
The Proposal of the Neutrino (1930) - luisb
http://fermatslibrary.com/s/the-proposal-of-the-neutrino
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more_original
At first, I thought the title was a mistake, as the letter speaks of
'neutrons' throughout. But it turns out that the term 'neutrino' came only
later:

'Pauli earlier (in 1930) had used the term "neutron" for both the neutral
particle that conserved energy in beta decay, and a presumed neutral particle
in the nucleus, and initially did not consider these two neutral particles as
distinct from each other'

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

~~~
KIFulgore
I thought the HN headline was incorrect until I read Pauli was looking for a
particle of ~0.01 proton mass (neutrons and protons are about the same mass).

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gpderetta
Basically Pauli can't get his dear theory to work so has to invent magic dark
matter to get the theory to match the experiments. This 'quantum' atom looks
more and more like ptolemaic epicycles.

Clearly we need to throw the theory away and start from scratch.

[this being the internet: /s ]

~~~
Avshalom
I came here to snark this exact snark.

~~~
gpderetta
best part is that neutrinos are literally dark matter.

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martincmartin
I've been reading "The Making of the Atomic Bomb," which is a great book and
covers the early discovery of Quantum Mechanics, including this letter.
Recommended.

~~~
astrodust
The follow-up to that is basically _Command and Control_ which covers what
happens after those things were made.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_Control_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_Control_\(book\))

It starts out where those weapons and prototypes from World War II were
sitting on a shelf in a hut in the middle of the desert with no real security.
That program had been all but shut down, the team disbanded.

Equally interesting is _Stalin and the Bomb_ which covers the Soviet efforts
to replicate what the Americans had created:
[https://books.google.ca/books/about/Stalin_and_the_Bomb.html...](https://books.google.ca/books/about/Stalin_and_the_Bomb.html?id=ICO6aUnQ2KcC&redir_esc=y)

There's accounts of scientists painstakingly re-discovering fundamental things
only to realize their superiors already knew the correct approach to take,
their intelligence had stolen the files, but were concerned that the
information was faked to lead them astray. They must have felt like high-
school students getting their homework checked by the teacher.

~~~
phreenet
Well don't get to ahead of yourself. The follow up should be "Building the H
Bomb: A Personal History" by Kenneth W. Ford.

~~~
astrodust
True. There is _that_ thing.

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silicon123
The beginning "Dear Radioactives" is a classic, we even learnt it at school

~~~
lucozade
As this was sent to experimental nuclear physicists in the 30's, it may well
have been a reasonably accurate description.

