbound (1820) MUCH OF HUMAN HISTORY can, I think, be described as a gradual and sometimes painful liberation from provincialism, the emerging awareness that there is more to the world than was generally believed by our ancestors ...» |
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