Villain
A villain is a bad person in fiction. The word comes from a Latin word meaning a feudal farm worker or peasant. Villains, or antagonists, are usually found in fiction, such as books and movies. The audience do not usually like the villain and they support the hero or heroine. However, in some cases the villain is more praised by the public than the hero, as the example of Joker in the Batman franchise. In some movies and books (such as the movie Ocean's Eleven), the villain is a good person and the hero/heroine is bad (such as a robber). When used in comic books, they are depicted as supervillains. Supervillains usually hold some kind of unnatural force.
Giant's Causeway
The Giant's Causeway is an area of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns. The formation is a result of an ancient volcanic eruption. It is in County Antrim on the northeast coast of Northern Ireland. It is a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. It was named a National Nature Reserve in 1987 by the Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland. In a 2005 poll of "Radio Times" readers, the Giant's Causeway was named as the fourth greatest natural wonder in the United Kingdom.
The tops of the columns form stepping stones that lead from the cliff foot and disappear under the sea. Most of the columns are hexagonal, although there are also some with four, five, seven and eight sides. The tallest are about 12 metres (36 ft) high, and the solidified lava in the cliffs is 28 metres thick in places.
The Giant's Causeway is today owned and managed by the National Trust. It is the most popular tourist attraction in Northern Ireland.
The Giant's Causeway and Fingal's Cave are part of the same volcanic eruption. They were separated by the plate tectonics movements which happened when the supercontinent Pangaea broke up.
During the Palaeogene period, some 50 to 60 million years ago, Antrim was subject to intense volcanic activity. Highly fluid molten basalt intruded through chalk beds to form a large scale lava plateau. As the lava cooled rapidly, contraction occurred. The size of the columns is mostly determined by the speed at which lava from a volcanic eruption cools. The extensive fracture network produced the distinctive columns seen today. The basalts were originally part of a great volcanic plateau called the Thulean Plateau which formed during the Paleogene period. Parts of this plateau can be found in the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Norway, as well as at Fingal's Cave.
Ornithopter
An ornithopter from the ancient Greek language is an aircraft that flies by flapping its wings. Designers try to make the flapping-wing flight of birds, bats, and insects seem real. Though machines may differ in form, they are usually built on the same scale as these flying creatures. Manned ornithopters have also been built, and some have worked. The machines are of two general types: those with engines, and those powered by the muscles of the pilot.
Calgary Stampede
The Calgary Stampede happens every year and has a rodeo, exhibits, and a festival held every July in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The ten-day event, which calls itself ""The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth,"" brings over one million visitors every year and has the world's largest rodeo. It also has a parade, rides, stage shows, concerts, farming games,and racing. People from Calgary also begin wearing cowboy hats and other cowboy gear in spirit of the event. The stampede began as a farming fair in 1886 and turned into the Calgary Stampede in 1923.
Juggling
Juggling is a skill where a person (the "juggler") keeps objects ("props") moving for a long time, using their hands or other parts of their body. The most common props are balls (or beanbags), clubs and rings. Some jugglers use more dangerous-looking objects such as knives, fire torches and chainsaws. There are other kinds of juggling prop such as diabolos, yo-yos, poi, devil sticks, cigar boxes, foot bags and hats. Some jugglers use bouncing objects.
Juggling can be for entertainment, art or sport.
3753 Cruithne
3753 Cruithne is an asteroid.
3753 Cruithne was discovered on October 10, 1986, by Duncan Waldron on the UK Schmidt Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory, Coonabarabran, Australia. The 1983 appearance is given to Giovanni de Sanctis and Richard M. West of the European Southern Observatory in Chile. It was not until 1997 that its unusual orbit was found by Paul Wiegert and Kimmo Innanen, working at York University in Toronto, and Seppo Mikkola, working at the University of Turku in Finland. The asteroid is named after the Cruithne, a people of early medieval Ireland.
3753 Cruithne is about 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) in diameter. From 1994 through 2015, 3753 Cruithne makes its annual closest approach to Earth every November. Although Cruithne's orbit is not thought to be stable over the long term, calculations showed that it has probably been synchronized with Earth's orbit for a long time. There is no danger of a collision with Earth for millions of years, if ever. Its orbital path and Earth's do not cross.
Cruithne is in a normal elliptic orbit around the Sun. Its period of revolution around the Sun, about 364 days at present, is almost equal to that of the Earth. Because of this, Cruithne and Earth appear to follow each other in their paths around the Sun. This is why Cruithne is sometimes called "Earth's second moon". However, it does not orbit the Earth and is not a moon. In 2058, Cruithne will come within 13.6 million kilometres of Mars. Cruithne's distance from the Sun and orbital speed vary a lot more than the Earth's, so from the Earth's point of view Cruithne actually follows a kidney bean-shaped horseshoe orbit ahead of the Earth, taking slightly less than one year to complete a circuit of the "bean". Because it takes slightly less than a year, the Earth "falls behind" the bean a little more each year, and so from our point of view, the circuit is not quite closed, but rather like a spiral loop that moves slowly away from the Earth.
After many years, the Earth will have fallen so far behind that Cruithne will then actually be "catching up" on the Earth from "behind". When it eventually does catch up, Cruithne will make a series of annual close approaches to the Earth and gravitationally exchange orbital energy with Earth; this will alter Cruithne's orbit by a little over half a million kilometres so that its period of revolution around the Sun will then become slightly more than a year. The kidney bean will then start to migrate away from the Earth again in the opposite direction — instead of the Earth "falling behind" the bean, the Earth is "pulling away from" the bean. The next such series of close approaches will be centred on the year 2292 — in July of that year, Cruithne will approach Earth to about 12,500,000 kilometres.
After 380 to 390 years or so, the kidney-bean-shaped orbit approaches Earth again from the other side, and the Earth, once more, alters the orbit of Cruithne so that its period of revolution around the Sun is again slightly less than a year (this last happened with a series of close approaches centred on 1902, and will next happen with a series centered on 2676). The pattern then repeats itself.
More resonant near-Earth objects (NEOs) have since been discovered. These include 54509 YORP, (85770) 1998 UP1, 2002 AA29, and 2009BD which exist in resonant orbits similar to Cruithne's.
Other examples of natural bodies known to be in horseshoe orbits include Janus and Epimetheus, natural satellites of Saturn. The orbits these two moons follow around Saturn are much simpler than the one Cruithne follows, but operate along the same general principles.