Word: electronics
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...research is made possible through the development of an "electron bombardment" furnace, in which metals have been heated, without contamination up to temperatures of bout 1500 degrees Fahrenheit, or nearly half that of the sun. Much higher temperatures could be easily reached by this apparatus, the Harvard scientists...
...most important feature of the new furnace is that contamination of the metal under study, by carbon or other impurities, can be entirely eliminated. The familiar carbon are reaches as high temperatures as the electron furnace; but as an experimental device the carbon arc is less effective because of uncontrollable carbon contamination...
...experimenting with a peculiar particle which showed up in the cosmic rays reaching earth. It appeared that this "X-particle" had a considerably higher mass than m, so Dr. Anderson, who had a natural and profound respect for the constancy of m, was quite sure it was not an electron. Jabez Curry Street of Harvard measured the X-particle's mass at 130 times m, although he said it might be subject to a 25% error either...
Some weeks ago George Eric MacDonnell Jauncey got a hunch that the X-particle was originally an ordinary electron whose mass had somehow been increased. He imagined what would happen if a high-energy cosmic ray photon struck an electron in the upper atmosphere. Most of the transferred energy would simply give the electron a high-velocity kick. But some of it might be converted into matter which the electron would absorb, increasing its mass. The increase might be any amount at all, depending on the initial energy of the cosmic ray and the variable quantity of matter produced...
Then it occurred to him that perhaps the electrons emitted on earth by cathode ray tubes and radioactive substances might be variable in mass, too. If this tremendous hunch were true, some bothersome discrepancies in the behavior of beta rays (fast electrons) shooting out of radium would be cleared up. Also it would make the concept of the neutrino unnecessary. The neutrino is a hypothetical particle imagined by physicists as a carrier of energy which mysteriously disappears when one element is transmuted into another. If it is assumed that the vanished energy has taken the form of greater mass...