Science: Fat Electrons

Harvard and M.I.T. announced this week that the Atomic Energy Commission is treating them jointly to a 6 billion-volt electron synchrotron, which will be built in Cambridge. Cost: $6,500,000. Its electrons will be steered around a circular vacuum chamber 236 ft. in diameter by 48 powerful magnets, each 11 ft. long, and they will be nudged to enormous speed by 16 radio-frequency circuits, each with the power of a full-scale television transmitter.

The Cambridge Electron Accelerator will not be as powerful as the proton synchrotron (25 billion to 30 billion electron volts) that is being built at Brookhaven National...

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