Word: sunlights
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...British astronomer Sir William Herschel performed a curious little experiment some 170 years ago. After bending a beam of sunlight through a prism, he found that a thermometer heated up most if it was placed just beyond the red end of the spectrum. Herschel concluded that the mysterious heat source was invisible rays from the sun, but he could hardly have known that infra-red radiation-as it was called -would eventually let man see the world in an entirely new light...
...automobile pollution. Unlike the cars it exports to the U.S., for example, Japan's domestic autos are still not equipped with emission controls. In Tokyo, a long and dreary rainy season was broken by a surge of windless warm weather that suddenly worsened the poisoned air. Bright sunlight reacted with suspended auto exhaust to produce a photochemical miasma called "white smog." One day a group of children playing in a schoolyard had trouble breathing and began collapsing; they were treated for smog poisoning. In five choking days, more than 8,000 people in Tokyo were treated in hospitals...
...also a temperature inversion. Like a lid on a jar, a stagnant upper layer of warm air kept heated air below from escaping. And what air! The city's brisk winds stopped dead; the sky darkened. Oxidants, caused by the reaction of nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons to sunlight, became a major addition to the city's usual outpourings of sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and tiny particles of lead, asbestos and other suspended matter. Day after day the city's Department of Air Resources reported pollution levels ranging between "unhealthy" and "unsatisfactory." SO2 levels hit .23 parts...
...growing list of endangered species, Walter Hickel should now add the American movie star (Astra americana). Take Julie Andrews-a feat that many people now claim is hard to do. In the '50s, she was My Fair Lady, a patch of sunlight on the American stage. In the '60s, she starred in the most successful film of all time, The Sound of Music. Ah, but then . . . sprinkled with Disney dust in Mary Poppins, way back in 1964 she began to turn into a pillar of sugar. Her marriage came apart, her "big" movie, Star, was the H-bomb...
...manufacture of pulp and paper. Instead of throwing away paper, which accounts for 80% of the trash disposal problem, Americans should reprocess it to make more paper and save power as well. Meantime, alternate sources of energy should be harnessed as quickly as possible. They could include nuclear fusion, sunlight, even the earth's own heat...