The Physics of a Lifetime: Reflections on the Problems and Personalities of 20th Century Physics

514 Pages·2001·24.24 MB·English

by  Professor Vitaly L. Ginzburg (auth.)

The Physics of a Lifetime
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg GmbH
Physics and AstronOmy~ ONUNEUBIAIIY
http://www.springer.de/phys/
Vitaly L. Ginzburg
The Physics
of a lifeti me
Reflections on the Problems
and Personalities of 20th Century Physics
, Springer
Professor Vitaly L. Ginzburg
P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute
of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Leninsky Prospect 53
ll792.4 Moscow, RUSSIA
Managing Editor of Translation
Dr. Maria S. Aksent' eva
Managing and Scientific Editor
ofUFN Journal
Leninsky Prospect 15, off. 2.40
ll7071 Moscow, RUSSIA
E-mail: maria4lufn.ru
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data.
Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme
Ginzburg, Vitalij L.:
The physics of a Iifetime: reflections on the problems and
personalities of 2.oth century physicslVitaly L. Ginzburg.
(Springer series in materials processing)
(Physics and astronomyonline Iibrary)
ISBN 978-3-642-08699-1 ISBN 978-3-662-04455-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-662-04455-1
ISBN 978-3-642-08699-1
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Preface to the English Translation
These days English is known to serve as the lingua franca of science. This is
not the least of the reasons for my welcoming the present English translation.
I hope the international readership will appreciate the book but only the
future will tell, of course.
The papers comprising Parts II and III of the book were written on differ-
ent occasions over a long period of time. They have not been changed in the
translation; only a few small items have been added and, where necessary,
some notes have been made. Two small texts have been omitted from the
book (the answers to a questionnaire distributed by one journal and an inter-
view given to another journal) and two larger papers. One is "Three Hundred
Years of the Principia by Isaac Newton" and the other is "The Course (In
Memory of L. D. Landau and E. M. Lifshitz)". The English translation of the
first paper was published in Sov. Phys.-Uspekhi 30, 46, 1987. The English
translation of "The Course" was an attachment to the book Landau: The
Physicist and the Man (Pergamon, Oxford, 1989). A rather detailed bibli-
ographical note about the papers in the collection was also omitted in the
translation.
Part I consists of the paper entitled "What Problems of Physics and As-
trophysics Seem Now to Be Especially Important and Interesting?", whose
long history is told in the Preamble to Part I. The underlying concept of the
paper implies its regular revision and I have taken care of that throughout
the years. But the last Russian edition was published comparatively recent-
ly (in 1995) and since then few major events have taken place in physies
and astrophysics. Indeed, in my opinion the only momentous events were
the understanding of the cosmological nature of the gamma bursts and the
detection of the neutrino mass. Moreover, completing the paper in 1995, I
declared my intention not to revise it any more - patching up will not make
an old garment new but can make it look ugly. However, new results, trends,
and developments cannot be ignored altogether. This is why I made some
amendments and comments specially for the English translation. The list of
references has also been revised. I believe that the paper will still be of inter-
est to readers. After all, its main purpose is not to report the latest science
news but to promote a comprehensive awareness of science (see my article on
the subject published in Physics Today 43 (5), 9, 1990, and its discussion in
VI Preface to the English Translation
a later issue, Physics Today 44 (3), i3, 1991). While the translation of the
book was in progress, I published a paper "What Problems of Physics and
Astrophysics Seem Now to Be Especially Important and Interesting (Thirty
Years Later, on the Verge of the 21st Century)?" in Physics-Uspekhi 42,
353, 1999. This paper is a follow-up to the main paper on the subject in
Part I and is also included here.
Note that the continuation of the present book is a collection of my papers
entitled "About Science, Myself, and Others" published in Russian in 1997
(Nauka, Moscow).
I am grateful to the translators and, particularly, to M. S. Aksent'eva,
without whose management effort the publication would have been impossi-
ble. I would like also to thank most warmly the Physics editorial department
of Springer-Verlag for their attention to, and care of the translation of the
manuscript.
October 30, 2000 v. L. Ginzburg
Author's Note
(Preface to the Earlier Russian Edition)
The type of publication before the reader allows the author to present papers
of diverse kind and content under the same cover. The papers I have selected
have been distributed among the three parts of the book.
Part I is essentially a new, revised version of the paper "What Problems
of Physics and Astrophysics Seem Now to Be Especially Important and In-
teresting?" There is no need to describe it in detail here because that is done
in the Preamble to Part 1.
Part II includes papers on the history and methodology of science and
related matters.
Part III consists of papers and short articles dedicated to the memory
of a number of Russian and foreign physicists (1. E. Tamm, L. 1. Man-
delshtam, N. D. Papaleksi, L. D. Landau, A. A. Andronov, A. L. Mints,
S. 1. Vavilov, 1. M. Frank, G. S. Landsberg, E. K. Zavoiskii, M. S. Rabinovich,
M. V. Keldysh, A. D. Sakharov, A. Einstein, N. Bohr, R. P. Feynman, and
J. Bardeen). An article written on the occasion of the 80th birthday of the
Dutch astrophysicist J. Oort is also in this section.
The texts of almost all papers in Parts II and III had been published
earlier. Only small revisions were made for this edition, the purpose of which
is usually self-evident.
It should be admitted that the book is not free of repetitions. Unfortu-
nately, it was impossible to get rid of all of them, as the book includes many
papers written in different periods on different occasions. It may be said that
another drawback of the book is that personal pronouns (I, me, myself, and
so on) are used, though this is typically not done in scientific literature in
Russian. It is not always possible to employ rigorously the impersonal style
of scientific literature in popular-science papers and reminiscences. Another
important (and primary) explanation is that my reminiscences too often fea-
ture myself. Obviously, a reader would like to learn more about, for instance,
Tamm from my reminiscences of him than about myself. I have not managed
to resolve adequately all the problems that arose in this connection. I hope,
though, that a well-disposed reader will be able to select from the book what
VIII Author's Note (Preface to the Earlier Russian Edition)
is interesting for himt and will ignore without prejudice the items that seem
superfluous or boring to him. One should always remember that different
people have different perceptions and the same comments or reports may
seem interesting or boring, useful or irrelevant to them. This is my opinion
based on considerable experience and was my thinking in the compilation of
the present collection.
In conclusion, I am grateful to the Russian Foundation for Basic Research,
whose financial assistance made possible the publication of the book. I am
also grateful to Yu. M. Bruk, L. A. Panyushkina, and S. V. Shikhmanova for
assistance of various types.
I am also grateful to a number of colleagues for their advice, which I used,
in particular, for revising the paper in Part I of the book (I do not give their
names, so that they cannot be blamed, however indirectly, for any errors or
omissions made by myself).
V. L. Ginzburg
t (Note added to English translation.) For simplicity, the pronouns 'he', 'him', and
'his' are used in this book when referring to an unspecified person. This is not
intended to carry any implication as to the person's gender.
Contents
Preface to the English Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. V
Author's Note (Preface to the Earlier Russian Edition) '" .... VII
Part I
What Problems of Physics and Astrophysics Seem Now
to Be Especially Important and Interesting? ............. . 3
Preamble ................................................. . 3
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
List of 'Especially Important and Interesting Problems' (1995) . . .. 11
Macrophysics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 12
1. Controlled Nuclear Fusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .. 12
2. High-Temperature Superconductivity. Superdiamagnetism ..... 18
3. New Substances (Production of Metallic Hydrogen
and Some Other New Materials). . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . .. 24
4. Some Problems of Solid-State Physics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 27
5. Phase Transitions of the Second Order and Similar Transitions
(Critical Phenomena). Interesting Examples of Such Transitions 29
6. Physics of Surfaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 35
7. Liquid Crystals. Very Large Molecules. Fullerenes. . . .. . . . . . . .. 37
8. Matter in Super high Magnetic Fields. . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 38
9. X-ray Lasers, Grasers, and New Superpowerful Lasers. . . . . . . .. 40
10. Strongly Nonlinear Phenomena (Nonlinear Physics).
Solitons, Chaos. Strange Attractors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 45
11. Superheavy Nuclei (Far Transuranic Elements). Exotic Nuclei. 47
Microphysics ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 50
12. What is Understood by Microphysics? ... . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. . . .. 50
13. Mass Spectrum. Quarks and Gluons. Quantum Chromo dynamics 53
14. Unified Theory of the Weak and Electromagnetic Interactions.
W± and ZO Bosons. Leptons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 59
15. Grand Unification. Proton Decay. Neutrino Mass.
Magnetic Monopoles. Superunification. Superstrings ........ 62
X Contents
16. Fundamental Length. Particle Interactions
at High and Ultrahigh Energies .......................... 67
17. Violation of CP Invariance. Nonlinear Phenomena in Vacuum
and Superhigh Electromagnetic Fields. Phase Transitions
in Vacuum. Some Comments on the Development
of Microphysics ........................................ 72
18. Microphysics Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow .............. 81
Astrophysics ............................................... 87
19. Experimental Verification of the General Theory of Relativity. 87
20. Gravitational Waves ..................................... 90
21. The Cosmological Problem. Singularities
in the General Theory of Relativity and Cosmology.
Relationship between Cosmology and High-Energy Physics 94
22. Neutron Stars and Pulsars. Supernovae. Black Holes ......... 98
23. Quasars and Galactic Nuclei. Formation of Galaxies.
Problem of Dark Matter (Missing Mass).
Does Astronomy Require a 'New Physics'? ................ 110
24. Origin of Cosmic Rays and Cosmic Gamma
and X-ray Radiation. Gamma Bursts ..................... 120
25. Neutrino Astronomy ..................................... 129
26. The Contemporary Stage in the Development of Astronomy. .. 132
Concluding Remarks ........................................ 135
27. General Comments on Scientific Progress ................... 135
28. In Lieu of a Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 138
References ................................................. 142
What Problems of Physics and Astrophysics Seem Now to Be
Especially Important and Interesting (Thirty Years Later,
Already on the Verge of the 21st Century)? .............. 149
1. Introduction ............................................. 149
2. List of 'Especially Important and Interesting Problems' (1999) . 152
3. Some Comments (Macrophysics) ............................ 154
4. Some Comments (Microphysics) ............................ 160
5. Some Comments (Astrophysics) ............................ 165
6. Three More 'Great' Problems .............................. 183
7. An Attempt to Predict the Future .......................... 187
References ................................................. 193
Part II
How Does Science Develop? Remarks on The Structure
of Scientific Revolutions by T. Kuhn ..................... 201
Preamble .................................................. 201
1. The Subject Matter of the Book ............................ 202