"Perhaps the past, if looked upon with care and hindsight, may teach us where we possibly took a wrong turn"

A partial history of particle physics II

Like I was saying last time, the electron was discovered by JJ Thomson in 1897, the proton was discovered by his student Ernest Rutherford in 1917, and the neutron was discovered by his student  James Chadwick in 1932: Chadwick neutron discovery image from Goodfellow.com The positron was discovered by Carl Anderson in the same year. Then the muon was discovered by Carl Anderson and Seth Neddermayer in 1936. After a hiatus due to World War II, the charged pion was discovered in 1947, as was the…

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A partial history of particle physics I

The history of particle physics starts with the concept of the atom. The word is derived from atomos, which means indivisible. It goes way back to the Greek philosopher Leucippus in the 5th century BC. His student Democritus promoted the idea, but Aristotle was dead against it. The Christian Church sided with Aristotle, and it wasn’t until the 17th century that atoms were resurrected. See the Philosophy Institute article Evolution of the Atomic Theory for more. Things really picked up in 1808 when John Dalton published…

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Mr Newton’s classroom

Mr Newton liked the blackboard, so his laptop remained in its case on the desk in front of him. He finished drawing his squiggles and arrows with an emphatic chip chip of the chalk. “So,” he said, turning to the class. “What does beta minus decay tell us?” There was a brief clatter of an iPod from the back and a rustle as Johnnie Dalton hid his Heat magazine. Then silence. I always felt out of my depth in Mr Newton’s class, so I kept my…

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Space

A lot of people are interested in space. It’s an interesting thing. Especially since it’s a something, not a nothing. Something that used to be called the aether¹. It was also called the fifth element or quintessence, and “was believed to fill the universe beyond the terrestrial sphere”: Abell S1063 image taken by the JWST, see the Space.com article JWST peers through a cosmic lens in deepest gaze to date People tend to think that Einstein dispensed with the aether, and that the Michelson-Morley experiment proved…

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New Scientist

I’m so glad the Artemis II crew made it back safely. I was worried that something would go wrong and NASA would have another spectacular on its hands. Regular readers will know that I’m all for this kind of thing, but I think we need something better than chemical rockets: Artemis II launch image, courtesy of NASA I am reminded of what Steve Buscemi said in Armageddon: “we're sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts…

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Particle discovered at CERN solves a 20-year-old mystery

I just love this time of year. The Sun is shining, the flowers are blooming, the bees are buzzing, and the birds are singing. I think they’re happy. Like the children we hear at playtime in the nearby school. Like the robin that fluttered around me as I weeded the front border on my hands and knees. Flowers in my front border Spring is a time of optimism and promise¹, with so much to look forward to. I look forward to picnics on the beach, sundowners…

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The mechanical universe

The Mechanical Universe is the name of a series of YouTube videos by Chantal Roth and James Ellias¹. As per convention I will refer to them by their surnames: I know Roth. I’ve spoken to her on Zoom about physics and simulations. She has a YouTube Channel called Red Pill. I don’t know Ellias, but he has a YouTube channel called Inductica. I didn’t mention either of them when I talked about YouTube physics a couple of months ago. Sorry about that. Screenshot from the Mechanical…

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PhysOrg

One website I rather like is called PhysOrg. It’s a news aggregator website which nowadays puts up about two hundred science stories a day. I’ve referred to a fair number of them in my Physics Detective articles. PhysOrg was around when I started digging into physics twenty years ago. Back then the website was PhysOrg.com, now it’s Phys.org. See the Phys.org entry on Grokipedia for some background. It was founded in 2004 by two anonymous PhD students “in response to the scarcity of accessible, high-quality science journalism…

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YouTube Physics

Merry Christmas to one and all. It’s been another day in paradise here on the South coast of England. The sky was blue, the beach was beautiful, and I even saw a lizard basking in the sun. It was a wall lizard, also known as Podarcis muralis: Poole, UK, December 20th 2025, clockwise: 1) looking towards Bournemouth, 2) looking towards Sandbanks, 3) a wall lizard It was another day in paradise last Sunday in Bondi beach when our daughter was walking past the pavilion. Fortunately she…

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It would be sufficient to really understand the electron

Einstein said “You know, it would be sufficient to really understand the electron”. At least that’s how Hans Dehmelt quoted him in 1989. As for the original source I’m not sure, I think it goes back to Stanford in 1950, but no matter. The electron was discovered by J J Thomson in 1897, and here we are 128 years later and people still don’t understand it. So much so that people like Frank Wilczek say “to understand the electron is to understand the world”. Even though…

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