Word: dusting
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...very concerned about the "acid paper problem," as Widener's current predicament is often referred to, because every book that is left to turn into dust represents a piece of lost heritage that will never be recaptured...
...acid paper problem is not new. Scholars and librarians have known for years that the poor quality with which books were printed for much of the last two centuries would eventually leave us with a heap of dust. The question now is what to do about...
...uncertainty has to do with the way comets are put together. They're basically chunks of ice--chiefly H2O with a fair amount of carbon dioxide and other frozen gases mixed in, plus a lot of sooty dust. Billions upon billions of comets orbit lazily out beyond Neptune--most of which we'll never even see. When one happens to fall in toward the sun, though, the ice begins to vaporize, surrounding the solid core with a hazy cloud of dusty...
...depends on many factors. The solid comet's size is one, and Hale-Bopp, an estimated 20 miles across, is bigger than most. (Halley's was less than half as large.) Its history is another. Out in deep space, a comet can get encrusted with a layer of gummy dust. This layer can seal in most of the ice and prevent it from vaporizing. Some gas may spurt out through cracks in the crust, giving a comet a premature air of greatness that amounts to not much...
...month Crimson investigation has found that one of Harvard's most valuable resources and one of the largest academic libraries in the world, the Widener stacks, are "decaying, turning to dust," in the words of Cline. And though the University has made plans to install a climate-control system to curb the decay, none of the $28 million needed to renovate Widener has yet been raised...