Word: x-rays
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...exactly the occasion of his birth, for April 1938 was when he made his debut on the cover of the first issue (dated June) of Action Comics. If he was then about 25, as he looked, he would actually now be 75, his superbody weak and weary, his X-ray vision dimmed. But since he still looks about 25, he can be said to be timeless, immortal. And although nobody is sure exactly how old he is, there is a tradition that his birthday falls on Feb. 29 (the leap-year day appropriate to Lois Lane's repeated efforts...
...Berchtesgaden and Moscow and haul both Hitler and Stalin before a League of Nations tribunal in Geneva. Believers in verisimilitude began wondering how Superman avoided getting drafted. Simple. Clark Kent patriotically went to take his physical exam, but when he looked at the eye chart, his X-ray vision caused him to read figures from a chart in the next room. He was rated...
Tensions over the development of the X-ray laser might have remained behind closed doors if Woodruff had not been demoted by Livermore Director Roger Batzel in what Woodruff claims was retaliation for trying to put a lid on Teller. Prior to his transfer, Woodruff was responsible for proposed SDI weapons like the X-ray laser, a device that was supposed to channel the intense X rays from a nuclear bomb into a beam of radiation. In theory, the X rays would be capable of destroying enemy ICBMs in mid-flight. But tests showed that although such devices work...
...Keyworth saying the laser was ready for "engineering phase" -- implying that only a few details remained to be worked out before the weapon could be built. And as late as 1987, Lowell Wood, a manager of weapons development at Livermore and Teller's protege, told a House subcommittee how "X-ray lasers can be used to destroy any type of platforms in space, including defensive platforms, so the counterdefensive role is being explored extensively, and it is this role in which X-ray lasers might be expected to first come into play...
Teller and Wood, for their part, refuse to comment directly on Woodruff's charges. Even so, Teller told TIME last week, "I'm most unhappy to see a great scientific discovery, the X-ray laser, is reported not for its merits or its possible use for defense, but as an object of controversy." Contends Livermore Physicist Hugh DeWitt: "Woodruff did a damn good job of blowing the whistle on the extravagant claims of those two men." And while Woodruff's employment status has been resolved, the issues have not. The conclusions of the GAO investigation are expected by June...