Word: livingston
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Since the accelerator is a unique machine, says M. Stanley Livingston, professor of physics at MIT and director of the project, the design of both the tunnel and the measuring apparatus requires a good deal of original work. To this end, physicists and engineers from MIT and Harvard have been busy for the past two years. Livingston expects construction to be finished early in 1960, and, after the machine is "turned up" and tested, operation should begin later that year...
According to Livingston, the electron accelerator is not properly an "accelerator" in the normal sense of the word. An experiment may start with electrons at .99 the speed of light and increase the velocity to .99999 the speed of light--not too great a change in percentage terms. What does increase dramatically is the energy (and the mass). At the beginning of an experiment, a beam of electrons may have a rest energy of 1/2 million electron volts; it is directed through a linear "pre-accelerator" (or "injector") where the energy is increased to 20 million electron volts. Then...
Meanwhile, the mass undergoes a similar increase: the rest mass of a proton is 1800 times as great as that of an electron; by the end of an accelerator experiment, says Livingston, an electron may become "over 6 times as heavy as a proton." In other words, the mass of the electron is increased 12,000 fold; thus, Livingston notes, many physicists half-seriously call the machine a "ponderator...
...deflected by the magnetic field of the accelerator and will continue on a straight tangential line into the experimental area. Physicists would also like to be able to deflect a beam of electrons directly into the experimental area, but this method has not yet been perfected, according to Livingston, and planning is now in process...
...purpose of accelerator experiments, Livingston says, is to "learn more about nuclear force,' to find out "why certain particles (protons, electrons, neutrons, etc.) are the only stable forms of matter." He believes that this new and unique electron accelerator will accomplish much toward answering these questions...