Word: vapor
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Astronomers used to think that only good-sized meteorites reach the earth intact, while the smaller ones "burn" to vapor on passing through the atmosphere. But Dr. H. E. Landsberg at the U.S. Weather Bureau had another idea. He smeared some microscope slides with glycerin and exposed them on a mountaintop just before a shower of "Giacobinid" meteors* was expected. Before and during the shower, he caught nothing unusual. But for many days after the shower he caught highly magnetic particles unlike anything found in normal dust-catches...
...seconds the Viking rose properly, leaving a trail of white vapor that twisted with the wind. Then the fuel stopped burning, prematurely. When its fire went out, the rocket was 10.5 miles up and rising at 1,775 m.p.h. Coasting upward on momentum, it reached an altitude of 33 miles and started down again...
...crater is still a shallow, rimless saucer pressed down into the earth by the force of the explosion. In it may be seen a few twisted bits of metal and the reinforced concrete foundations of the tall steel tower that the bomb blew away as vapor...
...pier, and rained down upon the hissing waters. Shells shot hither & thither, exploding under the touch of the terrific heat and shooting their missiles at random. Some of the shrapnel shells fell even in Manhattan. On the pier arose a white glare as of a million mercury-vapor lights...
Seymour Hess, of the Lowell Observatory at Flagstaff, Ariz., reported to the meteorologists that Mars is a dry place indeed. There is so little water vapor in its atmosphere that if it all fell at once as rain, it would register less than a hundredth of an inch.* And the Martians (if any) are living in a rarefied atmosphere only one-twelfth as dense as the earth...