1.
Deep Impact (spacecraft)
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Deep Impact was a NASA space probe launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 18,47 UTC on January 12,2005. It was designed to study the composition of the comet Tempel 1. At 05,52 UTC on July 4,2005, the impactor successfully collided with the comets nucleus, the impact excavated debris from the interior of the nucleus, forming an impact crater. Photographs taken by the spacecraft showed the comet to be more dusty, the impact generated an unexpectedly large and bright dust cloud, obscuring the view of the impact crater. Previous space missions to comets, such as Giotto and Stardust, were fly-by missions and these missions were able to photograph and examine only the surfaces of cometary nuclei, and even then from considerable distances. The Deep Impact mission was the first to eject material from a surface, and the mission garnered large publicity from the media, international scientists. Upon the completion of its mission, proposals were made to further utilize the spacecraft. Consequently, Deep Impact flew by Earth on December 31,2007 on its way to a mission, designated EPOXI, with a dual purpose to study extrasolar planets. By observing the composition of the comet, astronomers hoped to determine how comets form based on the differences between the interior and exterior makeup of the comet, observations of the impact and its aftermath would allow astronomers to attempt to determine the answers to these questions. The missions Principal Investigator was Michael AHearn, an astronomer at the University of Maryland, the Flyby spacecraft is about 3.2 meters long,1.7 meters wide and 2.3 meters high. It includes two panels, a debris shield, and several science instruments for imaging, infrared spectroscopy. The spacecraft also carried two cameras, the High Resolution Imager, and the Medium Resolution Imager.05 to 4.8 micrometres and it has been optimized for observing the comets nucleus. The MRI is the device, and was used primarily for navigation during the final 10-day approach. It also has a wheel, with a slightly different set of filters. The Impactor section of the spacecraft contains an instrument that is identical to the MRI, called the Impactor Targeting Sensor. Its dual purpose was to sense the Impactors trajectory, which could then be adjusted up to four times between release and impact, and to image the comet from close range, the final image taken by the impactor was snapped only 3.7 seconds before impact. The impactors payload, dubbed the Cratering Mass, was 100% copper, including this cratering mass, copper formed 49% of total mass of the impactor, this was to minimize interference with scientific measurements. Since copper was not expected to be found on a comet, instead of using explosives, it was also cheaper to use copper as the payload
2.
Arthur C. Clarke
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Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction writer, science writer and futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host. He is perhaps most famous for being co-writer of the screenplay for the 1968 film 2001, A Space Odyssey, Clarke was a science writer, who was both an avid populariser of space travel and a futurist of uncanny ability. On these subjects he wrote over a dozen books and many essays, in 1961 he was awarded the Kalinga Prize, an award which is given by UNESCO for popularizing science. These along with his fiction writings eventually earned him the moniker Prophet of the Space Age. His other science fiction writings earned him a number of Hugo and Nebula awards, for many years Clarke, Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov were known as the Big Three of science fiction. Clarke was a proponent of space travel. In 1934, while still a teenager, he joined the British Interplanetary Society, in 1945, he proposed a satellite communication system, an idea which won him the Franklin Institutes Stuart Ballantine Medal in 1963, and other honours. Later he was the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society from 1946–47, Clarke emigrated from England to Sri Lanka in 1956, largely to pursue his interest in scuba diving. That year he discovered the ruins of the ancient Koneswaram temple in Trincomalee. Clarke augmented his fame later on in the 1980s, from being the host of television shows such as Arthur C. He lived in Sri Lanka until his death and he was knighted in 1998 and was awarded Sri Lankas highest civil honour, Sri Lankabhimanya, in 2005. Clarke was born in Minehead, Somerset, England, and grew up in nearby Bishops Lydeard, as a boy, he grew up on a farm enjoying stargazing, fossil collecting, and reading American science fiction pulp magazines. He received his education at Huish Grammar school in Taunton. Early influences included dinosaur cigarette cards, which led to an enthusiasm for fossils starting about 1925, in his teens, he joined the Junior Astronomical Association and contributed to Urania, the societys journal, which was edited in Glasgow by Marion Eadie. At Clarkes request, she added an Astronautics Section, which featured a series of articles by him on spacecraft and he moved to London in 1936 and joined the Board of Education as a pensions auditor. Clarke spent most of his wartime service working on ground-controlled approach radar, as documented in the semi-autobiographical Glide Path, although GCA did not see much practical use during the war, it proved vital to the Berlin Airlift of 1948–1949 after several years of development. Clarke initially served in the ranks, and was an instructor on radar at No.2 Radio School. He was commissioned as an officer on 27 May 1943
3.
Robert Duvall
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Robert Selden Duvall is an American actor and filmmaker. He has been nominated for seven Academy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and has multiple nominations and one win each of the BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild Award and he received the National Medal of Arts in 2005. Duvall began appearing in theatre during the late 1950s, moving into television and film roles during the early 1960s, playing Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird and appearing in Captain Newman and this was followed by a series of critically lauded performances in commercially successful films. Duvall was born January 5,1931, in San Diego, California, the son of Mildred Virginia, an actress, and William Howard Duvall. He has English, and smaller amounts of Belgian, French Huguenot, German, Scottish, Swiss-German, and Welsh ancestry. His mother was a relative of American Civil War General Robert E. Lee, Duvall was raised in the Christian Science religion and has stated that, while it is his belief, he does not attend church. He grew up primarily in Annapolis, Maryland, site of the United States Naval Academy and he recalled, I was a Navy brat. My father started at the Academy when he was 16, made captain at 39 and he attended Severn School in Severna Park, Maryland, and The Principia in St. Louis, Missouri. He graduated, in 1953, from Principia College in Elsah, Duvall served in the United States Army for a brief period shortly after the Korean War leaving the Army as private first class. Thats led to confusion in the press, he explained in 1984. Hell, I barely qualified with the M-1 rifle in basic training, while stationed at Camp Gordon in Georgia, Duvall acted in an amateur production of the comedy Room Service in nearby Augusta, Georgia. In the winter of 1955, Duvall began studies at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City, under Sanford Meisner and he was there for two years. Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman, and James Caan were among his classmates and he was there in 1957 attending Meisners classes. While studying acting, he worked as a Manhattan post office clerk, Duvall remains friends today with fellow California-born actors Hoffman and Hackman, who he knew during their years as struggling actors. In 1955, Duvall roomed with Hoffman in a New York City apartment while they were studying together at the Playhouse. Around this time, he roomed with Hackman, while working odd jobs such as clerking at Macys, sorting mail at the post office. The three roommates have since earned, among themselves,19 Academy Award nominations, with five wins, Duvall began his professional acting career with the Gateway Playhouse, an Equity summer theatre based in Bellport, Long Island, New York. Arguably his stage debut was in its 1952 season when he played the Pilot in Laughter In The Stars, after a years absence when he was with the U. S
4.
Elijah Wood
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Elijah Jordan Wood is an American actor, voice actor, DJ, and producer. He made his debut with a minor part in Back to the Future Part II. Landing a succession of roles, he was critically acclaimed as a child actor by age nine. As a child, he starred in the films Radio Flyer, The Good Son, North and he began to take on teenage roles in the films The Ice Storm, Deep Impact and The Faculty. He is best known for his leading role as Frodo Baggins in Peter Jacksons epic film trilogy The Lord of the Rings. Since then, he has chosen varied roles in such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Sin City, Green Street, Everything Is Illuminated. Wood provided the voice of Mumble in the animated musical films Happy Feet and Happy Feet Two. In 2005, he started his own label, Simian Records. He did the voice acting for Spyro in the Legend of Spyro trilogy, from 2011-14, Wood played the role of Ryan Newman in FXs dark comedy, Wilfred. As of late autumn 2016, he co-stars in the BBC America series Dirk Gentlys Holistic Detective Agency, Wood was born on January 28,1981 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the second of three children. His parents, Debbie and Warren Wood, operated a delicatessen, Wood is of Austrian, Danish, English, German, and Polish descent. He has a brother, Zachariah, who is a video game producer at Sony, and a younger sister, Hannah. At age seven, Wood began modeling in his hometown and took piano lessons, in elementary school, he appeared in The Sound of Music, followed by the title character in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He also served as boy in a Marion Creative Council production of See How They Run. In 1989, his parents sold their delicatessen and the family–without his father–moved to Los Angeles for Wood to pursue an acting career and his parents divorced when he was 15. Wood modeled and did local commercials and he got his first break in the video for Paula Abduls Forever Your Girl, directed by David Fincher. This was followed by a role in the TV film, Child in the Night. Playing Aidan Quinns son in Avalon and Tin Men garnered professional attention for Wood, a small part in Richard Geres Internal Affairs, was followed by the role of a boy who brings estranged couple Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson back together in Paradise
5.
Morgan Freeman
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Morgan Freeman is an American actor, producer and narrator. He has also won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award and he rose to fame as part of the cast of the 1970s childrens program The Electric Company. Morgan Freeman is ranked as the 4th highest box office star with over $4.316 billion total box office gross, Morgan Freeman was born on June 1,1937 in Memphis, Tennessee. He is the son of Mayme Edna, a teacher, and Morgan Porterfield Freeman, according to a DNA analysis, some of his ancestors were from Niger. Freeman was sent as an infant to his grandmother in Charleston. He moved frequently during his childhood, living in Greenwood, Mississippi, Gary, Indiana, when Freeman was 16 years old, he almost died of pneumonia. Freeman made his debut at age nine, playing the lead role in a school play. He then attended Broad Street High School, a building serves today as Threadgill Elementary School, in Greenwood. At age 12, he won a drama competition, and while still at Broad Street High School, he performed in a radio show based in Nashville. Freemans service portrait appears in his characters funeral scene in The Bucket List. During this period, Freeman also lived in New York City, working as a dancer at the 1964 Worlds Fair, and in San Francisco, where he was a member of the Opera Ring musical theater group. He acted in a touring version of The Royal Hunt of the Sun. He continued to be involved in work and received the Obie Award in 1980 for the title role in Coriolanus. In 1984, he received his second Obie Award for his role as the preacher in The Gospel at Colonus, Freeman also won a Drama Desk Award and a Clarence Derwent Award for his role as a wino in The Mighty Gents. He received his third Obie Award for his role as a chauffeur for a Jewish widow in Driving Miss Daisy, although his first credited film appearance was in 1971s Who Says I Cant Ride a Rainbow. Freeman first became known in the American media through roles on the soap opera Another World, during his tenure with The Electric Company, t was a very unhappy period in his life, according to Joan Ganz Cooney. Freeman himself admitted in an interview that he never thinks about his tenure with the show at all, since then, Freeman has considered his Street Smart character Fast Black, rather than any of the characters he played in The Electric Company, to be his breakthrough role. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Freeman began playing prominent supporting roles in feature films, earning him a reputation for depicting wise
6.
Maximilian Schell
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Maximilian Schell was a Swiss film and stage actor, who also wrote, directed and produced some of his own films. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the 1961 American film Judgment at Nuremberg, born in Austria, his parents were involved in the arts and he grew up surrounded by acting and literature. While he was a child, his family fled to Switzerland in 1938 when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany, after World War II ended, Schell took up acting or directing full-time. He appeared in numerous German films, often anti-war, before moving on to Hollywood, Schell was top billed in a number of Nazi-era themed films, as he could speak both English and German. For his role as Vladimir Lenin in the film, Stalin. On stage, Schell acted in a number of plays, in Schells private life, he was an accomplished pianist and conductor, performing with Claudio Abbado and Leonard Bernstein, and with orchestras in Berlin and Vienna. His elder sister, Maria Schell, was also a noted Hollywood actress, about whom he produced the documentary, My Sister Maria, in 2002. Schell was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of Margarethe, an actress who ran a school, and Hermann Ferdinand Schell. Schells father was never enthusiastic about young Maximilian becoming an actor like his mother, however, Schell was surrounded by acting in his early youth, I grew up in a theatre atmosphere and took it for granted. I remember the theatre, as a child, the way most people remember their mothers cooking, acting was all around me, and so was poetry. I made my debut in the theatre at the age of three, in Vienna, the Schell family was forced to flee Vienna in 1938 to get away from Hitler after the Anschluss, when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany. In Zurich, Schell grew up reading the classics, and when he was ten, Schell later attended the University of Zurich for a year, where he also played soccer and was on the rowing team, along with writing for newspapers as a part-time journalist for income. Following the end of World War II, he moved to Germany where he enrolled in the University of Munich and studied philosophy and art history. During breaks, he would return home to Zurich or stay at his familys farm in the country so he could write in seclusion, My father and my uncle hunt deer there. I like to walk through the forest by myself, Schell then returned to Zurich, where he served in the Swiss Army for a year, after which he re-entered the University of Zurich for another year, and later, the University of Basel for six months. To me it is more important. To admire and feel and be stimulated and inspired, art comes out of chaos, not out of a mechanical analyzing. So as soon as I made up my mind, there was no sense any more in continuing to study and it is like an award, it does not mean anything in itself
7.
Paramount Pictures
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Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film studio based in Hollywood, California, that has been a subsidiary of the American media conglomerate Viacom since 1994. In 1916, film producer Adolph Zukor contracted 22 actors and actresses and these fortunate few would become the first movie stars. Paramount Pictures is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America, in 2014, Paramount Pictures became the first major Hollywood studio to distribute all of its films in digital form only. Paramount is the fifth oldest surviving studio in the world after the French studios Gaumont Film Company and Pathé, followed by the Nordisk Film company. It is the last major film studio headquartered in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles. Paramount Pictures dates its existence from the 1912 founding date of the Famous Players Film Company, hungarian-born founder, Adolph Zukor, who had been an early investor in nickelodeons, saw that movies appealed mainly to working-class immigrants. With partners Daniel Frohman and Charles Frohman he planned to offer feature-length films that would appeal to the class by featuring the leading theatrical players of the time. By mid-1913, Famous Players had completed five films, and Zukor was on his way to success and its first film was Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth, which starred Sarah Bernhardt. That same year, another aspiring producer, Jesse L. Lasky, opened his Lasky Feature Play Company with money borrowed from his brother-in-law, Samuel Goldfish, the Lasky company hired as their first employee a stage director with virtually no film experience, Cecil B. DeMille, who would find a site in Hollywood, near Los Angeles, for his first feature film. Hodkinson and actor, director, producer Hobart Bosworth had started production of a series of Jack London movies, Paramount was the first successful nationwide distributor, until this time, films were sold on a statewide or regional basis which had proved costly to film producers. Also, Famous Players and Lasky were privately owned while Paramount was a corporation, in 1916, Zukor maneuvered a three-way merger of his Famous Players, the Lasky Company, and Paramount. Zukor and Lasky bought Hodkinson out of Paramount, and merged the three companies into one, with only the exhibitor-owned First National as a rival, Famous Players-Lasky and its Paramount Pictures soon dominated the business. It was this system that gave Paramount a leading position in the 1920s and 1930s, the driving force behind Paramounts rise was Zukor. In 1926, Zukor hired independent producer B. P. Schulberg and they purchased the Robert Brunton Studios, a 26-acre facility at 5451 Marathon Street for US$1 million. In 1927, Famous Players-Lasky took the name Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation, three years later, because of the importance of the Publix Theatres, it became Paramount Publix Corporation. In 1928, Paramount began releasing Inkwell Imps, animated cartoons produced by Max, the Fleischers, veterans in the animation industry, were among the few animation producers capable of challenging the prominence of Walt Disney. The Paramount newsreel series Paramount News ran from 1927 to 1957, Paramount was also one of the first Hollywood studios to release what were known at that time as talkies, and in 1929, released their first musical, Innocents of Paris
8.
Science fiction film
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Science fiction films have often been used to focus on political or social issues, and to explore philosophical issues like the human condition. The genre has existed since the years of silent cinema. The next major example in the genre was the film Metropolis - being the first feature length science fiction movie, from the 1930s to the 1950s, the genre consisted mainly of low-budget B movies. After Stanley Kubricks landmark 2001, A Space Odyssey, the fiction film genre was taken more seriously. This definition suggests a continuum between empiricism and transcendentalism, with science fiction film on the side of empiricism, and horror film, however, there are numerous well-known examples of science fiction horror films, epitomized by such pictures as Frankenstein and Alien. The visual style of fiction film can be characterized by a clash between alien and familiar images. This clash is implemented when alien images become familiar, as in A Clockwork Orange, as well, familiar images become alien, as in the films Repo Man and Liquid Sky. For example, in Dr. Strangelove, the, distortion of the make the familiar images seem more alien. Finally, alien and familiar images are juxtaposed, as in The Deadly Mantis, Science fiction films appeared early in the silent film era, typically as short films shot in black and white, sometimes with colour tinting. They usually had a theme and were often intended to be humorous. In 1902, Georges Méliès released Le Voyage dans la Lune, generally considered the first science fiction film, several early films merged the science fiction and horror genres. Examples of this are Frankenstein, a adaptation of Mary Shelleys novel. Taking a more adventurous tack,20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a based on Jules Verne’s famous novel of a wondrous submarine. In the 1920s, European filmmakers tended to use science fiction for prediction and social commentary, as can be seen in German films such as Metropolis and Frau im Mond. In the 1930s, there were big budget science fiction films, notably Just Imagine, King Kong, Things to Come. Starting in 1936, a number of science fiction comic strips were adapted as serials, notably Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers and these serials, and the comic strips they were based on, were very popular with the general public. Other notable science fiction films of the 1930s include Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Doctor X, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, F. P. The 1940s brought us Before I Hang, Black Friday, Dr. Cyclops, The Devil Commands, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Man Made Monster, It Happened Tomorrow, It Happens Every Spring and The Perfect Woman
9.
Steven Spielberg
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Steven Allan Spielberg, KBE, OMRI is an American director, producer, and screenwriter. He is considered one of the pioneers of the New Hollywood era. He is also one of the co-founders of DreamWorks Studios, in a career spanning more than four decades, Spielbergs films have spanned many themes and genres. His other films include Jurassic Park, A. I, artificial Intelligence, and War of the Worlds. Spielberg won the Academy Award for Best Director for Schindlers List and Saving Private Ryan, three of Spielbergs films—Jaws, E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and Jurassic Park—achieved box office records, originated and came to epitomize the blockbuster film. The unadjusted gross of all Spielberg-directed films exceeds $9 billion worldwide and his personal net worth is estimated to be more than $3 billion. Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to an Orthodox Jewish family and his mother, Leah Posner, was a restaurateur and concert pianist, and his father, Arnold Spielberg, was an electrical engineer involved in the development of computers. His paternal grandparents were immigrants from Ukraine who settled in Cincinnati in the first decade of the 1900s, in 1950, his family moved to Haddon Township, New Jersey when his father took a job with RCA. Three years later, the moved to Phoenix, Arizona. Spielberg attended Hebrew school from 1953 to 1957, in classes taught by Rabbi Albert L. Lewis, as a child, Spielberg faced difficulty reconciling being an Orthodox Jew with the perception of him by other children he played with. It isnt something I enjoy admitting, he said, but when I was seven, eight, nine years old, God forgive me. I was embarrassed by the perception of my parents Jewish practices. I was never really ashamed to be Jewish, but I was uneasy at times, Spielberg also said he suffered from acts of anti-Semitic prejudice and bullying, In high school, I got smacked and kicked around. His first home movie was of a wreck involving his toy Lionel trains. Throughout his early teens, and after entering school, Spielberg continued to make amateur 8 mm adventure films. In 1958, he became a Boy Scout and fulfilled a requirement for the merit badge by making a nine-minute 8 mm film entitled The Last Gunfight. Years later, Spielberg recalled to an interviewer, My dads still-camera was broken. He said yes, and I got an idea to do a Western, I made it and got my merit badge
10.
Comet
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A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to evolve gasses, a process called outgassing. This produces an atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are due to the effects of radiation and the solar wind acting upon the nucleus of the comet. Comet nuclei range from a few hundred metres to tens of kilometres across and are composed of collections of ice, dust. The coma may be up to 15 times the Earths diameter, if sufficiently bright, a comet may be seen from the Earth without the aid of a telescope and may subtend an arc of 30° across the sky. Comets have been observed and recorded since ancient times by many cultures, Comets usually have highly eccentric elliptical orbits, and they have a wide range of orbital periods, ranging from several years to potentially several millions of years. Short-period comets originate in the Kuiper belt or its associated scattered disc, long-period comets are thought to originate in the Oort cloud, a spherical cloud of icy bodies extending from outside the Kuiper belt to halfway to the nearest star. Long-period comets are set in motion towards the Sun from the Oort cloud by gravitational perturbations caused by passing stars, hyperbolic comets may pass once through the inner Solar System before being flung to interstellar space. The appearance of a comet is called an apparition, Comets are distinguished from asteroids by the presence of an extended, gravitationally unbound atmosphere surrounding their central nucleus. This atmosphere has parts termed the coma and the tail, however, extinct comets that have passed close to the Sun many times have lost nearly all of their volatile ices and dust and may come to resemble small asteroids. Asteroids are thought to have a different origin from comets, having formed inside the orbit of Jupiter rather than in the outer Solar System, the discovery of main-belt comets and active centaur minor planets has blurred the distinction between asteroids and comets. As of November 2014 there are 5,253 known comets, however, this represents only a tiny fraction of the total potential comet population, as the reservoir of comet-like bodies in the outer Solar System is estimated to be one trillion. Roughly one comet per year is visible to the eye, though many of those are faint. Particularly bright examples are called Great Comets, the word comet derives from the Old English cometa from the Latin comēta or comētēs. That, in turn, is a latinisation of the Greek κομήτης, Κομήτης was derived from κομᾶν, which was itself derived from κόμη and was used to mean the tail of a comet. The astronomical symbol for comets is ☄, consisting of a disc with three hairlike extensions. The solid, core structure of a comet is known as the nucleus, cometary nuclei are composed of an amalgamation of rock, dust, water ice, and frozen gases such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, and ammonia. As such, they are described as dirty snowballs after Fred Whipples model
11.
Astronomer
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An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who concentrates their studies on a specific question or field outside of the scope of Earth. They look at stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies, as well as other celestial objects — either in observational astronomy. Examples of topics or fields astronomers work on include, planetary science, solar astronomy, there are also related but distinct subjects like physical cosmology which studies the Universe as a whole. Astronomers usually fit into two types, Observational astronomers make direct observations of planets, stars and galaxies, and analyze the data, theoretical astronomers create and investigate models of things that cannot be observed. They use this data to create models or simulations to theorize how different celestial bodies work, there are further subcategories inside these two main branches of astronomy such as planetary astronomy, galactic astronomy or physical cosmology. Today, that distinction has disappeared and the terms astronomer. Professional astronomers are highly educated individuals who typically have a Ph. D. in physics or astronomy and are employed by research institutions or universities. They spend the majority of their time working on research, although quite often have other duties such as teaching, building instruments. The number of astronomers in the United States is actually quite small. The American Astronomical Society, which is the organization of professional astronomers in North America, has approximately 7,000 members. This number includes scientists from other such as physics, geology. The International Astronomical Union comprises almost 10,145 members from 70 different countries who are involved in research at the Ph. D. level. Before CCDs, photographic plates were a method of observation. Modern astronomers spend relatively little time at telescopes usually just a few weeks per year, analysis of observed phenomena, along with making predictions as to the causes of what they observe, takes the majority of observational astronomers time. Astronomers who serve as faculty spend much of their time teaching undergraduate and graduate classes, most universities also have outreach programs including public telescope time and sometimes planetariums as a public service to encourage interest in the field. Those who become astronomers usually have a background in maths, sciences. Taking courses that teach how to research, write and present papers are also invaluable, in college/university most astronomers get a Ph. D. in astronomy or physics. Keeping in mind how few there are it is understood that graduate schools in this field are very competitive
12.
MSNBC
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MSNBC is an American basic cable and satellite television network that provides news coverage and political commentary from NBC News on current events. The network also carries a nightly programming block during prime time hours. It is owned by the NBCUniversal News Group, a unit of the NBCUniversal Television Group division of NBCUniversal, MSNBC and msnbc. com were founded in 1996 as a partnership between Microsoft and General Electrics NBC unit, hence the networks naming. As of February 2015, approximately 94,531,000 households have the ability to receive MSNBC within the United States of America, in the late summer of 2015, MSNBC revamped its programming. The moves were in sharp contrast to previous programming decisions at the network, along with this, moves were made to sharpen the channels news image through a dual editorial relationship with its organizational parent NBC News. MSNBC Live, the flagship daytime news platform was expanded to cover over eight hours of the day. Phil Griffin currently serves as the president and director of operations at the cable network. Pat Burkey, Janelle Rodriguez, and Jonathan Wald oversee programming and news operations at the network, MSNBC was established by NBC executive Tom Rogers. Rogers was instrumental in developing the partnership with Microsoft, which invested $221 million for a 50% share of the cable channel. MSNBC and Microsoft would share the cost of a $200 million newsroom in Secaucus, New Jersey, the network took over the channel space of NBCs 18-month-old Americas Talking network, though in most cases cable carriage had to be negotiated with providers who never carried AT. MSNBC was launched on July 15,1996, the first show, which was anchored by Jodi Applegate, broadcast a lineup of news, interviews, and opinions. Stories were generally longer and more detailed than the running on CNN at the time. NBC also highlighted their broadcast connections by airing stories direct from the NBC network affiliates, gradually, MSNBC began to put more emphasis on politics. The Project for Excellence in Journalism found in 2007 after a survey of cable channels that MSNBC is moving to make politics a brand, with a large dose of opinion. In January 2001, Mike Barnicle got a show on MSNBC, in June, in a sign of continuing trouble at MSNBC, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that he would not have started MSNBC if he knew then what he knows now. After the September 11,2001 attacks, MSNBC served as an outlet for NBC News to provide up-to-the-minute coverage, CNBC and CNBC Europe, with little financial news to report, ran MSNBC for many hours of the day following the attacks. The year also boosted the profile of Ashleigh Banfield, who was present during the collapse of Building 7 while covering the World Trade Center on September 11 and her Region In Conflict program capitalized on her newfound celebrity and showcased exclusive interviews from Afghanistan. NBC would have the option, which it exercised, to buy the remaining 18% share of the television from Microsoft after two years
