Word: gamma
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Gamma Rays. In both Hiroshima and Nagasaki a few modern buildings of heavy reinforced concrete stood up through the clean-swept desolation. Some military conservatives have pointed to them as proof that only flimsily built Japanese cities need fear atomic bombs...
...both stricken cities a few Japanese under shelter survived the heat and blast, only to die later from the invisible gamma rays. Striking through thick concrete, the rays disintegrated their blood cells, allowing raging infections to spread through their bodies (TIME...
...many of their light "curtain walls" would be swept away, leaving only skeleton steel. In downtown New York, a single up-to-date bomb might kill a million people. Some might live for a while, eventually die by inches. Few U.S. buildings could give protection from the stealthy gamma rays...
...corn varieties are native to Guatemala and southern Mexico -just as the peach is native to China. the English walnut to Persia, celery to the Mediterranean. Sometime around the 5th Century, primitive South American corn, which had small, globular ears and irregular kernels, was crossed with the strong, tall gamma grass which grows in Central America. Result of this crossbreeding was teosinte, an earless corn-producing plant which still grows wild in Mexico and the highlands of Guatemala. Crossed and recrossed with South American corn, teosinte produced the elongated ear and regular rows characteristic of modern corn...
Like radium, the glass fragments and the steel gave off alpha rays (ionized helium atoms), beta rays (electrons) and gamma rays (natural X rays). The proportions of the rays varied with the material. The steel gave off the most gamma rays. Sometimes the radiation from a piece gave a sudden, brief spurt, much above its normal level...