Word: atomic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...huge National Accelerator Laboratory at Batavia, Ill. Crowds of curious spectators hovered anxiously around the main control room, watching the meters and oscilloscope screens. On the screens, a narrow band of light-representing the electrical energy in a beam of speeding subatomic particles inside the atom smasher's doughnut-shaped tunnel-edged toward a telltale marking. The room became strangely silent. Then someone exclaimed, "There it is!" and wild cheering broke...
...assembled scientists and technicians had every reason for jubilation. After many plaguing problems, the world's largest atom smasher had reached its programmed energy level of 200 billion electron volts (GeV).* That was not only the most powerful beam ever achieved by an accelerator, but also far surpassed the former record achieved by the Russians in their 76 GeV machine outside Moscow. Just back from congressional appropriations hearings in Washington, NAL'S beleaguered director, Physicist Robert R. Wilson, happily passed out champagne in goblets saved for the occasion and emblazoned with...
...economy measure, Batavia's builders had decided not to air-condition the main tunnel of the $250 million machine. As a result, warm, humid air seeped into the tunnel last summer, and water condensed inside the coils of the 1,000 giant magnets that bend and focus the atom smasher's proton "bullets" as they race around this circular race track at speeds close to that of light. Shorted out by the moisture, some 300 magnets weighing up to twelve tons had to be repaired, resealed or replaced...
...cost: $1,000,000). Was the monumental effort really worth it? Addressing himself to that question at the congressional hearing, Wilson had no doubts. "We can say," he testified, "that we are about to complete a new scientific instrument that will allow us to see much deeper into the atom, that we know there is much yet to be seen and that the new knowledge will help us better to understand the universe-and hence ourselves...
...Sagan's wife, Linda, an artist-chose figures of two representative earthlings (see A in diagram). Their height is indicated by the scale drawing of Pioneer in the background (B). The message contains a more subtle dimensional clue (C) that an extraterrestrial physicist should quickly recognize: an atom of hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, which is shown undergoing a change of energy state (indicated by the different orientations of the orbiting electrons on the circles). During this process, the atom gives off a pulse of radiation with a wave length of 21 cm., which is also...