Word: proton
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Star of Suicides. Dr. Segrè has no doubt about what happened. The antiproton, he says, hit an ordinary, positively charged proton and reacted with it in such a way that the collision produced one ordinary neutron and one antineutron. These two particles differ only in their magnetic properties. Neither has any electric charge, and therefore they left no bubble trails. The neutron shot out of the picture undetected, but the antineutron hit a carbon atom in the propane and committed double suicide with one of its protons or neutrons. The atom disintegrated, leaving a star of bubble trails made...
...same simple purpose: to heat gaseous deuterium (heavy hydrogen) as hot as possible and confine it in a small space as long as possible. When deuterium atoms get hot enough, they hit each other so hard that they "fuse," forming helium 3 (and a neutron) or tritium (and a proton), and give off energy. This process happens explosively in H-bombs, but to control the reaction, the deuterium must be confined. Since ordinary, solid walls cannot hold the gas at the necessary temperature of many million degrees, fusion reactors use walls of magnetic force. They are strong, do not cool...
...Russians now have the world's most powerful particle accelerator. Last week Soviet scientists announced that the great proton synchrotron in the village of Dubna near Moscow has gone into operation and is generating protons with 8.3 billion electron-volts of energy. This beats the 6 billion-volt Bevatron at Berkeley, Calif, by a comfortable margin, and the Russian scientists are confident that their machine will soon reach its designed power...
Since the end of the war, Dr. Alvarez has divided his time between electronics and nuclear physics, scoring a long series of scientific triumphs. He developed the proton linear accelerator, an important atomic tool, and he holds patents in radar and other branches of electronics. A crack weekend golfer, he invented an electronic golf-practice gadget, which uses a photo-electric eye to spy on the motion of the club. One of these he gave to President Eisenhower. He drives an impressive yellow Lincoln convertible, and he does not see why scientists should not be prosperous as well as famous...
Most of these antiprotons were "annihilated" (turned into energy) when they hit an ordinary positive proton. But occasionally, when an antiproton passed close to an ordinary proton, it merely handed over its negative electric charge. The proton, its positive charge neutralized by a negative one, became an ordinary, chargeless neutron. The antiproton, having lost its negative charge and received nothing in return, also became a chargeless particle, but it did not become a normal neutron. Since its basic "anti-ness" was not changed by the loss of its charge, it became an antineutron with a reversed magnetic field...