Word: proton
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Arnold is convinced that his scheme is entirely feasible. As a demonstration, he reports in Science, he recently set up two detectors near Argonne's 12 billion-electron-volt proton synchrotron. Then he periodically inserted a small block of brass in the path of a beam of particles from the accelerator. The effect was predictable: whenever the metal was in the way, it slightly weakened but did not block the flow of muons to the detectors 160 yds. away. Arnold had in effect devised a simple Morse telegraph system. By appropriately timing the intervals during which the metal...
...builders had decided not to air-condition the main tunnel of the $250 million machine. As a result, warm, humid air seeped into the tunnel last summer, and water condensed inside the coils of the 1,000 giant magnets that bend and focus the atom smasher's proton "bullets" as they race around this circular race track at speeds close to that of light. Shorted out by the moisture, some 300 magnets weighing up to twelve tons had to be repaired, resealed or replaced...
Apart from ISR, all atom smashers rely on the same basic principle: subatomic particles-usually protons-are accelerated to high velocities and slammed at stationary targets. Upon impact, the nuclei in the target atoms break apart, scattering the fragments for physicists to observe. This "bash-and-see approach" has drawbacks. As an accelerator's bullets approach the speed of light, the strange effects predicated by the relativity theory begin to take a toll: the proton's mass becomes much larger than that of the stationary targets. Much of the proton's energy is spent simply in pushing...
Breeder Reactor. One casualty is the Princeton-Pennsylvania proton synchrotron on the Princeton campus, which is used for basic particle research by 14 universities. From a recent budget of $5,000,000 annually, the synchrotron funds have now been cut to $3.5 million, and will be down to $2,000,000 next year. Beyond that the Atomic Energy Commission is cutting off funds completely-after a total investment of $30 million on a project that, according to Director Milton White, has not yet had a chance to reach its peak efficiency. Another important tool for probing the secrets...