Word: vapor
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Chatter and Hiss. The Government is becoming involved. The Environmental Protection Agency has just awarded a $570,000 steam-engine-development contract to a small firm in Newton, Mass., called Steam Engine Systems, or SES. Similar contracts to develop non-steam, low-pollution vapor engines using organic fluids like fluronol instead of water have gone to California's Aerojet-General Corp. and Thermo Electron of Waltham, Mass. The environmental agency expects to hold a competitive runoff by year's end to determine which of the three engines merits additional federal money...
...noble idea leveled with a thud, see your nearest modern Bible. "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher . . ." In one new version his words become, "A vapor of vapors! Thinnest of vapors! All is vapor!"-turning the most passionate cry in the literature of nihilism into a spiritual weather report. The new rendition may be a more literal expression of the Hebrew original, but at what a cost in grace and power...
More ominously, some scientists have warned that SSTs could envelop the earth in a "global gloom" by dumping water vapor into the stratosphere, where it could hang suspended for long periods of time. Presidential Adviser Russell Train himself warns that a fleet of 500 SSTs flying at 65,000 ft. for a period of years could raise stratospheric water content by as much...
...This could be very significant," Train told the Proxmire subcommittee, "because observations indicate the water vapor content of the stratosphere has already increased about 50% over the last five years." A water-vapor blanket, Train contends, could lead to greater ground-level heat and hamper the formation of ozone that shields the earth from the sun's ultraviolet rays...
...Cornell researchers, a young Israeli chemist named Akiba Bar-Nun and his biochemist wife Nurit, tested the theory in a relatively simple experiment. They filled one end of a brass-and-Pyrex tube with a mixture of ammonia, methane, ethane and water vapor-all probable ingredients of the earth's early atmosphere. A thin plastic membrane separated the gases from the other end of the tube, which contained chemically inert helium. The Bar-Nuns increased the helium pressure until the membrane broke. This produced a shock wave that swept into the gaseous mixture at high speed, momentarily creating temperatures...