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About Heppner gazette-times. (Heppner, Or.) 1925-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 27, 1985)
Ih r lleppitrr (> Jfrllr 1 n»it*\ ll r p p n r i. OrrKon VSrtliu siijv ‘Worlds Within the Atom' . The follow ing e x c e rp ts from ■■Worlds Within the A tom ," an arti tie by John Hoslough in the May 1SKS "N ational G eographic m aga zinc Vol 167 No $), pages 634 663 explain som e basic theories about atom s, describe the wav a super collider works and pros ide some of the reasons scientists give for studs ing atom s by m eans of a super collider A site near B oardm an is being considered among several proposed sites for a superconducting super collider A task force has been form ed to help m ake the Boardm an site m ore attractiv e to the agency selecting a final site Man has speculated endlessly about the nature of m a tte r Some 2 .* » years ago the Greek philoso phers Democritus and la*ucippus proposed that if you cut an object, such as a loaf of bread, in half, and then in half again and again until you could do it no longer, you would reach the ultim ate building block They called it an atom The atom is infinitesim al Your every breath holds a trillion trillion atom s And because atom s in the everyday world we inhabit are virtually indestructible, the a ir you Specializing in Steaks & Seafood Luncheon Specials Seafood & Chowder Special Friday $3.99 . a l(K)k at the Superconducting Super Collider suck into your lungs may include an ato m or tw o g a sp e d o u t by D emocritus with his dying breath To grasp the scale of the atom and the world within, look at a letter " i" on this page Magnify its dot a million tim es with an electron microscope, and you would see an a rray of a million ink molecules This is the dom ain of the chem ist look closely at one ink m olecule and you would see a fuzzy im age of the largest atom s that compose it W hether by eye. c a m e ra , or microscope, no one has ever seen the internal, stru ctu re of an atom Minute as atom s a re they consist of still tinier subatom ic particles Protons, carry in g a positive electric charge, and electrically neutral particles called neutrons cluster within the ato m 's central region or nucleus one hundred thousandth the diam eter of the atom Nuclear physicists work at this level of m atter Whirling around the nucleus is a third subatom ic particle, the elec Iron, which c a rrie s a negative charge Klectric cu rren t consists of flowing electrons, point like parti cles literally impossible to m easure E le c tro n s "o rb it'' an a to m s n u cleu s a c c o rd in g to p rin c ip le s governing the motion of waves I'nlike planets revolving around the sun. electrons do not follow fixed paths Yet the prohable location of electrons can be calculated using quantum m echanics, a m athem ati cal system developed in the 1920a to desenlie the weird behavior of mat ter and energy at the suliatormc level, the world of p article physi cists That p articles can act like waves may seem b izarre But no m ore so than some other oddities suggested by quantum theory That how we probe m atter affects its behavior and fo rm . that som e particles exist so briefly that they a re not real but "v irtu a l' and that well ordered reality the whole of the universe rests on chance and random ness at the subatom ic level Besides quantum m echanics, the other concept crucial to our m odern view of the atom and its p a rts in E instein's special theory of re la ti vity His form ula. E equals mc2. when- E is energy m is m ass and c is the unvarying speed of light, s t a i n that m ass and energy are merely different versions of the sam e thing E instein, however, never accepted quantum m echa ntes He felt that random ness could not be the ultim ate reality , and he debated the point with another titan of atom ic theory, Danish physicist Niels Bohr On this point Einstein has been proved wrong yet his special relat ivlty theory is routinely pul to work in accelerators, w here energy is transform ed into subatom ic parti cles in a hint of how the universe may have com e to be P a r a d o x ic a lly . e x p lo rin g th e sm allest things in the universe requires the iargest m achines on earth As physicists have pene trated from the m olecule to the atom and then to the ato m 's nucleus with its protons and neutrons, they have pulled hack layer a fte r layer of m atter as if peeling an artichoke To reveal each layer requires increas ing am ounts of energy prov ided by m assive atom sm ashers No two of these giants a re alike, but there are two basic ty pi’s Some, like Stanford s linear accelerato r near Palo Alto. C alifornia, fire negatively charged electron» at atom ic nuclei Two m iles long and as straight as the laser twain used to align it. the accelerato r hurls elec Irons at 99 99 percent the speed of light But like the one at CERN most accelerators a re circu lar and use protons as projectiles Protons are heavier and gen erate m ore collisions However, collisions in an electron accelerato r a re easier to analyze Almost every A m erican home has a primi ive accelerato r the televi sion picture tube Inside it e le c tri city heats a m etal filam ent, boiling off negatively charged electrons and accelerating them through a posi lively charged wire grid A m agnet then steers them at the phosphorus coated TV screen, which glows from the collisions In most high energy physics labs the first step in accelerating sub atom ic particles depends upon a accelerator invented in 1932 by John Cockcroft and E rnest Malton It ex tracts protons and electrons from atom s of hydrogen gas IN 197H an elderly E rnest Walton visited E erm ilab and inspected such an accelerator Covered with met allie balls for discharging elccrtical energy, the m onstrous contraption seem ed fit for a horror movie, and RADIO CONTROLLED TOYS ARE FUN 21 Game Every Sat. 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SAVE hundreds of dollars a year on your food ond household budget1 Receive the wonted discount coupdns on brand names of your choice Hurry1 You must enclose 2 stomped self addressed envelopes for easy details on how to save money at your local store as Walton looked on. it spat a huge bolt of lightning Ah." said the delighted Walton, "th e m achine knows its m aster The particles liberated by a Cock cro ft W alton a c c e le r a to r a re boosted to greater and g reater velo city in copper cham bers called radio frequency cavities E lectric pulses led to the cavities millions of times each second lift the particles to high energy and sweep them down an accelerator's beam line on travel ing radio waves, like surfers riding a crest In ring shaped m achines such as ihe CERN accelerator, electro magnets focus the particles into a pencil thin beam and steer it in a circle To prevent unw anted colli sums with stray atom s, oxygen and other gases a re pumped from the (warn line tube, leaving It nearly as airless as the moon Particle physicists m easure an acclerator s power in electron volts, the more electron volts that an accelerator produces, the deeper it can delve into the atom One electron volt ceV> is about the energy gained by a single electron flowing from the negative to the positive end of a flashlight battery Shghtlv greater energies can strip electrons from atom s but it takes millions of electron volts MeV to probe the nucleus Energy a thou sand tim es higher stiij. in the billion« V ior GeV. for giga electron volt i range, is needed to propel particles with enough force to shat ter protons and electrons and thus create new m atter tine way to boost energy is to fire two ts-ams o( particles in opposite directions around a ring s o that (ties slam together This doubles the energy giving the CERN ac c e lrra tor, for instance, an energy of 630 GeV Yet Ihe a ttractiv e force binding together the constituents of protons and neutrons is so im m ense trillio n s of trillio n s of tim e s stronger than earth s gravity that even the CERN m achine can only pick and poke at the atom 's inner structure It's a bit like finding out how c a rs w ork by sm a sh in g them together and seeing what falls out." Dr Carlo Kubbia told m e at CERN. w here he w as on le a v e from H arvard But in particle physics, when you sm ash two c a rs together, you get 20 or 30 new cars, or even a truck or two W e re repealing one of the m iracles of the universe trans (oring energy into m atter A Unification of Forces A' the Big Bang, when tim e, space, and energy cam e into being was there an essential unity io n a tu re ’’ Theorists think that before gravity separated at 1043 second, it, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and the electrom agnetic force were unified As Ihe universe cooled, the unity and sym m etry of those inter actions w ere broken one by one First steps in reunifying them a re by m athem atical constructions called guage theories Eor their concep tual work in unifying the weak and electrom agnetic forces into the "ele ctrow eak." Steven Weinberg, Abdus Salam . and Sheldon Glashow shared a 1979 Nobel prize Theory requires proof by ox pen inent C ER N p h y sic ist C arlo Kubbia. whose personal energy is legendary, led a team that found the W and Z particles, which c arry the weak force Noliel winning work A problem Big hang energies can never be duplicated, yet e x p e ri m ents rely on applying ever m ore energy to the atom Atoms a re end products, Ixirn to a in imh > year old universe and far rem oved from big bang conditions A P article Factory Tevatron That relativity is Heal, that m ass and energy a re equivalent as in Einstein s E equals mc2. is the basis for E erm ilab* collider now being built Protons will be boosted to m ore than 9» percent Ihe speed of light then routed to collide with m anufactured antiprotuns of oppu site charge Upon collision, these particles of m atter and an tim atter annihilate each other in a burst of energy The energy then congeals into o th e r p a r tic le s th a t le a v e characteristic tracks in a m agnetic field The hardw are is laid out in an exploded view The top tier contains sy stem c o n tro l and m o n ito rin g cables Next a re pipes carrying w ater to cool Ihe iong narrow m agnets below The bottom train m agnets is supercooled with liquid helium The m agnets direct the particles, while radio waves accele rate them Finally Ihe particle beam s a re (orced to collide, and lb-tec tors record the results No accelerator will ever m atch the energy released in the big lu n g , and some physicists once thought it might be a w aste of money to build bigger m achines However, Sheldon Glashow says \Se will (ind noth ing i( we do not look We theorists a re dependent upon experim ental discoveries Without them we a re no better than m edieval theologians, who endlessly debated how many angels might dance on the head of a pin " Theorists like Glashow work in a delicate balance with e x p e rim e n t lists to uncover the hidden unity linking the three basic forces to gravity Says avowed experim en lalist t'a rlo Kuhhia T heorists tend to forget that every tim e we look so m ep lace new w ith a b ig g e r m achine a surprise aw aits u s." E xperim entalists like Kubbia pre vail for the mom ent at CERN. and they are building a new accelerator 17 m iles in c ir c u m f e re n c e The m am m oth m achine will cost half a billion dollars, a rem ark ab le invest men I considering that in its lifetim e it will propel less than a gram of m atter At E erm ilab in Illinois physicists have doubled up by constructing a new accelerator ring inside Ihe tunnel housing their first m achine Eventually the new er accelerator will IxNist protons and antiprotons to a colossal collison energy ol two trillion electron volts as they travel a circuit equal in distance to five round trip journeys to the moon. 2,400.000 miles Even m ore am hiti ous is the accelerator, perhaps too miles around, that U S scientists want to build II would dw arf E erm tlab's four mile accelerator, visible from MX) m iles in space P erhaps the biggest obstacle to such mega engineering projects is Ihe shrinking federal science budget "We practically have to beg for m oney." says Eerm ilba director Leon l.cdorm an CERN, a conipar able laboratory, enjoys about twice as much funding as E erm ilab Lederm an and other A m erican part icle physicists fear that tight bud gets may cost the l' S its traditional iead in the exploration of the atom Money conscious federal officials often ask l.eon Lcderni.in why Ihe l? S needs costly m achines that cannot help solve pressing social problem s ills answ er never varies "Learning about the ultim ate nature of m atter is of fundam ental im port unce to the hum an race It gives us a Sert icp Report A irm an 1st P lu s s D avid A T albert, son ol Phyllis D Hamlin ol Lincoln Pity has tieon nam ed out standing airm an of Ihe q u arter for the Air Force Artie B roadcasting Squadron The com petition was based on job knowledge, significant sell im prove m enl, leadership qualities, ability to liean articu late and positive s|x>ki’s man for the Air Force and other accom plishm ents T albert is a broadcasting special ist at Elm endorf Air Force Base. Alaska Ills sister. Helen I. T albert, re sides at lleppner The airm an is a I9H2 g raduate ol Pendleton High School Automotive, Tractor, Truck, R.V. TS-1000 M.C.G.G. 989 8221 DEALER Christmas Opening! 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