SCIENTIST SPLITS ATOM, FINDS TOY PRIZE INSIDE
Promise of Hidden Surprises Has Propelled Fission Research for Decades
Princeton, N.J. (SatireWire.com) — A Princeton physicist recently split an atom of hydrogen and found a toy
prize inside, the journal Science reported in its June issue.
"It was just a cheap plastic clicker you use to make cricket sounds, and
it broke, like, the second time I used it, but it was the surprise I found
most satisfying," said Prof. Harold Lumiere of the Princeton Plasma
Physics Laboratory.
Science noted that it was the first prize found inside an atom since
Allison Wyatt of Cambridge University discovered a magic puzzle toy
in a lithium atom in February. For Lumiere, it was the first time in his
15-year, atom-splitting career that he has come across anything more
than the normal protons, gluons, and quarks.
"I know that over at MIT, Hendricks has amassed an entire collection of
little gewgaws — spinning tops, decoder rings, stickers," he said. "He is
so lucky. I hate him."
And well he should. Atomic prizes are so rare as to drive scientists into
the field of physics, and then, quite often, drive them mad. Legendary
theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, in fact, first became interested
in nuclear fission after watching a professor at Cal Tech discover a
mystery motion fun card inside an Iodine atom. Feynman himself,
however, never knew that joy. This deficiency caused him to declare,
on his death, that despite his Nobel, he had failed to win the only real
prize in physics.
Even Enrico Fermi, a pioneer of fission, had to wait nearly 10 years before discovering a plastic whistle inside a
newly split nucleus of uranium. "He was so happy, he just cried and cried," wrote colleague Edward Teller in his
1952 book, "The Physicists Guide to Isotopal Isolation and Collectible Atomic Prizes."
"For days after, Enrico kept running around the lab, his fingers to his lips, trying to play that whistle," Teller
recalled. "Of course, we couldn't hear it, but he said he could. He was such a goof."
More than half a century later, perceptibility remains an
issue with physicists. "You can't do much with (the toys)
because they're infinitesimally small," said Lumiere. "You
can only play with them under an electron microscope,
and if you have to sneeze, kiss it goodbye."
Some winners, meanwhile, have been forced to part with
their prizes without so much as exhaling. In his book
"Bohr, Baubles, and the Bomb: Why the Nazis Lost the
Nuclear Race," historian Everson White recounts how
Hitler's quest to build the ultimate weapon was thwarted by
his own policies that claimed atomic prizes were the
property of the Third Reich. Danish physicist Niels Bohr, a
fission pioneer, fled occupied Denmark after learning of
the policy, while German colleague Werner Heisenberg
stayed behind but sabotaged the program after Goering
confiscated a "Hi Score" pinball game Heisenberg found
in a phosphorous atom.
Ironically, while the lure of tiny tokens has shaped history
and led scientists to unravel much of the riddle of the
atom, the existence of the prizes themselves is perhaps the
greatest mystery facing physics today. Who, they still
wonder, put the prizes there?
Many have proposed theories. Einstein thought it was
aliens. Niels Bohr suspected it was Einstein. Ernest Rutherford conjectured that the prizes were natural
formations.
But most physicists today accept the argument espoused by Nobel laureate Ernest Walton, who along with John
Cockcroft split the atom in 1932. In early 1946, Walton was thrilled to discover a decoder ring and secret
message inside a carbon atom. After four days of painstaking work, he finally deciphered the message: "Sorry," it
read, "you're not a winner. Try again."
"That's gotta be God," Walton reportedly said. |
