Word: atomically
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Probing ever deeper into the inner world of the atom, nuclear physicists have uncovered an increasingly baffling collection of tiny particles. Besides the familiar neutrons, electrons and protons, they are now pondering dozens of new and strange bits of matter bearing such exotic names as lambdas, pions, kaons and sigmas. Five years ago, in an effort to bring order to this subatomic chaos, Physicists Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig, both now at Caltech, in dependently dreamed up strange elemental particles-out of which all the others could be constructed. Gell-Mann emphasized that the particles, which he whimsically dubbed...
...number of scientists had previously suggested cosmic rays as an ideal weapon to use in the quark hunt. If one of these high-speed bits of matter struck an atomic particle, they calculated, its tremendous energy would accomplish what no man-made atom smasher can do: split that particle into its constituent quarks. A particle with an energy of 200 billion electron volts, for example, might be enough to pry apart the three tightly bound quarks that theoretically constitute a proton. But a machine that can supply such energy will not be available until the AEC completes its giant accelerator...
...Whenever Geiger counters detected a cosmic shower, they triggered four Wilson cloud chambers, which show the path of any ionized or charged particle that passes through them as a trail of condensed water drop lets. If a quark freed by a collision between a cosmic ray and an atmospheric atom happened to penetrate the cham ber, the physicists reasoned, it would leave a highly characteristic track...
What will happen when the two sides finally get down to setting a date to begin the talks? First, the U.S. and the Soviets must take stock of just where they stand. In existing offensive weapons delivery systems, both sides have intercontinental bombers, land-based ICBMs and atom-powered submarines with sea-launched nuclear missiles. The U.S. has 510 B-52 and 80 B58 jet bombers as against 150 turboprop Soviet TU-95 Bears. There are 1,054 Minuteman and Titan II U.S. ICBMs, v. about 1,000 Russian ICBMs in the SS series. Undersea, the U.S. has 41 Polaris...
...Thousands of young people, who had previously thought of themselves as part of an isolated minority, experienced the euphoric sense of discovering that they are, as the saying goes, what's happening. Adults were made more aware than ever before that the children of the welfare state and the atom bomb do indeed march to the beat of a different drummer, as well as to the tune of an electric guitarist. The spontaneous community of youth that was created at Bethel was the stuff of which legends are made; the substance of the event contains both a revelation...