Slicing through the rolling countryside near Palo Alto, and flanked by newly planted oak and eucalyptus trees, the low, two-mile-long structure could easily be mistaken for a new link in California's growing network of freeways. Instead of automobiles, however, it will handle streams of speeding electrons. It is Stanford University's linear accelerator, the newest tool in one of the newest and fastest-growing disciplines of science, high-energy physics. When it achieves full power and goes into operation this fall, the largest atom smasher in the world will give man a closer look at the mysterious subatomic world and its host of...
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