Canada and the World
Current Events with a Canadian Perspective
Last update
17 January 2011
Science Timeline Part Twelve
With the end of World War II in 1945 scientists were able
to turn their attention to such knotty problems
as the origins of the Universe and of life
NASA Image
In 1948, the Russian physicist George Gamow worked out a theory that the Universe had expanded from a hot, dense state. Guess whose equations Gamow based his work on. Yes, Albert Einstein’s.
In 1950, the British astronomer Fred Hoyle, belittled Gamow’s theory and referred to it as a mere “big bang.” The name stuck, and the Big Bang Theory is currently accepted by most scientists as the best explanation for the origin of the Universe.
Unlocking the Mysteries of Life
The origin of life was yielding up its secrets too. It is fairly well established
that the Universe is 99% hydrogen and helium in a nine-
So, how could life have been created from these lifeless materials? For many, there is the religious explanation that the hand of God was involved. But, scientists look for a more rational answer.
In the early 1920s, a Russian chemist and an English geneticist independently proposed that the basic building blocks of life could have formed from simple molecules in Earth’s early atmosphere as a result of being energized by lightning.
In 1952, the American chemist Stanley Miller (left) decided to put this theory to
the test.
Using some carefully purified and sterilized water, he added an “atmosphere” of hydrogen, ammonia, and methane. He circulated this through his apparatus and past an electric discharge that added energy.
Miller kept his rig running this way for a week. When he analyzed his solution he found organic compounds. There were even amino acids, the building blocks of proteins and thus of all life.
Miller and many other scientists have since performed experiments to determine where and how the building blocks of life may have formed. These scientists have shown that organic compounds could be produced by many kinds of energy: ultraviolet light (as from the Sun), heat (as from volcanoes), and even shock (as from plummeting meteorites).
Their experiments have produced all of the 20 amino acids synthesized by life today as well as various sugars and phosphates, including the ones that form the backbones of DNA.
Yet, more and more people have quibbled with these findings. Many scientists are now leaning towards the belief that the building blocks for life hitched a ride on a meteorite that crashed into Earth from somewhere else in the Universe.
Space probes and rendezvous missions with Halley’s Comet (right) discovered plenty
of organic compounds in space. In fact, the body of Halley’s comet (as opposed to
its glowing tail and corona) proved to be the darkest object every observed in the
solar system: it is covered in organic goop. So are some of the moons of Jupiter
and Saturn.
Outer Space Beckons
On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1. The satellite weighed 83 kilos and circled Earth in 98 minutes. This marked the start of the space age. A month later, Sputnik 2 went into orbit carrying a dog, Laika. She was the first living organism to orbit Earth, and she died in space.
On April 12, 1962, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel in space. The Soviet cosmonaut orbited Earth once in a flight that lasted one hour and 48 minutes. On July 20 1969, U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin became the first people to walk on the Moon.
These journeys into space were essentially triumphs of technology rather than science. And the 1950s and ‘60s were decades of huge advances in technology. Just look at this partial list:
Hovercraft – 1950
Breeder reactor – 1951
Spray can – 1953
Industrial robot – 1954
Oral contraceptive – 1954
Contact lenses – 1954
Synthetic diamonds – 1955
Heart pacemaker – 1957
Photocopying – 1958
Laser – 1960
Astroturf – 1960
Audio tape cassette – 1961
Electronic watch – 1961
Hologram – 1963
Coronary heart by-
Green revolution – 1964
Minicomputer – 1965
Fibre-
Heart transplant – 1967
Boeing 747-
Quarks and Neutrinos
By the end of the 20th century, scientific research was dominated by particle physics and biotechnology.
Particle physics is the science of the fundamental nature of matter.
Research of the past century has revealed the structure of the atom with its nucleus and orbiting electrons. Probing still deeper into this structure, research now focuses on the individual particles inside the nucleus, studying their properties and the ways they interact.
Particle physicists have developed a theoretical model (the Standard Model) that gives a framework for the current understanding of the fundamental particles and forces of Nature.
If you look in the Particle Data Book, you will find more than 150 particles listed there. Some of them are very odd, and some exist in theory only – so far. Some have a lifetime that is measured in nanoseconds and others have wonderful names such as: charm quark, strange quark, muon neutrino.
The Standard Model predicts the existence of a tiny little thing called the Higgs Boson. This particle is believed to be what gives all particles their mass and scientists are looking for it and other elemental particle using extremely expensive machines like the one illustrated above. No one has spotted a Higgs Boson yet, but there are people with sufficient knowledge to recognize one if they stumble across it. In fact, finding the Higgs Boson seems to be the key to everything.
But, if it shows up, someone is going to want to know what it’s made of. And, the process of discovery will begin again.
In 1993, British Science Minister William Waldegrave challenged particle physicists to answer the questions “What is the Higgs Boson, and why do we want to find it?” on one side of a single sheet paper.
He awarded bottles of champagne to the authors of five winning entries at the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
The prize-
Image credits
NASA Image
Mike Procario
© Canada and the World, January 2011
All rights reserved
1941
In the United States George Beadle and Edward Tatum are studying mouldy bread for
information about genes. They decide that genes direct the making of proteins that
control basic metabolic functions, which characterize life itself. The so-
1943
A slot machine helps science when Salvador Luria watches a colleague feeding dimes
into the one-
1947
In June a patent is filed for ENIAC -
1947
In what is perhaps the most important advance in electronics in the 20th century three physicists at Bell Laboratories invent the transistor. Used in regulating current and switching, it replaces the clunky vacuum tube and paves the way for the miniaturization of electronic equipment.
1948
The American mathematician Claude Shannon publishes a paper which earns him the title
“the father of information theory.” An obituary in 2001 in The Times said that Shannon
created “the mathematical foundations for a technical revolution. Without his clarity
of thought and sustained ability to work his way through intractable problems, such
advances as e-
1948
A group of American physicists develop the theory of quantum electrodynamics, an astoundingly complex notion about the relationship of light and matter. One of creators of the theory, Richard Feynman, calls it “the jewel of physics;” however he also says, “My physics students don’t understand it; that’s because I don’t understand it. Nobody does.”
1951
The American geneticist Barbara McClintock discovers that sequences of DNA can move
and establish themselves in a new position in the genome of a cell. These so-
1952
Polio is a disease that in a small number of cases causes paralysis and death. In a 1952 epidemic almost 60,000 people were infected in the United States alone, of whom 3,000 died. At the height of the outbreak, the American medical researcher Dr. Jonas Salk develops a vaccine. After testing, the vaccine is released for general use in 1955 and, by the 1990s, polio has been virtually eradicated in the developed world.
1957
A group of American physicists explain superconductivity.
1960s onwards
British paleantologist Richard Leakey and others begin discovering fossils of early humans in East Africa and are able to state that all humans can trace their ancestry to this region.
1963
What causes a tornado to start up at any particular moment? The American mathematician Edward Lorenz says it might be because a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon rainforest. Lozenz is working on Chaos Theory when he proposes the idea that a tiny event in one place might start a chain of connected events that get bigger and bigger. He calls this the “Butterfly Effect” and says that the behaviour of a large system, such as a climate, cannot be predicted unless all the factors, no matter how tiny, that influence are taken into account.
WHERE IS
THE GOD PARTICLE?
Hundreds of scientists using some very expensive equipment are trying to find the
Higgs Boson, the so-
The machines used in the search are called particle colliders. One is the Large Hadron Collider (left) and there’s another particle collider at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. In July 2010, a rumour flashed through the scientific world that the Americans had found the elusive Higgs Boson.
The people at Discover Magazine (“Higgs Boson Discovered? Not So Fast.” July 12, 2010) advised the scientific world to back off. The Higgs Boson has not yet been found, nor has its existence been ruled out. If it is found the Standard Model is confirmed. If it’s written off as a theoretical particle that doesn’t exist everybody gets to sharpen their pencils and start figuring out a new model.
The Large Hadron Collider (left) sits in a 27 kilometre long tunnel on the Franco-
“There is no hope for the fanciful idea of reaching the Moon because of insurmountable barriers to escaping Earth’s gravity.”
Dr. F.R. Moulton, University of Chicago astronomer, 1932