Let's make a quantum jump ("quantum" jump these days means to most people "a specific" jump) to what Paul Dirac did.
In those days, the early thirties, quantum mechanics was still in it's infancy, as was special relativity.
What Paul Dirac did was to try to marry quantum mechanics with relativity for the electron, the simplest particle.
His results were astonishing.
He wrestled with the maths involved, turned the mathematical handle, and out came the washing.....But there were TWO results, not just the one.
The one he was after, the electron, was quite clear. What was NOT clear, however, was the other answer. The maths had produced something no experimentalist had ever done!
Paul Dirac simply shrugged off the shock and said "There must be another particle out there, with the same mass as the electron, but oppositely charged".
Outrageous!
In 1932, Carl Andersson found it in his cloud chamber. The path it took had the look of an electron, but curved the opposite way. It was henceforth named the "positron".
Paul Dirac and Carl Andersson had just revealed anti-matter!
Outrageous!
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Are you Positive?
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1 comment:
I think it is interesting that Dirac chose to believe what the math told him, rather than reject the other half of his answer as meaningless. This shows an insight equal to Bohr's idea about the atom. Dirac's idea even turned out to be correct.
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