The Bevatron was a particle accelerator — specifically, a weak-focusing proton synchrotron — at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, U.S., which began operating in 1954. The antiproton was discovered there in 1955, resulting in the 1959 Nobel Prize in physics for Emilio Segrè and Owen Chamberlain. It accelerated protons into a fixed target, and was named for its ability to impart energies of billions of eV. (Billions of eV Synchrotron.)
At the time the Bevatron was designed, it was strongly suspected but not known, that each particle had a corresponding anti-particle of opposite charge, identical in all other respects, a property known as charge symmetry. The anti-electron, or positron had been first observed in the early 1930s, and theoretically understood as a consequence of the Dirac equation at about the same time. Following World War II, positive and negative muons and pions were observed in cosmic-ray interactions seen in cloud chambers and stacks of nuclear photographic emulsions. The Bevatron was built to be energetic enough to create antiprotons, and thus test the hypothesis that every particle has a corresponding anti-particle. The antineutron was discovered soon thereafter by Oreste Piccioni and co-workers, also at the Bevatron. Confirmation of the charge symmetry conjecture in 1955 led to the Nobel Prize for physics being awarded to Emilio Segrè and Owen Chamberlain in 1959.
Baal was the leader of the Sandstormers, who found Apocalypse as a baby and raised him. The character, created by Terry Kavanagh and Adam Pollina first appeared in The Rise of Apocalypse #1 (October 1996).
Baal is the leader of the Sandstormers, raiders and scavengers in ancient Egypt who lived by the dogma of survival of the fittest. When Kang the Conqueror went back in time, in his spaceship, the Sphinx and crash landed, he was found by the Sandstormers. Inside, Baal and his people found a wounded Kang, and nursed him back to health. When Kang recovered, he ran away and became pharaoh of Egypt as Rama Tut. He returned with soldiers to reclaim his jewel, which the Sandstormers had stolen. The Sandstormers did not reveal where it was and many of Baal's men were massacred.
The jewel, "The Eye of the Ages" gives its holders glimpses into the future and Baal saw in it a man who would defeat him, this man was En Sabah Nur. The Sandstormers raided village after village in search for Nur and finally found him left to die on an altar of stones. Many of the Sandstormers wished to slay the baby, thinking it a demon. From the moment Baal had found Nur, he was attached to him and even slew his own men to defend him.