Word: electronic
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Called the large electron-positron collider (LEP), it will smash together electrons and positrons -- "antimatter" particles that are similar to electrons except that their charge is positive rather than negative. From the debris of the collisions, which involve particles traveling at nearly the speed of light, physicists hope to get information that will solidify -- or upset -- their understanding of the fundamental building blocks of matter and energy. Says Carlo Rubbia, CERN's director general: "This is the main road in basic science. You never know where the main road is really going to take you." Agrees Steven Weinberg...
...while the unexpected is always possible, CERN physicists do have a specific quarry to start with. As soon as the LEP has been put through its paces, they will begin taking a hard look at a particle called the Z 0, which will emerge in great numbers from the electron-positron collisions. The discovery of the Z 0 and two related particles, W+ and W-, in 1982 and 1983 won a Nobel for CERN scientists Rubbia and Simon van der Meer. The three particles carry the weak nuclear force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature, which is responsible...
...that the U.S. is second rate. The Tevatron, an accelerator at Fermilab, near Chicago, that smashes together protons and antiprotons, is still the most powerful collider in the world, and the proposed superconducting supercollider, planned for Texas, will be more powerful still. Proton-antiproton collisions entail more energy than electron- positron collisions and thus are more likely to generate previously undiscovered particles. But proton-antiproton impacts generate more subatomic debris, which makes it harder to study the properties of individual particles carefully. For what Amaldi calls "precision physics," Europe could soon...
...hold until they can see what sort of political and business climate emerges from the present turmoil. The wait may be a long one, and even when it ends, Western involvement will depend on whether the eventual winners are receptive to foreign influence or are isolationist hard-liners. Thermo Electron, a Waltham, Mass., company, is negotiating to build in China a $110 million co-generation plant that would turn out electric power and ferrosilicon metal by reusing the same fuel (coal). But, says chief executive George Hatsopoulos, "if the situation reverted to anything like the ((1960s)) Cultural Revolution, we wouldn...
...volumes are composed of bawdy limericks: "There is something about satyriasis/ That arouses psychiatrists' biases,/ But we're both very pleased/ We're in this way diseased/ As the damsel who's waiting to try us is." Others are concerned with nuclear physics and organic chemistry: "It is the electron that is mobile and the proton that is relatively stationary . . . Benjamin Franklin had a fifty-fifty chance of guessing right, and he muffed it. Too bad." Some are science fiction -- excursions out in the galactic void or deep within the vessels and sinews of the human body: " 'Watch what...