Word: atomically
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
...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...
...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...