The Daily Alaska empire., 1948-04-09
Artificial Cosmic Rays
(New York Times


 Cosmic rays are still one of the major mysteries of nature Heavy particles from outer space rush at high speed into our atmosphere with energies of b- lions of volts These primary rays strike atoms ana so generate what called cosmic rays. New know ledge about cosmic rays is therefore of importance to the atomic physicist In 1886 pr. Carl Anderson of the California Institute of Technology discovered in the secondary rays particle which is now called ameson" The Japanese physicist H. Yukawa had prdected that there is such particle because without t there was no plausible way of explaining why the nucle of atoms and hence the planets and stars do not fly asunder Yukawas invention was of no help n aynlanng why the universe is intact, but 1t proved to be a lucky hit
 The news that two young physicists in the Uni yersity of California Drs C. M C. Lattes and Fuoene Gardner have produced with the 4000-ton cyclotron the equivalent of feeble cosmc rays and thus succeeded in creating mesons is the most important that has thrilled scientists since the uranium atom was split in 1938 At last the physicist has some control over pr- mary cosInic particles that hurled against atmo- spheric target-atoms and over energy, so that he knows exactly what he is doing. Some of the guess ing will surely be taken out of cosmic ray physics
 This does not that machines will hence forth supplant ccsmic rays. Last summer pr Lattes and Drs G. P S. Occhialni and c. F. Powell ot the University of Bristol announced that they had ols- covered in secondary cosmc rays meson twice as heavv as one that Yukawa had postulated ana that left its mark cn Andersons plate Before that meson 900 times more massive than YuKa"dS 5 Hao heer discovered France. The CallIOrIld 10 etl of another mass So it is fair to conclude that there are Ight mesons and heavy mesons positive mesons and negative mesons and probably neutral rason It is doubtful if all these mesons Will pc roduced by cyclotrons other olslntegrators Even the powerful California cycotron was only Just ohle to produce the particular meson discovered py Drs Iattes and Gardner. To duplicate the plllols of volts that nature loose in cosmic rays would demand an apparatus that would cost more money than foundation could spare
 The meson is supposed to be the glue or cement that holds matter together Some mathematic physl- cists have their doubts about this At any rate the meson cannot be regarded fixed and substantial entity since it has life of only two milionths of second It is more like wrath than material body for turns up and vanishes in ways which are some times baffling sometimes convenient. The atom Is certainly getting more complicated now that physl- cists must reckon with protons, neutrons, neutrlnos electrons and half-a-dozers mesons that lie some where between eectron and breton and that as yet fit nowhere into the scheme of things atomic ms couplexity may lead to simplicity in the end Already physicists suspect that protons and nearons are not elementary particles and that they may be broken down just as atoms by bombardment It may Curn out that there are only two fundamental particles positive and negative electrons To the formulation of this simpler conception of matter the discovery made in California may prove to be more direct con- trih,ition than appears at first sight.