Astraphobia

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

a term used to describe the abnormal sensitiveness of many persons to the approach or in the presence of thunderstorms. The condition has been attributed to the increase in atmospheric electricity, as well as to changes in other atmospheric conditions such as accompany the gathering of storms. ATOMIC ENERGY. The question of the possibility of developing new sources of power for human use, in view of the known approaching exhaustion of coal, oil, and other resources of the earth, has led to scientific consideration of the energy locked up in the atoms of matter. Such energy is as inexhaustible as matter itself and is known to be enormous in amount. The disintegration of radium, for instance, is accompanied by an emission of heat sufficient to raise an equal mass of water from zero to the boiling point once every hour; or, in other words, it is possible to estimate that the energy contained in one radium gram would be sufficient to raise the temperature of ten million liters of water from zero to the boiling point. According to some scientists, the sun and stars must be drawing on vast reservoirs of energy by means at present unknown to us, and these reservoirs, they maintain, can be nothing else than the subatomic energies of matter. The amount of such energy in a body the size of the sun would be capable of maintaining its output of heat for fifteen billion years. Artificial methods of disintegrating atoms, as radium is gradually disintegrating by nature, are at least conceivable (see ELECTRON THEORY, TRANSMUTATION OF ELEMENTS), and the future use of atomic energy is confidently predicted by many scientists.