Word: ultraviolet
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...fragile environment has ranged from pollution of the oceans and the air to radioactive contamination in a nuclear war. Now researchers are turning their attention to the atmosphere's ozone layer, which protects all life below from a lethal overdose of the sun's ultraviolet light. Their ominous findings: the vital blanket of gas is so fragile that it might well be severely damaged or destroyed by large-scale atmospheric nuclear tests, to say nothing of military and civilian supersonic aircraft, and even the widespread use of aerosol sprays...
...discharges of electricity, and is most noticeable after a lightning storm, when it can be detected by its pungent smell. Most of the ozone in the air is concentrated in a layer some 15 to 30 miles above the earth, where it absorbs much of the sun's ultraviolet radiation. Trouble is, ozone is far from stable; it readily gives up one of its oxygen atoms to other gases and turns into ordinary oxygen, which does not block ultraviolet radiation...
...debate that led to the cutting off of U.S. Government funds for the supersonic transport, environmentalists had voiced fears that nitrogen oxides in the exhaust of the 1,800-m.p.h. aircraft might weaken the ozone shield that protects the earth from an overdose of the sun's ultraviolet rays. The charge was serious, but was it true? The U.S. Department of Transportation commissioned researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to find out. After two years of study, M.I.T.'s experimental evidence indicates that the fears of '71 are justified...
Even if Viking fails to detect living things, there is always the possibility that life on Mars is based on a chemistry different from that of any known life forms, or that it sought shelter even deeper in the ground as protection against the sun's deadly ultraviolet rays...
...first moon landing on July 21, 1969, has been turned into a commissary storeroom for ketchup and cookies. The massive lunar receiving laboratory, designed to analyze the 838 lbs. of rocks hauled back from the moon, has been dismantled and turned into a medical research laboratory. The seven ultraviolet showers built to cleanse astronauts and technicians of unknown moon bugs are now stainless steel corridors leading nowhere...