VoltMany researchers get their best ideas while walking or sleeping, when the subconscious mind is free to think about problems. In 1967, when physicist Steven Weinberg drove a red Chevrolet Camaro (Steven Weinberg) to his workplace, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, he had his greatest idea, this Will revolutionize particle physics and bring him the Nobel Prize.
Weinberg has long been thinking about how to reconcile the existing four forces of nature-strong nuclear, weak and electromagnetic forces, and gravity-despite their different appearances. He was convinced that these forces acted like a single elemental force at first, only after the Big Bang and decoupled in the later stages of the universe.
Money saving trick
Behind the steering wheel of his sports car, Weinberg suddenly realized that there are at least two natural forces that have surprisingly common mathematics. This makes it possible to use a unified formula to describe the electromagnetic interaction between charged particles and the weak forces that play a role in radioactive decay. When he arrived at the office, he published a two-and-a-half page article in the famous Physical Review Letters and wrote down his thoughts. But his idea did not arouse people’s interest initially. But when it was discovered that two other theorists-Sheldon Glashaw and Abdus Salam-were working on the same problem, the situation changed.
The three physicists teamed up to design a theory that unifies weak force and electromagnetic force, which they call electroweak interaction. This brings them closer to standardized natural forces. However, your theory has several flaws: it needs to exchange the presence of particles, it should correspond to the photons of electromagnetic force, but they should carry mass. There should also be a weak process (neutral current) in which the charge of the partner involved has not changed. This is inconsistent with the emerging view that matter consists of three basic quarks.
In 1970, Glascio unceremoniously “invented” a particle of matter—different from the three quarks known at the time—that should appear in a weak reaction. When this building block—charm quark—was actually discovered in 1974, and in 1983, the outstanding exchange particles of electroweak interaction—W and Z bosons—see the light of elementary particle physics, the new theory Finally entered the textbook. Today, it constitutes the backbone of the Standard Model of Particle Physics, the world model that describes the structure of matter. Four years ago, Glashaw, Salam and Weinberg won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Three minutes to see the universe
Born in New York in the 1980s, he worked successively at the University of California, Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. Since 1982, Weinberg, who has led the theory group at the University of Austin, Texas, has also tried electroweak force. Standardize powerful nuclear energy-but not much success. Weinberg is an open atheist, and since then he has dealt with astronomy and astrophysics more and more.
In addition to actual research, Weinberg also needs to explain difficult topics in an easy-to-understand way. He is likely to be well-known to readers mainly through his popular science books “the first three minutes”. He described the development of the universe from the perspective of particles and astrophysics. Steven Weinberg, who has won many awards, expressed his opinions on political and social issues even in his later years. Last weekend, as everyone knows, this great physicist died in Austin at the age of 88.
