Word: meson
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Tracked to the Grave. The two Russians studied microscopic tracks of free silver which mesons had made on photographic films (probably exposed at high altitudes, where cosmic ray effects are strongest). Their authorized, translated report is far from clear, but apparently they found what they were looking for in the sensitive emulsion: groups of short lines arranged like a star or a chicken-track. Each of these, they said, was an X which marked the spot where a negative meson had murdered an atomic nucleus...
Role of the Meson. Last week 500 ultra-physicists gathered in Manhattan at a meeting of the American Physical Society to discuss this unfinished business. The meson (pronounced mees-on) was the star of the convention. Most physicists agreed that this subatomic particle, which weighs 200 times as much as an electron, was the key to the problem...
Little is definitely known about mesons, except that they are formed in large numbers in the upper atmosphere. One theory: cosmic rays hit air atoms, knock high-speed protons out of their nuclei. These hit other atomic nuclei, somehow producing mesons. Mesons live only two-millionths of a second; then they disintegrate with a burst of energy. All, or nearly all, the matter in.the meson spontaneously turns into energy. If physicists could generate mesons on a large scale, their great problem might be solved...
...only reliable meson generators are the mysterious cosmic rays from outer space, which spend most of their force inconveniently high in the atmosphere...
...data would be studied with bated breath, would yield new understanding of the birth of mesons. Eventually, perhaps, the grateful physicists might repay the Army with a cataclysmic meson-bomb...