Word: proton
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...Parts in 1 Billion Billion. Lyttleton and Bondi belong to the British school of cosmology, which holds that matter is being created continuously in the form of hydrogen atoms appearing in empty space. Each hydrogen atom consists of one electron and one proton, and physicists have generally assumed that the positive electrical charge of the proton is exactly equal to the negative charge of the electron. Lyttleton and Bondi point out that this is only an assumption...
...contains condensations: galaxies and clusters of galaxies, each made of billions of stars and surrounded by clouds of gas. Inside these units, say Lyttleton and Bondi, there is no electrostatic repulsion. Instead, some of the hydrogen atoms between the stars are ionized (i.e., separated into a proton and an electron) by light and other radiation. These ions form a kind of electrical conductor: free protons move to the outside of the unit until they have carried away enough positive electricity to make the interior electrically neutral...
This led to the development of an extremely important modern instrument: the Cherenkov counter. It is made of some transparent substance such as Lucite. When a proton, electron or other charged particle enters it at a speed that is greater than the speed of light in the material, Cherenkov radiation is given off. Its angle (like the angle of a ship's bow wave) depends on the speed of the particle. When the angle is measured by a photomultiplier tube, the speed of the particles can be determined...
...electron machine in the world. Its maximum energy of 6 billion electron volts is approximately five times as great as that of the largest accelerators now in operation--one at Cal Tech and the other at Cornell. The largest accelerator of any kind is the 30 billion electron volt proton accelerator under construction at the Atomic Energy Commission's Brookhaven laboratories on Long Island...
Meanwhile, the mass undergoes a similar increase: the rest mass of a proton is 1800 times as great as that of an electron; by the end of an accelerator experiment, says Livingston, an electron may become "over 6 times as heavy as a proton." In other words, the mass of the electron is increased 12,000 fold; thus, Livingston notes, many physicists half-seriously call the machine a "ponderator...