Word: electronic
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...science scratches below the surface of the physical universe, it turns up more & more mysterious matters. A very small ghost, much smaller than an electron, now haunts modern physics. Its name, for want of something better, is the "neutrino." No one has ever seen a neutrino, or any trace which one has left behind it, but physicists are pretty certain that neutrinos are real. Just possibly, they may be the most important things in the physical universe...
...marbles. The atomic debris cascades toward the earth, some of the pieces with enough energy to crack atoms on their own. Occasionally one of these "extensive showers" covers an area 1,000 meters wide. The total energy in a shower runs up to 10 18 (one billion billion) electron-volts...
...result is an electric current which fluctuates rapidly to match the picture. This current is amplified and sent by a radio transmitter to the television receiver, where it controls the strength of a second electron beam in a rather similar tube...
...inside it. Driven by subtly timed electrical pushes, atomic particles will circle faster & faster around the chamber until their speed comes close to the speed of light. Berkeley scientists calculate that when a proton has circled around the chamber something over a million times, it will have six billion electron volts of energy...
This figure (6 BEV) has a thrilling, musical ring to the ears of nuclear physicists. The 184-inch cyclotron at Berkeley generates only about 350 MEV (million electron volts). With this comparatively puny force, it creates mesons, the mysterious particles knocked out of matter by cosmic rays from space. The new cyclotron will give its protons so much energy that they will act like the "primary" cosmic rays themselves, which slam through the earth's atmosphere and plunge deep into the ground. These wild invaders from space have never before been caged in laboratories. No one can guess what...