Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2011
Volume 56, Number 4
Saturday–Tuesday, April 30–May 3 2011; Anaheim, California
Session T10: History of Physics II |
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Sponsoring Units: FHP Chair: Gloria Lubkin, Physics Today, Retired Room: Garden 1 |
Monday, May 2, 2011 3:30PM - 3:54PM |
T10.00001: Building the Superconducting Super Collider, 1989-1993: The Problem of Project Management Michael Riordan In attempting to construct the Superconducting Super Collider, US particle physicists faced a challenge unprecedented in the history of science. The SSC was the biggest and costliest pure scientific project ever, comparable in overall scale to the Manhattan Project or the Panama Canal - an order of magnitude larger than any previous particle accelerator or collider project. Managing such an enormous endeavor involved coordinating conventional-construction, magnet-manufacturing, and detector-building efforts costing over a billion dollars apiece. Because project-management experience at this scale did not exist within the physics community, the Universities Research Association and the US Department of Energy turned to companies and individuals from the military-industrial complex, with mixed results. The absence of a strong, qualified individual to serve as Project Manager throughout the duration of the project was a major problem. I contend that these problems in its project management contributed importantly to the SSC's 1993 demise. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, May 2, 2011 3:54PM - 4:18PM |
T10.00002: The Quantum Underground: Early quantum theory textbooks Clayton Gearhart Quantum theory had its beginnings in 1900, when Max Planck derived his famous formula for the energy density of black-body radiation. But the early quantum theory textbooks we remember today---for example, those of Arnold Summerfeld (1919), Fritz Reiche (1921), and a shorter Report by James Jeans (1914), did not appear until some years later, and all were written by physicists who were themselves active participants in early quantum theory. Surprisingly, not all early texts fit this pattern. Reiche himself had written a review article on quantum theory for general readers in {\em Die Naturwissenschaften} in 1913, long before his research had shifted to quantum topics. And a year later, textbooks by Hermann Sieveking and Sigfried Valentiner treated quantum theory for students and non-specialists, although neither was active in quantum theoretical research. A third and better known author, Owen Richardson, also treated quantum theory in a 1914 book on electromagnetism. I will describe these early and little-known treatments of quantum theory, all of which were written by physicists whose primary research and professional interests lay elsewhere. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, May 2, 2011 4:18PM - 4:42PM |
T10.00003: Poincar\'{e}, Minkowski, and the Road to Space-Time: New Light on Some History that Did Not Happen Felix T. Smith In 1905 Poincar\'{e} identified in the Lorentz transformation equations both the 6-parameter Lorentz group generated by velocity boosts and the 4-vector space $s $=\textit{ x,y,z,ict } on which they act, recognizing the R(4) rotation symmetry this space implies. In 1907 Minkowski (M.) showed that the Lorentz velocity boosts imply a nonEuclidean 3-space of velocity, expressed through a 4-vector $v$, and displayed the strikingly parallel structure of the 4-vector $s$. This velocity-position symmetry was bypassed in 1908 when M.'s forceful rhetoric merged space and time in a single space-time. An alternative solution has now come to light which connects the time-dependence of $s$ with the Hubble expansion, the imaginary fourth components of $s$ and $v$ with the negative curvature of the background position and velocity spaces, and leads naturally to parallel 4-spaces of $s$ and $v$ (Smith, F. T., Ann. Fond. L. de Broglie, \textbf{35}, in press, (2010)). There are lessons to be learned about prematurely imposing a solution on an open problem by a hypothesis that is sufficient to agree with the known facts but may not be unique and may, in fact, foreclose exploration in other directions. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, May 2, 2011 4:42PM - 5:06PM |
T10.00004: X-Ray Astronomy Discovery Experiments, III* P.C. Fisher The first paper established the existence of concurrent discovery experiments by Riccardo Giacconi and myself at the start of x-ray astronomy.\footnote{R. Giacconi \textit{et al., }Phys. Rev. Lett.\textbf{ 9}, 439 (1962).}$^{,}$\footnote{P. C. Fisher \textit{et al., Quasars and High Energy Astronomy including Proceedings of the 2}$^{nd}$\textit{ Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics 15 - 19 December 1964 }(K. N. Douglas \textit{et. al.,} eds.) Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, New York, p. 253 (1969).}$^{,}$\footnote{P. C. Fisher, BAPS \textbf{53} No. 2, 165 (2008).} Paper II \footnote{P.C. Fisher, http://www.aps.org/units/fhp/index.cfm plus FHP link to April 2009 presentation H14.00006.} described some acts by some individuals/institutions over four decades that may have caused the illusion that I had not made a discovery. Some additional data about this illusion, and the first possible measurement of x-ray emission from a black hole, will be presented. This paper's primary goal is for the American Physical Society to have Giacconi comment on several questions of a historical nature. \\[4pt] *Work supported by NASA contracts NAS5-1174 and NASw-909, the Lockheed Independent Research Program, and Ruffner Associates. [Preview Abstract] |
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