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The Heart of the Matter

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The Heart of the Matter angles with the leg, but some were set There's more to Seaview, certainly, century science, the quark was a prod askew, and a couple were almost upside than a fascination with pinning down uct of pure reason. Even now it is more down. Their hulls were dark green, and the visual details. Melinda's arduous an idea than an artifact. Physicists who they had bright red masts that were journey to her death in her place of are quite confident quarks exist none topped with orange sails. They did not theless give odds that one will never be seem seaworthy. Each one had a small birth, Bob White's quest to reclaim the land where his people had their origin, seen in isolation. According to the porthole with crosshatched lines in its side, and each had a little pink rudder, and Alan's inevitable progression to prevailing conjecture, the quark is and a pink point at its prow. ward a primitive and absurd confronta "confined" or "enslaved" within larger At five places on the legs there were five tion with Richard are all pulled together composite particles and can never be little whales. They were the same size as by the trip back across the breadth of extracted. It is an invisible presence, all the boats, and they too floated on little the country and by golf, which here around us and even within us, and yet waves. They were pink in color, with takes its place alongside baseball as the forever intangible; it has roughly the curvy tales, and they each spouted a curl same status in physics as the soul has in of water from their blowholes. They each quintessential American game. But in had a little eye and little green lines for the end, this is very much a poet's nov theology. No wonder the idea took so smiles. Near the slit of both front pockets, el. The images that are captured, the long to establish itself. but not printed in a symmetrical way, patterns they form, and the ideas they there were two dolphins. These were the yield are the basic materials, and the same size and general shape as the final structure stands or falls by them. THEphysical QUARK theory was almost introduced twenty yearsinto whales, and only their color (they were Seaview is a novel that's wrought with a ago by Murray Gell-Mann of the Cali blue) seemed to distinguish them. But at a great deal of serious care, and for that fornia Institute of Technology. (A simi closer look, which the Chair had taken alone it deserves its fair share of our lar proposal was made at about the before buying the pants, one could see attention. If it required the extreme in same time by George Zweig of the same that the dolphins, though they sat on tervention of a prize to save it from an similar waves, had no blowholes or curls institution; evidently the idea was in the air, if only in the hallways at Cal of spout, and they were not, like the early death, then all honor to it. whales, riding the waves but were arched Tech.) It would not be quite accurate to in mid-dive, halfway between the exit Tova Reich say people laughed, but I think in the from one wave and the entrance into an early years the idea was considered other. They didn't seem to have any pu Tova Reich is the author of Mara (Far more diverting than illuminating. At pils in their happy eyes. rar, Straus & Giroux), a novel. the time no one was looking for an ex planation of the internal structure of protons and neutrons; indeed, there was not even a hint that protons and neutrons had an internal structure. To all appearances they were smooth, fea tureless globes. Gell-Mann was sug gesting that each such particle has with The Heart Of The Matter in it exactly three smaller particles, and he assigned to them certain bizarre Quarks: The Stuff of Matter properties and equally bizarre names. They were to be called the up quark, by Harald Fritzsch the down quark, and the strange (or (Basic Books, 281 pp., sl9) sideways) quark. In emphasizing the oddity of the Breaking things open to see how they together by the hooks and threads of quark model I do not mean to suggest work is a passion seldom indulged after chemistry. Next the atom itself was re that it is a crackpot idea or was ever a certain age. A child with a screw vealed to be a thing of parts: it has a considered one. On the contrary, it driver can find a rainy day's reward hard pit—the nucleus—embedded in a offered a solution to an important prob poking at the springs and ratchets of an pulp of electrons. Then the nucleus too lem in the theory of elementary parti alarm clock, or even at the messy in turned out to be a composite object: cles, and the solution was recognized nards of a flashlight battery; the adult it is a cluster of protons and neutrons, from the outset as an extraordinarily merely asks if it can be put together an atom within the atom. With the hier elegant one. The idea simply seemed a again. archy of structures thus set forth, the little too good and too rich to be true. One could make too much of child latest findings are not hard to guess. The problem Gell-Mann and Zweig like wonder as an animating spirit in The proton and the neutron are also addressed was an overabundance of the sciences, but it does seem that the hiding something: they are made up basic building blocks of matter. The urge to pry off the lid has survived into of still smaller particles, the ones proton and the neutron are representa the maturity of modern physics. In the called quarks. tives of a family of related particles. For past one hundred years or so four lay The progression from atom to nucle a time they were the only known mem ers in the structure of matter have been us to proton and neutron to quark is bers of the family, but by the early peeled away, just to see what's inside. obvious only in retrospect. Every step 1960s a great many more had been dis First the solidity and continuity of the had its impediments, and the last step covered, and it was becoming awkward world were undermined: all matter was was unquestionably the hardest. More to consider all of them equally elemen shown to be a lacework of atoms, held than any other invention of twentieth- tary states of matter. A quite adequate JULY 4, 1983 37 world could be built out of just a few Fritzsch's account is even tempered the German meaning. From this clue I kinds of particles, and to have so many and scrupulously fair. Physics is unusu think I can guess what the birds were extras offended one's sense of economy al among the sciences in having two doing (rather than saying) over Dublin. of means. The alarm clock had been re communities of investigators, the theo I submit that my inference is supported assembled, and it worked, but there rists and the experimentalists, whose by Joyce's well-known tendency to sca- were parts left over. relations are characterized by some tology and by talk a few lines further on The quark model handily eliminated thing resembling interservice rivalry. about "speckled trousers." "The Stuff the supernumerary particles. The pro Fritzsch is a member of the theoretical of Matter" is dreck. ton and the neutron and their roughly camp, but he is careful not to slight the one hundred relatives could all be ac experimental one. He cites as the crucial Brian Hayes counted for as combinations of just event in the evolution of the quark three species of quarks. Two funda model an experimental result obtained Brian Hayes is the associate editor of mental rules governed the construction in 1974: the discovery of the first Scientific American. of composite particles out of the quarks. particle made up of charmed quarks. It A particle could be built either by bind was this event that persuaded many ing together three quarks or by binding doubters. Later experiments are also one quark to one antiquark; no other chronicled, and the imposing machines combinations were possible. In this way of high-energy physics—the particle ac all the known members of the family celerators that now approach the scale could be accounted for. Furthermore, of a small town—get their due both in with one exception, every allowed com words and pictures. Brief Reviews bination of quarks corresponded to a Reading Quarks will not be easy for known particle of matter; the exception those who are making their first ac was a particle predicted by the model quaintance with the odd little fellows. Roughneck: and discovered within a year. Fritzsch writes that "One aim of this The Life and Times of book is to show that anyone with an "Big Bill" Haywood elementary knowledge of physics can THEassociated QUARK withmodel it have and become the argot sub comprehend what physicists have ac by Peter Carlson stantially more elaborate since 1964. A complished in the last thirty years." (Norton, 352 pp., $17.50) fourth kind of quark has been intro I am quite sure he is right that any read duced to carry a property of matter that er with sufficient interest and stamina The quotations that open Peter Carl has been called charm.
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