Recent Examples on the WebWhen the rate – or frequency, as scientists call it – at which the tops are precessing, or spinning, matches the frequency at which the car is bumping up and down, something called a spin-orbit resonance occurs.—Gongjie Li, Discover Magazine, 11 Jan. 2024 But Earth has a massive Moon, which pulls on Earth’s spin axis and drives it to precess faster.—Gongjie Li, Discover Magazine, 11 Jan. 2024 And because jets are thought to align with the axis of the disk, a precessing disk should also produce a corkscrew jet.—science.org, 25 Apr. 2023 The rocket soon appeared to begin precessing about its long axis like a toy top slowing down.—William Harwood, CBS News, 20 Apr. 2023 If the black holes' spins are out of alignment with their orbit, then the black hole spins will precess like spinning tops while also maintaining their anti-alignment.—Chris Lee, Ars Technica, 24 Jan. 2022 After that time, if all goes well, the second stage will fire for a third time to send the Tesla on a precessing Earth-Mars elliptical orbit around the Sun.—Eric Berger, Ars Technica, 6 Feb. 2018
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'precess.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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