Word: watered
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Western scientists were frankly skeptical. Russian Chemists N. Fedyakin and Boris Deryagin claimed to have produced a mysterious new substance, a form of water that was so stable it boiled only at about 1,000°F., or five times the boiling temperature of natural water. It did not evaporate. It did not freeze-though at -40°F., with little or no expansion, it hardened into a glassy substance quite unlike...
Despite its remarkable qualities, the polymerized water, or polywater as it was called, was basically the familiar old H 2 O. Or was it? The question was so intriguing, recalls University of Maryland Chemist Ellis Lippincott, that "we couldn't afford not to look...
...polywater with the aid of laser beams and one of the world's two double-beam microscope spectrometers. They found that the chemical bonds between polywaters hydrogen and oxygen atoms were always of equal length, which made them stronger than the bonds between atoms of a natural-water molecule. They also confirmed that polywater is a totally new substance with all the properties the Russians had claimed...
Threatening Thimble. So far, the total quantity made in Russia, the U.S. and Britain would fill little more than a thimble. But researchers are busily making more, and the process is surprisingly simple. A vacuum is created in a bowl that contains tiny glass capillary tubes; water vapor is introduced into the vacuum, and in two or three days polywater collects in the capillaries. Scientists conjecture that polywater's strange properties might eventually make it useful as a superlubricant, a substitute for antifreeze, or fuel for an extraordinarily efficient steam engine...
Physicist Frank Donahoe of Pennsylvania's Wilkes College, for one, thinks that polywater could pose a threat to all life. Once it is let loose, the stuff might propagate itself, feeding on natural water. The proliferation of such a dense, inert liquid, warns Donahoe, could stop all life processes, turning the earth into a "reasonable facsimile of Venus." Lippincott considers that danger slight. But he concedes that until scientists know more about polywater, they should handle it with care...