Word: vapor
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Traditionally, most laymen have thought of nicotine as the principal villain in tobacco. For two decades, scientists have been concentrating on "tars," a catchall term for the viscous gunk that is left from cigarette smoke after the gases and water vapor have been boiled off. Now, while they do not exonerate these culprits, researchers are studying carbon monoxide, a product of incomplete combustion in cigarettes as in automobile engines...
...Planetary Studies Lab, suggested that the glaciers are frozen carbon dioxide (dry ice), the major constituent of the polar cap. Smith felt that dry ice would not flow like a glacier. "The only thing that does," he said, "is water." Mariner's instruments did detect water vapor in the atmosphere above the south polar cap, suggesting that it had risen from the ice below. Those readings encouraged scientists who still hope to find some form of ife, however rudimentary, on the desolate Martian surface...
...itself, that modest plot cannot fully convey the quinine-flavored humor of the evening. Simon creates an atmosphere of casual cataclysm, an everyday urban purgatory of copelessness from which laughter seems to be released like vapor escaping from the city's manholes...
...moonlike craters, the virtual lack of a magnetic field and the extremely low atmospheric pressure (only one one-hundred-fiftieth that of the earth's). Finally, although many scientists are becoming increasingly pessimistic about the prospect of finding life on Mars, Mariner will look for telltale evidence (water vapor, temperature) that the planet could possibly support rudimentary biological activity...
...that the crickets kept coming, and they were twice the size of the common cricket found in the U.S. At night, the patter of crickets landing on roof tiles was like the sound of rain, which the town had seldom heard in recent years. Turning out the mercury vapor lamps helped little; the crickets invaded lighted houses instead. Turning out indoor lights meant a darkness in which crickets suddenly lit on eyes or mouths or necks. Worst of all was the sickening crunch of crickets underfoot and the unending chirp-chirp-chirp of their monotonous serenade...