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black hole

(Encyclopedia)black hole, in astronomy, celestial object of such extremely intense gravity that it attracts everything near it and in some instances prevents everything, including light, from escaping. The term was...

Tennessee, state, United States

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Tennessee tĕnˈəsēˌ, tĕnˌəsēˈ [key], state in the SE central United States. It is bordered by Kentucky and Virginia (N), North Carolina (E), Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi (S), and,...

English language

(Encyclopedia)English language, member of the West Germanic group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Germanic languages). Spoken by about 470 million people throughout the world...

North America

(Encyclopedia)CE5 North America, third largest continent (2015 est. pop. 571,949,000), c.9,400,000 sq mi (24,346,000 sq km), the northern of the two continents of the Western Hemisphere. North America includes a...

Spanish literature

(Encyclopedia)Spanish literature, the literature of Spain. The Spanish civil war (1936–39) truncated the cultural evolution of the country. Many writers went into exile. Salinas, Guillén, Juan Larrea, an...

Arthropoda

(Encyclopedia)Arthropoda ärthrŏpˈədə [key] [Gr.,=jointed feet], largest and most diverse animal phylum. The arthropods include crustaceans, insects, centipedes, millipedes, spiders, scorpions, and the extinct ...

geography

(Encyclopedia)geography, the science of place, i.e., the study of the surface of the earth, the location and distribution of its physical and cultural features, the areal patterns or places that they form, and the ...

Islam

(Encyclopedia)Islam ĭslämˈ, ĭsˈläm [key], [Arab.,=submission to God], world religion founded by the Prophet Muhammad. Founded in the 7th cent., Islam is the youngest of the three monotheistic world religions ...

plant

(Encyclopedia)plant, any organism of the plant kingdom, as opposed to one of the animal kingdom or of the kingdoms Fungi, Protista, or Monera in the five-kingdom system of classification. (A more recent system, sug...

archaeology

(Encyclopedia)archaeology ärkēŏlˈəjē [key] [Gr.,=study of beginnings], a branch of anthropology that seeks to document and explain continuity and change and similarities and differences among human cultures. ...