Word: sunlights
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...Stored Sunlight. Scientists have long known that sunlight striking the atmosphere 60 miles above the earth breaks two-atom oxygen molecules (62) into single oxygen atoms. Normally the single atoms recombine when they come into contact with nitric oxide as a catalyst. Since there is only a tiny trace of this gas in the high atmosphere, they recombine slowly, releasing enough energy in the process to produce a hardly perceptible glow in the night...
Nobody knows how much energy is stored in the layer of atomic oxygen, but since the supply is renewed every day by sunlight, it should be inexhaustible. This opens up some interesting possibilities. In an earlier experiment the Cambridge men discovered that when nitric oxide is re leased in daytime, it is acted upon by sunlight and forms a dense cloud of electrified particles that reflect radio waves as a mirror reflects light. A few such reflectors properly spaced around the curve of the earth might support new kinds of long-range communication. Rockets fired at night might illuminate large...
...quadrillions of miles from the earth, and with galaxies much more distant. But Pluto, a member of the sun's own planetary family, and only 3½ billion miles away, has little personality for them. The outermost member of the solar system, it shines only feebly by reflected sunlight. Even in the biggest telescopes it looks like a faint star; only its motion among the real stars and a slight fuzziness prove it to be a planet. Astronomers are not sure how big it is (probably midway between Mercury and Mars), but recently they have learned how fast...
Like organic spongy life of the sea or the weird shapes that bubble and float before our half-closed eyes in bright sunlight, the forms of Joan Miro drift across his canvasses. For their simplicity, the crescents, spots and silhouettes have been called no form at all but only elements--embryos of form like "graffati that children scratch on walls" or that "prehistoric man engraved in caves...
Sunspots are storms in the sun's surface layer of bright, turbulent gas. They send out blasts of radiation and high-speed particles that hit the earth's atmosphere and form ionized (electrified) layers at high altitudes. Ordinary sunlight does this too, but sunspots beef up the layers and make them strong enough to divert TV signals that would normally pass through into outer space...