Pacific Rim acquired a firm that already had an exploration permit, a sort of phase-one permit in the mining world that allows companies to explore an area and determine whether mining would make sense there.

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And then something that they would call the boost-phase missile defense, which would be ways of shooting down missiles when they're at their sort of most vulnerable phase of flight.

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Particularly noteworthy in this regard, is the decision to all but cancel the promising Brilliant Pebbles space-based interceptor technology at the very moment that the Israeli government and the Western European Union (among others) are recognizing the indispensibility of the sort of boost-phase defense afforded by such a system.

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Dr Swartzlander's prototype phase mask was made using the sort of etching techniques employed to fabricate computer chips.

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T-phase waves produced by landslides can be heard by hydrophones (underwater microphones) of the sort used to detect submarines.

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This is the penalty phase, and so it's being raised by the defense, not as a sort of a legal test, it's being raised as a mitigating factor.

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