Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper

Dinosaurs and asteroids

In March of 1992, three astronomers, Carolyn and Eugene Shoemaker and David Levy discovered their ninth comet, hence its name, “Shoemaker-Levy 9.” The team determined that S-L9 was orbiting Jupiter now rather than the sun. Because Jupiter is a heavy-weight planet, exerting an enormous gravitational pull, astronomers call it the solar system’s vacuum sweeper.

In July of 1992, astronomers noticed that Jupiter’s force had broken S-L9 into 23 fragments that they labelled A through W and that each were strung out in single file, like pearls on a string. Most fragments, they estimated, we...

 

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