Artists have felines too
1997; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 386; Issue: 6623 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1038/386348b0
ISSN1476-4687
ResumoWill-o' -the-wisps, the natural manifestation of the combustion of gases emitted by the dead rotting in their cemeteries, used to strike unreasoned terror into the hearts of our forebears.This dread finds psychological resonance today in the blind fear of radiation.The title of this book, Will-o' -the-wisps and Nuclear Mushrooms, is doubly intrigu- ing, but just two paragraphs are devoted to jack-o' -lanterns; the remainder concentrates on nuclear radiation.The authors, one French, the other American, are well-known physicists.Georges Charpak works in Geneva at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) and in Paris, and won the Nobel prize for physics in 1992 for the design and construction of particularly efficient particle detectors.Richard L. Garwin devoted much of his talent to developing US nuclear weapons and security systems during the Cold War.President Bill Clinton has recently called on him to collaborate with Russian colleagues in reviewing strategy for the control and destruction of plutonium stocks.Charpak and Garwin therefore constitute a first-rate fount of knowledge of the civil and military applications of nuclear physics; they are a well-tuned duo in which each player is a fine soloist.The authors begin with clear explanations of the principle of mass-energy equivalence and of the properties of neutrons.
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