Word: nuclei
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...some figuring. The silver iodide particles need be only one-millionth of an inch in diameter. A billion billion of them will fit in an eggshell. About 200 pounds of silver iodide may be enough to seed the entire atmosphere of the U.S. at the rate of 100,000 nuclei per cubic foot. Adding one pound per hour will keep it seeded...
What happens to the negative mesons is unknown, but it has long been suspected that they are absorbed by atomic nuclei. This would be natural enough, for nuclei are positive, and so would have a strong attraction for negative mesons...
...announced a discovery last week, the first they have made since the war (or been allowed to talk about). Physicists P. I. Lukirsky and N. A. Perfilov told the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. that they knew what happened to negative mesons: the powerful little particles struck atomic nuclei and died while breaking them up. Trumpeted S. I. Vavilov, president of the Academy, "This possibly begins an altogether new chapter in the physics of the atomic nucleus." U.S. physicists applauded mildly, while awaiting more information...
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...
...bitterest sorrow : the invisibility of the Milky Way's nucleus. Even with small telescopes, astronomers can study the galaxies, gigantic clouds of stars which float far off in space. At their centers most galaxies have tight star clusters which may contain much of their mass. These nuclei facinate astronomers, for within them, they suspect, are conditions which exist nowhere else in the universe...