Pink Noise - Leonid Korogodski [57]
The first two heroes decide to play, but their courage fails by the next day, after they see the beheaded man miraculously pick up his head from the floor and leave. Finally, Cú Chulainn plays. He waits for the man to come back, then puts his head on the block. But he is spared. The mysterious man turns out to be a druid who came to test the heroes’ courage.
decorticate rigidity
Involuntary flexion or extension of muscles by person in a coma indicates brain damage in the cortex and/or that the interface between the cortex and the rest of the motor system is affected.
The arms are bent at the elbows up and toward each other, connecting over the chest. The fists are clenched and pressed against each other. The legs are extended, with feet turned inward.
diamond nanorods
A super-hard material, not only harder than diamond but even harder than fullerite, a macroscopic form of buckyballs, the carbon-cage molecules like C60. Diamond nanorods are made by crushing buckyballs under tremendous pressure. Also known as hyperdiamond.
digital, adj.
Characterized by discreteness of states, as opposed to analog.
Doppler shift
The change of wavelength observed when either the source of the waves or the medium in which they propagate moves relative to the observer. For visible light, wavelength corresponds to color. So it is common to call lowering of frequency the “red shift,” and the opposite of it the “blue shift.”
double layer
Plasma envelops any object with two parallel layers of oppositely charged particles, with a very thin space in between, such that the object is shielded from electrostatic interaction with the outside. Because of this resemblance with blood plasma that coagulates around any foreign body, Irving Langmuir (1881–1957), the 1932 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, called this state of matter plasma.
Double layers form at the boundary between plasma regions with different characteristics (temperature, density, chemical composition, and so on). Charge separation does exist in plasma—but most of the voltage is squeezed into layers as narrow as possible.
Drakensberg
A mountain range in KwaZulu–Natal, South Africa, running parallel to the southeastern coast for about 1,000 km. Its highest elevation is just below 3.5 km above the sea level. In Zulu, it’s called uKhahlamba, “Barrier of Spears.”
For many centuries, the mountains were inhabited by the San (aka Bushmen), who left between 35,000 and 40,000 paintings on the walls of the numerous caves—the largest and most concentrated collection of cave art in the world.
See also San.
Dungeon Heart
In the Dungeon Keeper series of games, this is a giant heart beating within the inner sanctum of the dungeon, containing the player’s life force. Once it is destroyed, the game is lost.
See also Dungeon Keeper.
Dungeon Keeper
A computer game developed by Peter Molyneux (b. 1959). Released in 1997, it was followed by a sequel, Dungeon Keeper 2, in 1999.
In the game, one plays an anti-hero, the evil keeper of a dungeon. The player builds a dungeon and makes improvements to it, populates it with evil minions, and defends it from intruders—the forces of Good and rival keepers alike—and may invade the territory of the enemy and have it, in the game terms, “claimed.”
dust devil
On Earth, a dust devil is a small tornado. On Mars, dust devils are extremely common and can reach great heights, rising taller than Olympus Mons. On Earth, the dust devil is a solitary critter, but Martian dust devils often travel in packs and can even form an uninterrupted front.
Lunar dust, also, ofen hangs above the ground—even without any atmosphere.
On Mars, the field lines of the interplanetary magnetic field often pass straight through the surface. Dust devils are electrically charged dust rotating around the magnetic field lines. Vast quantities of electrified dust remain hanging in the atmosphere for days after dust storms, suspended in the double layers.