5 ms·
The Proposal of the Neutrino (1930)
- more_original 10y agoAt first, I thought the title was a mistake, as the letter speaks of 'neutrons' throughout. But it turns out that the term 'neutrino' came only later: 'Pauli earlier (in 1930) had used the term "neutron" for both the neutral particle that conserved energy in beta decay, and a presumed neutral particle in the nucleus, and initially did not consider these two neutral particles as distinct from each other' (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- gpderetta 10y agoBasically Pauli can't get his dear theory to work so has to invent magic dark matter to get the theory to match the experiments. This 'quantum' atom looks more and more like ptolemaic epicycles. Clearly we need to throw the theory away and start from scratch. [this being the internet: /s ]
- Avshalom 10y agoI came here to snark this exact snark.
- pvg 10y agoIt's Pauli who's being the principled scientist here, though. He comes up with something that explains the experimental result and fits established theory. The epicyclist in this case was Bohr - his idea was that maybe conservation of energy is just a suggestion.
- astrodust 10y agoMaybe the missing mass is just the universe skimming a small percentage of the "transaction" as payment, right?
- walrus1066 10y agoThe neutrino is very real, and observable by experiment. It was first unambiguously observed in 1956 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowan–Reines_neutrino_experiment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowan–Reines_neutrino_experi...). Reines was awarded a Nobel prize in 1995 for the discovery.
- gpderetta 10y agoOf course, mine was just a quip at those that dismiss dark matter as just an 'hack' to patch a broken theory.
- walrus1066 10y agoAh, understood :)
- silicon123 10y agoThe beginning "Dear Radioactives" is a classic, we even learnt it at school
- lucozade 10y agoAs this was sent to experimental nuclear physicists in the 30's, it may well have been a reasonably accurate description.
- martincmartin 10y agoI've been reading "The Making of the Atomic Bomb," which is a great book and covers the early discovery of Quantum Mechanics, including this letter. Recommended.
- astrodust 10y agoThe follow-up to that is basically Command and Control which covers what happens after those things were made. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_Control_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_Control_(book) It starts out where those weapons and prototypes from World War II were sitting on a shelf in a hut in the middle of the desert with no real security. That program had been all but shut down, the team disbanded. Equally interesting is Stalin and the Bomb which covers the Soviet efforts to replicate what the Americans had created: https://books.google.ca/books/about/Stalin_and_the_Bomb.html?id=ICO6aUnQ2KcC&redir_esc=y https://books.google.ca/books/about/Stalin_and_the_Bomb.html... There's accounts of scientists painstakingly re-discovering fundamental things only to realize their superiors already knew the correct approach to take, their intelligence had stolen the files, but were concerned that the information was faked to lead them astray. They must have felt like high-school students getting their homework checked by the teacher.