As Apollo 16 was the penultimate mission in the Apollo program and there was no new hardware or procedures to test on the lunar surface, the last two missions ( the other being Apollo 17 ) presented opportunities for astronauts to clear up some uncertainties in understanding the Moon's properties.

Rainforests once covered 14 % of the earth's land surface ; now they cover a mere 6 % and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years.

Some evidence for this last possibility may be seen in film recordings of the crash-as the nose of the boat climbs and the jet exhaust points at the water surface no disturbance or spray can be seen at all.

Cernan was the last Apollo astronaut to step off the surface of the Moon.

Even the simplest designs avoid the vicious circle of rocket launches from the surface, the difficulty that: the fuel needed to travel the last 10 % of the distance to orbit must be lifted all the way from the surface ; that requires extra fuel ; most of the extra fuel must be lifted most of the way before it is burned ; that requires more extra fuel ; and so on.

As the last lake in the Great Lakes ' hydrologic chain, Lake Ontario has the lowest mean surface elevation of the lakes at 243 feet ( 74 m ) above sea level ; lower than its neighbor upstream.

The historical definition differs from the length-based standard in that a minute of arc, and hence a nautical mile, is not a constant length at the surface of the Earth but gradually lengthens in the north-south direction with increasing distance from the equator, as a corollary of the Earth's oblateness, hence the need for " mean " in the last sentence of the previous paragraph.

The small penguins do not usually dive deep ; they catch their prey near the surface in dives that normally last only one or two minutes.

In the last several years, the PRC has made progress in modernizing its surface fleet with the purchase of Sovremenny class destroyers, as well as producing sophisticated domestic designs such as the Lanzhou class destroyers and.

In 1707 an undersea volcano breached the sea surface, forming the current centre of activity at Nea Kameni in the centre of the lagoon, and eruptions centred on it continue — the twentieth century saw three such, the last in 1950.

Obstruction means a player touches the ball when it is above or traveling towards the playing surface, not having touched the player's court since last being struck by the player.

U-571 will then surface and hit the ship with their last torpedo.

For example, Glacial lakes have been forming rapidly on the surface of the debris-covered glaciers in the Bhutan Himalaya during the last few decades.

This last conclusion attempts to refute Saussure's division between langue and parole and Chomsky's distinction between surface structure and deep structure simultaneously.

Rain or snow begins to reach surface level at the beginning of a precipitation event that can last up to 36 hours depending and the size of the weather system and its speed of movememnt.

Dives to these depths last around 25 minutes, including the time spent at the bottom and the transit down and back from the surface.

* 1966-Rainer Sachs and Arthur Michael Wolfe theoretically predict microwave background fluctuation amplitudes created by gravitational potential variations between observers and the last scattering surface ( see Sachs-Wolfe effect )

Three major land battles, seven large naval battles ( five nighttime surface actions and two carrier battles ), and continual, almost daily aerial battles culminated in the decisive Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in early November 1942, in which the last Japanese attempt to bombard Henderson Field from the sea and land with enough troops to retake it was defeated.

He designed a special procedure of building the tunnels to allow the swift repaving of surface roads ; this procedure involved ( among other things ) building the crown of the tunnel first and the flooring last, the reverse of the usual norm at that time.

The last uncontested reports of vakkas being held originate in the 19th century, although sporadic reports also surface in the 20th century.

The last 3. 4 meters to the surface was accomplished in free-fall from zero velocity at that height, after the vernier engines were turned off.

The freeway ( termed a highway or expressway in Massachusetts ) ends at a rotary with Route 127 in Gloucester, and the last bit of Route 128 is a surface road that bypasses downtown Gloucester to the northeast.

Surveyor 7 was the seventh and last lunar lander of the American unmanned Surveyor program sent to explore the surface of the Moon.

In practice, a bidirectional reflectance distribution function ( BRDF ) may be required to characterize the scattering properties of a surface accurately, although the albedo is a very useful first approximation.

He also discovered the phenomenon now called Rayleigh scattering, explaining why the sky is blue, and predicted the existence of the surface waves now known as Rayleigh waves.

When the primary electron beam interacts with the sample, the electrons lose energy by repeated random scattering and absorption within a teardrop-shaped volume of the specimen known as the interaction volume, which extends from less than 100 nm to around 5 µm into the surface.

Such measures prevent electron scattering off of residual gas atoms as well as the formation of a thin " gas ( adsorbate ) layer " on the surface of the specimen which degrades analytical performance.

This removes much of the surface scattering effects typically seen in other types of gratings.

The light at a given point in the speckle pattern is made up of contributions from the whole of the scattering surface.

These processes include the scattering of phonons by crystal defects, or the scattering from the surface of the crystal in case of high quality single crystal.

Some of the things investigated by surface physics include surface states, surface diffusion, surface reconstruction, surface phonons and plasmons, epitaxy and surface enhanced Raman scattering, the emission and tunneling of electrons, spintronics, and the self-assembly of nanostructures on surface.

These include X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Auger electron spectroscopy, low-energy electron diffraction, electron energy loss spectroscopy, thermal desorption spectroscopy, ion scattering spectroscopy, secondary ion mass spectrometry, Dual polarization interferometry, and other surface analysis methods included in the list of materials analysis methods.

The section of spacetime that can be observed is the backward light cone ( all points within the cosmic light horizon, given time to reach a given observer ), while the related term Hubble volume can be used to describe either the past light cone or comoving space up to the surface of last scattering.

Analysis of data from WMAP implies that on the scale to the surface of last scattering, the density parameter of the Universe is within about 0. 5 % of the value representing spatial flatness.

The types of non-uniformities which can cause scattering, sometimes known as scatterers or scattering centers, are too numerous to list, but a small sample includes particles, bubbles, droplets, density fluctuations in fluids, crystallites in polycrystalline solids, defects in monocrystalline solids, surface roughness, cells in organisms, and textile fibers in clothing.

Surfaces described as white owe their appearance to multiple scattering of light by internal or surface inhomogeneities in the object, for example by the boundaries of transparent microscopic crystals that make up a stone or by the microscopic fibers in a sheet of paper.

More generally, the gloss ( or lustre or sheen ) of the surface is determined by scattering.

Highly scattering surfaces are described as being dull or having a matte finish, while the absence of surface scattering leads to a glossy appearance, as with polished metal or stone.

The name " Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon " is a literal translation of the Chinese proverb " 卧虎藏龍 " which refers to the mysteries ( or hidden talents, undiscovered talents ) that lie beneath the surface of an otherwise normal-looking individual.

In recent usage, especially in the context of environmental policy, the term " climate change " often refers only to changes in modern climate, including the rise in average surface temperature known as global warming.

Among Black players, the name " craps " refers primarily to the casino version of the game that is played on a marked felt surface on a table.

The Southern Oscillation refers to variations in the temperature of the surface of the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean ( warming and cooling known as El Niño and La Niña respectively ) and in air surface pressure in the tropical western Pacific.

For example, air hoar is a deposit of hoar frost on objects above the surface, such as tree branches, plant stems, wires ; surface hoar is formed by fernlike ice crystals directly deposited on snow, ice or already frozen surfaces ; crevasse hoar consists of crystals that form in glacial crevasses where water vapour can accumulate under calm weather conditions ; depth hoar refers to cup shaped, faceted crystals formed within dry snow, beneath the surface.

In a limited sense, the Coandă effect refers to the tendency of a fluid jet to stay attached to an adjacent surface that curves away from the flow, and the resultant entrainment of ambient air into the flow.

* Full-grain leather refers to hides that have not been sanded, buffed, or snuffed ( as opposed to top-grain or corrected leather ) to remove imperfections ( or natural marks ) on the surface of the hide.

* Underground living, refers simply to living below the ground's surface

The term bolide refers to either an extraterrestrial body that collides with the Earth, or to an exceptionally bright, fireball-like meteor regardless of whether it ultimately impacts the surface.

Thermal radiation refers not only to the radiation itself, but also the process by which the surface of an object radiates its thermal energy in the form black body radiation.

The term surface used without qualification refers to surfaces without boundary.

The term " sound change " refers to diachronic changes, or changes in a language's underlying sound system over time ; " alternation ", on the other hand, refers to surface changes that happen synchronically and do not change the language's underlying system ( for example, the-s in the English plural can be pronounced differently depending on what sound it follows ; this is a form of alternation, rather than sound change ).

The water cycle ( known scientifically as the hydrologic cycle ) refers to the continuous exchange of water within the hydrosphere, between the atmosphere, soil water, surface water, groundwater, and plants.

Deep marine usually refers to environments more than 200 m below the water surface.

Intaglio ( from ) is a term from art applied to burial mounds that refers to a design cut into a hard surface.

Although painterly generally refers to a certain use of paint in art, it happens that some forms of sculpture make use of apparently random surface effects which, if not exactly resembling brushstrokes, contain the traits of painterliness ( see Wood as a medium ).

Within scientific journals, global warming refers to surface temperature increases while climate change includes global warming and everything else that increasing greenhouse gas levels will affect.

Charbroiling, or chargrilling outside North America, refers to grilling on a surface with wide raised ridges, to the point of having the food slightly charred in texture.

The term geophysics sometimes refers only to the geological applications: Earth's shape ; its gravitational and magnetic fields ; its internal structure and composition ; its dynamics and their surface expression in plate tectonics, the generation of magmas, volcanism and rock formation.

The word planetarium, has been captured and now usually refers to hemispherical theatres in which images of the night sky are projected onto an overhead surface.