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Paralyzing Pygmies. As the Martian invasion of France proceeded, the invaders became more bizarre. A troup of pygmies in plastic helmets gamboled down a railroad track near Quarouble and transfixed M. Marius Dewilde with "a paralyzing beam of light." Some Martians were blue, others were yellow or pink. A traveling salesman of the Cotes-du-Nord saw a wonderful sight: a deep rose flying cigar from which stepped a zebra-striped Martian. As he alighted, he changed color, chameleonlike, from yellow to green...
...Motz's "millimeter-wave generator" is made up, first, of a linear accelerator that produces a pulsed beam of electrons about ? inch in diameter. The electrons, whose energy is 2,000,000 electron volts, pass into an "undulator," a silver wave guide that is held between 16 pointed steel teeth. The teeth set up separate and alternating magnetic fields, and as the electrons pass from field to field, they are made to oscillate, forming the desired waves less than one millimeter long...
Visible Radio. Dr. Motz can make them even smaller by increasing the speed of the electrons and therefore increasing the Lorentz contraction. Once he hitched his undulator to a large linear accelerator that sent out electrons at 100 million electron volts. From the business end came a beam of blue light. He had actually generated "radio waves" that were short enough to qualify as visible light. This stunt proved that the stubborn gap in the spectrum has been closed, but it is hardly practical. There are better ways of generating the waves of light and heat...
...Brain surgery can now be performed with greater precision, using ultrasonic vibrations (a million cycles per second, or 50 times faster than the highest audible note) instead of the neurosurgeon's knife. University of Illinois researchers have focused the beam down to one-twentieth of an inch in diameter-the thickness of a pencil lead...
Rockets to Godfrey. The sort of things that happen range from Physicist James Van Allen's experiments with high-altitude research rockets to Psychologist Wendell Johnson's pioneering work with stutterers, from Zoologist Harold Beam's studies on the organization of cells to the Institute of Gerontology's "clearing house" on the problems of old age. The medical school, with its three affiliated hospitals, is a major center for the treatment of handicapped children, rightfully boasts such names as Surgeon Arthur Steindler, Ophthalmologist Alson Braley, Heart Specialist William Bean, and Carroll Larson, authority on arthroplasty...