SCIENTIST SPLITS ATOM, FINDS TOY PRIZE INSIDE
A Princeton physicist           recently split an atom of hydrogen and found a toy prize inside, the journal           Science reported in its May issue.In this colorized photo, physicist Enrico Fermi brags about the plastic whistle he found after splitting open a uranium atom.âIt was just a cheap plastic clicker you use to make cricket sounds,           and it broke, like, the second time I used it, but it was the surprise           I found most satisfying,â said Prof. Harold Lumiere of the Princeton Plasma           Physics Laboratory.     Science noted that it was the first prize found inside an atom           since Allison Wyatt of Cambridge University discovered a magic puzzle           toy in a lithium atom in February. For Lumiere, it was the first time           in his 15-year, atom-splitting career that he has come across anything           more than the normal protons, gluons, and quarks.     âI know that over at MIT, Hendricks has amassed an entire collection           of little gewgaws â spinning tops, decoder rings, stickers,â he           said. âHe is so lucky. I hate him.â     And well he should. Atomic prizes are so rare as to drive scientists           into the field of physics, and then, quite often, drive them mad. Legendary           theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, in fact, first became interested           in nuclear fission after watching a professor at Cal Tech discover a mystery           motion fun card inside an Iodine atom. Feynman himself, however, never           knew that joy. This deficiency caused him to declare, on his death, that           despite his Nobel, he had failed to win the only real prize in physics.     Even Enrico Fermi, a pioneer of fission, had to wait nearly 10 years           before discovering a plastic whistle inside a newly split nucleus of uranium.           âHe was so happy, he just cried and cried,â wrote colleague Edward Teller           in his 1952 book, âThe Physicists Guide to Isotopal Isolation and Collectible           Atomic Prizes.â     âFor days after, Enrico kept running around the lab, his fingers to           his lips, trying to play that whistle,â Teller recalled. âOf course, we           couldnât hear it, but he said he could. He was such a goof.â    More than half a century later, perceptibility remains an issue with           physicists. âYou canât do much with (the toys) because theyâre infinitesimally           small,â said Lumiere. âYou can only play with them under an electron microscope,           and if you have to sneeze, kiss it goodbye.â     Some winners, meanwhile, have been forced to part with their prizes           without so much as exhaling. In his book âBohr, Baubles, and the Bomb:           Why the Nazis Lost the Nuclear Race,â historian Everson White recounts           how Hitlerâs quest to build the ultimate weapon was thwarted by his own           policies that claimed atomic prizes were the property of the Third Reich.           Danish physicist Niels Bohr, a fission pioneer, fled occupied Denmark           after learning of the policy, while German colleague Werner Heisenberg           stayed behind but sabotaged the program after Goering confiscated a âHi           Scoreâ pinball game Heisenberg found in a phosphorous atom.     Ironically, while the lure of tiny tokens has shaped history and led           scientists to unravel much of the riddle of the atom, the existence of           the prizes themselves is perhaps the greatest mystery facing physics today.           Who, they still wonder, put the prizes there?     Many have proposed theories. Einstein thought it was aliens. Niels Bohr           suspected it was Einstein. Ernest Rutherford conjectured that the prizes           were natural formations.     But most physicists today accept the argument espoused by Nobel laureate           Ernest Walton, who along with John Cockcroft split the atom in 1932. In           early 1946, Walton was thrilled to discover a decoder ring and secret           message inside a carbon atom. After four days of painstaking work, he           finally deciphered the message: âSorry,â it read, âyouâre not a winner.           Try again.â     âThatâs gotta be God,â Walton reportedly said.