However, a new study suggests collisions aren't the only way to twirl an asteroid: Given a few billion years, gentle nudging by sunlight can do the trick.
Instead, William Bottke of Cornell University and his colleagues argue, the asteroid may have been gradually nudged by a gentle push from sunlight into one of numerous, weaker "escape hatches" created by Mars (Science, 13 August 1999, p. 1002), taking tens of millions of years longer to approach Earth than assumed.
In the best of Mr. Dixon's neatly made paintings, warm, hazy sunlight bathes gentle California landscapes so that they practically glow with Emersonian beneficence; "Oak Alone," a big tree in the center of an open field, is like a transcendentalist icon.
My block is my front yard, but without the mowing (so much for the nostalgic grass), a stretch of village green where the sunlight is gentler, the shadows less menacing, the faces friendlier than even one street to the north or south.
We have friends who let us stay with them in Playden, just north of Rye, and we woke to sunlight in that gentle, idyllic part of Sussex, which I barely visited when I was growing up beside the cold pebbled shore of Bexhill, only 15 miles away.
And I've never felt such animosity for a scrim before: Riccardo Hernandez's work is painted with green leaves and dappled sunlight, heavy-handedly suggesting the gentle, nostalgic glow that his actual set tries to work against.
White linen benefits from being dried in direct sunlight, as this provides a gentle bleaching.
You have to grow your tree with gentle swipes on the screen, seeking out the sunlight.
Golden sunlight illuminated the ceremonies as a gentle breeze caught the flags and swept across the stands and the manicured field.
A gentle breeze will also help orchids handle bright sunlight without scorching the leaves.
