Word: hydrogenic
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When they passed the proper hydrocarbons, sulphur dioxide and oxygen near a chunk of fiercely radioactive cobalt 60, the gamma rays from the cobalt knocked a hydrogen atom off the hydrocarbon molecules, making them highly reactive. After enough of these free radicals had been formed, the cobalt 60 could be removed, and the reaction proceeded without further stimulation. The result was SAS (sodium alkane sulfonate), a long-chain detergent that washes clothes and dishes every bit as well as the troublesome...
When Dr. Ponnamperuma added hydrogen to the mix in the tube, less adenine was formed, and he concluded that life could not have developed on earth until most of the free hydrogen in the earth's primitive atmosphere had escaped into space. Only then could adenine and similar chemicals have been made out of methane, ammonia and water. Gradually, those chemicals accumulated in the ocean where the first life appeared, and at last they formed nucleic acid, life's key substance...
These are only a few of the myriad new uses; man also employs the gases to fire rockets, sterilize rooms, freeze ice cream and produce soda bubbles. Food processors use liquid hydrogen to stiffen oils into shortening through "hydrogenation." Steelmakers are taking big gulps of pure oxygen in their furnaces to speed melting. In orbital flights, the astronauts burn liquid oxygen as fuel and breathe its evaporations...
...rings up $287 million yearly and leads in sales of oxygen. Air Reduction Co. (sales: $287 million) leads in gases for welding and in research on food freezing. The youngest, smallest and scrappiest of the big three is Air Products and Chemicals (sales: $100 million), which pioneered in liquid hydrogen and grew to its present size by building big air-separation plants right on the sites of their industrial users...
Speaking in the Quincy House Junior Common Room, Teller, who strongly advocated development of the hydrogen bomb, maintained that the present U.S. security classification system does not protect the United States; "the Russians probably know all our secrets and all those we will discover in the next few years...