List of The Outer Limits episodes
"Production and Decay of Strange Particles" is an episode of the original The Outer Limits television show. It first aired on 20 April 1964, during the first season.
The plot involves workers at a nuclear research plant wearing radiation suits, who are taken over by some odd glowing substance that fills their suits and causes them to act as puppets of the force inside.
Mentioned in the episode are many modern physics concepts such as neutrinos, antimatter, quasi-stellar objects (at that time just discovered and perhaps mentioned here in TV fiction for the first time) and subatomic particles with the property of "strangeness" (a perhaps unfortunately named quantum property of matter which had been chosen a few years before by physicists, despite objection at the time that it was no more "strange" or odd than any other property of subatomic particles). The episode name is close to that of an actual Physical Review paper of 1956, titled "Cloud-Chamber Study of the Production and Decay of Strange Particles."
Read more about Production And Decay Of Strange Particles: Opening Narration, Plot, Closing Narration, Cast
Famous quotes containing the words production, decay, strange and/or particles:
“[T]he asphaltum contains an exactly requisite amount of sulphides for production of rubber tires. This brown material also contains ichthyol, a medicinal preparation used externally, in Websters clarifying phrase, as an alterant and discutient.”
—State of Utah, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“But I must needs take my petulance, contrasting it with my accustomed morning hopefulness, as a sign of the ageing of appetite, of a decay in the very capacity of enjoyment. We need some imaginative stimulus, some not impossible ideal which may shape vague hope, and transform it into effective desire, to carry us year after year, without disgust, through the routine- work which is so large a part of life.”
—Walter Pater (18391894)
“As for the nights I warn you the nights are dangerous
The wind changes at night and the dreams come
It is very cold
there are strange stars near Arcturus
Voices are crying an unknown name in the sky”
—Archibald MacLeish (18921982)
“When was it that the particles became
The whole man, that tempers and beliefs became
Temper and belief and that differences lost
Difference and were one? It had to be
In the presence of a solitude of the self....”
—Wallace Stevens (18791955)