Word: vapor
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...galaxy or quasar. Smog adds to the astronomer's headache; by scattering ground light in all directions, tiny smog particles can greatly increase the glare over an observatory. Not only the amount, but also the character of the light can affect a telescope's usefulness. Increasingly, mercury-vapor street lamps are the astronomer's special bane. They happen to be a powerful source of ultraviolet radiation, which is in the part of the light spectrum that gives astronomers important clues to the nature of certain stars and galaxies. And if a city's street lamps...
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...