John Carlos Baez on Nostr: In fundamental physics, the period from 1940 to 1960 looks a bit slower than the ...
In fundamental physics, the period from 1940 to 1960 looks a bit slower than the previous two decades. Perhaps World War II slowed things down.
But the development of quantum electrodynamics was huge. People had been trying for decades to unify quantum mechanics with special relativity - that is, understand a world where space and time are unified and all particles and forces are described using linear algebra. Initial attempts gave infinite answers to physics questions.
Only when Tomonaga, Schwinger and Feynman developed "renormalization" did this project begin to succeed. At first it only applied to charged particles interacting by exchanging photons. This is called quantum electrodynamics. But this opened the floodgates for future work on quantum field theory.
Pauli had predicted there must be a hard-to-detect and almost massless particle which he called the "neutrino". This was found in 1956. It turned out to be just the first of three.
And also in 1956, a huge experimental shocker: Wu discovered that left and right are fundamentally different!
(4/n)
But the development of quantum electrodynamics was huge. People had been trying for decades to unify quantum mechanics with special relativity - that is, understand a world where space and time are unified and all particles and forces are described using linear algebra. Initial attempts gave infinite answers to physics questions.
Only when Tomonaga, Schwinger and Feynman developed "renormalization" did this project begin to succeed. At first it only applied to charged particles interacting by exchanging photons. This is called quantum electrodynamics. But this opened the floodgates for future work on quantum field theory.
Pauli had predicted there must be a hard-to-detect and almost massless particle which he called the "neutrino". This was found in 1956. It turned out to be just the first of three.
And also in 1956, a huge experimental shocker: Wu discovered that left and right are fundamentally different!
(4/n)