Word: atomics
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...ATOMIC SUBMARINE tanker is on the drawing boards of Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy-Industries Ltd. Nuclear-powered undersea craft will do 22 knots, carry 30,000 tons of oil, measure 540 ft. by 69 ft., to dwarf the first U.S. atom sub Nautilus. Snorkel craft will be able to stay submerged for a month straight, safe from turbulent storms. Cost: about twice as much as conventional tanker of same size...
...Institute of Technology was setting up its great Government radar laboratory. There he invented and developed G.C.A. (Ground Controlled Approach), the radar blind-landing system which "talks" airplanes safely down to a fog-covered runway. This enormously valuable job accomplished, Alvarez, still only 32, moved on to the wartime atom-bomb project. In 1945 he measured from an airplane the dangerous shock wave of the first atomic test explosion at Alamogordo, N. Mex. Later that year he did the same for the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, following close behind the bomb-carrying...
...Mesic" Atoms. Closer study showed that the mu mesons, which have negative electric charges, had attached themselves to positive hydrogen nuclei and were revolving around them as electrons normally do. Since mu mesons are 210 times heavier than electrons, the laws that govern the internal affairs of atoms force them to revolve at only 1/210th of the distance of electrons. The "mesic" atom formed in this way is somewhat heavier than an ordinary hydrogen atom but extremely small. It can therefore sift through the electron defenses of ordinary atoms and fuse with their nuclei...
This is what was happening in the bubble chamber. Mesons were forming mesic atoms with the nuclei of heavy hydrogen (deuterium), which they prefer to ordinary hydrogen. A meson so occupied makes no bubbles, and this accounted for the gaps in the meson tracks. But when a mesic deuterium atom hits an atom of ordinary hydrogen, the nuclei fuse together, forming an atom of helium 3 and releasing 5.4 million electron-volts of energy. The meson shoots off, carrying the energy as velocity, and is none the worse for its experience. It may form another mesic atom and cause...
...Atomic Energy Commission celebrated its tenth anniversary this week by letting out a few of its secrets. The U.S. is spending $2 billion a year to run its nuclear plants and laboratories. AEC reported, as much as it cost the nation to develop and produce the original atom bomb. Its capital investment in nuclear sites and equipment has grown from $1.2 billion in 1947 to almost $7 billion today. Said the report: "The current program has attained its goal of geographic dispersion of vital components of the weapon 'assembly line.'" To feed that hungry line, and to provide...