A-Z Browse

Previous Next

Sōya Strait (waterway, Russia-Japan)
international waterway between the islands of Sakhalin (Russia) and Hokkaido (Japan). The strait, named after the French explorer Jean-François de Galaup, Count de La Pérouse, separates the Sea of Okhotsk from the Sea of Japan. It is 27 m...
Sōya-Kaikyō (waterway, Russia-Japan)
international waterway between the islands of Sakhalin (Russia) and Hokkaido (Japan). The strait, named after the French explorer Jean-François de Galaup, Count de La Pérouse, separates the Sea of Okhotsk from the Sea of Japan. It is 27 m...
soybean (plant)
annual legume of the Fabaceae family and its edible seed, probably derived from a wild plant of East Asia. The soybean is economically the most important bean in the world, providing vegetable protein for millions of people and ingredients for hundreds of chemica...
soybean meal
annual legume of the Fabaceae family and its edible seed, probably derived from a wild plant of East Asia. The soybean is economically the most important bean in the world, providing vegetable protein for millions of people and ingredients for hundreds of chemica...
soybean milk
Soybean milk is produced and used in the fresh state in China and as a condensed milk in Japan. In both of these preparations, certain antinutritive factors (antitrypsin and soyin) are largely removed. In the Western world most soy products are treated chemically or by heat to remove these antinutritive factors along with the unpopular beany taste. Such processing affects the enzymatic activity......
soybean oil
Soybean (Glycine max) is not a cereal but a legume; because of its widespread use in the baking industry, it may appropriately be dealt with here. Soybean provides protein of high biological value. Although Asia is its original source, the United States became the major world producer in the late 20th century....
“Soyedineniye i perevod chetyrokh yevangeliy” (work by Tolstoy)
...related works, Issledovaniye dogmaticheskogo bogosloviya (written 1880; An Examination of Dogmatic Theology), Soyedineniye i perevod chetyrokh yevangeliy (written 1881; Union and Translation of the Four Gospels), and V chyom moya vera? (written 1884; What I Believe); he later added Tsarstvo bozhiye vnutri vas (1893; The Kingdom of God Is......
Soyer, David (American musician)
Feb. 24, 1923Philadelphia, Pa.Feb. 25, 2010New York, N.Y.American musician who cofounded (1964) the world-renowned Guarneri String Quartet, for which he served as cellist until his retirement in 2001. The Guarneri, which also consisted of violinists Arnold Steinhardt and John Dalley and vio...
Soyet (people)
...a band into which feathers of birds have been pierced. The footwear is also symbolic—iron deer hooves, birds’ claws, or bears’ paws. The clothing of the shamans among the Tofalar (Karagasy), Soyet, and Darhat are decorated with representations of human bones—ribs, arm, and finger bones. The shamans of the Goldi-Ude tribe perform the ceremony in a singular shirt and i...
Soyinka, Wole (Nigerian author)
Nigerian playwright and political activist who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. He sometimes wrote of modern West Africa in a satirical style, but his serious intent and his belief in the evils inherent in the exercise of power usually was evident in his work as well....
Soylent Green (film by Fleischer)
...in many dramas and specials, including Ford Theatre, Playhouse 90, and Rod Serling’s Night Gallery. Robinson died in 1973 shortly after completing his final film, Soylent Green. He was posthumously awarded a special Oscar for his contributions to the art of motion pictures....
soyonbo (Mongolian emblem)
...which was popularized there in the 16th century. In 1911, when the modern Mongolian state was first established, its yellow flag bore in the centre in blue a traditional emblem known as the soyonbo. This consists of figures (flame, sun, moon, yin-yang, triangles, and bars) representing philosophical principles inherent in Mongolian culture and religion. Below the soyonbo was......
Soyot (people)
any member of an ethnolinguistic group inhabiting the autonomous republic of Tyva (Tuva) in south-central Russia; the group also constitutes a small minority in the northwestern part of Mongolia. The Tyvans are a Turkic-speaking people with Mongol influences. They live among the headwaters of the Yenisey River...
Soysal, Sevgi (Turkish writer)
The promising literary career of Sevgi Soysal was cut short by her untimely death in 1976. Born in Istanbul, Soysal studied philology in Ankara and archaeology and drama in Germany. Her first novel, Yürümek (1970; “To Walk”), features a stream-of-consciousness narrative and a keen ear for local dialogue; its treatment of sexual issues was unusua...
Soyuz (spacecraft)
any of several versions of Soviet/Russian manned spacecraft launched since 1967 and the longest-serving manned-spacecraft design in use. Originally conceived in Soviet aerospace designer Sergey Korolyov’s design bureau (see Energia) for the U.S.S.R.’s Moon-landing pr...
Soyuz Osvobozhdeniya (Russian political group)
first major liberal political group in Russia. The Union was founded in St. Petersburg in January 1904 to be a covert organization working to replace absolutism with a constitutional monarchy. Originally the creation of liberal nobility, it soon was dominated by middle-class, professional people, who gave the union a new mil...
Soyuz Pisateley S.S.R.
organization formed in 1932 by a decree of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that abolished existing literary organizations and absorbed all professional Soviet writers into one large union. The union supported Communist ...
Soyuz Sovetskich Socialisticeskich Respublik (historical state, Eurasia)
former northern Eurasian empire (1917/22–1991) stretching from the Baltic and Black seas to the Pacific Ocean and, in its final years, consisting of 15 Soviet Socialist Republics (S.S.R.’s)–Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belorussia (now Belarus), Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirgiziya (now Kyrgyzstan), Latvia, Li...
Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik (historical state, Eurasia)
former northern Eurasian empire (1917/22–1991) stretching from the Baltic and Black seas to the Pacific Ocean and, in its final years, consisting of 15 Soviet Socialist Republics (S.S.R.’s)–Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belorussia (now Belarus), Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirgiziya (now Kyrgyzstan), Latvia, Li...
Soyuz TM-29 (Russian space mission)
...six months of cosmonaut training at the Yury Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Star City, Russia, between March and August 1998. He flew his only space mission as a research cosmonaut on Soyuz TM-29, which launched on Feb. 20, 1999, and docked with Mir on February 22. Bella was accompanied on Soyuz TM-29 by a Russian cosmonaut, Viktor Afanasyev, and a French astronaut, Jean-Pierre......
Soyuz TM-31 (Russian space mission)
...Endeavour space shuttle visited the International Space Station (ISS). The flight lasted 12 days. His fifth space mission was in 2000–01, when he served as flight engineer on Soyuz TM-31 as part of the first resident crew (Expedition 1) on the ISS. He spent 141 days in space during this mission. In 2005 he went into space for the sixth time, to the ISS as commander on......
Soyuz TM-7 (Soviet space mission)
...Soviet spacecraft design organization, as an engineer in 1981 and became a civilian trainee cosmonaut four years later. He flew his first space mission in 1988–89 as flight engineer on Soyuz TM-7, during which he spent 151 days in space aboard the Mir space station. He was in the public eye in 1991–92 during his second mission, also to Mir, for being in space during the dissolutio...
Soyuz TMA-10 (Russian space mission)
...when she visited the ISS in September 2006. The following year American billionaire Charles Simonyi joined the ranks of spaceflight participants when he shared a ride with two cosmonauts on board Soyuz TMA-10 for a 10-day stay on the ISS. The sixth spaceflight participant, American video game developer Richard Garriott, was launched in October 2008. In making his flight, Garriott became the......
Soyuz TMA-11 (Russian space mission)
Whitson traveled into space for a second time on Oct. 10, 2007—aboard Soyuz TMA-11 with Yury Malenchenko of Russia and Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor of Malaysia—as the commander of the Expedition 16 mission. The first female commander of the ISS, Whitson supervised and directed a significant expansion of the living and working space on the ISS, including the installation of components......
Soyuz TMA-13 (Russian space mission)
Garriott became the sixth space tourist when, after training at the Yury Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Star City, Russia, he launched aboard Soyuz TMA-13 on Oct. 12, 2008, with commander Yury Lonchakov of Russia and flight engineer Edward Fincke of the United States. He arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) two days later. Garriott’s work on the ISS included communicating ...
Soyuz TMA-3 (Russian space mission)
In 2001 Duque was chosen to attend the first advanced training class for the International Space Station (ISS). In 2003 Duque flew for a second time in space, as flight engineer on Soyuz TMA-3 during the Cervantes mission to the ISS. During this 10-day mission (October 18 to 28), Duque visited the ISS during a crew changeover, launching with Expedition 8 and returning with Expedition 7....
Soyuz TMA-6 (Russian space mission)
Two crew-exchange missions, Soyuz TMA-6 and 7, were flown to the International Space Station (ISS). Each carried an American and Russian replacement for American and Russian crew members who had completed a six-month stay on the ISS. In addition, the TMA-6 mission carried an Italian scientist and TMA-7 a space tourist....
Soyuzkino (Soviet agency)
...state film trust (then called Sovkino) from the jurisdiction of the Commissariat of Education and placed it under the direct authority of the Supreme Council of the National Economy. Reorganized as Soyuzkino, the trust was turned over to the reactionary bureaucrat Boris Shumyatsky, a proponent of the narrowly ideological doctrine known as Socialist Realism. This policy, which came to dominate.....
Soyuzselkhoztekhnika (Soviet organization)
...stantsii; RTS), which repaired the machinery, supplied spare parts, and continued to rent machines for special purposes—e.g., road building. In 1961 the RTS were replaced by the All-Union Farm Machinery Association (Soyuzselkhoztekhnika). ...
Sozaboy (novel by Saro-Wiwa)
...the late 1960s. Afterward he worked as a government administrator until 1973, when he left to concentrate on his literary career. His first novels were Songs in a Time of War and Sozaboy (both 1985); the latter, written in pidgin English, satirized corruption in Nigerian society. He reached his largest audience with Basi and Company, a......
Sōzen (Japanese feudal lord)
head of the most powerful warrior clan in western Japan in the 15th century....
Sozialdemokrat, Der (German periodical)
...abandoning the “ethical socialism” of Karl Höchberg, the wealthy patron of Die Zukunft. With Marx’s consent, he became the editor of the Zürich edition of Der Sozialdemokrat, a periodical that was the rallying centre of the underground socialist party. Expelled from Switzerland at the request of Bismarck in 1888, Bernstein continued the publicati...
Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei (political party, Germany)
...losers in the tariffs-plus-navy-legislation arrangement were consumers, who were taxed for the defense program after they had paid higher prices for bread. Popular resentment tended to increase the Socialist vote, and the other parties could command a majority only by banding together....
Sozialdemokratische Partei der Schweiz (political party, Switzerland)
Swiss political party of the centre-left that supports an extensive government role in the economy. With the Christian Democratic People’s Party, the Radical Democratic Party, and the Swiss People’s Party, the Social Democratic Party has governed Switzerl...
Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (political party, Germany)
Germany’s oldest political party and one of the country’s two main parties (the other being the Christian Democratic Union). It advocates the modernization of the economy to meet the demands of globalization, but it also stresses the need to address the social needs of work...
Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs (political party, Austria [1945])
In 2010 Austria’s grand coalition between the centre-left Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) and the centre-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) was characterized by cooperation as the coalition partners worked together to lead the country out of the worst recession it had experienced since World War II. Pres. Heinz Fischer (SPÖ) was reelected to his post in...
Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs (political party, Austria [1889])
...World War I and 1934. Compared with its chief right-wing opponent force, the Heimwehr, the Schutzbund was tightly organized, having been created in 1923 from the workers’ guards by the Austrian Social Democratic Party, of which the Schutzbund remained an adjunct. It was also descended from the People’s Guard of 1918, a Social Democratic weapon against the Communists; it considered...
Soziale Marktwirtschaft
...minister of the new Federal Republic of Germany under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, Erhard was commissioned to continue his policies of reconstruction. In the following years he applied his “social market system” to the problems of economic renewal with phenomenal results, achieving what has often been called the German “economic miracle.” Based on free-market......
Soziale Umschichtungen in einer dänischen Mittelstadt (work by Geiger)
His work on social stratification and mobility included studies of Danish intellectuals and a detailed examination of the people of Århus, Soziale Umschichtungen in einer dänischen Mittelstadt (1951; “Social Changes in a Medium-Sized Danish City”). Long interested in the sociology of public order, he wrote Vorstudien zu einer Soziologie des Rechts (1947;.....
Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (political party, Germany)
...in the Reichstag, and Liebknecht continued to be a thorn in Bismarck’s side. Bismarck’s determination to repress the socialists brought about the merger of the Lassalleans and Liebknechtians as the Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (Socialist Labour Party) at Gotha in 1875. The Gotha Program, a compromise between the positions of the two parties—although criticized...
Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (political party, Germany)
Controlled by the Socialist Unity Party, the FDGB was formed shortly after World War II with virtually compulsory membership. With the rapid reduction of private enterprise in the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany, the trade unions dropped their original function of representing the workers’ interests as against the employers’ and instead became agents for the administration of social ...
Sozialistische Reichspartei (political party, Germany)
In 1949 Fritz Dorls and Otto Ernst Remer, a former army general who had helped to crush an attempted military coup against Hitler in July 1944, founded the Socialist Reich Party (Sozialistische Reichspartei; SRP), one of the earliest neofascist parties in Germany. Openly sympathetic to Nazism, the SRP made considerable gains in former Nazi strongholds, and in 1951 it won 11 percent of the vote......
“Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen” (work by Troeltsch)
...Ethics), a large number of articles on various subjects thematically linked with the development of the Christian churches. Many of these were later integrated into his best known work, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen. In that work he explored the relationships between and within social and cultural groups in the context of the social ethics of the Christian....
“Sozialreform oder Revolution?” (work by Luxemburg)
...socialism in highly industrialized nations could best be achieved through a gradualist approach, using trade-union activity and parliamentary politics. This, Luxemburg denied categorically in Sozialreform oder Revolution? (1889; Reform or Revolution), in which she defended Marxist orthodoxy and the necessity of revolution, arguing that parliament was nothing more than a......
Sozini, Fausto Paolo (Italian theologian)
theologian whose anti-Trinitarian theology was later influential in the development of Unitarian theology....
Sozini, Lelio Francesco Maria (Italian theologian)
Italian theologian whose anti-Trinitarian views were developed into the doctrine of Socinianism by his nephew Faustus Socinus....
Sozomen (Christian lawyer)
Christian lawyer in Constantinople whose church history, distinguished for its classical literary style, its favouring of monasticism, and its greater use of western European sources, rivaled that of his elder contemporary Socrates Scholasticus....
Sozzi, Mario (Roman Catholic priest)
Mario Sozzi, a priest who was admitted to the Piarists in 1630, eventually caused, out of jealousy, dissension that led to Joseph’s unwarranted arrest. An ensuing internal revolt ruptured the order; in 1643 Sozzi died, being succeeded by an equally villainous subordinate, Fr. Cherubini, and Pope Urban VIII quashed the generalate. Joseph, then 86 years old, was tried by the Holy See. Pope......
Sozzini, Fausto Paolo (Italian theologian)
theologian whose anti-Trinitarian theology was later influential in the development of Unitarian theology....
Sozzini, Lelio Francesco Maria (Italian theologian)
Italian theologian whose anti-Trinitarian views were developed into the doctrine of Socinianism by his nephew Faustus Socinus....
SP method (prospecting)
...activity, (2) resistivity changes, or (3) permittivity effects. Some materials tend to become natural batteries that generate natural electric currents whose effects can be measured. The self-potential method relies on the oxidation of the upper surface of metallic sulfide minerals by downward-percolating groundwater to become a natural battery; current flows through the ore body and......
sp-electron (chemistry)
Silicon, carbon, germanium, and a few other elements form covalently bonded solids. In these elements there are four electrons in the outer sp-shell, which is half filled. (The sp-shell is a hybrid formed from one s and one p subshell.) In the covalent bond an atom shares one valence (outer-shell) electron with each of its four nearest neighbour atoms. The......
sp-shell (chemistry)
Silicon, carbon, germanium, and a few other elements form covalently bonded solids. In these elements there are four electrons in the outer sp-shell, which is half filled. (The sp-shell is a hybrid formed from one s and one p subshell.) In the covalent bond an atom shares one valence (outer-shell) electron with each of its four nearest neighbour atoms. The......
spa (health resort)
spring or resort with thermal or mineral water used for drinking and bathing. The name was taken from a town near Liège, Belg., to which persons traveled for the reputed curative properties of its mineral springs....
SPA (North Korean government)
...held by Kim Jong Il, Kim Il-sung’s son. The head of government is the premier, assisted by several vice-premiers and a cabinet, the members of which are appointed by the national legislature, the Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA). The president of the SPA is North Korea’s titular head of state. In practice, however, the government is under the one-man leadership of Kim Jong I...
Spa (Belgium)
municipality, Walloon Region, eastern Belgium. It is situated in the wooded hills of the northern Ardennes, southeast of Liège. Its popular mineral springs, known locally as pouhons, have caused the name spa to be given...
Spa Conference (European history)
The Reparations Commission bickered throughout 1920 over the total sum to be demanded of Germany and its distribution among the Allies. At the Spa Conference (July 1920), France won 52 percent of German payments, Britain 22 percent, Italy 10, and Belgium 8. At the conferences of Hythe, Boulogne, and Brussels, France presented a total bill of 230,000,000,000 gold marks, although the British......
Spa Fields Riot (British history)
...with the idea that the first duty of a patriot was to overthrow the government. He served in the army briefly, then drifted rather aimlessly until December 1816, when he helped plan an uprising (the Spa Fields Riot) in which the Bank of England and the Tower of London were to be seized. After the rioters were dispersed, Thistlewood and another conspirator were arrested but were eventually......
SPA Presidium (North Korean government)
...the highest organ of state power and the primary legislative body, consists of a single chamber with 687 members elected to five-year terms by universal adult suffrage; it also has a 15-member SPA Presidium, or Standing Committee, with members chosen from within the SPA, that meets when the assembly is not in session. The SPA’s regular sessions last for about a week and are convened once...
SPA Standing Committee (North Korean government)
...the highest organ of state power and the primary legislative body, consists of a single chamber with 687 members elected to five-year terms by universal adult suffrage; it also has a 15-member SPA Presidium, or Standing Committee, with members chosen from within the SPA, that meets when the assembly is not in session. The SPA’s regular sessions last for about a week and are convened once...
Spaak, Paul-Henri (Belgian statesman)
Belgium’s foremost statesman in the decades following World War II and a leading advocate of European cooperation. He played a major role in forming the European Economic Community (EEC; later succeeded by the European Union),...
Spaatz, Carl (United States military officer)
the leading U.S. combat air commander in World War II and the first chief of staff of the independent U.S. Air Force....
Spaatz, Tooey (United States military officer)
the leading U.S. combat air commander in World War II and the first chief of staff of the independent U.S. Air Force....
SPAB (British organization)
...(later called The Lesser Arts), and his first collection of lectures, Hopes and Fears for Art, appeared in 1882. In 1877 he also founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in an attempt to combat the drastic methods of restoration then being carried out on the cathedrals and parish churches of Great Britain....
Spaccanápoli (street, Naples, Italy)
...subsequent structures, evident remains of Roman public buildings. The lower parallel—the street that, bearing interim names, becomes Via San Biagio dei Librai—delineates the so-called Spaccanápoli (“Split of Naples”), a designation more loosely applied to all of this ancient centre....
Spaccio de la bestia trionfante (work by Bruno)
...according to which religion is considered as a means to instruct and govern ignorant people, philosophy as the discipline of the elect who are able to behave themselves and govern others. The Spaccio de la bestia trionfante (1584; The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast), the first dialogue of his moral trilogy, is a satire on contemporary superstitions and vices, embodying a......
space (physics)
a boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction....
space (astronomy)
a boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction.......
space (mathematics)
...geometry be regarded as special cases of projective geometry. In each case the common features that, in Klein’s opinion, made them geometries were that there were a set of points, called a “space,” and a group of transformations by means of which figures could be moved around in the space without altering their essential properties. For example, in Euclidean plane geometry ...
Space Adventures Ltd. (American company)
The advent of space tourism occurred at the end of the 1990s with a deal between the Russian company MirCorp and the American company Space Adventures Ltd. MirCorp was a private venture in charge of the space station Mir. To generate income for maintenance of the aging space station, MirCorp decided to sell a trip to Mir, and Tito became its first paying passenger. However, before Tito could......
Space Age
the investigation, by means of manned and unmanned spacecraft, of the reaches of the universe beyond Earth’s atmosphere and the use of the information so gained to increase knowledge of the cosmos and benefit humanity. A complete list of all manned spaceflights, with details on each mission’s accomplishments and crew, is available in the section Chronology of ma...
Space and Astronautical Science, Institute of (Japanese organization)
JAXA arose from two earlier Japanese space agencies. The University of Tokyo created an Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) in 1964. This small group undertook the development of scientific spacecraft and the vehicles needed to launch them, and it launched Japan’s first satellite, Osumi, in 1970. In 1981 oversight of ISAS was transferred to the Japanese Ministry of Education...
space charge (physics)
electrical charge distributed through a three-dimensional region. In an electron tube, for example, a negative charge results because electrons that are emitted from the cathode do not travel instantaneously to the plate (anode) but require a finite time for the trip. These electrons form a cloud around the cathode, the clou...
space contraction (physics)
in relativity physics, the shortening of an object along the direction of its motion relative to an observer. Dimensions in other directions are not contracted. The concept of the contraction was proposed by the Irish physicist George FitzGerald in 1889, and it was thereafter independently developed by Hendrik Lorentz of the Netherlands. The Michelson...
space debris
man-made material that is orbiting Earth but no longer functional. This material can be as large as a discarded rocket stage or as small as a microscopic chip of paint. Much of the debris is in low Earth orbit, within 2,000 km (1,200 miles) of Earth’s surface; however, some debris can be found in geostation...
Space Disturbance Forecast Center (United States)
...doses of radiation for astronauts in interplanetary spacecraft. Efforts have been undertaken to mitigate such serious problems. In the United States, for example, the federal government operates a Space Disturbance Forecast Center in Boulder, Colorado, which monitors the state of the Sun and solar wind and attempts to predict the occurrence of such “space weather.”...
space elevator
a concept for lifting mass out of Earth’s gravity well without using rockets in which an extremely strong cable extends from Earth’s surface to the height of geostationary orbit (35,786 km [22,236 miles]) or beyond. The competing forces of gravity at the lower end and outward ...
space exploration
the investigation, by means of manned and unmanned spacecraft, of the reaches of the universe beyond Earth’s atmosphere and the use of the information so gained to increase knowledge of the cosmos and benefit humanity. A complete list of all manned spaceflights, with details on each mission’s accomplishments and crew, is available in the section Chronology of ma...
Space Exploration Technologies (American corporation)
privately developed spacecraft built by the American corporation SpaceX. The first of three test flights was launched on Dec. 8, 2010....
space exploration: Year In Review 1993
The United States experienced a frustrating year in space exploration in 1993 as several key satellites were lost, space shuttle launches were delayed five times, and the space station was drastically cut in size. In addition, a daring project to pioneer a new launch vehicle was killed before its final test flight. In December, however, an ambitious mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope was...
space exploration: Year In Review 1994
During 1994 the design of the international space station was established as the United States and Russia moved to combine forces in a single orbital facility. The DC-X launch vehicle program was revived, and Japan and Europe introduced new launch vehicles. In addition, an international campaign was begun to understand the effect of solar and space phenomena on the Earth....
space frame (architecture)
Three-dimensional truss based on the rigidity of the triangle and composed of linear elements subject only to compression or tension. Its simplest spatial unit is a tetrahedron having four joints and six members. A space frame forms a very strong, thick, flexible structural fabric that can be used horizontally or bent to a variety of shapes. The beauty of its open latticework we...
space group (crystallography)
in crystallography, any of the ways in which the orientation of a crystal can be changed without seeming to change the position of its atoms. These changes may involve displacement of the whole structure along a crystallographic axis (translation), as well as the ...
Space Invaders (electronic game)
arcade game created by Japanese engineer and game designer Nishikado Tomohiro in 1978 and produced by Japanese electronic game manufacturer Taito Corp. The objective of Space Invaders, which was one of the earliest video games released, is to pan across a screen and shoot descending swarms of aliens, preventing them from reaching the bottom of the screen. It is viewed as ...
Space Jam (motion picture)
...(or celebrities of any sort) have known. He accumulated millions of dollars from endorsements (most notably for his Air Jordan basketball shoes). He also made a successful film, Space Jam (1996), in which he starred with animated characters Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. In 1996 the NBA named him one of the 50 greatest players of all time, and in 2009 he was elected to......
space junk
man-made material that is orbiting Earth but no longer functional. This material can be as large as a discarded rocket stage or as small as a microscopic chip of paint. Much of the debris is in low Earth orbit, within 2,000 km (1,200 miles) of Earth’s surface; however, some debris can be found in geostation...
space laboratory
an artificial structure placed in orbit and having the pressurized enclosure, power, supplies, and environmental systems necessary to support human habitation for extended periods. Depending on its configuration, a space station can serve as a base for a variety of activities. These include observations of the Sun and other astronomical objects, study of ...
space lattice (crystallography)
The elements are found in a variety of crystal packing arrangements. The most common lattice structures for metals are those obtained by stacking the atomic spheres into the most compact arrangement. There are two such possible periodic arrangements. In each, the first layer has the atoms packed into a plane-triangular lattice in which every atom has six immediate neighbours. Figure 2 shows......
space launch vehicle (rocket system)
in spaceflight, a rocket-powered vehicle used to transport a spacecraft beyond Earth’s atmosphere, either into orbit around Earth or to some other destination in outer space. Practical launch vehicles have been used to send manned spacecraft, un...
space law
the body of regulations in international law that governs conduct in and related to areas of space above Earth’s lower atmosphere....
space medicine
specialized branch of medical science concerned with those medical problems encountered in human flight in the atmosphere (aviation medicine) and beyond the atmosphere (space medicine)....
Space Merchants, The (novel by Pohl and Kornbluth)
Though many of his works are known for their humour, Pohl often addressed serious issues. His most famous work, The Space Merchants (1953), was written in collaboration with Kornbluth. It tells the story of Mitchell Courtenay, a “copysmith star class” for a powerful advertising agency who is made head of a project to colonize Venus in order to create consumers in space.....
space motion
A complete knowledge of a star’s motion in space is possible only when both its proper motion and radial velocity can be measured. Proper motion is the motion of a star across an observer’s line of sight and constitutes the rate at which the direction of the star changes in the celestial sphere. It is usually measured in seconds of arc per year. Radial velocity is the motion of a sta...
Space Needle (landmark, Seattle, Washington, United States)
...Pioneer Square, downtown, and the popular neighbourhood of Belltown stands Seattle Center, the 74-acre (30-hectare) site of the 1962 World’s Fair. The center contains the 605-foot- (184-metre-) high Space Needle, Seattle’s best-known landmark, as well as McCaw Hall (home of the Seattle Opera), Key Arena, the Children’s Museum, and other public buildings. There the high-rise...
Space Oddity (song by Bowie)
...of the 1960s he fronted various bands from whose minuscule shadow he—having renamed himself to avoid confusion with the singer of the Monkees—emerged as a solo singer-songwriter. “Space Oddity,” the science-fiction single that marks the real beginning of his career, reached the Top Ten in Britain in 1969 but did not become an American radio staple until some years la...
space perception
process through which humans and other organisms become aware of the relative positions of their own bodies and objects around them. Space perception provides cues, such as depth and distance, that are important for movement and orientation to the environment....
space physics (space exploration)
The first scientific discovery made with instruments orbiting in space was the existence of the Van Allen radiation belts, by Explorer 1 and other spacecraft in 1958. Subsequent space missions investigated Earth’s magnetosphere, the surrounding region of space in which the planet’s magnetic field exerts a controlling effect (see Earth: The magnetic field and......
space probe
Akatsuki, a Japanese mission to Venus, launched on May 21, was the only new interplanetary mission launched during the year. A unique instrument would have imaged the planet 30,000 times a second to capture evidence of lightning flashes. Other instruments would have monitored cloud patterns—including super-rotating cloud structures in the upper atmosphere—and atmospheric water......
space program
Both the Soviet and the American space industries had much the same origins and impetus. The development of intermediate-range and intercontinental missiles provided not only the critical electronic technologies but also the rockets necessary to boost small payloads into orbit. Thus, the launch of Sputnik in 1957 signaled not only Soviet technical leadership in a new field but also the......
space quantization (physics)
...which restrict the fraction of the total angular momentum along the quantization axis so that they are limited to the values mlℏ. This phenomenon is known as space quantization and was first demonstrated by two German physicists, Otto Stern and Walther Gerlach....