Every time an honored theory is disproved or amended, science makes a little progress. For 20 years the Dirac theory of electron behavior has been the bible of wave (quantum) mechanics.* Last week Columbia University announced that two of its young scientists, Professor Willis Lamb, 34, and Robert Retherford, 35, had knocked a prop from under the Dirac theory. Their experiment, said Columbia's Nobel Physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi, revealed new facts which will be of "inestimable value in future research."
The Dirac theory predicts, among many other things, that hydrogen atoms can exist...
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