Word: sunlight
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...Alvarezes did not stop there. Basing their calculations on the atmospheric consequences of the explosion of Krakatoa, they roughly estimated how much dust the impact of the asteroid would have thrown into the atmosphere, how long sunlight would have been blocked from the earth's surface, and what kinds of life would have been the most gravely affected by the climatic changes. They decided that plants, totally dependent on the sun for photosynthesis, and a variety of marine organisms would have died first, followed by the land animals highest on the food chain, the dinosaurs. Eventually the iridium-enriched debris...
...more often, the author evinces a tragic yearning for days that never were. Her obviously neglectful and self-indulgent mother is made into an art nouveau madonna, complete with aura: "I would drift into . . . the sunlight yellow that surrounded her." Reality is hard to hold; at 17, Gloria finds herself staring hard at visitors, "because if I didn't keep my eyes on them they might all disappear in a puff of the . . . cigarette." She imagines a sofa as "a nest on the topmost branch of a tree where I'm safe and nothing can harm...
Harvard's Winthrop House has its own inimitable way of fabricating spring. On the first Saturday that dares to show a shaft of sunlight between the thickly knit clouds, we drag out the grills and declare a barbeque. Eager and willing to celebrate this long-anticipated new season, impatient Winthropians don Hawaiian shirts and sun-glasses. Music comes blasting into the courtyard from some heavenly sphere--or is it really only that fourth floor window? Miraculously, a tire swing appears in a nearby tree. Idyllic, you say. Just exactly how a spring day should be, you say. Well...
...light is then split into ten parts, each of which races down its own 460-ft.-long tube equipped with amplifiers, spatial filters and isolators. As it emerges, each beam is focused to about the width of three human hairs, yet is a thousand trillion times brighter than the sunlight that falls on the earth. Together they deliver 100 trillion watts of power, about 200 times the present electricity-generating capacity of the U.S., albeit only for a billionth of a second...
Concerned that their Neolithic treasures would quickly disintegrate if exposed to humidity and sunlight, museum officials placed them in a darkened room, under glass and resting on a bed of blue and white silica gel that absorbs moisture. To view the objects, visitors press a button, which turns on display lights (filtered to block any destructive ultraviolet light) for only 90 seconds...