Word: nitrogenating
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...depth that was rarely attempted a few years ago. It has developed, among other items, a complex fiber glass "rat hat" that warms the helium-oxygen mixture that divers must breathe at the very cold depths below 200 ft. to avoid the disabling nitrogen narcosis commonly known as "rapture of the deep." The $2,500 hat has been successfully tested at 1,600 ft.; Oceaneering refuses to sell it to anyone-even the U.S. Navy, which has chastised the firm as "unpatriotic...
...large part of the controversy over the British-French Concorde arises from concern about the big jets' effect on the ozone layer, which protects life on earth from lethal doses of ultraviolet light. Laboratory tests and chemical theory have shown that the nitrogen oxides given off by jet engines destroy ozone. Do nitrogen oxides have the same effect in the stratosphere? A Dutch meteorologist working at Boulder, Colo., reports there is now evidence that the answer...
...lower latitudes, most of the protons are deflected by the earth's magnetic field. But near the poles, where the lines of the field bend toward the earth, the protons slam into molecules in the upper atmosphere and cause a shower of electrons. These, in turn, crash into nitrogen molecules, ionizing them and allowing them to combine with oxygen. As a result, nitric oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ) are formed; both react readily with ozone molecules and cause their destruction...
Last summer, Crutzen declared that a large solar flare in 1972 must have doubled the amount of nitrogen oxides in the stratosphere at an altitude of about 25 miles over the polar regions, and thus depleted the ozone over these areas by an amount he calculated at 20%. There was a way of checking his theory. A Nimbus satellite, in orbit at the time, had been measuring the amount of ultraviolet light reflected from the earth's atmosphere. Because ozone absorbs ultraviolet, any decrease in ozone would result in an increase in the ultraviolet "seen" by the satellite. Sure...
...Nature, G.C. Reid and I.S.A. Isaksen of NOAA, T.E. Holzer of NCAR and Crutzen suggest that the solar particles may not directly wreak their havoc on life during magnetic field reversals. Instead, unobstructed by the field, they may deplete the ozone layer by as much as 50% by creating nitrogen oxides, letting in lethal doses of ultraviolet light...