Word: hissing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...classic case of scientific serendipity. The two young scientists at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in Holmdel, N.J., were using a hornlike antenna to "listen" to the faint background hiss created by stars and other radio sources in the Milky Way galaxy. What they picked up was a faint echo of the creation, the remnant of the cataclysmic fireball, or Big Bang, that gave birth to the universe 15 to 20 billion years...
From the driver's seat in the air-conditioned cabin, there is no tranquillity about a 19,000-lb., 150-h.p. John Deere 7700 combine, even run at half throttle. The engines hiss and suck. The cutting blades click like a madwoman's knitting needles. In this age, when transistors perform wondrous deeds with assistance from only a few volts of electricity, the combine, despite its air conditioner, turbo engine and two-way radio, is a functioning monument to 19th century mechanical ingenuity. It is a jumble of rubber belts propelling multisized wheels that turn gears, pull pulleys...
...this noise came from so-called radio galaxies that were all but invisible in the mirrors and lenses of ordinary optical telescopes. Other signals came from the distant and powerful quasars. At Bell Telephone Labs, scientists working on a new satellite communications system even "heard" a low-level microwave hiss that may be lingering radiation of the Big Bang...
THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER, Richard Nixon remained a singularly bloodless character, an automaton with a five-o'clock shadow and an unerring ability to capitalize on the strong emotions he provoked but apparently could not feel. The classic opportunist, he was always running, always chasing after an Alger Hiss or running away from the Checkers mess, pursuing the phanton of "peace with honor" or retreating from the very real brown manila envelopes loaded with cash that his vice president used to collect every two weeks or so. As long as he was on the move-to China, to Russia...
Your generally excellent article on new evidence in the Hiss case [Feb. 13] refers to me as "another Communist...