Word: fainter
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Though the twins seem old, cold and aloof, one of them recently blew its top. Last Dec. 7, says Luyten, "the fainter of the two stars was seen to flare up suddenly to twelve times its normal brilliance and to subside again in less than 20 min utes, a phenomenon which, so far, is unique among stars . . . The atomic explosion . . . amounted to the equivalent of a billion atomic bombs of the Hiroshima type...
...minute exposure, the Palomar telescope recorded all that had ever been caught at Mt. Wilson. As the exposures were lengthened, fainter and more distant objects were found in constantly increasing numbers. An exposure of one hour brought in the "background," the shine of the night sky, and thus represented the maximum power of the telescope. To judge by the number of faint nebulae on it, this photograph reached one billion light-years (6 billion trillion miles) into space-twice as far as man had ever looked before. Said Hubble: "The tests confirm our previous conclusion that the Hale telescope...
...general method (in practice, enormously difficult) was to determine the intrinsic brightness of objects in a nebula and then gauge its distance (the fainter it is, the farther away). Variable stars called Cepheids, discovered at Harvard, told him that the bright nebula called Messier 31 is 680,000 light-years away. Messier 31 was therefore no mere part of the Milky Way galaxy (the star-congregation in which our sun is a fourth-rate star), but an isolated star-system far out in space and as big as our entire galaxy. Other, longer-ranged measuring sticks carried him farther...
...excused himself for a minute and went out to shiver in the cold air. The music was fainter, but still you could hear it from the upstairs window. I hate dancing, Vag thought and thought over and over. Do girls really like it? Oh, here she was she followed you. What's the matter, Vag dear! Why do you run away from me! Do you want me to go home I will I'll go home we're neither of us having a good time, darling. Yes, said Vag aloud, then yes yes yes yes to himself I want...
...Blimp blew his nose with a Tory blast prolonged by the boom of the great ship's sirens, which are pitched two octaves below middle A and audible ten miles across the downs. On decks and dock, the handkerchiefs fluttered, bon voyage bouquets were waved. The farewells grew fainter across the widening water...