Columbia Holds Wake For Historic Cyclotron

Pickens writes "They called it leviathan, behemoth, Big Bertha. At 12 feet wide, rising 7 feet above the cement floor and weighing an estimated 65 tons, the Columbia cyclotron, the particle accelerator built in the late 1930s by Columbia physicist John Dunning, played a crucial role in the dawn of the nuclear era. Dunning's experiments verified fission, established many of its properties, and, most significantly, demonstrated that the rare isotope Uranium 235, and not the more common U-238, was the more fissionable form of the element. 'In a week or two, they will dismantle it, and they will sell it for scrap,' says George Hamawy, Columbia University's director of radiation safety. 'This is the last chance to see it,' Hamawy added as students held a wake and contractors arrived to remove the cyclotron. 'We're going to make two-thousand-pound sections,' said one contractor before taking the cyclotron's measurements. 'We'll start slicing on Monday.'"

Comments

It was always disposable

[jotok]

No matter how large, complex, or beautiful anything we make is, it is all essentially disposable. We inevitably attach sentiment to things like cars or houses or boats or gigantic cyclotrons but they are just...things.

Look, the Navy has all this romantic imagery associated with plying the seas in deadly warships (read "Choosers of the Slain" by Kipling) but almost all ships end up as razor blades or sunk for target practice. Likewise a lot of us have fun tinkering with computers...but over the past 5 years haven't we all broken down and rebuilt assorted Frankenboxes for this project or that project a hundred times over?

It's the adventure of DOING stuff with the things that is important, not the things themselves. As impressive as the cyclotron is, it's the science and discovery that are really meaningful.

Re:It was always disposable

[blincoln]

It's the adventure of DOING stuff with the things that is important, not the things themselves.

The things are important because they provide a tangible link between the events they represent and people who weren't present for them. I wasn't even born when the XB-70 program was underway, but when I visited the Air Force Museum and saw the one remaining prototype, it made all of the things I'd read about it more real to me. None of us (other than the vampires) were alive when the ancient trading routes in the Black Sea were in use, but the artifacts discovered there by Robert Ballard help us understand more about them.
Obviously some things aren't practical to keep around - fleets of obsolete aircraft carriers, for example. But a single cyclotron? What's so important that they need to put in its place?

They could make more money...

[effigiate]

I bet they could bring in more money if they didn't scrap the whole thing, but instead sold small slices of it. No way they could sell ~65 tons worth of slices, but they could get a lot more if they sold off some of the historic piece of equipment. I'd buy a slice.

Re:Can it not be preserved?

[Dun Malg]

Givin it's importance in the development of nuclear science, it might be nice to preserve it somehow I would think... Look, we can't be expected to save every damn thing that ever played an important role in history. Things have a limited useful life. Who's ever going to go see the remains of a 70+ year old cyclotron. Were you p[lanning on seeing it, only to be disappointed to hear it was being scrapped? I doubt it. It's not like they're filling in the grand canyon. It's a giant lump of scrap metal. Let it go.