Word: sodium
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Guns for Sale. In New Delhi, Daoud's remarks were taken with a grain of sodium chloride. The city buzzed with the news that an Afghan arms-buying mission would soon be on the way to Moscow, and that large quantities of Soviet arms would get into the hands of Afghanistan's border-raiding Pathan tribesmen. Thus the Soviet Traveling Salesmen sought to punish the West's good friend Pakistan. Having endorsed India's claims to Kashmir (disputed by Pakistan), they now encouraged the Afghans' claim to northern territories of West Pakistan...
From the observatory perched on nearby Sacramento Peak, Dr. Edward Manring of the Air Force Cambridge Research Center followed the sodium cloud all night. The light affected sensitive instruments so strongly that it drove them off-scale. It will be at least a month before Air Force scientists can analyze their data and decide what the experiment has taught them. If the results are promising, many other sodium rockets may be shot into...
...sodium rocket was not merely a beautiful and expensive firework; it had a serious scientific purpose: to help the Air Force's long-range study of the upper atmosphere. Part of the "air glow" (the faint glow of the night sky) comes from sodium atoms that absorb solar energy during the day. At night they give off this energy as yellow sodium light. Scientists do not know how high the "sodium layer" is. Nor do they know how the sodium got into the top of the atmosphere. Some think it came from outer space; others suspect that it originated...
...putting a known amount of sodium vapor into the atmosphere at a known altitude, the sodium rocket will enable scientists to learn more about the natural sodium that is already there. They can compare the air glow coming from the two lots of sodium, and since the amount of one is known, the amount of the other may be calculated...
...sodium vapor that the Air Force put into the atmosphere will drift with the winds. If it increases the normal air glow, it can be followed, perhaps for considerable distances. A cloud of sodium of known origin picked up by astronomers' instruments in the Eastern states will be a fine way to measure wind velocity at levels that no weather balloon can reach...