Word: atomically
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Except for the space program, there is hardly a costlier quest in all of science than exploration of the inner universe of the atom. To peer more deeply into that hidden world-in which more than 100 strange subnuclear particles have already been discovered -scientists have been forced to build ever more powerful atom smashers. Trouble is, the cost of such monsters is now so high-$250 million, for example, for the 500-billion-electron-volt (BeV) accelerator now nearing completion at Batavia, Ill.-that high-energy physicists are anxiously looking for alternate ways of getting a bigger bang...
...economizing technique has now been put to work by imaginative scientists of the 12-nation European nuclear research center (CERN) outside Geneva. It is incorporated in a remarkable, new and relatively low cost ($80 million) atom smasher called ISR (for Intersecting Storage Rings) that has broken all existing energy records...
...leap second grows out of science's pressing need for extremely accurate clocks. In 1967, an international agreement redefined the basic unit of time -the second-in terms of the precise tuning-fork-like vibrations of the cesium atom (9,192,631,770 cycles per sec.). But while cesium, or atomic, clocks are the most accurate timepieces ever built by man (they lose no more than one ten-millionth of a second in a day), other measures of time-hours, days, months -are still geared to the earth's rotation. Unfortunately, as clocks go, the earth is less...
...other formidable problems in communicating with an alien race. At what frequency would a civilization listen for and transmit messages? Many scientists have proposed the 21-cm. band, which is the wave length of emissions from the hydrogen atom, the most abundant element in the universe. Another hurdle might well be the choice of a language that would be universally understood by intelligent beings (see diagram, page 56). Also, because man has so recently entered a technological state, any civilization capable of receiving earthly signs might be far more sophisticated. Would it bother to reply? Possibly not, according to Sagan...
...Oliver composed a sample universal message that could conceivably have been sent from some distant planet. The information would be contained in a series of irregularly spaced pulses picked up by radio telescopes tuned to a wave length of 21 cm. (the natural frequency of radiation from a hydrogen atom and an obvious choice of an advanced civilization). Translated into print, the message would consist of an apparently meaningless sequence of 1,271 ones (for pulses) and zeros (for gaps between the pulses...