Word: positrons
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Working with what is known about the 28 accelerator-produced new particles, Grebe theorizes that they may all be multiples or combinations of only two: pairs of the negatively charged electron and the positively charged electron (positron). Reason is his discovery of two key particle ratios: that between the mass of mu and pi mesons, and that between the mass of the proton and sigma hyperon. Each proves to equal TT divided by four; this produces a new constant (1.12888), based on the inverse of the square root of TT divided by four, which Grebe calls "g." This tool "opens...
Other men have unsuccessfully focused on the electron and positron as the atom's "building blocks." Grebe hopes his table may have turned the trick. For it would, he suggests, indicate that gravity itself is an electromagnetic force accountable in electromagnetic terms. Like many another, this "unified field theory" may also fail. But, says Grebe, "the mathematical relations discovered cannot help but remain and be a useful step forward...
Pair of Creation. In 1932, physicists discovered that positive electrons (positrons) are created out of energy by cosmic rays. They can also be made artificially by high-energy gamma rays from radioactive elements. Positrons do not last long; as soon as one of them hits a normal electron, both particles are annihilated, turning back into the energy out of which they were made. But the proof that positrons exist was a victory for believers in nature's symmetry. Better still was the fact when a positron is created, it always appears in a "pair" with an ordinary negative electron...
...negative protons? Scientists searched for them for years in cosmic rays, but found only a few doubtful cases. They hoped to create them in the laboratory, but no existing cyclotron had enough power. It took the Berkeley Bevatron to create an antiproton out of energy. Like the positron, it, too, appears only paired with an ordinary proton, and destroys itself as soon as it collides with a proton...
...when the reactor was in operation, the detecting instruments registered "an event"-two flashes of light of exactly correct intensity and timing. This meant that a single neutrino (out of many billions per second) had hit a proton (out of billions along its path) and turned it into a positron and a neutron. After watching this happen for a total of 1,371 hours and taking elaborate precautions to eliminate false signals, Reines and Cowan announced that they had really detected neutrinos. AEC Commissioner Willard F. Libby congratulated them on their "magnificent accomplishment." Now nuclear physics can use neutrinos without...