Word: gamma
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...clear sky could hardly be more visible, its light and heat beating down apparently unhindered. But scientists know that the earth's atmosphere stops most of the radiation in the sun's long spectrum, which runs all the way from gamma rays to radio waves. Now at last U.S. scientists are getting a steady, unhampered look at the sun's radiation...
...sail, and pointed accurately at the center of the sun by a special set of eyes, are five of the 13 observing instruments that OSO carries. An X-ray spectrometer measures the wave length and strength of X rays coming from the sun. A photomultiplier tube looks for powerful gamma rays that are believed to come from electrons and positrons annihilating each other in the sun's churning gas. A dust counter watches the sun to find out whether microscopic dust particles are coming from its direction...
Borrowed from France's biggest calculator manufacturer, it was "instructed" by Barbaud and his friend Blanchard in theory, harmonics and chromatics-i.e., they crammed the circuits of its electronic memory with all the knowledge necessary for composition. Now Gamma knows the mathematical rules by which chords are combined into musical compositions. It understands only a vocabulary of numbers and letters, so all the essentials must first be fitted with a coded description. Fed with the necessary information, and given instructions relating to the key of the composition, its length, and the number of instruments, Gamma Three then attacks...
Because both Barbaud and Blanchard are modernists, much influenced by Schoenberg, they have instructed Gamma in the twelve-tone scale so that it can spew forth Schoenbergian chamber works on punched tape with confidence and ease. Says Barbaud: "They are in some respects better, artistically as well as technically, than some of Schoenberg's works...
...only catch, of course, is that if Gamma Three and other computers were turned loose to compose to the electronic limit, the frenzied output would need someone to judge it-someone to decide which compositions were worth keeping and which were pure junk. Many such judges would be needed, and as they picked off good bits from the machines' output, stitched excerpts together with some work of their own, ran off passages now and then on a piano, they could come to be known as composers...