a cloud of orbiting elec- trons; when struck sunlight, the mole- cule resonates and one of the electrons is flipped out of orbit "along an electrical cir- cuit to drive the production of storable chemical power." Occasionally, however, there is a malfunction, and the electron es- capes and attaches itself to an oxygen mol- ecule. The result is an "oxygen radical," one of which, the hydroxyl radical (HO), is a kind of terrorist of the natural world. It "almost instantly abstracts...