1074 



128 SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL COOPERATION 



what remained of World War II and to the cities of Hiroshima and 

 Nagasaki. 



Particle physics in its present form is shaped by these two events. 

 How? 



The distances over which we observe elementary particle structure 

 and interactions today have decreased from the 10~^ cm of typical 

 atomic structure to some 10"^^ cm. This means that the energies needed 

 for particle beams that will probe subnuclear interactions as we study 

 them today are some 10^ times higher than energies typical of atomic 

 phenomena. This translates into a need for great technical efforts. We 

 can illustrate this by a look at particle accelerators at the cutting edge of 

 our science. Take, as examples, the CalTech Electron Synchrotron, 

 which helped accumulate vital data on nucleonic structure between 

 1955 and 1970: at a final energy of 1.5 GeV, ^ it accelerated electrons so 

 that photons could probe nucleons to distances a few times 10~^^ cm; it 

 fitted comfortably into a single hall on the small Pasadena campus, and 

 was well supported by a crew of eight operators and technicians, with 

 annual operating costs of about SO. 5 million. Between accelerating 

 cycles, its energy was stored in a large steel flywheel. The bill paid to the 

 local power company was negligible. 



The synchrotron that will accelerate electrons to an energy of some 50 

 GeV as a first stage (later to be raised to 100 GeV) and their antiparticles 

 to an equal but opposite momentum,- to be built by CERN for initial 

 operation in 1988, needs a subterranean tunnel of roughly circular 

 shape, and of a total length of some 26.7 km. Its building costs will be 

 some $400 million,^ the permanent support staff will number some 800 

 people, and the electrical power bill alone will amount to an annual $20 

 million.'* This accelerator, suitably called LEP (Large Electron-Positron 

 [collider]), will probe the so-called Weak Nuclear Force (the force 

 responsible for (S-radioactivity in nuclei) at distances below 10~^° cm, 

 just as the CalTech Synchrotron probed the strong nuclear force at 

 10 ~ ^^ cm. Just as there were four experimental setups serving four teams 

 of experimental physicists at CalTech, doing different but related ex- 

 periments, so we expect to have four experimental setups providing four 

 related experimental goals for four teams of scientists at LEP. 



This is where the parallel becomes skew: The teams at CalTech con- 

 sisted of, typically, a faculty member and a couple of graduate students; 

 at LEP, the teams will consist of between 200 and 400 scientists each, 

 with more senior researchers and professors than research fellows or 

 graduate students. At CalTech, the beamtime was casually divided be- 

 tween the people interested, who could be summoned at all hours from 

 their nearby houses for emergency discussions or fixups of apparatus; at 



