Word: flare
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...almost seemed impudence. Man, in cosmological terms an all but invisible presence on the surface of the earth, had flung aloft an apparatus which disturbed the order of the heavens themselves, made auroras flare in the skies, a hemisphere apart. Exploding nuclear bombs 300 miles above the South Atlantic, the men of Project Argus spun a veil of electrons around the earth, boldly using the atmosphere and nearby space as their laboratory...
...last week, what had started as an idle lark had become a serious affair for both Thompson and Brown. Not only was the flare-up drawing headlines in Providence papers, but newspapers across the nation were carrying deadpan accounts that bore no hint of its whimsical beginnings. Wincing at the story's effect on alumni fund drives and student recruitment programs, Brown officials, with hopes of clearing the air, approved a debate between Thompson and Athletic Director Paul F. Mackesey...
...reasons for choosing 1957-58 as as Geophysical Year was the anticipation of great solar activity--sunspots, flares and "plages" many times the size of the earth--which occurs in roughly eleven year cycles. As long ago as 1946, scientists were looking forward to last year as another peak in the sun-spot cycle; they were amply rewarded, for both 1946-47 and 1957-58 turned in high sunspot peaks. Donald H. Menzel, Director of the Harvard College Observatory, and long a specialist in solar research, agreed that the Sun cooperated beautifully during its intensive examination. In fact...
...granddaddies of all magnetic storms on February 10 and 11, 1958. The first hint that something out of the ordinary was happening to the sun came early in the afternoon of the ninth, when an observer, looking through an instrument called a monochromatic heliograph, spotted a flare of breathtaking brilliance leaping out from the Sun's surface. Almost before he could notify the World Data Center on Solar Activity at Boulder, Colorado, confirmation came from the Radio Astronomy Station at Ft. Davis. Bursts of static at 448 megacycles were so loud that the listener called it "Magnitude Major Plus...
...scientists have known for some time that flares generally occur where there is a large concentration of sunspots, thought by Menzel to be "islands of intense calm floating in the otherwise turbulent sea of the Sun's atmosphere." Accordingly, the staff at Sacramento Peak had been watching a large cluster of sunspots covering over three billion square miles of the Sun's surface. Before the giant flare was seen, seven smaller flares had been observed, like rumblings before a storm. When a flare breaks out it spews a large number of electrically charged particles out into space; the bombardment...