Science: Proton-Busters

Physicists will never be happy until they take the atom completely apart. Most of them already consider the atom bomb just a frontier skirmish. Last week they gathered at the University of California to discuss the big topic in nuclear physics: subatomic particles. To the American Physical Society, U.S. atom-busters described carefully laid plans for further busting.

Until recently, atomic physicists thought they knew nearly everything there was to know about the atom. Now, Nuclear Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer told the meeting, they are "frankly puzzled." The notion that an atom consists only of electrons, protons and neutrons has been knocked into...