Word: decays
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...nucleus consists of positively charged protons and uncharged neutrons, around which negatively charged electrons orbit. Yet the continuous discovery of new particles, such as the unstable muon, challenged this simple theory. In addition, this theory raised further theoretical questions: how was the nucleus held together? Why did radioactive decay exist...
...four unmarked samples: a shroud cutting and three control pieces, one of which dated from the 1st century. The samples were chemically cleaned, burned to produce carbon dioxide, catalytically converted into graphite and then tested for carbon 14 isotopes to fix the date by calculating the amount of radioactive decay. Only London's British Museum, which coordinated the testing, knew which samples were which...
...eight miles out in the North Sea. On that island there are still keepers, but most lighthouse have now been automated. The buildings that the keepers and their families used to live in, when they haven't been destroyed outright, are mostly left empty, unprotected from vandals, storms and decay...
...through the shadows of his theaters and sound stages, Bergman rarely strikes the customary autobiographical notes of nostalgia and the tranquil acceptance of fate. To him, middle-class morality is a cloak for madness, family life an invitation to distraction and guilt. Neither helps one come to grips with decay, eroticism, violence -- those irrational torments by which the unseen world insists on its presence in our lives...
...admiration is for figures like Laurence Olivier, whom he glimpses backstage, sweating, swilling champagne, denying desperate illness -- and making up to go onstage once more and transform despair into dominance. His pity is for someone like Garbo, who has allowed herself to be victimized by her beauty's decay and so exiled from the consolation of creation. Describing a rehearsal of Der Rosenkavalier he once heard Herbert von Karajan conduct, Bergman writes, "We were drowned in a wave of devastating, repellent beauty." That is how one feels emerging from this book, which is surely one of the finest self-portraits...