Word: atomically
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After the war, Libby joined the newly formed Institute of Nuclear Studies at the University of Chicago and specialized in peaceful employment of the atom. Investigating the feeble radioactivity of air, he found that a good part of it comes from carbon 14, a radioactive isotope of carbon that is formed when cosmic rays hit nitrogen atoms in the atmosphere. This led to a brilliant idea that has revolutionized a long list of sciences...
Nixon had saved a few bold foreign-policy promises for the final fortnignt's campaigning. In Toledo Nixon promised, if elected, to ask Ike on Nov. 9 to send Cabot Lodge off to Geneva as U.S. negotiator at the two-year-old Geneva atom-test talks. If the talks succeeded, there would be a summit. If they failed by Feb. 1, "the U.S. will be prepared to detonate atomic devices necessary to advance our peaceful technology." In Muskegon, Mich, next day, Nixon promised, if elected-in a manner reminiscent of Ike's "I will go to Korea...
...Harvard clock a thin trickle of hydrogen gas flows through an apparatus that splits its two-atom molecules into single atoms. Each of these atoms has one proton and one electron, but some of them have slightly more energy than the others because their electrons are spinning in a different way. When the atom stream shoots through a system of magnets, the low-energy atoms in it are deflected sideways while the high-energy ones converge, pass through a small hole in a 6-in. quartz bulb. The bulb is lined with paraffin which does not affect the atom...
...system to detect clandestine atom bomb tests must consider tests in space. A nuclear burst in a vacuum does not form a bright fireball; it gives off very little visible light and even if it were as near as the moon, its flash might be too feeble to attract unalerted attention. Sponsors of such a test would know where and when to look for it, and they would have instruments ready, to assess the results. A sneak test of this sort would be difficult and expensive, but not impossible...
...Answer. The waves of krypton 86 have none of these failings. They cannot be lost, destroyed, damaged or stolen (there is krypton in all air), and scientists believe that their length, which is determined by the properties of the krypton 86 atom, will never change at all. Anyone with the proper equipment (present cost about $100,000) can reproduce, even a million years from now, the standard unit of length adopted in 1960. By use of an interferometer-an optical device that counts wave lengths and fractions of them-the new light standard gives measurements accurate to one part...