

Ettore Majorana was alive and living in Venezuela? - rnhmjoj
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=it&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ilfattoquotidiano.it%2F2015%2F02%2F04%2Fettore-majorana-vivo-residente-in-venezuela-negli-anni-50%2F1396809%2F&sandbox=1

======
dredmorbius
Bio from Wikipedia:

 _Ettore Majorana (Italian: [ˈɛttore majoˈraːna]; born 1906;) was an Italian
theoretical physicist who worked on neutrino masses. He disappeared suddenly
under mysterious circumstances while going by ship from Palermo to Naples. The
Majorana equation and Majorana fermions are named after him. In 2006, the
Majorana Prize was established in his memory._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ettore_Majorana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ettore_Majorana)

~~~
riffraff
if you can find it "I Ragazzi di via Panisperna"[0] is a good movie about the
"Via Panisperna Boys", the group of physicist led by Fermi of which Majorana
was a member (the movie is mostly focused on the relation between Fermi and
Majorana).

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_ragazzi_di_via_Panisperna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_ragazzi_di_via_Panisperna)

------
gus_massa
[Biographical note: In 1937 he proposed that the neutrinos have mass and are
their own antiparticles. This make them slightly different from the other
particles, like the electrons. This theory is still not confirmed, but the
particle-physicists really like it. More info:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ettore_Majorana](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ettore_Majorana)
]

~~~
kartikkumar
Although the nature of neutrinos is still to be uncovered, my alma mater
announced the discovered for a "meta" Majorana particle a couple of years ago
[1]

[1] [http://www.tudelft.nl/en/current/latest-
news/article/detail/...](http://www.tudelft.nl/en/current/latest-
news/article/detail/nanowetenschappers-vinden-langgezocht-majorana-deeltje/)

------
acjohnson55
I definitely read a long and interesting article about Majorana, and I was
pretty sure I had found it from HN. Some searching finally dredged it up:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7870344](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7870344)

~~~
privong
I think you meant to paste this link:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7870344](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7870344)

(Yours goes to a comment replying to the post about Majorana, rather than to
the HN top-level post with the article).

~~~
acjohnson55
Yep, edited, thanks

------
recibe
He didn't want to participate in the building of the atom bomb.

Hero.

~~~
keithpeter
_" Because another factor which invalidates the suicide theory is that Ettore
Majorana had taken his passport and a sum of money with him."_ [1]

Majorana left with the entire contents of his and his brother's joint savings
account and _five months_ salary cheques (previously uncashed). Sounds like he
had plans, monastic or otherwise. Sciascia's essay was produced as a radio
play by the BBC years ago (possibly decades ago) and struck me as plausible
then. The possibility of a fission weapon was inherent in a lot of the
detailed work on the nucleus in the late 30s. The Bohr-Wheeler semi-empirical
model is just that: fit a polynomial to the known properties of the
radioactive materials available and you have your yield...

Is there an Italian speaker with access to the original here who can render a
slightly more idiomatic translation?

[1] Leonardo Sciascia _The Mystery of Majorana_ , Tr Sacha Rabinovich, New
York Review of Books Classics, 2004

~~~
menoinglish
Italian here, but translation of what? If you refer to the "Il fatto
quotidiano" article linked here, the story so far is:

\- (if the story is true) Majorana was alive and lived in Valencia, Venezuela,
between 1955 and 1959

\- Italian police is investigating

\- An Italian TV Show "Chi l'ha visto?" (it's a very dramatic show where they
try to find missing people...) found a guy who lived in Valencia those years
and claims he was friend with Majorana, but he didn't know his real identity

\- The supposed Majorana called himself Mr."Bini", but one day they convinced
Bini to take a photo, the photo traveled back to Italy to the witnes' family

\- Police examined this photo and they say Bini's face is compatible with
Majorana's one and Bini looks very similar to Majorana's father

\- If the story is true, this means Majorana didn't suicide and was not forced
by anyone to leave Italy, he just left.

\- Police is trying to confirm, finding out the driving license/identity of
this Mr. Bini, but they also say that Venezuelan police is kind of lazy..

Didn't want to translate it all, I'm also lazy. There are many stories on
Majorana, and a lot of people claimed and still claim to have seen him. There
are many many stories, really, another recent one is that he ended up as an
homeless guy.

Hope this was helpful.

~~~
keithpeter
Yes, very helpful - better job than the original page.

------
stared
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

He is the most famous "missing physicist" and people have been speculating a
lot about various possibilities.

------
mod3rn0
more on this in another article wrote on Friday:
[http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=it&sl=it&tl=en&u=ht...](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=it&sl=it&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ansa.it%2Fsito%2Fnotizie%2Fcronaca%2F2015%2F02%2F05%2Fgiallo-
majorana-testimone-era-clochard-a-
roma_814bf27d-e893-413c-a813-6939079466db.html&sandbox=1)

~~~
menoinglish
Oh here it is. Here there is a guy that says "Majorana was surely alive in
1981 and he was in Rome. I've seen him." He says that Majorana was in Rome
with a priest Luigi Di Liegro, founder of Roman Caritas (a catolic institution
to help poor people). (still according to the witness) Majorana was a
homeless, he was hosted in a monastery. "I was one among the closer assistants
of Luidi di Liegro and with him we met Majorana probably the 17 March 1981. It
was not the only time, I met him in three-four occasions. " This witness is a
"director programmer"(??) from Calabria, he lived in Rome when he was young,
but he wants to remain anonymous. "Majorana was in Pilotta Square, on the
Università Gregoriana's stair, near Fontana di Trevi. He looked like more than
70 years old", the guy was helping homeless people during those years, he was
puzzled by one other homeless saying that guy (Majorana) had the solution to
'Fermat Theorem'", which was solved only in 2000. "Then I said that I wanted
to meet him with Di Liegro", the meeting happened and the priest drove
Majorana back home. "After one hour and half he came back and said to me: 'you
know who that man is? He is the physicist Ettore Majorana, the one missing. I
phoned the monastery where he was hosted and they told me he left. Now I
brought him back.'" The director of the monastery said "Majorana had the
feeling his studies could precede the atomic bomb and he had a conscience
crisis and he wanted to be forgotten." It seems Majorana was in another
monastery in Napoli before the one in Rome. They were sure he was him for a
scar in his right hand. The witness says "I asked priest Luigi to tell
Majorana's family, but he said we must not. I tried to speak about the subject
several times during the years, but Di Liegro, who never told anyone, not even
his most close assistants, he didn't want to speak about it and he told me to
shut up. He told me to not say anything to anybody until 15 years until his
dead, happened the 12 October 1997. Now the time has passed."

Fuck Google Translate is way better than this crap. I'm scared. Anyway it
seems to me that all the people involved are dead, and the this story is
carried by an anonymous guy. So it might be 100% imagination.

------
adharmad
Joao Magueijo
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo%C3%A3o_Magueijo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo%C3%A3o_Magueijo))
has written a biography of Ettore Majorana "A brilliant darkness". An
interesting read!

------
ExpiredLink
Dedication to physics and mathematics may be unhealthy.

~~~
cafard
Compared to what? Dedication to football and motorcycles?

~~~
jedrek
Exactly, it's not the dedication, it's the level of dedication. If you immerse
yourself in anything to the point that you ignore the rest of your life, the
rest of your life will suffer.

~~~
rnhmjoj
I completely agree.

