Word: detectable
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...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...
...vacuum, about half of its energy goes into invisible X rays. These hit the atmosphere and make its oxygen and nitrogen fluoresce in characteristic wave lengths that can easily be distinguished from the spectrum of sunlight. When Los Alamos Physicist Donald R. Westervelt learned about this, he designed a detection system based upon it. A few dozen of his detectors spotted around the earth would be an adequate network. Some of them would always be under clear skies. In daylight they would detect a one-megaton burst 2,000,000 miles from the earth, much farther at night. Cost...
Certainly the response of 102 people questioned by the survey team bear out Herklots' hesitation. Here are the results: Kennedy (or leaning to Kennedy)--44. Nixon (or leaning to Nixon)--45. Undecided--13. As a portent of things to come, one simply cannot detect any definitive trend on the basis of these figures. It can be assumed, if Brooklyn's reputation as a barometer proves valid again this year, that the election will be extremely close, but this is hardly shedding any new light on the situation. As an indication of the people's mood, however, answers to the lengthy...
...detect a note of bitterness from those housewives who are disturbed at Jackie Kennedy's "chic"? May I say, on behalf of the male sex, that we love her "devil-may-care chic" and "floor-mop" hairdo...
Snakes & Fish. Savely pointed out that nature is full of marvelously sensitive instruments. Rattlesnakes, for instance, find warm prey at night by means of heat-detecting organs that respond to a temperature change of one-thousandth of a degree. No man-made heat seeker can do anything like it. Neither can man-made gadgets approach the electronic virtuosity of those tropical fish that send out pulsed currents of electricity, presumably to keep them in touch with things around them. The system they use is not well understood, but it is known that one kind of fish can detect a current...