Word: decays
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...their few years of operation, raised more problems than they have solved. One of their most baffling stunts was to produce the K meson, a short-lived particle knocked out of atomic nuclei. In all significant ways K mesons are alike, but some of them, called "tau K mesons," decay into three pi mesons; others, called "theta K mesons," decay into only two pi mesons. For mathematical reasons which physicists can explain only to other physicists, this inconsistent behavior seemed to violate the sacred parity principle. What could be done about it? The experimental evidence was plain...
...known as the Law of Conservation of Parity, said, in effect, that the physical laws governing our world and a world which was the mirror-image of ours would be the same. However, in experiments involving the very slow "beta-decay" processes, scientists found that theory based on the Law could not explain certain observed phenomena...
...these 15 short stories have several things in common. They are middle-aged (ranging from 41 to 48) and have thus been exposed to two world wars and a depression. They are Northerners, so their theme is largely urban frustration instead of the fashionable Southern predilection for rural decay. And like most contemporary short-story writers, they are at their best when remembering their childhood. The exception to this rule is Brooklynite Daniel Fuchs, who here ignores adolescence and is the only one of the four to deal with the excitements of earning a living...
...mirror, developed by Venetian craftsmen. Observes Mary McCarthy: "The perennial wonder of Venice is to peer at herself in her canals and find that she exists-incredible as it seems. It is the same reassurance that a looking-glass offers us: the guarantee that we are real." In its decay, Venice is frozen in a kind of narcissistic trance with each Venetian "a connoisseur of Venice," and somehow slightly saddening in his obsessive concern with sacred artistic relics...
...depended too much on Ike's likeableness, and too little on the firm ties which must hold alliances together; too much on John Foster Dulles' paper treaties, and too little on moral, ideological, and economic leadership; too much, in short, in letting the foreign policy inherited from the Democrats decay in the process of bringing the Old Guard up to date, and too little on forging those new ideas which must meet new dilemmas...