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BBB Before the
Big Bang: In a vacuum state with no space and consequently no time,
physical laws would not seem appropriate. However, the law that
states matter can neither be created nor destroyed implies another
state of matter, i.e. a state of pure energy unbound by space and
time. The chance fluctuation indicated below for the beginning of
the Big Bang would have occurred in this energy field. This
occurrence could have been like the breaking of a dam, or a puncture
that explodes a filled tire, or a bomb that violently explodes upon
detonation. The resulting tiny bubble of space-time provided an
outlet for the enormous energy latent in the pre-space-time state.
This of course gives no account of how or where or why the initial
pure-energy state came about. We may never know, but we can always
speculate.
(AR, 2/1/02)(AR, 9/10/10)
10-3 Sec
Quarks freeze into particles. (JST-TMC,1983, p.157) According to the
Standard Theory, all matter in the universe is made from different
combinations of two types of sub-atomic particles. Fermions, such as
electrons and quarks, are the bricks or fundamental building blocks
of matter. A different type of particle, called bosons, are the
mortar. Bosons are the carriers or forces like electromagnetism and
gravity, which hold the bricks of our universe together. Peter Higgs
postulated around 1970 that the Higgs boson, usually invisible,
creates a field through which subatomic particles, such as quarks
and electrons, pass. Experiments in 2001 found that muon spin
modification in a magnetic field varied from that predicted by the
Standard Model. When the temperature dropped below 1 trillion
degrees or so, the Higgs field flipped on and some particles began
interacting with Higgs bosons. In 2012 Nicholas Mee authored “Higgs
Force: The Symmetry-Breaking Force That makes the World an
Interesting Place. Jim Baggott authored “The Quantum Story: A
History in 40 Moments.”
(LSA, Fall 1995, p.34)(SFC, 11/4/00, p.A14)(SFC,
2/9/01, p.A5)(Econ, 3/3/12, p.94)
490BC Empedocles (d.430BC),
Greek philosopher, was born. He is best known for being the
originator of the cosmogenic theory of the four classical elements.
An important idea in ancient Greek philosophy is that "Nothing comes
from nothing", so that what exists now has always existed, since no
new matter can come into existence where there was none before. An
explicit statement of this, along with the further principle that
nothing can pass away into nothing, is found in Empedocles
(ca. 490–430 BCE): "For it is impossible for anything to come to be
from what is not, and it cannot be brought about or heard of that
what is should be utterly destroyed."
(Econ, 2/7/09,
p.72)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_mass)
1642 Dec 25, (OS) Isaac Newton
(d.1727), English physicist, mathematician and scientist, was born
in Woolsthorpe (Grantham), Lincolnshire, England. He enunciated the
laws of motion and the law of gravity [see Jan 4, 1643].
(V.D.-H.K.p.205)(HN,
12/25/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton)
1643 Jan 4, (NS) Sir Isaac
Newton, scientist, was born. He developed the laws of gravity and
planetary relations [See Dec 25, 1642].
(HN,
1/4/01)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton)
1661 Jun 5, Isaac Newton was
admitted as a student to Trinity College, Cambridge.
(http://tinyurl.com/4extmym)
1665-1666 Over a span of 18 months Isaac Newton
invented calculus, explained how gravity works, and discovered his
laws of motion. This period came to be called his annus mirabilis.
(Econ, 1/1/05, p.59)
1676 Isaac Newton wrote: “If I
have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”
(Econ, 8/7/04, p.64)
1687 Jul 5, The first volume of
Isaac Newton's "Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica"
("Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy") was published in
Latin by Edmund Halley. His invention of differential and integral
calculus is here presented. Here also are stated Newton’s laws of
motion, that obliterated the Aristotelian concept of inertia. 1)
Every physical body continues in its state of rest, unless it is
compelled to change that state by a force or forces impressed upon
it. 2) A change of motion is proportional to the force impressed
upon the body and is made in the direction of the straight line in
which the force is impressed. 3) To every action there is always
opposed an equal reaction. Book Three of the Principia opens with
two pages headed "Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy." There are four
rules as follows: 1) We are to admit no more causes of natural
things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain the
appearances. [A restatement of Ockham’s Razor: "What can be done
with fewer is done in vain with more."] 2) Therefore to the same
natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.
3) The qualities of bodies which are found to belong to all bodies
within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the
universal qualities of bodies whatsoever. 4) In experimental
philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general
induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true
notwithstanding any contrary hypothesis that may be imagined, till
such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made
more accurate, or liable to exceptions.
(V.D.-H.K.p.207-10)(http://tinyurl.com/6772jj)(Econ, 4/21/12, p.95)
1727 Mar 20, Sir Isaac Newton
(b.1642), physicist, mathematician and astronomer, died in London.
Michael White wrote the 1998 biography "Isaac Newton" in which he
revealed Newton’s passion for alchemy. In 2003 James Gleick authored
the biography "Isaac Newton." In 2011 Edward Dolnick authored “The
Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, Royal Society, and the Birth of
the Modern World.”
(AP, 3/20/97)(WSJ, 2/19/98, p.A20)(SSFC, 6/1/03,
p.M1)(Econ, 3/12/11, p.99)
1745 Feb 18, Count Alessandro
Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (d.1827), Italian physicist,
inventor (battery), was born.
(AHD, 1971
p.1436)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_Volta)
1745 Oct 11, The Leyden jar,
capable of storing static electricity, was invented by German cleric
Ewald Georg von Kleist. Also about this time Dutch scientist Pieter
van Musschenbroek of Leiden (Leyden) independently came up with the
same idea.
{Physics, Germany, Netherlands}
(ON, 2/12,
p.11)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leyden_jar)
1752 Jun 15, Benjamin Franklin
and his son tested the relationship between electricity and
lightning by flying a kite in a thunder storm. Some sources date
this to June 10.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin)
1753 Jul 26, New style date is
Aug 6. Georg Richmann (b.1711), German physicist, died of
electrocution in St. Petersburg, Russia, during an attempt to
duplicate Benjamin Franklin’s “sentry box” experiment. Reportedly,
ball lightning traveled along the apparatus and was the cause of his
death, apparently the first person in history to die while
conducting electrical experiments.
(Econ, 3/29/08,
p.104)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Richmann)(ON,
2/12, p.12)
1787 Carl Axel Arrhenius
discovered the mineral ytterbite in Ytterby, Sweden. Two years later
yttrium oxide was found in the sample and named. It took another 329
years for yttrium, a rare earth element, to be isolated from its
oxide.
(SSFC, 11/25/12, p.E7)
1800 Alessandro Volta
(1745-1827), Italian physicist, first demonstrated the electric pile
or battery.
(V.D.-H.K.p.269)(Econ, 3/8/08, TQ p.22)
1821 Thomas Johann Seebeck
(1770-1831), Estonia-born German physicist, discovered that applying
a temperature difference across two adjoined metals would give rise
to a small voltage. This came to be called the Seebeck effect.
(Econ, 9/6/08, TQ p.6)
1822 Jan 2, Rudolph J.E.
Clausius (d.1888), German physicist (thermodynamics), was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Clausius)
1827 Mar 5, Alessandro Volta
(b.1745), Italian physicist who made 1st battery (1800), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_Volta)
1843 Sep 19, Gustave-Gaspard
Coriolis (b.1792), French engineer and mathematician, died. He
showed that the laws of motion could be used in a rotating frame of
reference if an extra force called the Coriolis acceleration is
added to the equations of motion.
(www.gap-system.org/~history/Mathematicians/Coriolis.html)
1853 German physicist Heinrich
Magnus (1802-1870) first described the phenomenon, which came to be
called the Magnus effect, whereby a spinning object flying in a
fluid creates a whirlpool of fluid around itself, and experiences a
force perpendicular to the line of motion and away from the
direction of spin. According to author James Gleick (b.1954) Isaac
Newton described it and correctly theorized the cause 180 years
earlier, after observing tennis players in his Cambridge college.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_effect)
1859 Gaston Plante, French
physicist, invented the first rechargeable battery.
(Econ, 3/8/08, TQ p.23)
1877 Sep 11, James Jeans
(d.1946), English physicist, mathematician and astronomer, was born.
He was the first to propose that matter is continuously created
throughout the universe.
(HN, 9/11/00)(www.britannica.com)
1902 Apr 20, Radium was
isolated as a pure metal by Curie and André-Louis Debierne through
the electrolysis of a pure radium chloride solution. Pierre and
Marie Curie had discovered the element in 1898.
(AP,
4/20/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium)
1892 Sep 10, Arthur Compton,
physicist, was born in Wooster, Ohio.
(HN, 9/10/00)
1898 Jul 12, Xenon, an inert
substance, was discovered in England by the Scottish chemist William
Ramsay and English chemist Morris Travers.
(Econ, 2/8/14,
p.76)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon)
1904 John William Strutt
(1842-1919), 3rd Baron Rayleigh and British physicist, won the Nobel
Prize in Physics for his investigations of the densities of the most
important gases and for his discovery of argon in connection with
these studies.
(www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1904/)
1905 Einstein presented his
theory of relativity declaring that the very measurement of time
intervals is affected by the motion of the observer. He proposed
that light is itself quantized, or particle-like, to explain how
electrons were emitted when light hit certain metals. He presented
four papers, the first on Brownian motion, the second was on the
composition of light, the third proposed the Special Theory of
Relativity, and the fourth established the equivalence of mass and
energy. Einstein presented 5 papers this year, one of which was
titled “Does the Inertia of a Body Depend on its Energy Content?”
This paper provided an incomplete proof of E=mc2, an equation that
had already been know for a few years. In 2008 Hans C. Ohanian
authored “Einstein’s Mistakes: The Human Failings of Genius.”
(NH, 3/05,
p.72)(www.aip.org/history/einstein/great1.htm)(WSJ, 9/5/08, p.A13)
1908 Heike Kamerlingh-Onnes,
Dutch physicist, was the first to liquefy helium. He cooled helium
gas to below its boiling point of -269°C, just 4 degrees above
absolute zero. Three years later he observed the resistance of
mercury vanished when it was cooled by liquid helium, thus
discovering superconductivity.
(SFC, 10/10/96, p.A15)(Econ, 12/3/11, TQ p.20)
1914 Sep 7, James Alfred Van
Allen, physicist, was born in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. He discovered and
named the two radiation belts surrounding the Earth.
(HN, 9/7/98)
1916 May 11, Einstein's paper
“The Basis of the General Theory of Relativity” was published.
(http://tinyurl.com/2dvp8de)
1919 Jun 30, John William
Strutt (b.1842), 3rd Baron Rayleigh and British physicist and Nobel
Prize winner (1904), died in England. His work included the
discovery of the phenomenon now called Rayleigh scattering,
explaining why the sky is blue.
(www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1904/)
1919 Dec 28, Johannes Robert
Rydberg (b.1854), Swedish physicist, died. He is mainly known for
devising the Rydberg formula, in 1888, which is used to predict the
wavelengths of photons (of light and other electromagnetic
radiation) emitted by changes in the energy level of an
electron in an hydrogen atom.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Rydberg)
1921 Apr 2, Einstein
(1879-1955) made his first visit to the US on a fundraising tour
with Zionist leader Chaim Weizman. Prof. Albert Einstein lectured in
NYC on his new theory of relativity. In 2007 Jurgen Neffe authored
“Einstein: A Biography;” and Jozsef Illy edited “Albert Meets
America.”
(SSFC, 5/13/07,
p.M6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein)
1922 Carl Wieselsberger, German
physicist, described a method of suspending models on an airstream,
i.e. the ground effect.
(Econ, 9/8/07, TQ
p.12)(http://naca.central.cranfield.ac.uk/citations/cit.html)
1925 Wolfgang Pauli, Austrian
physicist, discovered his exclusion principle. This says that two
similar particles cannot exist in the same sate, that is they cannot
have both the same position and the same velocity, within the limits
given by the uncertainty principle. Pauli postulated the existence
of neutrinos in the 1930s.
(BHT, Hawking, p.67)(SFC, 7/21/00, p.B2)
1927 Mar, J.W. Dunne
(1875-1949), Irish engineer and author, published his essay “An
Experiment with Time” on the subjects of precognition and the human
experience of time. His theory suggested that in reality all time is
eternally present, that is, that past, present and future are all
happening together in some way. Human consciousness, however,
experiences this simultaneity in linear form. It was very widely
read, and his ideas were later promoted by several other authors, in
particular by J. B. Priestley. Other books by J. W. Dunne are The
Serial Universe, The New Immortality, and Nothing Dies.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Experiment_with_Time)
1929 Ernest Lawrence invented
the cyclotron at UC Berkeley.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclotron)
1930 Physicists in Germany
discovered the neutron. Walther Bothe and Herbert Becker described
an unusual type of gamma ray produced by bombarding the metal
beryllium with alpha particles. James Chadwick recognized that the
properties of this radiation were more consistent with what would be
expected from Ernest Rutherford's neutral particle. The subsequent
experiments by which Chadwick proved the existence of the neutron
earned him the 1935 Nobel Prize in physics.
(ON, 8/09,
p.7)(www.hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q609.html)
1931 Ernest Lawrence tested the
first cyclotron at UC Berkeley, Ca. The device measured 30cm in
circumference.
(Econ, 9/13/08, p.87)
1939 Jan 25, The cyclotron of
Nebraska-born nuclear physicist John R. (Ray) Dunning (31) produced
nuclear fission for the first time in America in Room 128 of
Columbia University's Pupin Physics Laboratory. Eugene T. Booth was
a member of the experimental team which conducted the first nuclear
fission experiment in the US; the other members of the team were
Herbert L. Anderson, John R. Dunning, Enrico Fermi, G. Norris
Glasoe, and Francis G. Slack.
(www.enotes.com/peoples-chronology/year-1939/science)
1939 Aug 2, Albert Einstein
signed a letter to President Roosevelt urging creation of an atomic
weapons research program.
(HFA, ‘96, p.36)(AP, 8/2/97)
1942 Sep 17, US Army Lt. Gen.
Leslie R. Groves (1896-1970) made a temporary Brigadier General and
was placed in charge of the Manhattan Engineer District, which
became known as the Manhattan Project, the fledgling US atomic bomb
program.
(ON, 8/09,
p.7)(http://unjobs.org/authors/leslie-r.-groves)
1942 Dec 2, A self-sustaining
nuclear chain reaction was demonstrated for the first time at the
University of Chicago. On the squash court underneath a football
stadium of the University of Chicago, the first nuclear chain
reaction was set off. At 3:45 p.m., control rods were removed from
the "nuclear pile" of uranium and graphite, revealing that neutrons
from fissioning uranium split other atoms, which in turn split
others in a chain reaction. The reaction was part of the Manhattan
Project, the United States' top-secret plan to develop an atomic
bomb. The group of scientists was led by Enrico Fermi and they
proved that building an atomic bomb would be feasible. Dr. Alexander
Langsdorf was one of the designers of the first 2 nuclear reactors
that followed the first sustained nuclear chain reaction at the
Univ. of Chicago. The first and last atomic bombs ever used in war
were dropped on Japan in 1945.
(TMC, 1994, p.1942)(SFC, 5/26/96, p.C-10)(AP,
12/2/97)(HNPD, 12/2/98)
1943 Jan 7, Nicola Tesla
(b.1856), Croatian born inventor and physicist, died In NYC. In 1996
Marc Seifer authored “Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla:
Biography of a Genius.”
(SFC, 12/29/96, Z1
p.2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla)(WSJ, 3/7/09, p.W8)
1943 Jan, Construction began at
Los Alamos, New Mexico, on a research facility for the Manhattan
Project, the US atomic bomb program.
(ON, 8/09, p.8)
1943 The Hanford nuclear
reservation was constructed in Washington state for the Manhattan
Project. Hanford made plutonium until the 1980s.
(SFC, 4/10/99, p.A7)
1948 Lewis Fry Richardson,
British physicist, authored a paper on the mathematics of war. He
showed that the probability of wars having a particular number of
casualties followed a mathematical relationship known as a power
law. This was probably the first rigorous analysis of the statistics
of war.
(Econ, 7/23/05, p.74)(Econ, 4/2/11, p.76)
1951 Apr 26, Arnold Sommerfeld
(b.1868), German theoretical physicist, died. He pioneered
developments in atomic and quantum physics. His atomic model
permitted the explanation of fine-structure spectral lines.
(www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Arnold_Sommerfeld)
1955 Apr 18, Albert Einstein
(76), physicist, died in Princeton New Jersey. Dr. Thomas Harvey,
chief pathologist at Princeton Hospital, performed Albert Einstein’s
autopsy. He removed the brain and took it home. In 2000 Michael
Paterniti authored "Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with
Einstein’s Brain." In 1999 it was reported that Einstein’s inferior
parietal lobe was larger than normal. In 2000 Amir D. Aczel
published "God's Equation: Einstein, Relativity, and the Expanding
Universe." [see Apr 15] In 1983 Abraham Pais (d.2000 at 81) authored
"Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein."
In 2000 Dennis Overbye authored "Einstein In Love," on Einstein’s
1st marriage with Mileva Maric. In 2002 Fred Jerome authored "The
Einstein File: J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret War Against the World’s Most
Famous Scientist." In 2007 Walter Isaacson authored “Einstein: His
Life and Universe;” Jurgen Neffe authored “Einstein: A Biography;”
and Jozsef Illy edited “Albert Meets America,” a chronicle of
Einstein’s first visit to the US (1921) on a fundraising tour with
Zionist leader Chaim Weizman.
(AP, 4/18/97)(SFC, 6/18/99, p.A18)(SFEC, 1/9/00,
BR p.4)(SFC, 8/1/00, p.B2)(WSJ, 10/20/00, p.W10)(SSFC, 3/18/01, BR
p.6)(SFC, 9/15/02, p.M5)(WSJ, 4/6/07, p.B3)(SSFC, 5/13/07, p.M6)
1955 Oct 18, Ernest O.
Lawrence, Univ. of California Radiation lab. director, announced the
discovery of the existence of an anti-proton, an atomic particle
postulated in 1928.
(SFC, 10/14/05, p.F6)
1957 Bruno Pontecorvo, Italian
physicist, suggested that neutrinos could come in different types,
known to physicists as flavors. His hypothesis was proved in 1998 in
Japan. Pontecorvo had defected to the Soviet Union seven years
earlier.
(Econ, 2/1/14, p.71)
1960 Donald A. Glaser
(1926-2013) of UC Berkeley, inventor of the bubble chamber, won the
Nobel Prize in Physics.
(SFC, 10/10/96, p.A1)(SFC, 2/19/13, p.C6)
1964 Peter Higgs of the Univ.
of Edinburgh postulated the Higgs boson, a particle responsible for
mass. The Higgs mechanism, a way that the massless gauge bosons in a
gauge theory get a mass by interacting with a background Higgs
field, was proposed in 1964 by Robert Brout and Francois Englert,
independently by Peter Higgs and by Gerald Guralnik, C. R. Hagen,
and Tom Kibble. It was inspired by the BCS theory of
superconductivity, vacuum structure work by Yoichiro Nambu, the
preceding Ginzburg–Landau theory, and the suggestion by Philip
Anderson that superconductivity could be important for relativistic
physics.
(SFC, 9/18/00,
p.A6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_mechanism)
1967 Feb 18, Robert Oppenheimer
(62), theoretical physicist and leader of atomic bomb development,
died. His work included outlining processes by which old stars of
sufficient mass might collapse beyond the Schwarzschild radius and
become black holes. Physicist John Wheeler named the phenomena black
holes. In 2005 Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin authored “American
Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” and
Priscilla J. McMillan authored “The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer.”
In n2013 Ray Monk authored “Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the
Center.”
(SFC, 12/19/98, p.C3)(SSFC, 4/10/05, p.B1)(SSFC,
7/31/05, p.F2)(SSFC, 5/26/13, p.F3)
1968 Aug 19, George Gamow
(b.1904), physicist and writer, died. He popularized the idea of The
Big Bang. His books included “One, Two Three… Infinity” (1947).
(V.D.-H.K.p.335)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gamow)
1968 Oct 27, Lisa Meitner
(b.1878), Austrian-born Swedish physicist, died in England. During
the war while in hiding from Hitler in Sweden, she analyzed and
understood for its significance the work of Otto Hahn who in 1944
was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on nuclear
fission.
(MT, 10/94, letters,
p.10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lise_Meitner)
1969 Prof. Henry W. Kendall
(1926-1999), American physicist and Nobel Prize winner (1990),
helped establish the Union of Concerned Scientists. The initial
focus of the organization was the opposition of nuclear weapons and
nuclear power plants.
(SFC, 2/17/99,
p.C3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_W._Kendall)
1973 Leo Esaki (b.1925), [Esaki
Reona], Japanese-born physicist, won the Nobel Prize.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Esaki)
1974 Nov 11, Burton Richter and
Samuel Ting found reported evidence for a fourth quark.
(NG, May 1985, J. Boslough, p.
650)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J/%CF%88_meson)
1980 Dr. Clyde Wiegand
(1915-1996), a nuclear physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory, retired. In the 1970s he opened a field called keonic
physics, wherein subatomic called k-mesons take the place of
electrons in atoms.
(SFC, 7/9/96, p.20)
1983 The General Conference on
Weights and Measures defined the speed of light in a vacuum at
299,792,458 meters per second. This set the value of the meter as
the path traveled by light in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
(NH, 2/05, p.24)(Econ, 1/29/11, p.79)
1984 Oct 20, Paul Dirac
(b.1902, British physicist and Nobel Prize winner (1933), died in
Florida. His equations predicted the existence of antimatter. In
2009 Graham Farmelo authored “The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of
Paul Dirac.”
(Econ, 1/24/09,
p.89)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dirac)
1984 Oct, Simon van der Meer
(1925-2011), Dutch physicist, and Carlo Rubbia (b.1934), Italian
physicist, shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for contributions to
the CERN project which led to the discovery of the W and Z
particles, two of the most fundamental constituents of matter.
{Nobel Prize, Physics}
(Econ, 3/19/11,
p.96)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_van_der_Meer)
1985 Feb 3, Frank Friedman
Oppenheimer (b.1912), American physicist, died. He had worked on the
Manhattan Project, was a target of McCarthyism, and was later the
founder of the Exploratorium in San Francisco (1969). He was the
younger brother of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the first director of
Los Alamos National Laboratory.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Oppenheimer)
1986 Georg Bednorz and
Alexander Muller, researchers at IBM’s Zurich laboratory, discovered
that that an exotic ceramic material behaved like a superconductor
at 35°K.
(Econ, 12/3/11, TQ p.20)
1987 The Tevatron, a circular
particle accelerator at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in
Batavia, Illinois, went into operation as the highest energy
particle collider in the world. In 2009 it was eclipsed by the Large
Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Switzerland.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tevatron)
1989 Caltech's Kip Thorne and
colleagues theorized that general relativity permits wormholes,
tunnels that cut across regions of space-time, and showed that with
enough negative energy, they can be propped open.
(WSJ, 11/21/03, p.B1)
1991 Princeton astrophysicist
J. Richard Gott proposed theorized that cosmic strings could warp
space time enough to create paths to the past, called closed
timelike curves.
(WSJ, 11/21/03, p.B1)
1991 A dye-sensitized solar
cell, also known as Gratzel cells, was invented by Michael Gratzel
and Brian O'Regan at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.
He pioneered research on energy and electron transfer reactions in
mesoscopic-materials and their optoelectronic applications.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dye-sensitized_solar_cell)
1993 In California Richard M.
Diamond (1924-2007), nuclear chemist, and lab partner Frank Stephens
developed and built the original Gammasphere at Berkeley’s 88-inch
cyclotron. It analyzed gamma rays emitted from atoms bombarded in
high-energy nuclear accelerators.
(SFC, 10/20/07, p.B5)
1995 Oct 13, The Nobel Peace
Prize was awarded to Polish-born British physicist Joseph Rotblat
(1908-2005) and the Pugwash Conferences (begun in Canada in 1957)
for their efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in
international politics.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Rotblat)(AP,
10/13/00)(SFC, 9/2/05, p.B5)(WSJ, 10/16/95, p. A1)
1996 Feb 27, It was reported
that element 112, aka unumbium, was first made in Darmstadt,
Germany, in an experiment led by Peter Armbruster.
(Econ, 5/5/07,
p.100)(http://newton.ex.ac.uk/aip/physnews.260.html)
1999 In Canada the Perimeter
Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI) was set up at Waterloo,
Ontario, by Mark Lazaridis, founder and co-CEO of Research In
Motion. Lazaridis' initial donation of $100 million was announced on
October 23, 2000.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perimeter_Institute_for_Theoretical_Physics)
2000 May 4, Hendrik Casimir
(b.1909), Dutch physicist, died. He was best known for his research
on the two-fluid model of superconductors (together with C. J.
Gorter) in 1934 and the Casimir effect (together with D. Polder) in
1946.
(Econ, 5/24/08,
p.105)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Casimir)
2005 Mar 6, Hans Bethe
(b.1906), German-born peace worker and Nobel Prize winning physicist
(1967), died in Ithaca, NY. In the 1930s Bethe, one of the greatest
innovative theoretical physicists of our time, unraveled the
mysterious nuclear cycles by which stars produce prodigious amounts
of energy for billions of years without burning out.
(SFC, 3/8/05, p.B5)(Econ, 3/19/05, p.90)
2005 Element 118 was created by
a team from Livermore, Ca., and scientists at the Dubna heavy ion
accelerator in Russia.
(SFC, 4/8/10, p.C5)
2006 Oct 4, Professor Eugene
Polzik and his team at the Niels Bohr Institute at Copenhagen
University in Denmark reported a breakthrough in teleportation by
using both light and matter.
(Reuters, 10/4/06)
2007 Jan, Work began on the
Int’l. Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in Cadarache,
France. 34 nations collaborated to realize the ITER project's First
Plasma in November 2019. The project was born at the Geneva
Superpower Summit in November, 1985.
(Econ, 9/3/11, p.79)(www.iter.org/factsfigures)
2007 Mar 20, Albert Baez
(b.1912), Mexican-American physicist, died. In 1948 he and Paul
Kirkpatrick co-invented the X-ray reflection microscope for the
study of living cells. His books included “The New College Physics:
A Spiral Approach” (1967), and the memoir “A Year in Baghdad”
(1988). Baez was also the father of singers Joan Baez and Mimi
Farina.
(SSFC, 3/25/07, p.B3)
2007 Sep 24, Wolfgang K.H.
Panofsky (b.1919), German-born Stanford physicist, died. He led the
construction of the Stanford Linear Accelerator following approval
by Congress in 1961.
(SFC, 9/26/07, p.B7)
2007 Oct 31, Physicists at UC
Berkeley said they had produced the world’s smallest radio out of a
single carbon nanotube, 10,000 times thinner than human hair. They
had it play “Layla” by Derek and the Dominos and said it could also
function as a transmitter.
(SFC, 11/1/07, p.C1)
2007 Walter Isaacson authored
“Einstein: His Life and Universe.”
(WSJ, 4/6/07, p.B3)
2008 Sep 10, In Geneva the
Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest particle collider, passed
its first major tests by firing two beams of protons in opposite
directions around a 17-mile (27-kilometer) underground ring in what
scientists hope is the next great step to understanding the makeup
of the universe. On Sep 19 it started leaking helium and had to be
turned off. The technical problems delayed for at least two months
the quest for scientists to learn more about the nature of the
universe and the origins of all matter.
(AP, 9/10/08)(AP, 9/20/08)(Econ, 9/27/08, p.96)
2008 Oct 7, The Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences announced that two Japanese citizens and a
Japanese-born American won the 2008 Nobel Prize in physics for
discoveries in the world of subatomic physics.
(AP, 10/7/08)
2008 Richard Muller, a
physicist at UC Berkeley, authored “Physics for Future Presidents:
The Science Behind the Headlines.
(SSFC, 8/3/08, Books p.1)
2008 Leonard Susskind authored
“The Black Hole War: My Battle With Stephen Hawking to Make the
World Safe for Quantum Mechanics.”
(WSJ, 7/28/08, p.A13)
2008 Physicist Frank Wilczek,
Nobel Prize winner (2004), authored “The Lightness of Being: Mass,
Ether, and the Unification of Forces.”
(Econ, 9/6/08, p.98)
2008 The ATLAS particle
detector at CERN, Switzerland, was completed.
(Econ, 4/27/13,
p.66)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATLAS_experiment)
2009 Mar 16, Bernard d’Espagnat
(87), French physicist and philosopher, was named in Paris as the
winner of this year’s $1.42 million Templeton Prize.
(SFC, 3/17/09, p.A2)
2009 Jun 11, German researchers
said a new, superheavy chemical element numbered 112, Ununbium,
Latin for 112, will soon be officially included in the periodic
table. A team in Darmstadt first produced 112 in 1996 by firing
charged zinc atoms through a 120-meter-long particle accelerator to
hit a lead target.
(Reuters, 6/11/09)
2009 Jul 28, It was reported
that scientists claimed to have created a form of aluminum that's
nearly transparent to extreme ultraviolet radiation and which is a
new state of matter.
(www.livescience.com/technology/090728-new-state-matter.html)
2009 Nov 20, In Geneva, Sw.,
CERN scientists restarted the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider
(LHC) following more than a year of repairs. They were surprised
that they could so quickly get beams of protons whizzing near the
speed of light during the restart.
(AP, 11/21/09)
2009 Nov 23, In Geneva the
world's largest atom smasher made another leap forward Monday by
circulating beams of protons in opposite directions at the same time
and causing the first particle collisions in the $10 billion machine
after more than a year of repairs.
(AP, 11/23/09)
2009 Nov 30, In Switzerland the
world's largest atom smasher broke the world record for proton
acceleration Monday, firing particle beams with 20 percent more
power than the American lab that previously held the record.
(AP, 11/30/09)
2010 Jan, Scientists at
Russia’s Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions announced internally
that they had succeeded in detecting the decay of a new element with
Z=117 using the reactions.
(SFC, 4/8/10,
p.C5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ununseptium)
2010 Mar 30, In Switzerland
scientists cheered the historic crash of two proton beams at the
CERN Large Hadron Collider.
(SFC, 3/31/10, p.A4)
2010 Jul 19, Physicist Gerson
Goldhaber (b.1924) died at his home in Berkeley, Ca. He contributed
to the 1955 discovery of the antiproton and to the discovery of the
“charm” quark, later known as the J/psi particle (1974).
(SFC, 7/22/10,
p.C4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J/%CF%88_meson)
2010 Sep 2, The London Times
published extracts of a new book by the eminent British theoretical
physicist Stephen Hawking in which he argues that God did not
create the universe and the "Big Bang" was an inevitable consequence
of the laws of physics. "The Grand Design" was co-authored with US
physicist Leonard Mlodinow.
(Reuters, 9/3/10)
2010 Oct 5, Two Russian-born
scientists shared the Nobel Prize in physics for groundbreaking
experiments with ultrathin carbon. University of Manchester
professors Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov used Scotch tape to
isolate graphene, a form of carbon only one atom thick but more than
100 times stronger than steel, and showed it has exceptional
properties, the strongest and thinnest material known to mankind.
(AP, 10/5/10)
2010 Nov 17, Scientists at CERN
reported that they have stored 38 atoms of the antimatter called
antihydrogen for a tiny fraction of a second. The first antihydrogen
atoms were made 15 years ago at CERN.
(SFC, 11/18/10, p.A9)
2011 Jun 7, Dmitri Mendeleev's
Periodic Table of Chemical Elements was augmented with two new
entries – elements 114 and 116. An international commission of
scientists, comprised mostly of physicists and chemists, agreed to
include the ultra-heavy chemicals in the Table.
(SFC, 6/9/11, p.A6)(http://tinyurl.com/64s59wa)
2011 Sep 22, It was reported
that CERN physicists have found that tiny particles called neutrinos
are making a 454-mile (730-km) underground trip faster than they
should, more quickly, in fact, than light could do. If the results
are confirmed, they could throw much of modern physics into
upheaval. Researchers in 2012 published papers that refuted the
faster than light neutrino travel.
(http://tinyurl.com/3k9puhj)(SFC, 9/23/11,
p.A5)(Econ, 3/24/12, p.82)
2011 Sep 30, The Tevatron
particle accelerator at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in
Batavia, Illinois, was shut down.
(Econ, 10/1/11, p.85)(http://tinyurl.com/42odxlf)
2011 Oct 4, Three US-born
scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics for overturning a
fundamental assumption in their field by showing that the expansion
of the universe is constantly accelerating. During the 1990s, Saul
Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess found that the light from
more than 50 distant exploding stars was far weaker than they
expected, meaning that galaxies had to be racing away from each
other at increasing speed.
(AP, 10/4/11)
2011 Dec 13, Scientists at
CERN, Switzerland, announced the possible discovery of the Higgs
boson, a fundamental particle proposed by British researcher Peter
Higgs in 1964.
(Econ, 12/17/11, p.137)
2011 David Deutsch, Oxford
physicist, authored “The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That
Transform the World.”
(Econ, 3/26/11, p.97)
2011 Hugh Aldersey-Williams
authored “Periodic Table: The Curious Lives of the Elements.”
(Econ, 2/5/11, p.96)
2012 Mar 24, It was reported
that New Zealand scientist Sir Paul Callaghan (64) has died after a
long battle with bowel cancer. He gained international recognition
for his work in molecular physics.
(AFP, 3/24/12)
2012 Jul 4, Physicists at CERN,
Switzerland, said they had found a new sub-atomic particle
consistent with the elusive Higgs boson which is believed to confer
mass.. “We have discovered a boson, and now we have to determine
what kind of boson it is." Finding the Higgs would validate the
Standard Model, a theory which identifies the building blocks for
matter and the particles that convey fundamental forces.
(AFP, 7/4/12)
2012 Jul 31, Russian internet
entrepreneur Yuri Milner announced that he will give $3 million each
year to the most influential thinker in fundamental physics.
(Econ, 8/4/12, p.70)
2012 Oct 9, The Nobel Prize in
Physics was awarded to Serge Haroche (68) of France and American
David Wineland (68) for experiments on quantum particles.
(SFC, 10/10/12, p.A4)
2013 Mar 14, The newfound
particle discovered at the world's largest atom smasher last year
is, indeed, the Higgs boson, the particle thought to give other
matter its mass, scientists reported today at the annual Rencontres
de Moriond conference in Italy.
(LiveScience.com, 3/14/13)
2013 Jun 29, Italian
astrophysicist Margherita Hack (95) died in the Adriatic Sea town of
Trieste. She had explained her research on the stars in plain
language for the public and championed civil rights.
(AP, 6/29/13)
2013 Jul 19, In Switzerland the
world's top particle physics lab said it had measured the decay time
of a particle known as a Bs (B sub s) meson into two other
fundamental particles called muons, which are much heavier than but
similar to electrons. It was observed as part of the reams of data
coming from CERN's $10 billion Large Hadron Collider, the world's
largest atom smasher.
(AP, 7/19/13)
2014 Ray Jayawardhana authored
“Neutrino Hunters: The Thrilling Chase for a Ghostly Particle to
Unlock the Secrets of the Universe.”
(Econ, 2/1/14, p.71)
2014 Heinrich Pas authored “The
Perfect Wave: With Neutrinos at the Boundary of Space and Time.”
(Econ, 2/1/14, p.71)
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Subject = Physics
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