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Introduction Introduction Introduction
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Introduction

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time.
-T. S. Eliot

Great Human Triumphs

In the last 50 years, the study of the basic constituents of matter and their interactions has led to an extraordinarily detailed understanding of subatomic phenomena (phenomena on the scale of atomic nuclei or smaller). This work culminated in the unification of electromagnetism and radioactivity, by which we mean that they are now understood to be different aspects of the same phenomenon. This achievement ranks as one of the great triumphs of the human intellect.

These discoveries were the result of experiments involving:

  • Particle accelerators that produce proton and electron beams of ever increasing energy.
  • Detectors capable of measuring the complex interactions produced by the collisions of these high-energy beams.
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