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The Times's science correspondent, William L. Laurence, labeled Berkeley’s deuton “a new miracle worker of science . . . The most powerful cannon yet found for liberating relatively enormous stores of energy locked up in the inner core of the atom.”

The deuton, however, had twice the heft of the proton but not the additional charge, so it should be better at penetrating a target’s electromagnetic field.

But even Ernest was unprepared for how effective the deuton turned out to be.

Eventually the Rad Lab was able to manifest the projectile’s power visibly by deflecting deutons out of the vacuum chamber and into the air via a platinum “window”: Lawrence would never tire of displaying for visitors the eerie purple glow produced by the deuton beam as it ionized nitrogen in the air.

The deuton, Livingston added, “was what made the Berkeley laboratory famous. We were opening up a whole new field of science.”