FQ

Martin Perl (later Nobel Prize winner) discovers the tau particle, essentially a heavier version of the muon which is a heavier version of the electron. This completes the family of charged leptons in the Standard Model.

Reasenberg and Shapiro provide confirmation of the slowing of time in high gravitational fields (within 0.1% accuracy) with measurements made by transponders on the Viking spacecraft in orbit around Mars and by Martian surface probes.

In the context of the theory of supergravity, the hypothesis of the existence of a spin 2 particle is advanced: the Graviton, the vehicle of the gravitational force.

Stony Brook State University, Long Island. Daniel Freedman, Sergio Ferrara and Peter van Nieuwenhuizen write the Theory of Supergravity. It also includes the graviton and its partner, the gravitino, thus including Gravity. But the calculations show annoying infinite results that do not bode well for

Trinity College, Cambridge, UK. A notebook (The Lost Notebook) of 120 handwritten pages of Ramanujan is found by chance. This is the contribution that Ramanujan will give to String theory. To protect the original symmetry from being destroyed by quantum theory, a certain number of

The core of the RBMK reactor in Leningrad goes into partial meltdown, releasing a radioactive dose equal to about 5% of that of Chernobyl

paper by Teller and Konopinsky dated December 2, 1943 is made public where they estimate, with a safety factor of 60, that a nuclear explosion of 3 million electron volts cannot ignite the entire Earth’s atmosphere. They also conclude that even a bomb with 1000

The charm quark is discovered

Oxford: Stephen Hawking says black holes are not so black after all: they have not only mass, momentum and magnetic field, but also temperature, entropy, and emit radiation; finally they can evaporate and explode

Norio Taniguchi coins the term “nanotechnology” to mean machines with tolerances of less than 1mm

India detonates its first nuclear device: 10-15Kton

The Soviets begin to set up an automatic system called Perimeter, a network of sensors and computers that can automatically order a nuclear strike in response to the United States with ICBM ballistic missiles. It will be completed in 1985 and will be called “Dead

After 15 underground test explosions, the American Plowshire program for the use of nuclear explosions for planetary engineering: large-scale reshaping of the soil, is interrupted; the analogous Soviet program will continue until 1986

Bruno Zumino of CERN in Geneva lays the foundations, with Julius Wess, of supersymmetry, using the twistor theory

Alexander S. Holevo of the Steklov Mathematical Institute in Moscow proves that qubits contain hidden information that can be manipulated but not read, unless it is collapsed to a state of 0 or 1.

Mazara del Vallo. Sicily. A well-known tramp, called Omu Cani (the dog man) is found dead of natural causes. He was known for doing cube roots in his head and there are those who suspect that he was Ettore Majorana. Paolo Borsellino also deals with

Nobel Prize in Physics to Leo Eeaski and Ivar Giaever for discoveries of tunneling in semiconductors and superconductors respectively

Wheeler emphasizes Max Planck’s 1906 idea of Planck-Wheeler units by adopting it throughout his writings, but assuming G=c=h=k=1 and deriving e=1/SQR(137) (rather than G=c=k=e=1 as Planck had done)

Andrew Prentice states (wrongly) that the Sun has exhausted its hydrogen fuel and is therefore made up of a helium nucleus. The final energy crisis of our star would then have begun, which would take a few million years to reach the surface of the

DeWitt and Neill Graham publish the book The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, including both versions of Hugh Everett’s thesis

‘t Hooft shows that Yang-Mills fields constitute a well-defined theory of the interaction of subatomic particles. Professor CC Yang and his student RL Mills twenty years earlier had generalized Maxwell’s fields to the weak and strong nuclear forces by introducing the force-carrying W particles and

Nobel Prize in Physics to John Bardeen, Leon N. Cooper and J. Robert Schrieffer for the development of the theory of superconductivity (BCS theory)

FermiLab’s particle accelerator is completed and operating at full capacity (200GeV)

The remains of 17 natural nuclear reactors were discovered in Oklo, Gabon, in a uranium mine. In fact, the nuclear waste of the same type and percentage produced by modern nuclear reactors is evident: it is the terrible Plutonium 239 which in the decay process

Arnold R. Bodner hypothesizes that strange matter (i.e. composed of “strange” quarks) is absolutely stable (i.e. with energy per baryon lower than that of the isotope 56 of Iron)

Gerard ‘t Hooft, a graduate student at the University of Utrecht, demonstrates the renormalizability of theories where there is a spontaneous breaking of symmetry, as in the case of the electroweak force

United States. The Polaris, based on nuclear submarines, become operational; they are missiles with 14 nuclear warheads each.

At the Stanford Linear Accelerator, structures revealing the presence of quarks are observed for the first time

The theory of SuperSymmetry is developed which predicts extra spatial dimensions

Charles H. Bennett of IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Labs discovers that given an irreversible Turing Machine, there always exists another Turing Machine, but reversible, that will perform the same computation; and this machine will not require many more steps than the irreversible machine; this

United States. Minuteman III missiles with triple nuclear warheads become operational.

Nobel Prize in Physics to Hannes Alfven for his studies on the fourth state of matter: plasma

Hawking-Penrose Singularity Theorem: with the assumptions of 1) sufficiently smooth space-time, 2) impossible time travel, 3) sufficient matter and radiation in the Universe, 4) general relativity, 5) mass density always prevails over matter pressure (strong energetic condition); then the Universe was born from a singularity

Japanese-American physicist Yoichiro Nambu, building on a formula discovered by the young Italian Gabriele Veneziano two years earlier, explains several bizarre aspects of quantum mechanics by modeling individual particles as strings rather than points.

Nobel Prize in Physics to Murray Gell-Mann for his contribution to the classification of elementary particles

France conducts its first thermonuclear explosion; “Canopus”, 2.6Mton at Fangataufa, Polynesia

Felice Ippolito, accused of 40 crimes and sentenced in October 1963 to 11 years in prison for having squandered public money in the Italian nuclear sector, was released from prison pardoned by Giuseppe Saragat who had first attacked him 4 years earlier; a few months

Alfred Y. Cho and John Arthur of Bell Labs invent molecular-beam epitaxy, a technique for depositing layers of single atoms.

Gribov and Pontecorvo publish the theory based on the hypothesis of the existence of two types of neutrinos. This, in the following decades, will help to shed new light on the experiments on solar neutrinos, which will be found to change between different flavors of

The US federal government purchases 2,750 hectares of land from the state of Illinois on which to build FermiLab and its particle accelerator; construction begins on December 1, 1968

The young Italian Gabriele Veneziano conceives a formula on the basis of which, two years later, the Japanese-American physicist Yoichiro Nambu will explain several bizarre aspects of quantum mechanics by modeling individual particles as strings rather than points. The key aspect of this theory is

CERN, Geneva. Gabriele Veneziano and Mahiko Suzuki lay the foundations of the Superstring Theory. The so-called The Veneziano Model. It is based on the Euler Beta Function.

The Thule incident, according to the “Indian” nomenclature adopted by the Pentagon, is a Broken Arrow: it causes an unauthorized launch or explosion or fire or release of radioactivity from a nuclear weapon. Instead, an accident that causes damage to a nuclear weapon without any

B-52 is flying over Thule on a Thule Monitor mission. It maintains constant visual contact with the American base in North West Greenland, considered a primary target for the Soviets. The plane is loaded with 4 Mark-28 nuclear bombs. The co-pilot has put some foam

China detonates its first thermonuclear device: 3.3Mton

DeWitt writes a study, inspired by Hugh Everett’s approach, on the Wheeler-DeWitt equation

10:40pm: Robert Oppenheimer, dies in his sleep; he had been suffering from throat cancer for a couple of years.

Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam develop a mathematical scheme that simultaneously describes the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces, which merge into a single force at high energies

DeWitt presents the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, a universal wave function that can be satisfied by a theory of quantum gravity. The time variable is not included.

Urta-Bulak, Soviet Union (now Uzbekistan). To put out a permanent fire in an oil and natural gas well, the Soviets decided on a drastic solution: the underground explosion (1532 meters underground), of 10Kton, of a nuclear charge, to block the pipeline. It works (the explosion

Ray Davis and Blair Munhofen begin the experiment at the Homestake gold mine in South Dakota where they installed a neutrino detector, with 400 thousand liters of detergent as a detector (Chlorine) arrived in 10 railroad cars. The cost was 600 thousand USD (or 10

B-52 from North Carolina on a Chrome Dome mission begins its second in-flight refueling a couple of miles above Spain. The plane arrives at the rendezvous with the tanker too quickly, enters the refueling pipe which explodes and turns the tanker into a fireball killing

On the USS Ticonderoga, a group of sailors are pushing an A4-E Skyhawk plane across the deck, 70 miles from Japan. When they are done pushing, they whistle to signal the pilot, aboard the plane, to apply the brakes. The pilot does not hear, others

Livermore, California. The Special Projects Group, aka Z Division, is formed to gather as much information as possible about Soviet nuclear weapons. Some of this team will be aboard the Global Marine to recover the Soviet submarine K-129.

India. A group of Indian (from India…) and American climbers try to take six detectors, powered by plutonium batteries, to Nanda Devi, 7816 meters high, to spy on Chinese atomic explosions. The mission fails due to a blizzard. The climbers leave the material behind. When

Damascus, Arkansas. Launch Complex 374-7, consisting of 19 Titan II missiles, armed with a 9 Mton W-53 thermonuclear warhead, is the site of a localized fire that was later extinguished in a silo. This is the most serious accident at the Titans until the much

Nobel Prize in Physics to Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Julian Schwinger and Richard P. Feynman for their work on quantum electrodynamics

Ahmavaara suggests replacing the system of real numbers with a finite field Fp, where p is an extremely large prime number, to provide a fully discrete and combinatorial picture of the physical world.

Ray Davis and Blair Munhofen take over the excavations at the Homestake gold mine in South Dakota where they intend to install a neutrino detector, with 400,000 liters of detergent as the detector (Chlorine) arriving in 10 railroad cars.

Reines, using a detector at the bottom of a gold mine in Johannesburg, South Africa, finds the first “natural” neutrino, meaning one not generated by nuclear reactors or particle accelerators.

China conducts first of 47 nuclear tests at Lop Nur range; 22Kton bomb

After the statements of Giuseppe Saragat who believes that the nuclear sector in Italy is squandering money, an investigation is started on Felice Ippolito accused of 40 crimes and sentenced in October 1963 to 11 years in prison; he will be released in 1968 pardoned

The nuclear reactor of the Italian power plant of Trino Vercellese (the third) is turned on; Italy becomes the third nuclear power in the world

Leo Szilard Dies in La Jolla, California

The “Fitch-Cronin Experiment”, concerning reactions with K-mesons (strange and anti-down or down and anti-strange quarks), demonstrates that not even the CP (Charge-Parity) symmetry is conserved: we are moving towards the CPT (Charge-Parity-Time) transformation.

JP Gordon of AT&T Labs conjectures that qubits (properties of a quantum object) may have hidden information that can be manipulated but not read unless it is collapsed to 0 or 1.

The United States has 30,751 nuclear weapons (the most ever); the USSR has 5,221.

President Lyndon Johnson presents the Fermi Award to Robert Oppenheimer and a prize of 50,000 USD. After 9 years from the verdict for the suspension of access to classified material, it is a public reconciliation between the government and the scientist. Robert gives a speech

The nuclear reactor of the Italian power plant of Garigliano is turned on (the second)

Gell-Mann predicts existence of omega elementary particle composed of 3 strange quarks (sss); prediction is quickly confirmed experimentally at Brookhaven Nat’l Lab

The USSR has its own program for the use of nuclear explosions for engineering purposes to shape the terrain on a large scale: up to 1986 it will carry out 175 explosions for this purpose; only the Chernobyl disaster will lead the authorities to interrupt

The United States has 2 programs to use nuclear explosions for engineering purposes to shape the land on a large scale: the Chariot project and the Plowshire project (abandoned in 1974 after 15 test explosions) which among other things plans to dig a huge Panama

The United States has a program to use nuclear energy for space travel; with the ORION project they will come to theorize huge spaceships to carry 50 people to Mars thanks to continuous small nuclear explosions immediately behind the spaceship; in New Mexico they are

John Bell, an Irish physicist at CERN on sabbatical in Stanford, California, writes two famous papers on the revolutionary consequences of the entangled quantum state, which reveal that to see entanglement you do not have to measure the quantity that reveals the correlation, but rather

New Zealand mathematician Roy Kerr finds another exact solution to Einstein’s equations, which allows the existence of wormholes. A wormhole is a tear in space-time that connects us to another space-time. Thought of as a curiosity rather than a real possibility, it was later demonstrated

The nuclear reactor of the Italian power plant in Latina is turned on (the first)

The USSR conducts its last atmospheric nuclear test; from now on it will only conduct underground tests (494 until 1990)

The USSR detonates a 22 Mton thermonuclear device dropped from an airplane

Soviet and American high-altitude nuclear tests

On the very same day that a U-2 plane was shot down over Cuba and during the Cuban Missile Crisis, another U-2 plane flying over the Arctic Sea accidentally violates Soviet territorial space and enters Siberia. The pilot, Charles Maultsby, had orders to take samples