Word: atomic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...realm of high-energy physics, muons can be an outright nuisance. These tiny atomic fragments, somewhat heavier than the electrons they resemble, are produced when protons collide inside the bowels of large atom smashers. They live for only a fraction of a second, but are able to pass unscathed through heavy barriers or shields. Thus, unless carefully controlled, they often show up where they are not wanted, and can play havoc with experiments. Now a scientist at the AEC's Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago plans to put the troublesome particles to work. In an effort to take some...
Radiation. At present the only method man has for producing muon beams of message-carrying strength is to use expensive atom smashers. But Arnold contends that less costly machines designed specifically to make muons could be built in the near future. According to his estimate, a 100 billion-volt synchrotron, capable of producing a muon beam with a range of up to 600 miles, would cost about $10 million. That is roughly the price of a system of microwave towers covering a comparable distance. Furthermore, Arnold says, there might actually be a savings if muon beams were used to take...
...using the University of California's big new atom smasher at Berkeley, Physicists Emilio Segrè and Owen Chamberlain identified an elusive subatomic particle that had long been postulated but never found: the antiproton. Their discovery, honored four years later by a Nobel Prize, helped confirm the existence of "antimatter"-the strange substance that has many physical properties exactly opposite to those of "normal" matter. Now, to the astonishment of the scientific world, a fellow physicist has filed suit against Segrè and Chamberlain, accusing them of stealing a key idea that led to their significant discovery and Nobel...
...many minds. Can the Nobel Committee properly single out one man-or even a few* -for the lion's share of the honors? The question is particularly pertinent for high-energy physics. In 1964, for example, it took no fewer than 33 scientists, operating the large Brookhaven atom smasher, to discover another fleeting bit of matter-the omega-minus particle...
...advanced far enough technologically to stage such a test of relativity. But Physicist Joseph C. Hafele of Washington University in St. Louis and Astronomer Richard Keating of the U.S. Naval Observatory have apparently verified the clock paradox in a less dramatic fashion. Last October, carrying four extremely precise atomic clocks, they set off on two successive round-the-world plane trips to check the validity of Einstein's prediction (TIME, Oct. 18). Their scheme was elegantly simple. On the eastbound flight, their plane was traveling in the direction of the earth's rotation. Thus to an observer...