The Matter Of Everything
Suzie Sheehy 2023 West Slope Library 539.7 SHEEHY
Borzoi Book Published by Alfred A. Knopf Copyright 2022 by Suzie Sheeny First American Edition | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2023. LCCN 2022021649 | ISBN 9780525658757 (hardcover) Classification: LCC QC793.15 .S54 2023 1st Printing
1984 born Mildura, Victoria, Australia 2006 BS University of Melbourne 2010 PhD University of Oxford 2015 Royal Society University Research Fellow, Oxford
011 1895 Röntgen experiment generates X-rays across laboratory from cathode ray tube
- 014 images wife's hand
016 1897 J. J. Thompson
- 019 electron
020 Original experiment in Science Museum, London
021 Lewis Latimer carbon filament for Edison bulb
024 Brain X-Ray, injected air bubble 1919 until 1960s Godfrey Hounsfield X-ray computed tomography
029 physicist Ernest Rutherford
029 chemist Frederick Soddy
030 Rutherford gold foil experiment
- 039-40 large angle scattering of alphas by gold foil, dense small nucleus
032 Harriet Brooks, grad student from Ontario, detects "gas" (alpha/helium particles) from thorium
037 Ernest Marsden and Hans Geiger
043 Shroud of Turin medieval forgery
- 051 Independent of temperature, not classical
- 054 Planck quantum "act of desperation" to explain high frequency falloff of black body radiation
055-7 Robert Millikan tries and fails to disprove Einstein, paper 1916
- 058 Nobel Prizes 1921 Einstein, 1923 Millikan
061 Louis de Broglie wave properties of particles, Nobel Prize 1929
063 Davisson and Germer 1925 experiment, electrons on nickel form nanometer-wavelength interference patterns
063 Sandra Eibenberger 2013 10000 amu molecules form 500 femtometer-wavelength interference patterns
071 Griffith Observatory Cloud chamber, 1936 Alexander Langsdorf design
074 Victor Hess Cosmic Rays 1936 Nobel
075 Charles Wilson glass blower, cloud chamber, 1927 Nobel
- 079 Magnets, curve measures charge and energy
079 Dmitri Skobeltsyn 5 GeV cosmic rays
080 Carl Anderson Caltech cloud chamber, noisy expansion piston, 425 kW magnet
081 observed positrons predicted by Dirac
- 082 Pauli, Bohr, Heisenberg considered Dirac's antimatter nonsense
083 Blackett and Occhialini observe electron/positron pair production
083 "Anderson youngest physics Nobel" in 1936 at age 33 ... nope, William Lawrence Bragg in 1915 at age 25.
084 1935 Anderson and Neddermeyer observe muons on Pike's Peak
085 differ from Hideki Yukawa's predicted nucleus-binding pi mesons
085 nuclear emulsion plate better than cloud chamber
086 Marietta Blau
087 Bibha Chowdhuri discovers mesons with nuclear emulsion
089 1e18 cosmic rays strike every second, 1 GW; Sheeny silly calculation "3.6 billion kW every hour"
- actually, 1 cosmic ray is 1 nanojoule, 6 GeV ... not 80,000,000 GeV
089 cosmic rays make Carbon-14
090 Beryllium-10 (half life 1.4MY) ratio to stable ⁹Be dates ice cores and soil deposits
090 ca. 1955, Australian physicist E. P. George measures rock density above Snowy Hydro Guthega-Munyang tunnel with cosmic ray muons using a Geiger counter.
090 ca. 1966, Luis Alvarez ( Adventures of a Physicist, p230-236 ) measures muon density from the Belzoni Champer in the Second Pyramid of Chephren.
091 ScanPyramids Project finds void in Khufu's Pyramid
- 095 Violin teaser
- 097 Rutherford hypothesizes neutrons, proton-mass but uncharged
- 100 visual estimation of radioactive events prone to confirmation bias (observer overestimate)
101 1927: Ernest Walton proposes accelerating charged particles
101 Walton shares lab with Thomas Allibone and John Cockcroft
102 Cockcroft calculates alpha Coulomb barrier 10 million volts
104 George Gamow suggests tunneling means 5 MeV emission, 1 MeV sometimes penetrates, perhaps 300 KeV
106 Metrovick 1930 transformer, Walton rectifier
- disappointing results
109 Start work on 800KV machine 1932, fail, make 250KV Cockroft-Walton generator
- 109 Irene Curie and Frederic Joliot bombard beryllium with polonium sourced alphas, mistakenly assume gamma emission
110 Chadwick observes many 8 MeV alphas produced with 250 KeV protons bombarding Lithium 7
7.016003434 amu (Li₇) + 1.007276467 amu (p₁) - 2*4.002603254 amu (He₄) -> 0.018073393 amu = 16.835 MeV/c²
113 Physicist Harry Gove at University of Rochester helped Charles Bennett date his violin carbon in 1977.
- Used a mass spectrometer to precisely count C-12 and C-14 atoms
- Calibrated with geological carbon 14, found modern charcoal has 1000 times as much
- 114 measured tree rings, fossils, mummy cloth
- 115 measured the Shroud of Turin, AD 1260-1390 with 95% confidence, not 2000yo at all
- 115 $500G products made with particle beams annually in the US alone (2022 GDP $25000G)
- 116 ion implantation for integrated circuits, De Beers gemstone color modification
- 117 Louvre analyzes composition of artwork and historical artefacts (artifacts is US spelling)
118 measure bottles, detect wine fraud
120 Ernest Orlando Lawrence , first major chemistry, wooed by physicist Lewis Akeley
- 124 at UCB in 1929, Lawrence imagines cyclotron
- 125 first attempt with 1930 PhD student Niels Edlefsen
126 next M. Stanley Livingston 30 cm diameter. 3000 Vac to almost 1 MeV, then 1.1 MeV 1931 August 3
LeConte Hall now renamed Physics South
- 127 larger machines, 27 inch then 37 inch, 2 MeV
August 1931 Radiation Laboratory, former Civil Engineering Test Laboratory
- 129 deuteron beams coat targets with deuterium, spurious results
- 131 artificial isotopes, radio-thorium 15.5h halflife, radio-phosphorus
- 132 MD brother John Lawrence injects radio-phosphorus into mice with leukaemia, cured them, controls died
- 133 1937 8 MeV 37 inch machine / irradiate mother Lawrence's uterine tumor, she lives another 16 years
134 Cobalt-60, half-life 5.3 years, gamma emitter, 4M medical doses/year
134 Seaborg Iodine-131, half life 8 days, thyroid cancer, diagnostics
135 Technetium-99m 6h half-life, 10M diagnostic procedures per year
- 138 Relativistic protons gain mass but not speed, desynchronize near a few hundred MeV
Betatron, field increases with electron energy, particles orgit at a constant radius
- 142 100 MeV Betatron, zero to 100MeV 60 times per second
- 143 10 eV lost per revolution, final energy 99 MeV rather than 100 MeV
- 143 doubling energy, loss increases 16x, tops out at 500 eV
144 Synchrotron, increase drive frequency with particle energy
crystals as diffraction gratings, Max von Laue and Paul Peter Ewald
149 Benzene 1929, Penicillin 1949, DNA 1952, B12 1955, Insulin 1969
150 Australian Synchrotron 3 GeV, 500 MHz RF, 216 meters circumference (69m diameter), 14 sectors, 30+ beamlines
- 152 180 degrees of data in 18 seconds, compared to 40 minutes per angle on benchtop. A range of 50 varied samples can be done in a few hours, rather than years.
- 152 Without synchrotrons, the SARS-COV-2 structure could have taken years.
153 Understanding giant magnetoresistance. used for huge spinning platter hard drives but NOT for iPhones.
154 protons 1e13 less synchrotron radiation than electrons, but note 17 (page 292) says "radiation power proportional to mass to the fourth power" - nope, inversely proportional.
157 quote from Ayn Rand Anthem
159 Luis Alvarez observer in B-29 following Enola Gay over Hiroshima.
161 many physicists worked on The Bomb, Lisa Meitner refused
165 Alvarez Lawrence 1954 Bevatron 6.2GeV, stationary target 4 square feet
165 Brookhaven 1953 Cosmotron 13.3 GeV
- 169 pressure cooker release, bubbles in supercritical fluid
170 tried beer (oops) then diethyl ether
- 171 With Alvarez help, liquid hydrogen,
- 172 but first propane at the Brookhaven Cosmotron, 36 pictures, 30-40 rare decays
- 172 1958 15 inch at Berkeley
- 173 "scanning girls" analysed particle tracks . More than 200 particles discovered
174 1961 Gell-Mann and Ne'eman Eightfold Way
175 Glaser 1959 Nobel, shifts to neurobiology and Cetus Corporation
175 Robert R. Wilson 1914-2000 Fermilab director 1967-1978
177 Particle therapy, higher doses ~10cm deep than surface
- 178 treatment rooms, decorative screens mask thick concrete shielding, 200 ton magnet just above patient
179 Treaty of San Franscisco signed 1951, took effect April 1952, permitted Japanese nuclear research
181 beta decay produces Fermi-postulated neutrinos
183-8 1951-6 Cowan–Reines neutrino experiment at Savannah River
189-94 1982-present Super-Kamiokande Solar neutrino oscillation, tau/electron/muon, antineutrinos, handedness
200 Russell and Sigurd Varian from Halcyon, California Theosophist community and William W. Hansen invent the klystron in 1937
201 John Randall and Harry Boot at U. Birmingham invent Cavity Magnetron in 1940
202 Led to the MIT Rad Lab
- 202 1945 ... Raytheon. was producing 17 magnetrons per day ...
- That is a TINY number, given the vast demand for radar. CITATION NEEDED
203 1953 ranking, Litton outperformed big companies
- the wikipedia articles disagree about dates, and are poorly sourced
204 Stanford Industrial Park renamed Stanford Research Park in the 1970s
205 1946 Berkeley Alvarez 32 MeV 40 foot proton Linac photo 1947 Stanford Hansen 6 MeV 12 foot electron Linac (segment) photo
- 207 1953 400MeV linear accelerator .209 1966 20GeV
- 210 quarks, gluons - kinda lost the thread here
213 1954 Henry Kaplan and Edward Ginzton, 6MeV electron clinical LINAC
214 There are >12,000 radiotherapy LINACs
- 215 by 2035 additional 12,600 machines and specialists needed
- if new biotech doesn't emerge; genetic engineering moves much faster
215 STELLA
216 SPEAR 1974-77 evidence of Tau Lepton, third generation
219 Tevatron at Fermilab, 1983 to 2011, replaced by Large Hadron Collider, 13.6 TeV collision energy
225 1976 6 GeV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oops-Leon "2% chance of error" turned out to be error
- current standard is 5 sigma, less than 1e-6 chance of error
226 15 June 1977 confirmed Upsilon meson 9.46 GeV
- 228 Center-of-mass energy, 1TeV beam striking fixed target, 43 GeV of useful particle-creating energy available
229 Wilson Tevatron required 774 dipole and 216 quadrupole NbTi superconducting magnets, very difficult
230 Superconducting Magnet Quench, tiny heat effects lead to enormous failure and explosive destruction
231 Helen Edwards Underground Parameters Committee
- The Amateur Magnet Builders Handbook UPC 86, 135, 136
- Conductors must be placed to 0.001 inch
- Properties of Superconducting Magnets
- The Amateur Magnet Builders Handbook UPC 86, 135, 136
233 "Colliding" no Collider Detector at Fermilab 4500 tonne cylindrical detector inside a superconducting solenoid to bend particle paths.
234 5500 tonne DZero detector.
- 234 multiyear experiments, megascience.
- 234 Two experiments for independent verification.
234 Top quark in 1995, predicted lifetime 5e-25 seconds, last particle of standard model.
- 237 1986 APS meeting in Las Vegas; 4000 physicists didn't gamble at all, hotel's worst financial week.
238 Collider magnets led to Magnetic resonance imaging
239 Maglev
240 Higgs boson required more expensive collider, hence LHC
243 LHC director Lyn Evans
- 244 Some cosmic rays are thousands of times more energetic than LHC collision.
244 ATLAS
244 CMS Compact Muon Solenoid
244 ALICE A Large Ion Collider Experiment
244 LHCb Large Hadron Collider beauty, measure CP violation
- 244 CERN paid for 80% of LHC, experiments paid by large international collaborations
- 245 1232 magnets in 27 km tunnel loop. Dr. Sheehy's first summer job was controls for an ATLAS subsystem
- 247 2808 bunches 25 nanoseconds (7.5 meters) apart ... 27000/2808 = 9.615 meters, so bunches approx 2 meters long?
- 247 11245 laps per second, enough energy to melt 600 kg of copper
- 248 9 days later, short circuit(?) in joint, quench, six tons of LHe into gas, thirty 35 tonne magnets sheared from floor
- 249 bunches focused to width of less than a hair
252 Tim Berners-Lee HTML URL HTTP
- 254 Annual LHC detector data estimated 90 petabytes per year ( 23 Gb/s )
256 2012 Higgs discovery announcement 2013 Nobel Prize . . . Peter Higgs died 2024 April 8 age 94
- 260 most PhD physicists leave academic research, 63% of 2700 CERN researchers working on private sector
- 261 Dr. Sheehy's research, a small ion trap to mimic particle accelerators
- 262 LHC has found 50 new hadrons
- 265 International Particle Accelerator Conference, 10th in Melbourne May 2019, Dr. Sheeny presented opening plenary talk
268 Higgs factory, 1 TeV electron-proton collider
- 268 LHC due to finish operations around 2036
- 271 1930 30% literacy, "now" 86% global literacy
- 271 Since 1990, average 130,000 people out of poverty per day, 50M/year
271 The short history of global living conditions and why it matters that we know it
- 2015 survey 10% of Swedes think things are getting better, 6% US, 4% Germany
- 275 Sheehy planning new particle beam lab
Irrelevant to Sheehy book, but
Interesting book? "Hitler's Gift: The True Story of the Scientists Expelled by the Nazi Regime" 2012 by Jean Medawar and David Pyke. PSU 5th Floor Q141.M385