Primordial Particle

One of the most puzzling known particles of the atom is the neutron, the uncharged building block of the nucleus. To explain its lack of electrical charge, nuclear physicists have long supposed that the particle is made up of a tiny, positively charged core surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged mesons. These two charges were thought to cancel each other out, producing the neutral neutron.

For the past two years Stanford Physicist Robert Hofstadter, 42, has been probing the neutron by firing electrons down Stanford's 220-ft. accelerator at target nuclei of gaseous hydrogen and other elements. The electrons bounced off, said Hofstadter, "like tennis balls thrown at a target."

Last week, before an international conference of A-scientists at Stanford, Researcher Hofstadter reported on the evidence uncovered by his rebounding electrons. His findings indicate that the neutron has no precisely defined core and cloud. Instead, the positive charge that had once been attributed to a core now seems to be intermingled throughout the particle with the negatively charged cloud of mesons. To the 200 delegates (including four Russians) this was disquieting news. Said one American scientist: "The theoretical idea of the neutron structure must be re-examined,"--i.e., back to the laboratories.

But Physicist Hofstadter did turn up some fundamental knowledge about the neutron that could only please his audience: the radius of the neutron is about 7 X 10 -14 centimeters, or roughly one 40,000,000,000,000th of an inch. Cried Columbia's Nobel Prizewinner Dr. I. I. Rabi: "Hofstadter has found the size of the primary building block of ourselves and our environment, the primordial particle. It is a finding of immense interest, importance, and even beauty."

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