Smithereens

As atom-smashing goes, the uranium bomb is a comparatively gentle affair. Fissioning the uranium atom is roughly comparable to cracking a ripe coconut in half with a well-placed tap: the atom splits neatly into two pieces (lighter atoms) and two or three almost infinitesimal particles (neutrons) that fly off like sparks. Atom smashers believe that they will eventually do much better than that.

When & if the atom really splits to pieces, it will be more like an exploding electric light bulb--smashed to smithereens. Last week some determined U.S. atom smashers, the cyclotron group at the University of California, coolly reported that the smithereenizing of the atom is now well on its way. They announced that they had smashed some atoms into 22 to 30 pieces.

Successful Wallop. This feat was accomplished by Cal's fantastic new 184-inch cyclotron, which packs the most powerful wallop ever achieved by man. Firing relatively heavy atomic bullets--deuterons (heavy hydrogen nuclei) and alpha particles (helium nuclei)--with a force of 200 million to 400 million electron volts, the cyclotron has almost ten times the power of the most potent cyclotron previously known (also at Cal).* At an American Physical Society meeting at Stanford last week, Physicists Glenn T. Seaborg and Isadore Perlman made the first report on what they and their California teammates, who work under the sponsorship of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, had accomplished.

Successful Debris. Previous cyclotrons, they explained, had just chipped away at the atom, knocking off two or three small particles. But the 184-incher's bullets cause such havoc in atoms that researchers have so far been unable to sort out all the debris. Said one of the California scientists: "With the old cyclotron of 225 tons [60 inches], we could knock two or three floors off a 50-story building, or maybe add a floor or two. But with the new cyclotron, we can knock that 50-story building into a flock of four-room bungalows, with a lot of nails and shingles left over."

Sample smash: an arsenic atom (atomic weight: 75) had 21 particles knocked off by a single blow, and was reduced to radioactive cobalt (atomic weight: 54). When the new cyclotron bombarded an oxygen atom (atomic weight: 16) with neutrons, the light atom split into five pieces (see cut; the arrows point to the five-way split of the oxygen atom, the streaks indicate the path of atomic chips).

Upshot: California's atom smashers have thus far produced some 100 new isotopes* of atoms to add to the 450 previously known. Among them: two new forms of radium, and an iron isotope (atomic weight: 52) lighter than any iron ever before found. The physicists think that some of their new isotopes may be useful in medicine and research. But most of the isotopes, like the bombarded atom itself, are very unstable.

* General Electric's 100-million-volt betatron is not comparable, because it shoots much lighter particles (electrons).

* Isotopes are forms of the same element which behave alike chemically but differ from each other in atomic weight.

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