Word: nitrogenating
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...Rawson and Higgins have another reason for wanting to return to Kilauea Iki. In drilling their hole they discovered that nitrogen and carbon dioxide were seeping from it. There is a chance that these gases came from the atmosphere, the ocean or surface rocks, but if they can be proved to have come from the virgin lava itself, they may contribute valuable evidence about the formation of the earth. One theory holds that the earth was formed quickly out of dust particles and that it kept hot enough while growing to drive all gases out of its interior. A rival...
...newly formed Institute of Nuclear Studies at the University of Chicago and specialized in peaceful employment of the atom. Investigating the feeble radioactivity of air, he found that a good part of it comes from carbon 14, a radioactive isotope of carbon that is formed when cosmic rays hit nitrogen atoms in the atmosphere. This led to a brilliant idea that has revolutionized a long list of sciences...
...impossible either, given the right instruments. On a roof at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, six wide-angle lenses stare day and night at the sky. Each is linked to a filter that makes it blind to all light except a special kind that comes from the fluorescence of nitrogen or oxygen. If light of this unusual sort comes down from the sky, the rooftop apparatus at Los Alamos will ring an alarm that will sound around the world. It will mean that some nation has attempted a secret bomb test in space-and has been caught...
...tests above the atmosphere in 1958 taught that when a nuclear bomb explodes in a vacuum, about half of its energy goes into invisible X rays. These hit the atmosphere and make its oxygen and nitrogen fluoresce in characteristic wave lengths that can easily be distinguished from the spectrum of sunlight. When Los Alamos Physicist Donald R. Westervelt learned about this, he designed a detection system based upon it. A few dozen of his detectors spotted around the earth would be an adequate network. Some of them would always be under clear skies. In daylight they would detect...
...increased yields can be obtained by such simple devices as an improved plow, which could be drawn by a bullock, or by increased use of fertilizer. "Just as most people are starved for food, most crops are starved of essential elements-nitro gen, phosphorus and potassium." Though production of nitrogen fertilizer has now reached 10 million tons a year, it "still ranks as one of the most underexploited discoveries of all time." Concluded Britain's Physicist P.M.S. Blackett: "We as scientists and technologists, have already given ourselves the tools by means of which hunger could be banished from...