Word: gamow
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Since this is the case, argue cosmologists led by Dr. George Gamow of George Washington University, all the elements must have originated just after the great event when the ylem exploded. In the March Johns Hopkins Magazine, two cosmologists of the Gamow school, Drs. Ralph A. Alpher and Robert C. Herman, tell how they think the elements were formed...
Three of the four basic values, says Gamow, have already been discovered. They are: 1) the speed of light (the highest possible velocity); 2) Planck's Constant (the smallest possible value of mechanical action); 3) Boltzmann's Constant (having to do with the kinetic energy of gases...
...fourth corner post of physics, still unknown, Gamow says, will probably be an "elementary length" which will divide space into "smallest" units, just as Planck's Constant divided the flow of energy into "smallest" bursts (the "quantum" of the quantum theory). Gamow suspects that this missing length may turn out to be about 10 -13 centimeter (one ten-trillionth of a centimeter). A length close to this shows up as the radius of an electron, and as the effective range of forces in the atomic nuclei. "All kinds of physical considerations," says Gamow, "become senseless when...
Physics still has its work cut out for it, however. It will take about 50 years, thinks Gamow, to complete a theory of elementary length. Then the physicists can explain everything physical, from atoms to the universe, in tidy, clean-cut mathematics...
With no more adventure ahead, it would be a dull world for physicists. But Dr. Gamow voices a small hope that they need not give up to boredom. Perhaps, he speculates, bigger & better telescopes "will show us sights that will cause a complete turnover of present ideas concerning the universe." Or perhaps electrons and protons will turn out to be not "elementary particles" but small, intricate worlds jam-packed with new and fascinating problems...