THE NUCLEUS OF THE FUTURE

Abstract
A tremendous effort has gone into the study of the atomic nucleus and we know an enormous amount about it. Our theories have met with brilliant success and our conventional programmes, both experimental and theoretical, lead to greater and greater confidence in the essential rightness of our ideas. But all this knowledge is, in a certain sense, superficial because it does not refer to the bulk of the nucleons in the nucleus as I shall remark in a moment ; the nucleons concerned in most of our theory and experimentation are the favoured few valence particles at the top of the Fermi sea who rearrange themselves and promote themselves modestly into nearby shells. They form a cosy club and are, of course, very important but they owe their position and importance to their underpinning by the bulk of the A nucleons about which we remain astonishingly ignorant. All that we know about them is that they are there, and we are not even completely certain about that.