On Saturday, March 26th, 1938, Antonio Carrelli, Dean of Physics College of the University of Naples II, had no leisure on the rest day. At eleven o'clock in the morning, he received a telegram signed by majorana: "Don't be nervous, the letter will arrive soon". He was puzzled by this. What should he be nervous about? Carey certainly knows who sent him the telegram, and it all started in majorana.
The first is the island of Mallorana.
Photo 1: Italian genius-majorana.
Ma Jolana's full name is ettore majorana, 1906 was born in Catalonia, Sicily. In the year before his birth, Albert Einstein published five shocking papers in one breath, which not only laid the foundation of special relativity, but also put forward the concept of light quantum, which completely changed Planck's theory and created a new situation of quantum mechanics. People like Wolfgang E. Pauli, Werner Karl Heisenberg, Enri Fermi and Paul Adrian Morris Dirac have caught up with an era of vigorous development of physics, and at the same time, it is also an era of sudden changes in the world structure.
Although majorana's father is a businessman, he has a strange physicist uncle, Quirino Majorana. Girino's most prominent story is that he thinks Einstein's theory of relativity is nonsense and has been trying to falsify it, but his experiments always prove that Einstein is right. This seems to be a typical Sicilian style, never caring about the views of the whole world. This seems absurd, but it is actually close to the quality of a physicist, as described in richard phillips feynman's autobiography Why Do You Care What Others Think. It's just that Girino is unlucky. The muse was not on his side, just like Einstein in his later years. The magic of this fate finally came to majorana himself.
1923, majorana entered the University of Rome to study engineering. At this time, some changes have taken place in Italy's natural environment. From 65438 to 0926, Osso Mario Coll Pino, the head of the Institute of Physics of the University of Rome, realized Fermi's talent and recruited a large group of young people to study physics together, with the main direction of nuclear physics. At that time, the Institute of Physics was located in Via Panisperna Street in Rome, which was named after the famous monastery of Sanlorenzo nearby. Those young people go through the monastery every day and arrive at the Institute of Physics to study the truth of the universe, which is inexplicably related to the mysticism of physics at that time. This group of young people is also called "Via Panisperna boys". In addition to Coripin and Fermi, the main members are Ed Addo. Eduardo Amardi (Italian aviation pioneer), emilio segre (emilio gino segre), Bruno Pontevo (Bruno), Oscar D'Agostino (Oscar D'Agostino), Fran Lasetti and others. From 65438 to 0928, majorana could not stay in the Engineering College for various reasons, so segre introduced him to Fermi. "You will be very happy with those geniuses." From 65438 to 0929, Fermi decided to change the research institution into the research direction of modern physics, focusing on various popular theories at present. People think that this is the greatest group of physicists in Italy after Galileo.
Majorana's first paper is the early application of Fermi's statistical model of atomic structure. He and his colleagues studied atomic spectra together. 1932, majorana published a paper on the study of atomic spectrum under time-varying magnetic field, and isidor rabi and others are also studying this problem, thus opening an important new branch of atomic physics-wireless electromagnetic spectrum. In the same year, the young Curies-Irene Joliot-Curie, the daughter of Madame Curie, and Frederic Iorio-Joliot-Curie, the son-in-law, discovered a new particle suspected of gamma rays. majorana studied and thought that this particle should be electrically neutral, with a mass similar to that of protons, that is, neutrons; Fermi suggested that he write an article for publication, but majorana refused. Later, james chadwick proved this through experiments and won the 1935 Nobel Prize in Physics. But it didn't change majorana's style. He even stepped up his research and didn't publish it.
1933, Fermi asked Jolana to leave Italy and come to Germany. He met Heisenberg in majorana, Leipzig. He especially likes this colleague and thinks Heisenberg is not only a clever scientist, but also a lifelong friend. He also went to Copenhagen to work with niels henrik david bohr, a master physicist and Heisenberg's mentor. At that time, the Nazis had just come to power in Germany, and majorana studied Heisenberg's theory and Bohr's atomic model.
That summer, Ma Jolana returned to Rome sick. For the next four years, he practiced behind closed doors. His research on inner peace has never been published, but today we know that his research interests include geophysics, electrotechnics, mathematical analysis and relativity. Today, we can know him because of the Mayorana Fermion, which was a paper published suddenly by majorana in 1937. He rewrote Dirac equation and got Mayorana equation, which can describe the neutral spin of 1/2 particle, so the particle satisfying this equation is its own antiparticle, that is, the antiparticle of Mayorana fermion is itself, and the antiparticle of Dirac fermion is not itself. It is said that this is just one of his many papers because he suddenly wants to find a job.
Figure 2: Via Panisperboys1934, from left to right: D agostino, segre, Amardi, Lasetti, Fermi.
Second, mysterious disappearance.
It is because of this paper and his previous reputation that majorana was applied as a full-time professor at the University of Naples without examination. In Carelli's view, majorana should be on his way. At two o'clock on the afternoon of 26th, Carelli received a letter from Ma Jolana: "I have made up my mind that this is by no means selfish, although I know that my sudden disappearance will bring inconvenience to you and your students. So, I beg your forgiveness, forgive me for failing to live up to your trust, especially your concern in recent months. Please also convey this to the people I know and admire in the college, especially Sciuti: I will keep their best memories before tonight 1 1, maybe longer. " The date of the letter is the 25th, and Kerry can't help but get nervous.
The investigation found that majorana wrote two short messages at Albergo Bologna Hotel in Naples on 25th. One is a business letter that Carrelli received, and the other is a personal letter to his family, but this letter was not sent, but left in the hotel room. The letter said, "I don't want you to dress me in black. If you must bow to the guests, I also hope that your grief will not exceed three days. After that, if you like, please keep me in mind and forgive me. " On the day he finished writing this letter, he boarded a mail ship bound for Palermo, the capital of Sicily. According to the itinerary, the ship will arrive at dawn the next day.
At least literally, these two letters foreshadowed a bad ending, and Ma Jolana's colleagues segre and Amardi firmly believed that Ma Jolana would commit suicide. Segre thinks majorana intends to go to Palermo to meet himself who teaches there, but unfortunately his family was in California.
In fact, the original text of majorana is sparire, which means "disappearance" and "death" at the same time in Italian, while wear black has multiple meanings. Things like three days may just conform to the tradition of majorana's hometown of Sicily. In a word, semantic ambiguity is the opposite of writing confidence and firmness. Writer Leonardo Xia Xia commented: "I have seen many suicide notes, even if they are handwritten, they are more or less different from usual, and of course they are usually more irregular and scrawled. Majorana is not like this ... "In The Mystery of majorana, he investigated various situations and emphatically criticized the statement of suicide. Of course, Xia Xia's own opinions didn't get more response. He thought strangely that Ma Jolana was trying to escape from the monastery. He doesn't know whether it refers to the mysterious field of metaphysics or the place where their young physicists work.
The dilemma of the suicide statement is that it cannot explain the third letter. In fact, later on 26th, Careli received another letter from majorana, which was written on the letterhead of Su Le Hotel in Elberg, which can prove that majorana did land in Sol, Ahlberg on the morning of 26th. Carelli speculated that the telegram was actually written before this letter so as not to worry, but somehow it arrived earlier than the first letter. The letter said, "I hope you have received these letters and telegrams." The sea turned me down, and tomorrow I will return to Bologna Hotel in Elberg. Maybe this letter will go with me. However, in any case, I decided not to teach any more. Don't treat me as the heroine in Ibsen's works. My situation is completely different. I will know nothing about you. "This letter seems to indicate that majorana really intends to throw himself into the sea, but he gave up.
The ship returning to Naples set sail on the evening of 26th. According to the shipping company's records, majorana did buy tickets. If he gets on board, he will arrive on Sunday (27th) morning. There were two people in the same cabin with Ma Jolana, and one of them vowed that when he got off the boat, Ma Jolana was still sleeping in bed. If the testimony is reliable, this is not a good signal. After all, he seems to have just come out of the low tide, but now he is curled up in a small cabin like a baby in need of care. No matter what happens, he seems ready to give up.
Strangely, from then on, he seemed to disappear into the air. All kinds of literature, drama and animation also put forward their own views on this. Some people think that he has become a beggar on the street, others think that he is just dissatisfied with Argentina's personal life, and some even say that he was abducted by aliens. In the latest science fiction, he won the Nobel Prize in physics.
Although physicists think that his contribution deserves the Nobel Prize, and they jokingly call his disappearance "Schrodinger's cat", many physicists think that majorana was probably kidnapped or even killed because he didn't want to participate in the research and development of nuclear weapons. This explanation seems quite reasonable at present, but if we don't sort out the development of physics at that time, especially particle physics and nuclear physics, it will be difficult to restore the whole historical scene.
Third, the most likely explanation.
Jo? o, a cosmophysicist and popular science writer? Joao Magueijo restored the whole development of physics at that time in A Brilliant Darkness: ettore majorana's Extraordinary Life and Mysterious Disappearance, and we can clearly feel the pulse of physics and the pulse of the whole era.
At that time, Germany was undoubtedly the center of physics. Among majorana's contemporaries, Pauli put forward Pauli matrix and Pauli incompatibility principle, Dirac put forward Dirac equation, Heisenberg put forward matrix mechanics, and they all studied in Germany. Majorana also went on to study in Germany on Fermi's recommendation.
We don't know what kind of atmosphere majorana felt in Germany, but in 1935, Pauli was keenly aware of the change of political wind direction, left Germany, Dirac returned to England early, and even Bohr, who had close ties with Germany, became an American citizen after World War II. Only Heisenberg insisted on staying in Germany and began to study nuclear physics in 1938.
As an ally of Germany, the situation in Italy is very similar. As mentioned earlier, Segray visited the University of California at 1938. When he returned to China, he found that Mussolini had enacted the Anti-Semitic Act, so he stayed in the United States. Later, he and Zhang Bailun discovered antiprotons and won the 1959 Nobel Prize in physics.
These people formed the physical network at that time to some extent. For example, taking the discovery of neutrinos as an example, Pauli put forward a hypothesis in 1930 to explain the energy shortage of β decay, and Fermi first put forward the concept of "neutrino" (Italian meaning "tiny electrically neutral particles") in 1934. 1937 When the majorana fermion was first proposed, it was generally believed that neutrinos should be antiparticles like their own particles (it is still controversial at present, but it is inclined that neutrinos are not Mayorana fermions). 1957, Ponte corvo put forward the neutrino oscillation hypothesis, arguing that neutrinos can change from one type to another, and later it was further discovered that neutrinos have different tastes. For example, in the field of nuclear physics, it is well known that many natural radioactive elements have been discovered since 1896 discovered radioactivity. 19 19 realized the first artificial nuclear reaction by bombarding helium with alpha particles, and the appearance of accelerators in the 1930s further accelerated the related research, among which the two most important discoveries were the discovery of the aforementioned neutrons and the discovery of artificial radionuclides by the young Curie couple in 1934. The discovery of neutron not only provides a necessary premise for the study of nuclear structure, but also makes it easy to enter the nucleus and cause neutron-nuclear reaction because it has no charge and is not repelled by nuclear charges, which has become an important means to study the nucleus and the basis for understanding nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. Fermi won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938 for his research on neutron bombardment, and established the world's first fission reactor under his leadership in 1942.
Maguyou recalled a conversation between Jolana and Fermi. Majorana said, "I like Galileo because he knows what fear is ... people only see what they want to see." Another famous saying of majorana is: "Physics goes astray, and we all go astray." Maguyou and others all think that this is majorana's inner fear of nuclear physics and nuclear weapons. The genius who foresaw neutrons but refused to publish them has been uneasy about his discovery. However, the disappearance of Ma Jolana did not inspire Fermi. 1938 After winning the Nobel Prize abroad, he did not return to Italy, but went to the United States. One year later, he contacted the United States Navy, hoping that the United States would develop atomic energy weapons. Ma Guyou regretfully quoted majorana's countryman Luigi Pirandello (a famous Italian dramatist and novelist, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934) and commented: "The dead are professionals who recall."
Perhaps Ponte corvo's story can be used as another footnote for Mallorana. He defected from England to the Soviet Union in 1950, just like Ma Guyou's subtitles, but he was just another unclear genius in the nuclear age. Therefore, Ma Guyou gave majorana a high evaluation, thinking that he is a scientist with a humanistic background, and this sympathy may bring a little warmth to the cold science.
Recently, Italian media reported that someone witnessed majorana in 1950s, and confirmed the news by comparing some morphological features, but it was questioned like countless previous observation cases. Majorana has never had a girlfriend in her life. At that time, he was called a mysterious figure by people around him. The truth of his disappearance is as strange as himself. Finally, maybe we will never know. Whether he was kidnapped or even assassinated or retired because of personal morality or fear is still hidden in the fog of history. For physicists, finding the Fermion of Mayorana is the best memory for him. For the public, deduction in various cultures also gives them a sense of eternal life. To some extent, history, like physics, is a summary of what has happened. I hope that similar tragedies will never happen again.