Word: layer
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Tombaugh believes that the canals are faults or fractures, several miles wide, in the Martian crust. Their darkening and fading may be caused, he says, by the intermittent escape of hot gases that melt a thin layer of frost and vegetation. The oases where the faults intersect, he speculates, are probably impact craters where moisture gathers and promotes the growth of moss or lichenlike plants hardy enough to withstand the harsh Martian climate...
...dramatic demonstration of that strange phenomenon during the disastrous 1964 earthquake, says Columbia University Geologist Paul Kerr, whose investigation is described in the current issue of Scientific American. While probing beneath the battered sand, gravel and silt surface of Anchorage during the past two summers, Kerr studied an underlying layer of quick clay from 10 to 30 ft. thick. During the three minutes of the quake's violent up-and-down jolting, he concluded, some of the quick clay under Anchorage turned into liquid, triggering the damaging landslides that literally floated large sections of land to new locations...
...minimize damage from future Alaskan earthquakes, Army engineers are experimenting with a technique already used in Norway: forcing electrodes into the layer of clay and passing high-amperage currents between the electrodes to reorient the clay particles. Scientists are also conducting laboratory experiments that could some day put Anchorage on more solid ground. By pumping enough calcium salts into the clay to bind its particles together by electrolytic action, they hope to make the clay more viscous, resistant to shock and no longer thixotropic...
...clay pit every day on his way to work, was suddenly struck by an idea. Rounding up a few partners, he bought the pit and converted it into a private dump, charging $8 per load. To appease neighbors' noses, he covered each day's refuse with a layer of earth. To screen the mess from passersby, he built a bamboo fence, planted the border with floodlit flower beds and palm trees. When finished, the area looked so little like a dump that he had to put up a huge sign saying "Disposal Gardens" to convince befuddled truckers that...
...next year's Project Storm Fury, they may have to find ways to isolate the hurricanes from their principal source of energy, the sea. One suggestion advanced at the Miami meeting: to cover large areas of the sea in the vicinity of a hurricane with a thin chemical layer-perhaps of fatty alcohols-that would prevent evaporation and keep energy from rising into the storm...