Download Brief History of Nuclear Physics and more Study notes Physics in PDF only on Docsity! Brief History of Nuclear Physics 1896: discovery of radioactivity by Becquerel 1898: separation of Radium by Maria and Pierre Curie; discovery of α, β, γ rays 1911: nucleus as a central part of an atom – Rutherford 1913: Soddy and Richards elucidate the concept of nuclear mass: isotopes are born 1919: Rutherford carries out first transmutation (He+N → p+O) 1923: Georg von Hevesy uses radioactive tracers in biology 1928: theory of alpha decay by Gamow 1929: cyclotron (Ernest Lawrence); Rasetti discovers spin J=1 for 14N 1930: Pauli predicts neutrino; Dirac predicts antimatter 1932: discovery of the neutron by Chadwick; discovery of positrons by Anderson 1934: Fermi theory of beta decay; Baade and Zwicky predict neutron stars 1935: nuclear (strong) force through meson exchange – Yukawa 1936: John Lawrence treats leukemia with 32P 1938: stars are powered by nuclear fusion (Gamow, von Weizsäcker, Bethe): pp, CNO 1939: nuclear fission (Hahn, Strassman, Meitner, Frisch); Bohr, Wheeler explain fission 1940: McMillan and Abelson produce a new element (n+238U → 239U →239Np→239Pu) 1942: first self-sustaining fission reaction (Fermi); Manhattan project (Oppenheimer) 1945: atomic bomb 1947: pi meson discovered in Bristol (by studying cosmic ray tracks) 1948: Big Bang nucleosynthesis (Alpher, Bethe, Gamow) Electricity generated at the X-10 Graphite Reactor in Oak Ridge 1949: nuclear shell model (Mayer, Jensen) 1951: nuclear collective model (Bohr, Mottelson, Rainwater) 1952: hydrogen bomb (Teller, Ulam); Hoyle resonance predicted 1954: proton therapy at Berkeley 1956: experimental evidence for antineutrino (Reines, Cowan) prediction and discovery of parity violation (Lee, Yang, Wu) 1957: stellar nucleosynthesis (Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler, Hoyle) 1958: nuclear superconductivity (Bohr, Mottelson, Pines) 1961: first PET scan at Brookhaven 1964: quarks proposed (Gell-Mann, Zweig) 1967: discovery of neutron stars (Hewish, Shklovsky, Bell) 1969: intrinsic structure of the proton (SLAC) 1972: color charge and quantum chromodynamics (Fritsch, Gell-Mann) 1978: discovery of the gluon (DESY) 1982: chiral symmetry on the lattice (Ginsparg, Wilson) 1983: discovery of W and Z intermediate vector bosons (CERN) 1995: top quark discovered (Fermilab) 1999: discovery of particle stability of 31F (RIKEN) 2001: neutrino oscillations (Super-Kamiokande, SNO) 2002: element Z=118 produced in Dubna 2005: quark–gluon liquid of very low viscosity discovered at RHIC 2008: discovery of 40Mg at MSU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJsam4z715c HW#1: The “Brief History” ends in 2008. What milestones would you add to the list? (The more the merrier) Relativistic Heavy Ions RESOLUTION protons & neutrons Electron Scattering Reactive Beams Observations DISTANCE Subfields of nuclear physics • nuclear structure, whose goal is to build a coherent framework for explaining all properBes of nuclei and nuclear maYer and how they interact • nuclear astrophysics, which explores those events and objects in the universe shaped by nuclear reacBons • hot QCD, or relaBvisBc heavy ions, which examines the state of melted nuclei and with that knowledge seeks to shed light on the nature of those quarks and gluons that are the consBtuent parBcles of nuclei • cold QCD, or hadron structure, which explores the characterisBcs of the strong force and the various mechanisms by which the quarks and gluons interact and result in the properBes of the protons and neutrons that make up nuclei. • fundamental symmetries, those areas on the edge of nuclear physics where the understandings and tools of nuclear physicists are being used to unravel limitaBons of the Standard Model and to provide some of the understandings upon which a new, more comprehensive Standard Model will be built.
