Word: positronic
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...easy to understand why even Hawking was awed: he was looking at just a portion of the largest scientific instrument ever built. Known as the large electron-positron collider, this new particle accelerator is the centerpiece of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research and one of Europe's proudest achievements. LEP is a mammoth particle racetrack residing in a ring- shaped tunnel 27 km (16.8 miles) in circumference and an average of 110 meters (360 ft.) underground. The machine contains 330,000 cubic meters (431,640 cu. yds.) of concrete and holds some 60,000 tons of hardware, including...
Some of the images Tan creates are effective portraits. In one piece, called "Positron," two twins, one wearing white, the other black, slowly dance to Philip Glass' "Metamorphosis One," and exchange clothes. Then one twin carries the other off the stage...
Called the large electron-positron collider (LEP), it will smash together electrons and positrons -- "antimatter" particles that are similar to electrons except that their charge is positive rather than negative. From the debris of the collisions, which involve particles traveling at nearly the speed of light, physicists hope to get information that will solidify -- or upset -- their understanding of the fundamental building blocks of matter and energy. Says Carlo Rubbia, CERN's director general: "This is the main road in basic science. You never know where the main road is really going to take you." Agrees Steven Weinberg...
...unexpected is always possible, CERN physicists do have a specific quarry to start with. As soon as the LEP has been put through its paces, they will begin taking a hard look at a particle called the Z 0, which will emerge in great numbers from the electron-positron collisions. The discovery of the Z 0 and two related particles, W+ and W-, in 1982 and 1983 won a Nobel for CERN scientists Rubbia and Simon van der Meer. The three particles carry the weak nuclear force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature, which is responsible for radioactive...
...second rate. The Tevatron, an accelerator at Fermilab, near Chicago, that smashes together protons and antiprotons, is still the most powerful collider in the world, and the proposed superconducting supercollider, planned for Texas, will be more powerful still. Proton-antiproton collisions entail more energy than electron- positron collisions and thus are more likely to generate previously undiscovered particles. But proton-antiproton impacts generate more subatomic debris, which makes it harder to study the properties of individual particles carefully. For what Amaldi calls "precision physics," Europe could soon...