The neutron, first hypothesized by Ernest Rutherford in 1921, was proved to exist in 1932. That same year, the positron was proved to exist, and nuclear fission, or “splitting the atom” was accomplished for the first time.
These discoveries gave atomic physicists new tools with which to probe further the structure and properties of the atom, leading refugee physicist Leo Szilard, in London, to have an uncomfortable thought.
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Fanfare
Opening Theme
Two-Part Invention No. 8 in F major
Composed c.1723 by Johann Sebastian Bach. Public domain.
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Mark, This episode has got to be your best so far. I had to listen to it twice because it was so good. I have never had such a simple and succinct explanation of sub-atomic particles and their discovery. I did think that you missed a piece of foreshadowing about the structure of the atom. That some physicists thought adding pairs of electrons-protons to the nucleus to add mass (instead of a neutron) in fact foreshadows the discovery that a neutron decays into, wait for it, an electron and a proton! A wonderful episiode for us technology nerds and hopefully for hte general public, too.
Except laws of physics state that the spin has to add up. So even though we know a neutron will decay into an electron and a proton, there has to be another particle (with very little mass and no charge) that accounts for this spin, hence the prediction of the neutrino (and anti-neutrino)