Word: pion
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...physicists specializing in thermodynamics are drilling holes into nearby sites to reach "hot rocks" that will provide geothermal power. A special reverence is held for LAMPF, the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility. There, one of the most powerful linear proton accelerators in existence is using a particle called a pion to treat certain cancers. Because of the technique's pinpoint accuracy, it is a possible substitute for dreaded cobalt and X-ray therapy...
...forces between particles in terms of other, "mediating" particles. The mediating particle of gravity is called the graviton. The mediating particle of the electromagnetic force is called the photon. And the mediating particle of the "strong" force, proposed in 1934 by the Japanese physicist Hideki Yukawa, is called the "pion...
...pion was actually observed. Much had happened in the interim, not the least of which was the discovery of the muon in 1937, and of the "strange" particles in 1944, so named for their inexplicably long lifetimes. In the '50s, many more new particles were discovered. Suddenly, "the elementary particles" did not seem quite so elementary...
...fact, things were somewhat more orderly than they might seem. Glashow explains the scheme in a diagram accompanying an article he wrote last July. He first divides elementary particles into "carriers of force" and "carriers of mass." Carriers of force are the mediating particles described above (although the pion is not a member of this class). Carriers of mass comprise everything else...
...scenery is nice - mostly New Mexico and Nevada - but Brooks' notion of staging a scene is to plant the actors in the middle of the frame and have them talk. The dialogue is not worth such attention. Coburn is called on to describe Hackman as "the cham pion of dumb animals, women in dis tress and lost causes." Candice Bergen points out to the hotheaded Jan-Michael Vincent (the kid looking to make a reputation) that "killin' someone don't make you a man." Brooks occasionally offers some comic relief (Whore...