Timeline [antikvár]

INTRODUCTIONScience at the End of the CenturyA hundred years ago, as the nineteenth century drew to a close, scientists around the world were satisfied that they had arrived at an accurate picture of the physical world. As physicist Alastair Rae put it, "By the end of the nineteenth century it seemed that the basic fiindamentai principles governing the behavior of the physical universe were known."* Indeed, many scientists said that the study of physics was nearly completed: no big discoveries remained to be made, only details and finishing touches.But late in the final decade, a few curiosities came to light. Roentgen discovered rays that passed through flesh; because they were unexplained, he called them X rays. Two months later, Henri Becquerel accidentally found that a piece of uranium ore emitted something that fogged photographic plates. And the electron, the carrier of electricity, was discovered in 1897.Yet on the whole, physicists remained calm, expecting that these oddities would eventually be explained by existing theory No one would have predicted that within five years their complacent view of the world would be shockingly upended, producing an entirely new conception of the universe and entirely new technologies that would transform daily life in the twentieth century in imimaginable ways.If you were to say to a physicist in 1899 that in 1999, a hundred years later, moving images would be transmitted intoAlastair I. M. Rae, Quantum Physics: Illusion or Reality? (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1994). See also Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1965). Also Rae, Quantum Mechanics (Bristol, Eng.: Hilger, 1986).