Word: pinheads
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Microphone-transmitters these days can be made about the size of a pinhead and embedded anywhere (or everywhere) in a wall, ceiling, chair or a person's clothing. Some do not need wires to transmit; they send out microwave signals that can be read by equipment outside the building. They can be turned on and off by remote control, or set to be activated by heat, radiation, the vibrations of a voice or pressure. A bug in a chair might turn itself on when someone sits down...
...aspects of cometary theory have since been refined or expanded. By studying the spectra of light emitted from molecules broken down in the gaseous coma, scientists have estimated that a comet's nucleus consists of two-thirds water, one-fifth dust (particles averaging one-thousandth the width of a pinhead) and the rest a mixture of methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide and trace elements...
...canister into the back of a hospital truck and hauled it to a local junkyard, where a dealer gave him $10 for it. Unfortunately, Sotelo and the dealer were unaware that the canister was part of a radiography machine and contained a capsule that held approximately 6,000 pinhead pellets of cobalt 60, a powerful isotope used in the treatment of cancer. Later, at some undetermined point, the capsule in the canister broke open; hundreds of pellets were subsequently scattered throughout the truck and the junkyard. Even the junkyard's paperwork later proved to be radioactive. Many...
...Telephone Laboratories demonstrated a small, simple device that can do many of the jobs now done by vacuum tubes. Called a "Transistor," it is a slim metal cylinder about an inch long. Inside are two hair-thin wires whose points press, two-thousandths of an inch apart, on a pinhead of germanium...
...What they have is fairly significant, but it's definitely not the smoking gun for a planetary system," said David Layzer, Menzel Professor of Astrophysics. "There's not even an indication that there are solid objects larger than a pinhead...