Word: maximum
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...great flare, and its coterie of sunspots, was an unmistakable signal. It heralded the imminent arrival of the solar maximum: the period every eleven years or so when the sun reaches its peak levels of activity and pointedly reminds earth dwellers of its awesome power. At maximum...
...During a maximum, marked by a jump in the number of sunspots and flares, giant loops of incandescent gases, called prominences, proliferate, shooting tens of thousands of miles above the solar surface, sometimes hanging suspended for months. The solar corona, the halo around the sun visible during total eclipses, becomes fuller and brighter; great blobs of the corona, containing billions of tons of hot gas, occasionally burst free, shooting into space at speeds as high as 2 million m.p.h. And the earth's upper atmosphere, pummeled by solar particles, is laced by electrical currents of as much as a million...
Because the previous maximum occurred in late 1979, astronomers had targeted 1991 as the year when solar frenzy would again peak. But the sun is notably capricious. While the intervals between maximums average eleven years, some have been as short as seven, others as long as 17. Ever since the sun began revving up three years ago toward the next maximum, its activity has mounted with unprecedented speed...
Instead, what transpired was this: as army convoys moved toward Tiananmen in the early-morning hours of June 4, troops were viciously attacked by rioters brandishing fire bombs and guns financed by "overseas reactionary political forces." The reluctant soldiers exercised maximum self-restraint, but were finally compelled to open fire. Even then, General Li Zhiyun insisted last week at a press conference, "it never happened that soldiers fired directly at the people." In the end, nearly 100 soldiers and policemen were killed putting down the "counterrevolutionaries." Civilian casualties totaled no more than 100 dead, perhaps a thousand wounded. That...
...proposals on the discharge of toxic chemicals into the air are the least detailed part of his plan. Bush will ask Congress to revise ineffectual laws from the 1970s and order all polluters to adopt whatever the Environmental Protection Agency defines as the "maximum available control technology" to slash those emissions...