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A Cyclotron’s Long Journey Home

By Guest PostMarch 2, 2013Scienceamerican science, atom smashers, atomic energy commission, aundra richards, berkeley hills, berkeley lab, brass cyclotron, circular particle accelerator, cyclotrons, david shirley, diameter, electron volts, ernest o lawrence, hall of science, hydrogen atoms, invention, kinetic energy, lab history, Large Hadron Collider, light, london science museum, merry go round, modern particle physics, natalie roe, nobel prize, nuclei, pamela patterson, paul alivisatos, protons, secret, Smithsonian, speed, the royal society, uk museum, university of california, Washington, yale university

One of the world’s first working circular particle accelerators returns to Berkeley Lab—75 years later.

Seventy-five years after one of the world’s first working cyclotrons was handed to the London Science Museum, it has returned to its birthplace in the Berkeley hills, where the man who invented it, Ernest O. Lawrence, helped launch the field of modern particle physics as well as the national laboratory that would bear his name, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

On Jan. 9, 1932 the brass cyclotron—which measures 26 inches from end to end and whose accelerating chamber measures just 11 inches in diameter—was successfully used to boost protons to energies of 1.22 million electron volts. Its return to Berkeley Lab caps a decades-long saga in which various parties endeavored to secure the cyclotron’s return from London, but the persistence of Pamela Patterson, who chronicles Berkeley Lab’s history as managing editor of its website, finally paid off. (more…)

Global Science: U.S. is Still in The Game

ANN ARBOR, Mich.— Globalization is a benefit to U.S. scientific achievement, not a threat. That’s the conclusion of a new book that weighs the evidence from a number of recent surveys to answer its title question: “Is American Science in Decline?”

American science is in good health, according to the book’s authors, sociologists Yu Xie of the University of Michigan and Alexandra Achen Killewald of Harvard University.

Although there are areas of concern, they maintain that traditional American values will help the nation maintain its strength in science for the foreseeable future, and that globalization will promote efficiency in science through knowledge sharing. (more…)

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A Cyclotron’s Long Journey Home

Global Science: U.S. is Still in The Game