Established 1845

SCIENTIFIC
AME RI CAN"

April, 1957

Volume 196

Number 4

The Overthrow of Parity

Conservation of parity was a law of quantuln physics which said
that there

lS

no absolute distinction In nature between right

and lft. ExperiTnents now show that such a distinction exists

by Philip Morrison

n the days when philosophprs, acute

bear greater fruits than he knew. It was

than scientific. Yet it has become one of

in observation but as yet unaided

a proposition which at first thought

the firmest pillars of modern physics. It

by the tools of modern science, were

seems absurdly simple and self-evident:

underlies the theory of relativity and

primary founts of insight into the nature

namely, that "two states indiscernible

those laws of conservation-of energy,

of the physical world, the philosopher

from each other are the same state."

momentum and so on-upon which our

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz formu

Leibniz argued it on grounds which to

understanding of nature is built. And it

lated a "great principle" which was to

day we would find theological rather

is now given deeper and sharper mean-

PI AND MU MESON DECAYS are process

es in which parity is not conserved. This

-.:'Itt_-7'
:::: _----7.(

photograph records an example of both

events. It shows bubble tracks made by par
ticles from the Brookhaven Cosmotron in a
chamber of liquid propane. As shown in the
drawing at right, a pi meson

11 +
,

,,

,
,

(7T+) enters at
(p. +) about

left and decays into a mu meson

e+
,

,
,
\

halfway across the chamber. The mu meson

then decays into a positive electron (e + )

45

1957 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC

TAU PARTICLE

(T+) decys into three pi

mesons. The one shown here enters at the

T

left and travels almost to the righthand end

----3>

before bursting into a threepronged path.

The lower prongs represent positive pions,
the upper prong a negative one. The ex
periments shown were performed by Donald

A. Glaser, J. L. Brown, D. I. Meyer and

M. L. Perl of the University of Michigan.

NUClEUS
THETA PAltTICLE

(rr) decays into two

pi mesons. The theta in this photograph,

being 'neutral, forms no bubbles and cannot
be seen until it decays into a double prong.
The tbeta decay is the lower of the two dou
ble.prong events shown in the drawing. This
photograph also shows the birth of the theta
particle. It was formed from the collision of
a

pi meson with a proton in the chamber.

46

1957 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC

ing than ever by the amazing event in

physics which is the topic of this article
-the overthrow of the "parity principle"
and the unraveling of the nature of left
and right.
The

important

word

in

Leibniz's

axiom is "indiscernible." Modern physics

has been profoundly concerned with
what is discernible and what is not. One

Q[ its strongest and most fruitful assump

tions has been that among the indiscern

ibl66 are absolute space, time and direc
tion. It is not hard to present examples.
Think of the conventional world map. To
ach place are assigned a latitude and a
longitude-a pair of numbers. The num
bers are of great utility and convenience,
but they are in no sense real attributes
()f the places; they have no physical sig
nificance. If the starting point for count
ing were to be shifted from Greenwich
to Timbuklll, the numbers would change
but no mountains would be moved. The

RIGHTHAND RULE relating the directions of an electric current and its resulting mag
netic field (thumb points with current, fingers point with the north.seeking pole of a test
compass needle) becomes a lefthand rule when the experiment is reflected in a mirror.
In this drawing, the "real" experiment is seen at the left and its mirror image at the right.

numbers are merely arbitrary labels. And

this is the manner in which space in gen
ral is treated in physics. The coordi
nates specifying positions in space de
scribe only relative positions. We try to
formulate our physical laws by the use
of mathematical schemes in which abso
lute

positions

in

space never

enter.

Whatever our frame of reference, we

:say, space remains invariant.

t us take a more dramatic and com-

prehensive example. Suppose that a

skilled director is going to produce on

a stage before you some physical event
or phenomenon-any whatever-without
offering you clues to the date of the

event, the directional orientation of the

stage or the location of the theater.
Could you determine any of these by any
certain evidence? Indeed not. You may,
of course, date the performance as lying
within your lifetime, but. this is clearly
a subjective

(i.e.,

relative) time. (In

deed, Rip van Winkle could not succeed

even in that.) You can judge which di
rection within the theater is up and
which down, but "up" and "down" are
merely relative to the earth; consider
that you are in a theater in Australia and

you will begin to realize the problem of

attempting to determine the absolute
orientation. A sharper test would be to
use a compass to find "north," but this
fails too, for the director can falsify the
magnetic field, and in any case locating
"north" on the earth tells you nothing
about your absolute orientation in space.
Nor can you locate the theater, even if
you can look out a window and see a
familiar landmark or a familiar star. The
earth itself moves, and so do all the ex-

MIRROR REFLECTION of a spinning ball could not be detected if tbe ball ejected par
ticles equally in both directions along its axis. Image at top right looks just like the real
ball turned upside down. Reflection can be detected if there is a preferred direction for
the ejection of particles. Thus the image at bottom cannot be mistaken for the real thing.

47

1957 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC

,.

ternal reference pOints. No, in principle

j \
,: \
,:
\
,:
\
--I
\
___ I

and in practice absolute location in time

or space and absolute direction are all
indiscernibles.
These facts are of basic importance in

')

---

,,l

"

coordinates lies at the basis of Albert

Einstein's construction of the speCial

\
...

physiCS. The indiscernibility of absolute

.
\.'

theory of relativity, as is emphasized by

the very name of his theory. And the fact
that physical equations cannot refer to
absolute time, space or orientation leads
logically,

by

mathematical

reasoning

which we need not review here, to the

classical laws of the conservation of en
ergy and momentum.

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!

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:
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he conservation "law" that concerns

us now is the conservation of "par

ity," which rests upon the assumed in

discernibility of right from left. The

tV

indiscernibility principle can be put this

way: there is no absolute distinction be

tween a real object (or event) and its
mirror image. A right-hand glove and a
left-hand glove are surely different, but
if accurately made they are precise
counterparts; looking at a right-haud
glove in a mirror, you cannot tell from

60 (gray circles) emit electrons (large dots) preferentially

in one direction along their spin axes and antineutrinos (small dots) in the other. The effect
is ordinarily undetectable (top) but can be seen when spin axes are aligned (bott,om).
SPINNING NUCLEI of cobalt

its properties that you are not loo ing

at a left-hand glove. The looking-glass
world of people is admittedly unusual.
Your mirror image is badly brought up:
it offers to greet you with its left hand
instead of its right, and it writes oddly.
But the curiousness of the mirror world
is largely conventional. There is no rea
son to doubt that such a world could
exist. Indeed, any good director could
set and coach a performance so that you
could not distinguish it from the mirror
image of a conventional performance.
The physical principle of the indistin
guishability of right and left implies that
for every scene, every experiment, an
exact mirror counterpart is possible. It is
true that nature seems to favor a specific
orientation

(right-handed

or

left

handed) for the spiraling shells of snails

and other animals, and for molecules of
living matter. But this provides no con
clusive evidence for the physicist: he
sees that the molecule would function
exactly the same way were it mirrored,
and he can envision a world of living
beings just like our own in which the
"handedness" was simpJy reversed. The
looking-glass world of life could func
tion exactly like the actual world.
Until the startling events of the past
few months, it seemed that the invari
ance of left and right was as unassailable
as the invariance of time or space. All
WUAMBLER APPARATUS detects electrons from aligned cobalt nuclei. Vertical black

experience had buttressed the idea that

cylinder is the coil which furnishes aligning field. Horizontal tube is a photomultiplier.

no intrinsic difference could be found to

48

1957 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC

distinguish physical phenomena in a

looking-glass world from the real world.
All the seeming guides for distinguishing
left from right failed on analysis to do
any such thing. A student of electricity

PUMPING TUBE
FOR VACUUM SPACE

might cite the famous right-hand rule

for telling the direction of an electro
magnetic field: if you grasp a wire with
your right hand so that the thumb points
in the direction of the current's flow,
your finger tips point in the direction in
which a north pole moves in the magnetic
field around the wire. But not so fast.
What distinguishes a north pole from a

south pole ? True, you may refer me to a

compass needle. The "north"-seeking end

of the needle is colored blue and stamped
with a big N. But this convention could
be reversed without the least difficulty. If
we switched the label N to the other
end of the needle, the experiment would
work with the left hand. So only conven
tion distinguishes our experiment from
its mirror counterpart. No intrinsic phys

RE-ENTRANT VACUUM

ical distinction, either in the macroscopic

or the microscopic world, exists between
a north magnetic pole and a south. All
our right-hand rules are pure conven
tion: there is nothing in the laws of elec
tromagnetic fields that permits an abso
lute distinction between right and left.
The power of this idea of spatial sym
metry ought now to be clear. If we begin
by postulating mirror invariance, we can
infer the indistinguishability of magnetic
north and south poles. The latter in turn
is an important principle in the micro

MUTUAL INDUCTANCE

world of particles, permitting us to give

THERMOMETER COilS

an orderly account of certain phenomena

in that world. It implies the principle of

ANTHRACEE CRYSTAL

the conservation of "parity," just as the

invariance of space and time implies
the conservation of energy.

SODIUM IODIDE CRYST

CERIUM MAGNESIUM

"Parity" is a mathematical concept,

NITRATE CRYSTAL

impossible to define in physical terms. It

is a property of the so-called wave func
tion by which quantum mechanics de
scribes the wave characteristics of a par
ticle and represents its position in space.
The variables of a wave function are
just those coordinates that we use to lo
cate spatial positions. Now it is not hard
to see that if we change the sign of one co
ordinate

(i.e., from plus to minus), this is

equivalent to reflecting the system in a

mirror. Parity is the term that describes
the effect of such a reversal upon the
wave function. If the wave function re
mains unchanged when the sign of one
of its three spatial variables is reversed,
we say that the function has "even" par
ity. If reversal of the sign of the variable
reverses the sign of the wave function,
we call its-parity "odd." In short, parity
has one of two values-even or odd. And

V ACUUM CHAMBER for cobalt experiment is diagrammed above. The cobalt layer is
deposited on the top of the cerium magnesium nitrate crystal. Anthracene crystal flashes
when electrons strike it. Sodium iodide crystals count gamma rays from the cobalt, and
indicate the degree of alignment. The large finger above the anthracene is a lucite rod
which conducts the light of anthracene scintillations to amplifying and counting system.

49

1957 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC

all our experience, as well as theory, has

mode of decay, tau and theta were iden

the axis. Neither direction would have

indicated that in an isolated system pari

any significance, conventional or other

ty never changes its value-i.e., parity is

tical twins. Could they be one and the

same particle? Decay of a particle by

always conserved.

two different modes was certainly per

But the preferred direction of beta

Or rather, almost all. We are now con

mitted by theory and precedent, but in

emission by the spinning nuclei would

in fact define an arrowhead-the direc

wise: there is no arrowhead on the axis.

fronted with a flat failure of parity

this case the principle of conservation of

conservation. The story goes back to

parity stood in the way. Tau decayed to

tion of advance of a right-hand or left

about a year ago, when two extremely

a set of pions of odd parity, theta to even

hand screw-and its mirror image would

imaginative and ingenious investigators

parity pions. The law of unchanging par

be discernibly reversed from the real

of the newly discovered "strange" parti

ity said that tau and theta must have dif

thing. The experiment should leave no

cles of the atomic world made a really

ferent parity and therefore be different

doubt about a distinction between left

novel suggestion.

particles.

and right in beta-decay.

Yet

the

undownable

question

re
powerful team of laboratory experi-

T University and Chen Ning Yang of

he two-Tsung Dao Lee of Columbia

mained: Why were tau and theta exactly

alike in every respect except this one?

the Institute for Advanced Study-were

Lee and Yang boldly faced up to an em

Chien Shiung Wu of Columbia con

absorbed in what was perhaps the most

barrassing but insistent possibility: per

tributed her art in designing experiments

baffling paradox in this new realm of

haps the parity-conservation law simply

and her experience in beta-decay work.

strangeness:

broke down in the realm of particle de

A team at the National Bureau of Stand

cays like tau's and theta's!

ards under Ernest Ambler undertook the

the

so-called

"tau-theta

puzzle." There were two mesons, called

menters took up the

challenge.

tau and theta. Tau, in the course of time,

Their boldness was not rash. They

task of lining up the nuclei. Ambler's

uisintegrated into three pi mesons; theta,

could take the stand that while mirror

job was to provide the straight line;

into two pi mesons. What was baffling

invariance, from which the parity-con

Wu's, to look for the tip of the arrow

was that in every property except the

servation idea was derived, might hold

(i.e., the preferred direction of beta

in all other realms, it need not neces

emission).

sarily apply in the world of tau and theta.

!:

Nuclear alignment is

new art, no

For the decay of tau and theta belongs

more than three or four years old. The

to a very special class of reaction known

as "weak interactions." The forces in

can be manipulated is their magnetiC

sole handle by which the nuclei of atoms

volved in them are very weak indeed

moment. No laboratory generator can

much weaker even than the forces which

produce magnetic fields strong enough

bind electrons in atoms. The forces are

to align these tiny moments; only within

measured by the time it takes, with a

atoms themselves do sufficiently strong

given amount of available energy, for

fields exist. So special atoms are lined up

particle emission to occur. By this

to produce a field, and their field in turn

measure the force entailed in a weak in

lines up the magnetic nuclei. But to

: -- :--!---t-----":
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!

tcraction such as the decay of tau or

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SCREW DIRECTION could theoretically

be specified by an aluminum disk, mounted
10

rotate around vertical axis, and coated

on

underside with cobalt

60. Electrons eject

ed downward have predominantly one spin,

and impart opposite spin to disk. Upward
electrons are absorbed by aluminum. Thus
the disk always spins in direction shown.

The device was snggested by J. R. Zacharias

of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

theta is smaller by a. factor of 100 billion

make orderly alignment possible at all,

thermal agitation of the atoms must be

than the binding force on an atomic elec

reduced to a minimum, which means

tron. Yang and Lee felt that the previous

cooling the system to very low tempera

tests of mirror invariance in other fields

ture-considerably less than one degree

of phenomena might have no validity in

above absolute zero. Shielded by the

this untested realm of weak and subtle

interactions.
They proposed an experiment to test

best sort of vacuum bottle, cooled by

streams of liquid helium, the cobalt 60

atoms which served as the beta-emitters

whether right and left could or could not

were kept aligned for 15 minutes or so

be distinguished in this realm. Tau and

at a time.

theta particles themselves were poor

Six months to design, prepare and

candidates as subjects for such a tcst,

carry out the 15-minute experiments

for their lifetime is short-only about a

these times proved just long enough to

billionth of a second. But the beta-decay

settle the issue beyond doubt. The beta

(emission of beta particles) of radio

particles emitted by the lined-up cobalt

active atomic nuclei also belongs to the

nuclei went predominantly in the direc

family of weak interactions, and these

tion against the magnetiC field. This

decays, taking place at much lower

meant that, from the standpOint of beta

levels of available energy, have con

emission, the nuclei had an intrinSically

veniently long lifetimes-measured in

left-handed spin. Left could be distin

seconds or even years (e.g., the beta-de

guished from right. Mirror invariance

cay half life of cobalt 60 is 5.3 years).

was dead. However valid it was else

In essence Yang and Lee's proposal for

where, in the realm of weak interactions

the test experiment was simply to line

it unambiguously failed.

up the spins of beta-emitting nuclei

Within a few weeks after that first

along the same axis, and then see whether

test in December, 1956, the conclusion

the beta particles were emitted preferen

was again unequivocally confirmed by

tially in one direction or the other along

another experiment. This time the weak

50

1957 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC

MESON DECAY EXPERIMENT, also showing lack of mirror sym

tal setup is at center, between the small stepladder and the tall pile

metry, was done at the Columbia University cyclotron. Experimen

of concrete blocks. The cyclotron itself is behind shield at right.

CLOSEUP OF EXPERIMENT shows wirewound carbon block in

lar frame supported by a brick and a coffee can. To the left of the

which mu mesons are brought to rest. The block is in the rectangu

frame is a triple counter which detects the emitted electrons.

51

1957 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC

interaction tested was the decay of the

mu meson. The experiment rested on a
hypothesis which seeks to explain the
failure of mirror invariance in beta-de
cay. The theory assumes that in the de
cay of a mu meson both a neutrino and
an anti-neutrino are emitted, along with
the beta particle, and that the neutrino
always has a right-handed spin while the
anti-neutrino's is left-handed. It was rea
soned that when a pi meson decays into
a mu meson and an anti-neutrino, the
mu meson must be emitted with a left
handed spin to balance that of the
anti-neutrino. As a consequence, when

MAGNETIC SHIELD

aligned mu mesons, under suitable con

MAGNETIZING COIL

ditions, decay with emission of electrons,

the electrons should come out in a pref

CARBON TARGET

erential direction. The theory was tested,

first by a group at Columbia and later in
other laboratories, and the preference for

o
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__

-l
I

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_________ _

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___ --J

the specified screw direction was verified.

The Columbia group have used the ef
fect very ingeniously to measure the
magnetic moment of the mu meson, and
thus already have made a useful appli
cation of the failure of mirror invariance.
heoretical physicists have only begun

T to speculate about the more general

implications of this profound overthrow
of a basic principle in the world of weak
interactions. But there is an over-all les
son which can be put simply: The great
invariance principles of nature may be
relied upon within the domains of their
application, but they are not a

priori self

evident or necessarily of universal appli

cation. It is worth while to test to higher

ELECTRONS
PATH OF MESONS, from accelerator to detector, is shown at top. At bottom is a detailed
diagram of target and detector. Tshaped block stops pi mesons, leaving beam of mu mesons.
These come to rest in carbon target and decay to electrons which are counted in the detector.

>-

1.2

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tt

does it still hold for the weakest inter

actions of all, those involving the weak

force of gravity? Here one thinks of the

hypothesis that matter may arise spon

!t

taneously from a space containing no

energy, and the possibilities are exciting.
It may also be that there is some connec

IT

It

ZERO
FIELD

-4

-.

tion between the two major asymmetries

we now see in the physical world-the
right-left asymmetry of weak particle

reactions and the fact that our world

is overwhelmingly made up of one kind
of matter, to the near-exclusion of anti
matter. Perhaps this lead could forge

bridge between the microphysics of the

fundamental particles and the physics of

.6

-. 6

tion of energy. So far as we have gone,

even in weak particle interactions, en
ergy conservation appears to hold, but

1.4

Vl

and higher precision the great founda

tion principles, including the conserva

+.2

the great distances-that is, cosmology.

+4

+.6

MAGNETIC-FIELD CURRENT IAMPERESI

It is fair to say that the discovery of

the limitations of the mirror invariance
principle is not a setback but an oppor

ELECTRON COUNTS are plotted on the vertical axis against the strength of the magnetic

tunity. We have entered an exhilarating

field which turns the e1ectronemitting mu mesons. Variation shows asymmetry of emission.

time.

52

1957 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC

MESONS

H!!!!!
TIME

-- LAPSE

. -------------------------

. . ,,",,,
" ,,;:,"""""..
. "........... ....... .........
,'f--+,-T-V

L..
'_-,-/--,,,1
'/ //
"
,i

,//

/'

DETECTOR

, ""'
/

/
/

,/'

\ \ \ """>'"

\ ""', ''','' "

\" ''''''
t \ \
\ \ \\ :--
\\ '... "'
i
\
\
\
\

II, " "\ ',

,

'"",,,

"

'

'"

"

"

i
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_
- ....
......
'-,
..
...
..
,
""... ..' ...
......
'..
..
... .
...........
"'I

, , ',- I,
"

" "

\,

I
"

----------

....
...
.....-. ...._

'''...

\ '.
\ .

MESONS

1111111
TIME
--LAPSE

._

-------------- --- ----

DETECTOR

ASYMMETRICAL MESON DECAY detected in the Columbia

time as it takes the average mu meson to decay into an electron.

experiment is illustrated schematically. Pi mesons from the cyclo

The decay electrons, shown as small dots, go off in all directions,

tron decay into mus, and the mu mesons turn out to have their

but only those traveling in a particuLar direction from the block

spins lined up with respect to their flight direction. They are

are counted. The experiment is repeated for different values of the

stopped in a carbon bLock. Their alignment in the block is repre

magnetic field, which give different amounts of turning. The

sented symbolically in the diagram by a single rotating sphere. A

electron counts vary as shown in the curve at the bottom of the

coil around the bLock produces a magnetic field which turns the

opposite page. This shows that more eLectrons are emitted along

spinning mll mesons. The field is allowed to act for about as long a

one direction of the mesons' spin axis than in any other direction.

53

1957 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC