Word: vapor
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...Cooling Vapor. The Big Thompson River canyon had long been a very special place for Colorado residents and tourists alike. Situated on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, the canyon starts at about 7,500 ft. In a stretch of 25 miles, moving eastward from the Continental Divide, it descends some 2,000 ft. The walls of the canyon tower over what used to be a pleasant trout stream sparkling in the depths below. The canyon was not unspoiled, but neither was it ruined by money: the big, Aspen-style condominiums had been kept away, and most...
...m.p.h. winds blowing easterly across the Rockies. But this time, a nearly stagnant cold front lay over the peaks. As the dark clouds rose over a cul-de-sac at Estes Park, far up in the canyon, they collided with the mass of cold air. The cooling vapor began to condense into drops. At 6 p.m. it began to rain on the high eastern slopes of the Continental Divide. Nobody could have predicted that in the next six nightmarish hours, 14 in. would fall-as much as in a normal year...
With failure following failure the doctors have now turned to toxicological testing. For that they use a gas chromatograph, which heats a specimen until it vaporizes. When a bright light is shone through the vapor and passed through a prism, it yields a distinctive spectrum. Yet further tests will be run with an atomic spectrometer, which searches for deadly heavy metals like mercury and lead. A shotgun approach like this, says Sencer, should disclose whether "there are chemicals you would not expect to find in human tissue." If such chemicals can be found, the detectives may have their solution...
Above the horizon, the Martian sky looked surprisingly bright*-evidence, say some scientists, that the atmosphere is richer than expected in light-diffusing particles. In the sky was a shadow- perhaps a cloud composed of water vapor...
Indeed, Mars seems to possess many of the elements essential to life on earth. Most of Mars' visible water appears in the form of atmospheric vapor or ice locked in the planet's two polar caps (the surface pressure on Mars is so low* that liquid water would probably boil away). But liquid water apparently once did flow freely on the Martian surface in earlier days; Viking's orbital pictures show that the planet is crisscrossed by dry "riverbeds" and sinuous valleys, including a deep Grand Canyon-like depression called the Valles Marineris, that were probably carved...