Word: detections
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...After some research, I have discovered it definitely existed. SMERSH is short for two Russian words, Smert Shpionam (Death to Spies). It was formed just before World War II by the then NKVD. Its mission was the tracking down and punishment of foreign spies, and to detect any signs of dissent within the ranks of the Soviet armed forces. Every battalion, regiment and company of the Red army had a SMERSH agent attached to it, as did all active units of the navy and air force...
Blue Flash. Scientists have known for decades, says Hunt, that the dark-adapted human eye can detect X rays and gamma rays as a yellow-green glow. This sensation apparently comes from direct action of the rays on minute light-sensitive cells in the eye's retina, but it has almost no value as a practical warning sense. When the eye is not darkadapted, and it hardly ever is, the retina is sensitive only to massive doses of radiation from such disasters as runaway nuclear reactors. On these unhappy occasions, the victim sees a vivid blue flash...
...Good for Treasure. Ancient rubbish, garbage and human excreta are easily detectable. So are buried walls, whose stones usually have different magnetic properties from the material that covers them. Empty spaces, such as buried tombs, stick out like magnetic sore thumbs. Most conspicuous of all are objects of iron or steel, but the magnetometer does not detect gold and silver, and it will be of little use to treasure seekers...
...underground blast sets up only compression or "P" waves, with very little of the shear and surface ("S") waves that normally accompany a natural underground disturbance. As a result, the seismographs detect only what Leet terms "the lonesome P." an energetic compression wave which lacks the shear and surface waves that usualy follow...
...Lowther's artificial planet may get a crack at even more interesting jobs. Since its orbit will be slightly but measurably disturbed by the gravitational attraction of all the other passing planets, its waverings can be used to check the mass of individual planets. It may also detect large meteors that chance to streak close by. It may point to far-out, undiscovered planets, or even to dark, invisible stars. Its most radical use, Dr. Lowther figures, will be to check the inverse-square law, which says that the strength of light and gravitation diminishes inversely with the square...