Criticism

Every time an honored theory is disproved or amended, science makes a little progress. For 20 years the Dirac theory of electron behavior has been the bible of wave (quantum) mechanics.* Last week Columbia University announced that two of its young scientists, Professor Willis Lamb, 34, and Robert Retherford, 35, had knocked a prop from under the Dirac theory. Their experiment, said Columbia's Nobel Physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi, revealed new facts which will be of "inestimable value in future research."

The Dirac theory predicts, among many other things, that hydrogen atoms can exist in two different "states"--one stable, the other unstable--which contain the same amount of energy. Lamb & Retherford checked up with ultrashort radio waves (war-developed for radar), and found that this prediction was not correct.

Extra Energy. Radar waves are electromagnetic waves like light and X rays; but since their frequency is enormously smaller, they carry much less energy per "photon."* They therefore provide what scientists call an "elegant" method of dealing out very small quantities of energy. Using a formidable-looking gadget, Lamb & Retherford shot radar waves of the proper frequency through hydrogen atoms in one of Dirac's predicted states. As soon as the energy was added, the atoms turned into the other state. Since energy was required to make the change, the experiment showed that the two states did not have the same energy originally. Therefore, Dirac's theory was proved incomplete.

Theoretical consequences might be enormous. The hydrogen atom, with its single proton and single electron, is the simplest atomic structure. It is therefore the starting point for investigation of the fundamental mysteries of matter. The atoms of other elements are more complicated, but presumably their constituent particles follow the same basic laws.

More Speed. The Lamb & Retherford experiment acted rather like an improved microscope, revealing fine details about the hydrogen atom which earlier and coarser methods had left unsuspected. Now scientists, equipped with a new road map, may move ahead with more boldness and speed. Perhaps they will find out things that no one knows at present: what electrons and protons--and even matter itself--really are.

Practical consequences are not yet in sight, for the wave mechanicians work in a never-never land far beyond the frontier of practical technology. But Nobelman Rabi compared Lamb & Retherford's criticism of the Dirac theory with Einstein's modification of Newton's laws of motion. It took 40 years for Einstein's relativity to grow into the atom bomb.

* The highly theoretical branch of physics which studies chiefly the interaction of mass and energy within the atom. Most scientists and practically all laymen get mentally seasick attempting to follow the wave mechanicians.

* The photon (smallest unit of radiant energy) is equal to the frequency of the wave multiplied by Planck's constant h (6.55 X 10(-27)erg-seconds).

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