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| Ettore Majorana |
Like many people, I enjoy a good mystery. I’ve read books by Agatha Christie, watched just about every episode of Columbo ever made and even played the game Clue a number of times in my life. To me, though, the greatest mysteries are those that lie within the realm of the sciences.
Who hasn’t stared at a starry night and wondered how it all got here? Who hasn’t pondered with awe the unseen forces that shape and move the world around us?
Even as I write these words there are people out there whose job it is to study our world, our universe, and try to make sense of it all. I am referring, of course, to scientists. Aside from the occasional scientific celebrity like cosmologist Stephen Hawking or the late wildlife expert Steve Irwin, most are unaware of the activities of these people. Why should they be otherwise? After all, they’re too busy trying to keep up with the Kardashians and other really important stuff!
Growing up I was fascinated by two scientific disciplines in particular: Archaeology and Geology. It was my interest in the former that led me to my studies of the history of our people – the Southern Italians. My odyssey of learning led me to discover that a number of our people made a mark for themselves in the various scientific disciplines. This is something I wouldn’t have learned otherwise in the public fool system!
One figure in particular has always stood out for me, not just because he was a Southerner, but also because his life was as mysterious as the subatomic particles he studied. I am referring, of course, to the legendary Sicilian physicist Ettore Majorana (1906-38). Readers of this blog know that I have written of him in the past. To call him a genius would be an understatement. Nobel laureate physicist Enrico Fermi, a genius in his own right, once compared Majorana’s intellect to that of other giants like Galileo and Isaac Newton!
His whole life was something of a mystery. His hopes, dreams and ambitions he pretty much kept to himself. His departure from this world undoubtedly remains the greatest mystery surrounding him. All that is known is he boarded a passenger ship from Palermo bound for Naples and was never seen or heard from again. His ultimate fate remains unknown.
Nevertheless, in his tragically short time on this earth he made several profound contributions to the field of physics. Perhaps his greatest was his prediction concerning the existence of a particle now known as a Majorana fermion. As the name implies, this type of particle was named in honor of Ettore Majorana and Enrico Fermi, two pioneers in the field.
Before I continue further a brief explanation is in order. Scientists understand our universe is made up of almost infinitely small particles. All the particles in the universe fall together under one of two broad categories – fermions and bosons. Every kind of elementary particle in the universe is either a fermion or a boson.
Without getting too technical (and turning this into a Physics lecture), a boson is basically a particle that has zero or integral ‘spin’ and obeys statistical rules (Bose-Einstein statistics) permitting any number of identical particles to occupy the same quantum state. Examples of bosons include photons (particles of light), gluons and the still-elusive Higgs boson, the so-called ‘God Particle’. Fermions are basically any particles which are not bosons. Examples of fermions include electrons, protons and neutrons. Confused yet? Wait, it gets better, but I’ll try to keep it short and sweet.
Physicists have long believed all particles have an associated antiparticle with the same mass but an opposite electrical charge. The antiparticle of an electron (a negatively charged particle), for example, is positively charged and is called a positron. If a particle and its corresponding antiparticle come into contact with one another they annihilate one other, producing energy. The electron, for example, reacts with a positron to produce two gamma rays.
Certain particles (all of them bosons) can be their own antiparticles. Photons, for example, under the right circumstances can annihilate with themselves. To date, of all the fermions that have been included in the Standard Model of Particle Physics, none have ever been described as a Majorana fermion. What is a Majorana fermion, you say? It is a hypothetical fermion that acts as its own antiparticle.
The existence of this particle was first hypothesized by, you guessed it, Ettore Majorana! He published a paper on this way back in 1937. The majority of physicists doubted it existed, though some quietly speculated Majorana was on to something. Sadly, the technology to investigate this claim was non-existent at the time Majorana was alive. Physicists use devices called particle accelerators to delve into the mysteries of the subatomic universe. These devices require enormous amounts of energy.
Thanks to technological advances, within the past 10 years serious progress has been made into locating the most fundamental particles of creation. Many are hopeful the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, will locate the Higgs boson, a particle believed to impart mass to other elementary particles such as quarks and electrons.
It is thus with great excitement that I read, only today in fact, that a team of physicists led by Leo Kouwenhoven at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands have announced they have discovered actual evidence to establish the existence of Majorana’s hypothetical particles. Their findings must be independently corroborated, but the scientists are confident of the results. If this checks out it will be a major advancement in the field of particle physics. Some researchers are already talking about possibly using this discovery to aid them in the eventual construction of quantum computers. These are computers which, if ever built large scale, could perform computations that would dwarf those done by any digital computer used today.
Just as importantly, though, it would cement the reputation of a great Southern Italian scientist who is little known here in America. It would validate Enrico Fermi’s assessment of Majorana’s genius. Sadly, he would never get the Nobel Prize in Physics he deserves (Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously), but his name would be put among the other greats where it has always belonged!
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