Word: mu
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Chinese restaurant, where he orders special dishes. During a very long Chinese lunch, Dr. Wu's progress in Washington was discussed excitedly. Dr. Lee turned to Associate Professor Leon M. Lederman. who works with Columbia's 385 million-volt cyclotron at Irvington, N.Y. "Why not try the mu mesons?" he asked...
Indirectly, Street played a part in the upheaval of the old theory, for the mu-meson, which he discovered several years ago, was instrumental in detecting the variation from the parity principle...
Methuselah of Space. Instead of sending a human subject into space at close to the speed of light and comparing him physically on his return with stay-at-home contemporaries, Dr. Crawford uses mu mesons. When these subatomic particles are at rest in relation to the earth, they disintegrate in an average earth time of less than two-millionths of a second. But when they are created by cosmic rays hitting atomic nuclei high in the atmosphere, they seem to have comparative immortality. Many of them reach the earth's surface more than ten miles below, although their short...
...Mesic" Atoms. Closer study showed that the mu mesons, which have negative electric charges, had attached themselves to positive hydrogen nuclei and were revolving around them as electrons normally do. Since mu mesons are 210 times heavier than electrons, the laws that govern the internal affairs of atoms force them to revolve at only 1/210th of the distance of electrons. The "mesic" atom formed in this way is somewhat heavier than an ordinary hydrogen atom but extremely small. It can therefore sift through the electron defenses of ordinary atoms and fuse with their nuclei...
Particle Wanted. Dr. Alvarez, spokesman for the group who made the discovery, wants to make plain that catalytic mesons do not offer direct means for releasing fusion energy in commercial amounts. There is no dependable source of mesons at present except giant machines like the Berkeley bevatron. Worse still, mu mesons are short-lived, decaying into other particles in two-millionths of a second, so they have little time to act as catalysts. If a longer-lived particle could be found that does the catalytic service, the reaction would look promising indeed. The Russian physicist Artemy Alikhanian claims to have...