Word: gamma
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...ballistic missiles. When an atom bomb explodes in the atmosphere, its fireball stops expanding when its pressure falls to that of the air around it; in the vacuum above the atmosphere, the fireball expands indefinitely. Ahead of its hot, ballooning shell races a host of electrons, other particles and gamma rays that would be stopped soon by the lower-lying atmosphere. Thus its lethal above-the-atmosphere range should be vastly increased...
...research that led to the award began in 1934, when Cherenkov. then 30, noticed a bluish glow where gamma rays from radium were striking through water in a flask. The glow was exceedingly faint, and a less curious man might have put it aside as ordinary fluorescence, which is given off by many materials when struck by gamma rays. But Cherenkov's mysterious light proved to be strongly polarized, had a continuous (rainbow-like) spectrum, and was given off predominantly in the direction of the gamma rays...
...Cherenkov radiation remained a tantalizing mystery until three years later. Two other Soviet physicists, Ilya M. Frank and his senior, Igor Tamm (who studied at Edinburgh and speaks English with a Scottish burr), became interested, worked out a strange but correct theory. When gamma rays pass through water, they hit electrons, and the impact bumps the electrons up to high velocities. The electrons do not move faster than light in a vacuum (186,000 m.p.sec., the Einsteinian speed limit of the universe), but they do move faster than light in water, 140,000 m.p.sec. For exceeding the local speed limit...
...fierce, legless maggots are fed on 80,000 Ibs. a week of mixed whale and horse meat flavored with 4,500 gals, of beef blood. When they get their growth and turn into pupae, they are harvested, packed into aluminum canisters, and exposed for 6-2 minutes to gamma rays from radioactive cobalt...
...breathe into a glass flask, to test for radon gas in his breath, and into a mask hooked up to another flask to test for another gas, thoron, that has a half life of only 54 seconds. An ultra-sensitive scintillation counter scanned his whole body for gamma rays. X rays searched his bones for radioactive deposits. There, though the now retired salesman seems to be in good health, Dr. Evans found seven times as much radioactivity as he considered safe for a man to carry around...