Word: protons
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...everything from long-lasting cell-phone batteries to industrial power generators. And although fuel cells have generated buzz at least since astronauts took a prototype into space on Gemini 5 in 1965, it is only in recent years that a technology suitable for commercially viable hydrogen power has emerged: proton-exchange membrane fuel cells...
Scientists rarely discuss where that "speck smaller than a proton" came from, who put it there and what started its expansion some 15 billion years ago. The reason they don't tackle that ultimate question is that seeking the answer always leads to something they can't photograph, measure or make up equations for--God. DAVE REISER Palatine...
...flatness of the universe also means the theory of inflation has passed a key test. Originally conceived around 1980 (in the course of elementary-particle, not astronomical, research), the theory says the entire visible universe grew from a speck far smaller than a proton to a nugget the size of a grapefruit, almost instantaneously, when the whole thing was .000000000000000000000000000000000001 sec. old. This turbo-expansion was driven by something like dark energy but a whole lot stronger. What we call the universe, in short, came from almost nowhere in next to no time. Says M.I.T.'s Alan Guth, a pioneer...
Using this idea, Thorne and his colleagues proposed constructing a wormhole tunnel 600 million miles in circumference, with Casimir plates separated by only 400 proton diameters at the midpoint. Time travelers would have to somehow open doors in these plates to pass through the wormhole. The mass required for construction? Two hundred million times the mass of the sun. These are projects only a supercivilization could attempt--not something for 21st century engineers...
Although officially a professor emeritus, Ramsey has continued to play an active role at the University. On Saturday he presented a lecture at a symposium celebrating 50 years of proton beams at the Harvard cyclotron laboratory...