Jocelyn Bell Burnell and pulses in the sky: Little Green Men or fast-rotating cosmic beacons?
"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” (Arthur C. Clarke) In the post-World War II era, radio astronomy took off as the main field of inquiry in astronomy as radar scientists turned their dishes to the sky. Among them, is a postgraduate student in astronomy at the University of Cambridge, Jocelyn Bell Burnell (born in 1943, in Northern Ireland). When Jocelyn was a child, she read an astronomy book, "Frontiers of Astronomy" by cosmologist Fred Hoyle. Here she discovered that her passion had to be radio astronomy, where telescopes don't use visible light, instead, they use radio waves. As a graduate student, she was interested in investigating sources of cosmic radio waves such as quasars, extremely energetic and bright centers of galaxies powered by supermassive black holes. In the process and unexpectedly, she found something else, equally intriguing and as mysterious as a quasar.
Read full storyDuring a snowy day of winter in Sweden, Lise explains nuclear fire
Imagine you are a crucial person in the discovery of something in nature of historic proportions. How would you feel that you have trodden on the soil where nobody in the history of humanity has trespassed? What an honor and joy to discover something about nature that is new to our quest for knowledge. The obstacles in life seem unimportant during those moments of great discoveries. This is precisely what many scientists have experienced in their journey to understanding, among them, Madame professor Lise Meitner (Lise is pronounced "Leeza") (1878 - 1968), the discoverer of nuclear fission, an Austrian-Swedish physicist with Jewish ancestry working in Nazi Germany with chemist Otto Hahn (1879 - 1968). Unfortunately, Hahn was the only one who received the Nobel prize (in Chemistry) for this momentous discovery of splitting the atom and the German military began looking into it in April 1939, long before the Allies (Overlooked Achievement: The Life of Lise Meitner, lecture by Ruth Lewin Sime). If it was up to me, Lise deserves a posthumous Nobel Prize.
Read full storyThe Knowledge of the Ultimate Mystery of Nature, Impossible
“Let’s consider your age to begin with — how old are you?’ ‘I’m seven and a half exactly.’ ‘You needn’t say “exactually,”’ the Queen remarked: ‘I can believe it without that. Now I’ll give you something to believe. I’m just one hundred and one, five months and a day ‘I can’t believe that!’ said Alice. ‘Can’t you?’ the Queen said in a pitying tone. ‘Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes. ’Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said: ‘one can’t believe impossible things." (Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass)
Read full storyDr. Chien-Shiung Wu (1912- 1997) and how the weak force abhors a mirror
"If the universe were reflected in a mirror, most laws of physics would be identical—things would behave the same way regardless of what we call "left" and what we call "right". This concept of mirror reflection is called parity." (Meson. In Wikipedia)
Read full storyThe NASA scientist who made it count
What do astronauts Alan Shepard (the first American to reach space), John Glenn (the first American to orbit the Earth), and Neil Armstrong (the first human to walk on the Moon) have in common? Perhaps some of us might respond: "They are astronauts", "They are Americans", "They are American astronauts", or "They exhibited the courage to go to outer space". However, for this story, I want to stress the main reason why they have someone in common. They all had their flight paths calculated by NASA mathematician Katherine Goble Johnson (1918 - 2020).
Read full storyThe Father of Cosmology meets the Father of the Big Bang
Georges Lemaitre and Albert Einstein, Credit: Ida Lee. It was 1927, in Leopold Park in Brussels, a Catholic priest called Georges Lemaitre (1894 - 1966) had a meeting with the father of cosmology, Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955): "Here, finally, was his chance to explain his idea about an expanding universe to the very person whose theory he'd used to derive it...if Einstein endorsed his radical idea then surely it would be accepted" (The Beginning and End of the Universe, BBC). Unfortunately, Einstein wasn't ready to accept an expanding universe, and to think of it was "abominable". In Einstein's mind, a static universe was the correct cosmology. Georges Lemaitre's theory "should have ignited science, but without the backing of such a huge and influential figure as Einstein, his groundbreaking idea was doomed to be quietly forgotten" (The Beginning and End of the Universe, BBC).
Read full storyEnrico Fermi and the "New World" of Nuclear Fission
"That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind". (Neil Armstrong, commander of the Apollo 11 Moon landing mission) These words spoken by American astronaut Neil Armstrong may also describe the amazing work of Italian (later American naturalized) physicist Enrico Fermi (1901 - 1954). His first investigative steps, performed in Italy, and later in New York and in Chicago, resulted in a gigantic endeavor when he achieved the first man-made nuclear reactor in the world. Enrico's leadership and genius were also instrumental in the design of the first atomic bomb on the Manhattan Project (Enrico Fermi). I think of Enrico as an explorer, in the same league as Neil Armstrong, Christopher Columbus, Marco Polo, and the Viking Leif Ericson. When Enrico had accomplished a self-sustained atomic chain reaction in Chicago, the head of the project Arthur Compton referred to the feat as "the Italian navigator has just landed in the New World, the secret phrase agreed to signal success".
Read full storyThe Many Universes of Stephen Hawking
"Shortly after my 21st birthday, I went into hospital for tests. They took a muscle sample from my arm, stuck electrodes into me, and injected some radio-opaque fluid into my spine, and watched it going up and down with X-rays as they tilted the bed. I was diagnosed as having ALS...or motor neuron disease, as it is also known. The doctors could offer no cure and gave me two and a half years to live". (Stephen Hawking. "A Brief History of Time" 1991 film).
Read full storyMarie Curie is "the corner-stone of the edifice of the science of radioactivity"
"Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony". -Morpheus, The Matrix (1999 film) Scientists used to think of atoms as solid spheres, immutable entities responsible for the composition of everything in the universe. These particles, fated to compose matter, gave philosophers a sense of security. The structure of the universe relied on the eternal. Atoms will always be there, unchanged, looking like the monads of philosopher G.W. Leibniz wherein "in his system of metaphysics, monads are basic substances that make up the universe... Each monad is a unique, indestructible, dynamic, soullike entity..." (Monad philosophy. In Britannica). Who would have thought that in the 1890s this conception will be shattered from its very foundation?
Read full storyAlan Guth describes Inflation as a theory of the Bang
"Our whole universe was in a hot, dense state, then nearly 14 billion years ago expansion started. Wait..." (from The Big Bang Theory TV show intro song). This intro song of the sitcom The Big Bang Theory has done a fine job synthesizing the main ideas of the Big Bang for the public. The Universe is not static; it is expanding from a hot and dense point. However, the Big Bang theory in cosmology is a theory about the origin of the universe, not its later evolution. What happened right after the Bang? In the words of Alan Guth (born in 1947), a cosmologist at MIT who is one of the pioneers that theorized about an inflationary universe, "Inflation explains the Bang" (from Alan Guth Explains Inflation Theory)
Read full storyThe interaction between energy and matter, nothing less than a quantum
Some of us, when we hear the word quantum (plural quanta, from the German word Quanten), might think of health supplements, a sports car, or even the television show Quantum Leap. More recently, in Marvel Studios movies such as Ant-Man, Doctor Strange, and Avengers: Endgame, "the quantum realm" is presented where time flows differently from our ordinary reality and the Avengers may use the subatomic world "to go back in time", a world that "is smaller than a single atom" (Woodward, 2019, para.20)
Read full story