The true origin of corn is a question that's been debated for decades. Now a maverick geneticist says she may have the answer. But to get anyone to listen to her, she has to join a long-running academic food fight.

To get closer to the true, quantum nature of matter, physicist David Pritchard has been splitting atoms down the middle, fiddling with the halves, and then putting them back together. In principle, he says, he could do the same to a bacterium. Or even a baby grand.