Word: thermonuclear
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...think hurricanes and tornadoes are powerful, take a look at the sun's periodic storms. Kicking up twisting arcs of fiery gases, solar eruptions from that great thermonuclear reactor in the sky can stretch as far as the distance from Earth to the moon. The most intense outbursts explode a billion tons of material off the sun's searing (11,000[degrees]F) surface at speeds of millions of miles an hour. If these electrically charged particles happen to slam against Earth's atmosphere, they can imperil astronauts, push satellites out of orbit or fry their circuitry. If they...
...BRADBURY, 88, top physicist and for 25 years the head of the Los Alamos National Laboratory weapons-research center; in Los Alamos, N.M. A veteran of the Manhattan Project, where he helped assemble the first atom bomb, he built Los Alamos into a formidable facility that developed the first thermonuclear weapons...
...year-olds. Without a Vietnam War, the new generation is less polarized. "Young people today are not as struck by life's fragility," says John Gardner, head of the National Resource Center for the Freshman Year Experience at the University of South Carolina. "They're not thinking about thermonuclear Armageddon...
...imagery of aggression: every target implies a weapon and someone aiming. This had an inescapable point in the mid-'50s, when politicians and all the American media were pounding into the collective imagination, like a 10-in. spike, the message that the whole nation was a target for Russian thermonuclear weapons...
...book's theory makes a degree of sense. Science is usually an incremental enterprise, with most researchers toiling in the experimental thickets, trying to hack out a little clearing of enlightenment. Occasionally, however, a Darwin or Einstein comes along and with a flash of insight as blinding as a thermonuclear airburst, clears the entire landscape. Down below, ordinary scientists blink disbelievingly at their sudden ability to see from horizon to horizon. But their sense of wonder is tempered by regret. Tending your tiny patch seems like pulling weeds compared with such intellectual clear cutting...