New Nuclear Energy?

Nuclear physicists are "in the position of a boy who finds a penny and thinks he is on the way to becoming a millionaire." So says famed Physicist Luis Alvarez of the University of California, who spoke last week before a Monterey meeting of the American Physical Society. Dr. Alvarez made an announcement that excited scientists and engineers all over the world. He offered nothing practical, only some odd, squiggly lines and a mass of abstruse interpretation. But the lines and theories may eventually grow into a new and better kind of nuclear energy.

The lines described by Alvarez were photographs taken of a "bubble chamber" filled with liquid hydrogen in which high-speed particles made trails of tiny bubbles. When the chamber was bombarded by extremely powerful particles from the Berkeley bevatron, some of the tracks looked as if they were made by mu mesons, which are knocked out of the hearts of smashed atoms. A few of these tracks were peculiar; they had gaps in them that puzzled the scientists.

"Mesic" Atoms. Closer study showed that the mu mesons, which have negative electric charges, had attached themselves to positive hydrogen nuclei and were revolving around them as electrons normally do. Since mu mesons are 210 times heavier than electrons, the laws that govern the internal affairs of atoms force them to revolve at only 1/210th of the distance of electrons. The "mesic" atom formed in this way is somewhat heavier than an ordinary hydrogen atom but extremely small. It can therefore sift through the electron defenses of ordinary atoms and fuse with their nuclei.

This is what was happening in the bubble chamber. Mesons were forming mesic atoms with the nuclei of heavy hydrogen (deuterium), which they prefer to ordinary hydrogen. A meson so occupied makes no bubbles, and this accounted for the gaps in the meson tracks. But when a mesic deuterium atom hits an atom of ordinary hydrogen, the nuclei fuse together, forming an atom of helium 3 and releasing 5.4 million electron-volts of energy. The meson shoots off, carrying the energy as velocity, and is none the worse for its experience. It may form another mesic atom and cause it to fuse with another atom of ordinary hydrogen. When mesons act in this way, they are behaving like chemical catalysts, which cause chemical reactions but are not changed by them.

Particle Wanted. Dr. Alvarez, spokesman for the group who made the discovery, wants to make plain that catalytic mesons do not offer direct means for releasing fusion energy in commercial amounts. There is no dependable source of mesons at present except giant machines like the Berkeley bevatron. Worse still, mu mesons are short-lived, decaying into other particles in two-millionths of a second, so they have little time to act as catalysts. If a longer-lived particle could be found that does the catalytic service, the reaction would look promising indeed. The Russian physicist Artemy Alikhanian claims to have evidence that such a particle exists, but no non-Russian has confirmed his claims.

If catalyzed fusion could be made practical, it would have advantages over known methods of releasing nuclear energy. It would not require expensive fuel, as uranium fission does, and it would not create dangerously radioactive fission products. It would not need excessively high temperature, as thermonuclear (H-bomb) reactions do. It might burn peacefully, almost like an old-fashioned fire of chemical fuel.

Tall, blond, athletic Luis Alvarez, 45, is not only a leading physicist; he is also an inventor, a somewhat Buck Rogersish adventurer and an old-style American success story. After completing his graduate studies in 1936 at the University of Chicago (where he learned to fly an airplane in 3 hours and 15 minutes of instruction), he joined the Radiation Laboratory of the University of California. In 1940 he migrated to Cambridge, where Massachusetts Institute of Technology was setting up its great Government radar laboratory. There he invented and developed G.C.A. (Ground Controlled Approach), the radar blind-landing system which "talks" airplanes safely down to a fog-covered runway. This enormously valuable job accomplished, Alvarez, still only 32, moved on to the wartime atom-bomb project. In 1945 he measured from an airplane the dangerous shock wave of the first atomic test explosion at Alamogordo, N. Mex. Later that year he did the same for the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, following close behind the bomb-carrying B29.

Since the end of the war, Dr. Alvarez has divided his time between electronics and nuclear physics, scoring a long series of scientific triumphs. He developed the proton linear accelerator, an important atomic tool, and he holds patents in radar and other branches of electronics. A crack weekend golfer, he invented an electronic golf-practice gadget, which uses a photo-electric eye to spy on the motion of the club. One of these he gave to President Eisenhower. He drives an impressive yellow Lincoln convertible, and he does not see why scientists should not be prosperous as well as famous.

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