Word: antiproton
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...physics' most exciting recent discoveries is the antiproton. It resembles an ordinary proton (present in the nuclei of all atoms), except that its electric charge is negative instead of positive. There may be (but probably are not) places in the universe where antiprotons can exist permanently, but on earth they are short-lived. As soon as one of them touches the nucleus of an ordinary atom, it is annihilated. Both its own matter and the matter of a proton or neutron in the nucleus turn into a flash of energy...
...into Matter. Last week a team of physicists at the University of California told how they created antiprotons artificially and kept them alive long enough to identify them. Drs. Owen Chamberlain, Emilio Segre, Clyde Wiegand and Thomas Ypsilantis worked with Berkeley's Bevatron, a particle accelerator that was built by the Atomic Energy Commission for just such jobs. It can shoot a proton so fast that it carries 6.2 Bev. (billion electron volts) of energy. Physicists had figured that when a proton of this power hits a neutron, it will create a new proton and an antiproton. In such...
...Berkeley scientists turned their 6.2 Bev. proton beam on a copper target. From it emerged a secondary beam of sub-atomic debris (protons, neutrons, mesons, etc.) which presumably contained antiprotons. To prove that it did, the scientists shot the secondary beam into a "maze" (of magnetic fields and mass-or speed-measuring instruments) which only a particle with the anti-proton's properties could pass through. A few of the particles did pass through it, leaping every hurdle and checking in triumphantly at the far end. None lived very long, of course. After a fraction of a second, each...
Anti-Matter. As a result of the new discovery, it is now theoretically possible to create anti-hydrogen. The atoms of ordinary hydrogen have a proton in their centers with a negative electron revolving around it. Anti-hydrogen would have an antiproton and a positron (positive electron). Both these "anti" particles are now available, but since anti-hydrogen cannot live in peace with ordinary matter, it will be hard to create and even harder to preserve for more than a few millionths of a second...
Scientists cannot disprove this theory, but they consider it unlikely. It is probable that the whole universe had some common origin, and should, therefore, be made of the same kind of matter. The question might be settled, thinks Dr. Segre, one of the antiproton creators, if astronomers' instruments were sensitive enough to observe the magnetic properties of stars in distant galaxies...