Word: quarks
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Mass into Energy. Gell-Mann's quark is an unusual creature indeed. Unlike other known particles, which are electrically neutral or have positive or negative charges that are whole multiples of the basic charge of the electron, quarks would have a charge of either one-third or two-thirds of the unit electron charge. Arranged in different combinations, quarks would form practically any one of the confusing variety of subatomic particles...
This strong attraction of one quark for another has actually hindered the great quark hunt. To split a proton into its constituent quarks, for example, would require an atom smasher at least 30 times more powerful than any yet built by man. But scientists believe that the celestial processes generating cosmic rays are energetic enough to produce free quarks...
Atoms in Oysters. One group of European scientists used a unique, electronically assisted telescope to search for quarks among cosmic-ray particles that strike the earth. The Russians report that a quark-hunting cosmic-ray experiment was carried aboard their Proton 3 satellite. Neither venture was successful. Other scientists have suggested the use of radio telescopes for discovering evidence of quarks produced in highly energetic radio galaxies and starlike quasars...
Argonne National Laboratory physicists have also examined iron meteor ites, air and sea water in a vain attempt to find quarks that had combined with stable atoms. Instead of being electrically neutral, they reasoned, such atoms would have fractional charges imparted by the quarks-enabling scientists to separate them out in an electric field and analyze them. Because quarks would more likely combine with heavier atoms, one scientist has suggested looking for quark-bearing atoms in oysters, which tend to concentrate the heavier elements in the seas...
...Miles Up. Arguing that others may have been quark hunting in the wrong places, British Physicists J. B. Hasted and M.R.C. McDowell have suggested a new area of search. As quarks rain down on the earth, the British scientists suggest in their Nature article, those with a negative charge combine with oxygen in the ocean to form fractionally charged quark-oxygen atoms. When the quark-oxygen atoms are carried into the air during the normal evaporation and precipitation cycle, they are repelled by the atmospheric electrical field, which extends some 30 miles above the earth's surface...