sputter
v.— «A thin gas of electrically charged particles called a plasma, the solar wind blows constantly from the surface of the sun at some 250 to 370 miles per second (about 400 to 600 kilometers/second). According to Slavin, that’s fast enough to blast off the surface of Mercury through a process called “sputtering”, according to Slavin. Some sputtered atoms stay close enough to the surface to serve as a tenuous yet measurable atmosphere.» —“How Magnetic Tornadoes Might Regenerate Mercury’s Atmosphere” by Brian Ventrudo Universe Today June 3, 20009. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
A librarian opens a book and finds a mysterious invitation scribbled on the back of a business card. Another discovers a child’s letter to the Tooth Fairy, tucked into a book decades ago. What stories are left untold by these forgotten...