The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? by Leon Lederman & Dick Teresi

Author:Leon Lederman & Dick Teresi
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: SCIENCE, General
ISBN: 9780547524627
Publisher: Mariner Books
Published: 1993-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Lawrence worked out the theory of the cyclotron in 1929 and 1930. Later he designed, on paper, a machine in which the protons made a hundred turns with a generation of 10,000 volts across the D-gap. That would give him a beam of 1 MeV protons (10,000 volts × 100 turns = 1 MeV). Such a beam would be "useful for the studies of atomic nuclei." The first model, actually constructed by Stanley Livingston, one of Lawrence's students, came up considerably short, reaching 80 KeV (80,000 volts). Lawrence then went big-time. He obtained a huge grant ($1,000!) to build a machine that could produce nuclear disintegrations. The pole pieces (the north and south pole pieces of the magnet) were ten inches in diameter and in 1932 the machine accelerated protons to an energy of 1.2 MeV. These were used to produce nuclear collisions in lithium and other elements only a few months after Cockcroft and Walton's group at Cambridge. Second place, but Lawrence still lit a cigar.

BIG SCIENCE AND THE CALIFORNIA MYSTIQUE

Lawrence was a mover and shaker of enormous energy and ability. He was the father of Big Science. The term refers to huge, centralized facilities of great complexity and expense that are shared by a large number of scientists. In its evolution, Big Science created new ways of carrying out research with teams of scientists. It also created exquisite sociological problems, about which more later. The likes of Lawrence had not been seen since Tycho Brahe, the Lord of Uraniborg, the laboratory on Hven. In the experimental arena, Lawrence established the United States as a serious player in world physics. He contributed to the California mystique, the love of technological extravaganzas, complex and expensive undertakings. These were alluring challenges for young California and, indeed, for the young United States.

By 1934 Lawrence was producing beams of 5 MeV deuterons with a thirty-seven-inch cyclotron. The deuteron, a nucleus consisting of one proton and one neutron, had been discovered in 1931, and had proved to be a more efficient projectile than the proton for producing nuclear reactions. In 1936 he had an 8 MeV deuteron beam. In 1939 a sixty-inch machine operated at 20 MeV. A monster started in 1940 and completed after the war had a magnet that weighed 10,000 tons! Cyclotrons were built all over the world because of their ability to unravel the mysteries of the nucleus. In medicine they were used to treat tumors. The beam of particles, directed at a tumor, deposits enough energy in the malignancy to destroy it. In the 1990s over a thousand cyclotrons are in use in hospitals across the United States. Basic research in particle physics, however, has abandoned the cyclotron in favor of a new type of machine.

THE SYNCHROTRON: AS MANY TURNS AS YOU WANT

The drive to create ever higher energies intensified and spread worldwide. At each new energy domain new discoveries were made. New puzzles were also created, increasing the desire to attain even higher energies. Nature's richness seemed to be hidden in the nuclear and subnuclear microworld.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.