US particle accelerators at age 50
Fifty years ago, a dramatic race was under way to see who would be first to accelerate protons to an energy high enough to disintegrate the atomic nucleus. This contest, coincidental with the birth of the American Institute of Physics, could be considered as the beginning of what was to become a Golden age of high-energy physics. The race might also be taken to mark the end of an Age of Innocence of nulcear physicists. Heretofore during an era to which all physicists look back with nostalgia, much of the fundamental knowledge about the nucleus had been by obtained the use of rather primitive experimental devices, followed by sophisticated analysis. Rutherford's famous ..cap alpha..-particle scattering experiment is a case-in-point: a little string and sealing wax and not much else. Not much, that is, except great leaps of reason and imagination. In the future, in addition to make-do skills, physicists were going to have to master arcane techniques, such as those of mechanical and electrical engineers. Indeed they would have to invent a whole new technology of accelerator building in order to explore the inside of the nucleus and to identify and study its constituent parts.
- Research Organization:
- Columbia University, New York
- OSTI ID:
- 5677019
- Journal Information:
- Phys. Today; (United States), Vol. 34:11
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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