Word: apparatus
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...crew of artillerymen loaded her and hurried out of sight, 40-ft.-long "Amazon Annie" (also called "Atomic Annie") stood alone and silent on Nevada's Frenchman Flat. At a control point ten miles away, Atomic Energy Commission scientists got ready to turn on the remote-control firing apparatus. Then, at 8:30 one morning this week, the first atomic artillery shell ever fired whished from Amazon Annie's 280-mm. (11 in.) barrel and hurtled on its way. Above the target area, an atomic fireball blossomed, then a purplish cloud, that whitened as it rose swiftly into...
Miller set up a closed apparatus containing water, methane, ammonia and hydrogen. When the water was heated, its vapor circulated the other gases past a small electric "corona" discharge, which promoted chemical reactions among their molecules. This sort of thing may have happened on the primitive earth, where lightning was probably common. In any case, the influence of the electric discharge was similar to that of the strong, solar radiation beating down on the top of the primitive atmosphere...
...When the apparatus had run for a day, the water grew pinkish, then turned red. After a week. Student Miller analyzed the mixture. It proved to contain at least three amino acids (glycine, alpha-alanine and beta-alanine). This was the hoped-for payoff: amino acids are the building blocks of which proteins are made...
...Student Miller do not believe that they have created life. What they have done is to prove that complex organic compounds found in living matter can be formed, by chemical reactions, out of the gases that were probably common in the earth's first atmosphere. If their apparatus had been as big as the ocean, and if it had worked for a million years instead of one week, it might have created something like the first living molecule...
Said Dr. Gibbon, too camera-shy to pose with the apparatus: "The machine is not a cure-all for all heart conditions. It will probably be used chiefly on patients born with a deformed heart. It can't help coronary artery disease or hearts crippled by diseases of old age. But now, for the first time, it is possible to look into the heart. It's sort of like drying out a well to do some work at the bottom...