Word: electronics
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Sound & Fury. Using 700-ton magnets, Harvard's cyclotron fires a proton beam with the force of 160 million electron volts. But after leaving the cyclotron, the protons travel a precise and predictable distance before they release their power. Careful positioning of the patient allows the beam to pierce the skin with little damage before releasing all its energy and destroying a specific target deep inside the body-such as the pituitary gland, perhaps, or a brain tumor...
...flight's one notable failure -the unexpected early end to Astronaut Richard Gordon's space walk - provided scientists with valuable data that may help prevent similar problems on future missions. It was also a humbling reminder that for all his powerful rockets, com plex capsules and sophisticated electron ics systems, man's frail frame itself is the limiting factor in space exploration...
Beam Switchyard. For the remainder of the two-mile journey, most of the energy imparted to the electrons by the radio wave is in the form of mass. As a result, each electron increases its mass 40,000 times, and has acquired about 20 billion electron volts (BEV) of energy by the time it reaches the far end of the copper tube. There, the extremely powerful stream of charged particles passes through a beam "switchyard," where giant electromagnets direct it into one or another of two target buildings, or split it between both...
Inside the buildings, the electron beam is fired at targets such as metallic sheets or containers of liquid hydrogen. As a high-energy electron approaches the nucleus of an atom in the target, one of two things happens: it veers off in a different direction, or it actually shatters the nucleus-and the reaction often produces new and different particles that exist for only billionths of a second...
SLAC's electrons, with about three times as much energy as generated in the next most powerful electron accelerator, should produce new and revealing glimpses of the subatomic world by their reactions with atomic nuclei. SLAC has also been designed for the eventual addition of another 715 klystrons, which would increase its energy level to 40 BEV, exceeding even the output of Brookhaven National Laboratory's 33 BEV proton-accelerating synchrotron, currently the world's most powerful accelerator...