5 Monumental Papers In the History of Physics
Papers that transformed our understanding of reality
Gravitational contraction
The first scientific explanation of the formation of Blackhole was done by J. Robert Oppenheimer and Hartland Snyder in 1939 in their paper ‘On continued gravitational contraction. The term ‘Black hole’ was not coined yet but they described the process by which a star with significant mass collapses into a singularity. Their paper was published alongside Bohr and Wheeler’s fission paper. The paper was first ignored in the scientific community as Blackhole was a new idea that many didn’t pay attention to. It wasn’t until the 1960s that the term Black hole became the talk of the town.
Nuclear fission
This paper was written by Niels Bohr and John Archibald Wheeler in 1939 (alongside Oppenheimer’s paper). It was a great coincidence that this paper was published on the opening day of World War II, on September 1st. This paper described the mechanism of nuclear fission which would later be the crucial theory for the establishment of the Manhattan project and the development of the Atom bomb. The positive impact of this paper could be seen as the use of efficient nuclear energy as the power source. The idea of nuclear fission had been discovered in Nazi Germany in December 1939 but they hadn’t figured out the mechanism yet. Einstein was worried about the potential impact of the power of nuclear fission in the hands of Nazi Germany. Bohr and Wheeler were the first to do so which put the United States millions of leagues above the other countries during the World War.
A brief outlook on their paper.
Gravitational Waves
LIGO made a quintessential discovery of Gravitational waves and proved that Einstein was right all along. When Einstein wrote the general theory of relativity describing gravity, he came up with the idea that it leaves a ripple in space-time so-called gravitational waves. He was later unsure about his assumptions as no such means of proving it experimentally was present back then. These ripples are generally weak and undetectable. But an explosion big enough or the collapse of two black holes could create the waves that could be detected in the lab. LIGO successfully detected it in 2016.
Energy production in stars
Since the dawn of scientific curiosity, it had been a crucial question regarding the mechanism of how the stars shine. Early assumptions were made that it was because of gravity, but later when science touched a new horizon, it was discarded as the star would collapse in itself if it was solely due to gravity. Later, more sophisticated explanations were attempted regarding nuclear reactions. It was assumed that two protons fuse to power the star, as a proton describes hydrogen, and stars have an abundance of it. But Hans Bethe in 1938 confirmed that proton fusion alone couldn’t produce the energy responsible for the shine of the brightest stars. He was later awarded the Nobel Prize for it in 1967.
His paper on how stars shine.
The positive electron
This marks one of the indispensable discoveries in the history of quantum mechanics. In the 1920s, Paul Dirac successfully derived an equation to explain the nature of electrons. But when calculations for the energy of electrons were done, there came the negative root. He was confused as negative energy for an electron seemed absurd at that time. Math can never be wrong and Dirac came to the conclusion that there must be a new matter with negative energy. He didn’t publish this idea but Carl Anderson who ventured around Dirac’s electron equation did in 1933. During his experimental observation, Anderson spotted lightweight particles that were positively charged and came to the conclusion that these must be Dirac’s anti-electron.
His paper on the positive electron.
Contributed by Rishab Karki and curated by the author.
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