BROOKHAVEN LECTURE SERIES The Small Distance Frontier

摘要

Of the many scientific frontiers which exist to¬day, the small distance frontier is perhaps the most intriguing. The large distance frontier involving the newly discovered stellar processes is also of great interest, but, because Nature arranges things so that the inside usually determines the outside and not vice versa, the importance of small distance phenomena is paramount. For example, organisms are made up of cells, cells are controlled by DNA, DNA is made up of molecules, molecules are com¬posed of atoms, an atom's behavior is fixed by the charge on the nucleus, and nuclear characteristics are determined by the forces between nuclei whose nature is unknown. Thus those of us who work in this field think we are dealing with something basic to everything else.