Serpukhov Data Suggest Asymptopia May Be Further Away Than Ever

With 70 GeV available at the Soviet Serpukhov accelerator, a new look into the asymptotic region is possible, and some observers are surprised at the glimpses reported at the Lund International Conference on Elementary Particles in July. Preliminary results suggest that the $π−‐p$ and $K−‐p$ total cross sections may be flattening out as energy increases; many theorists had predicted that these cross sections would go down as energies increased.