The University of California admitted last week (after too many garbled rumors in the press) that it had created the first man-made meson. U.C. did it with its 4,000-ton cyclotron. The news caused a sizable flurry throughout the world of physics—for mesons are closely connected with the unknown force that holds matter together.
Mesons are mysterious, short-lived particles knocked out of .atomic nuclei. It takes a lot of punch to knock them out. Before the 4,000-ton cyclotron developed sufficient punch, the only mesons in captivity had been trapped in the wild. Dr. Carl Anderson of CalTech found their characteristic tracks in a...
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