Word: carbonations
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...biology experiments conducted by the Viking landers. The gas exchange test, based on the fact that terrestrial organisms give off gases as waste products, involved dropping a pinch of Martian soil into a warm, moist test chamber. The aim was to determine whether the sample would give off carbon dioxide, as animals would, or oxygen, as plants do. Scientists were surprised when the sample began releasing oxygen far more rapidly than plants would be expected to do. But they noted that the reaction might have a purely chemical, rather than a biological explanation; compounds called peroxides could have released...
More encouraging results came from a second test, in which a sample of Martian soil that had been moistened with a nutrient broth showed a rapid release of carbon dioxide. The result might mean that some kind of microbe was metabolizing the food provided by Viking. But cautious scientists noted that certain peroxides in the soil might also have caused the reaction to occur...
...third experiment was designed to measure the conversion of atmospheric carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide into organic matter. The results suggested that this process, which is carried out on earth in living cells, might also be taking place on Mars. In Jastrow's view, the experiment undermined the argument that peroxides might have been responsible for the results of the other tests. If peroxides were involved in this activity, certain catalysts had to be present and the reaction more complex...
...citizens at Eagle Point, Ore., [Dec. 20] presents a cogent case against local control of school systems. The right to a decent education is simply too important to be subject to the caprices of community conservatism and ignorance. Do these parents want to turn their young people into carbon copies of themselves? Gene Wright Madison...
...Technology and the Lincoln Laboratory used a radio telescope to discover the hydroxyl radical (two-thirds of the water molecule) in space. Since then, more than three dozen molecules have been found floating in the galactic clouds, including those of methane, formaldehyde, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, ethyl alcohol and carbon monoxide...