Abstract
THE natural facility with which the radioactive elements disintegrate has led on one hand to attempts to break down atoms artificially, and on the other to build them up from simpler particles. Rutherford succeeded in conveying the necessary energy to some of the less massive atoms and broke them down by bombardment with sufficiently energetic a-rays, atom by atom at comparatively rare intervals: the process of atom building is still not more than a dream, realised perhaps in the depths of space as Millikan has suggested in order to account for cosmic rays.
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E., A. The Detection of Helium. Nature 123, 879–881 (1929). https://doi.org/10.1038/123879a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/123879a0