Word: heats
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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During preparations for its successful trip to the moon, Surveyor was spared a severe test that future unmanned spacecraft on missions to Mars and Venus will have to endure: dry-heat sterilization to prevent the contamination of other planets by earthly microorganisms. The terrestrial bugs can do little harm on the lifeless moon, but experts agree that their premature arrival on other planets could obliterate or alter possible native life forms before they could be studied. There is a growing feeling, nonetheless, that the U.S. may have accepted international sterilization standards that are unnecessarily high...
...Them Out." When the cabin wall ruptured, escaping pressure sucked the flames across the astronauts-first Grissom, then White, finally Chaffee. Dense smoke and carbon monoxide rapidly filled the cabin. Though the astronauts suffered burns, it was asphyxiation that killed them. So intense were the heat and smoke billowing from the cabin into the "white room" near the craft that rescuers were repeatedly driven back and their gas masks, designed to protect against toxic fumes rather than smoke, were quickly exhausted...
...HEATING. When microwaves are focused into a narrow beam and directed at substances such as water, organic solvents and salt solutions, they cause them to heat almost instantaneously. Because the molecules of these substances are polarized-containing an uneven distribution of positive and negative charges-they align themselves with the direction of an electric field. Microwave fields reverse themselves rapidly; to keep up with them, the polarized molecules must oscillate constantly. This oscillation produces a rise in temperature. In a microwave oven, for example, the electric field completely permeates a potato, instantly heating the moisture in its center as well...
...KILLING GERMS. The ability to heat also gives microwaves the power to kill microorganisms. Litton Industries Biologist Carl M. Olsen has found that wrapped bread exposed to microwaves just before leaving the bakery remains free of mold for ten days, twice as long as bread treated only with a chemical preservative. Microwaves have also been used to pasteurize milk, beer and wine. Scientists have proposed a mobile microwave source that could be slowly moved across a farm field, generating enough energy to destroy harmful microorganisms before planting...
Jones's writing has if anything grown worse since Eternity. Thus, his narrative power: "He had never been so sexually excited in his life; the heat of it was so great he was afraid it would melt his ears, ignite his hair and burn the top of his head off." His gift for simile: "Grant suddenly felt amiable again, like a man who has just been relieved of a serious constipation." Metaphor: "I want to know what makes the wellsprings of human character tick...