Word: physicist
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...Physicist Raymond A. Lyttleton of Cambridge University proposes a return to the wrinkle theory of mountain building-but with a difference. The earth was cool and solid when it was formed, says Lyttleton; then radioactivity gradually heated its rocky material. A few billion years ago, the earth's central core got hot enough to change from a plastic solid to a true liquid. Under the enormous pressure that exists near the center of the earth, liquid rock is more compressible than solid rock. So when the core liquefied, it was squeezed into a smaller amount of space, allowing...
Died. Sir Charles Galton Darwin, 75, British theoretical physicist, head of the standard-setting National Physical Laboratory from 1938 to 1949, Charles Darwin's grandson, cousin of Pioneer Eugenicist Sir Francis Galton, and an outspoken advocate of eugenics himself; of a heart attack; in Cambridge, England...
Unlikely Field. At last week's Philadelphia meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Physicist Paul J. Coleman of the University of California said that the spacecraft's magnetometer worked perfectly during the flyby, but it reported no increase of magnetism. Coleman reminded his colleagues that Venus may have spots of strong local magnetism that do not make themselves felt far from the surface. But this is unlikely, and if Venus has a single magnetic field similar to the earth's, it must be less than 5-10% as strong...
...more satisfactory system, says Physicist R. Philip Hammond of Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, could be built around large nuclear reactors. In the magazine Nucleonics, Hammond explains that as reactors increase in size, the heat that they produce becomes cheaper and cheaper. Steam generated by a 10 million-kw. reactor costs only one-quarter as much as steam from a 1,000,000-kw. reactor. The necessary uranium fuel is relatively cheap, and most of the cost of running a nuclear reactor involves a variety of other items. But the cost of many of these increases only slightly as the plant...
...million-kw. reactor would produce heat cheaply enough for the sort of seawater distillery Physicist Hammond would like to use. But no such reactor has ever been built or seriously contemplated. The biggest one under construction in the U.S., at Bodega Bay north of San Francisco, will generate slightly more than 1,000,000 kw. of heat. For producing electric power, says Hammond, there is no present need for anything larger. But he is sure that the monsters he has in mind can be constructed without trouble. A 25 million-kw. distilling plant would suck in a river...