Energy

"properties can play a crucial role in determining the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe if thermal is the correct solution to the problem. Owing to this, the study of Neutrino models goes beyond the mere purpose of generating tiny neutrino masses, and it is natural to incorporate the puzzle of cosmic ."

"One of the most fundamental concepts in the study of physics is the idea of symmetry. Yet, Nature as we know it does not always seem to be perfectly symmetrical. ...[T]he principal theme for this current work is motivated by none other than the apparent between matter and antimatter in the universe. Therefore, along with the appeal of symmetry, a major topic of interest is the mechanism of symmetry breaking or asymmetry creation."

"[I]t is quite fascinating that two seemingly unrelated problems—the tiny masses of light neutrino and the matter-antimatter asymmetry—may be explained by the mere introduction of heavy RH [right-hand] neutrinos to the SM. ...[T]he former may be explained by the Type I seesaw mechanism while thermal leptogenesis provides an attractive solution to the later. This... means that an intricate link between neutrino properties and the baryon asymmetry can be established. Consequently, it has been the purpose of this work to explore the implications of several different neutrino models in the leptogenesis context."

"In the representative models... it has been found that successful leptogenesis is only possible in a very fine-tuned region of the parameter space. Specifically, one must select the f = u case, as well as certain combinations of Dirac and Majorana phases in UPMNS such that a lepton asymmetry can be generated via either resonant of flavoured N2-leptogenesis. Further, it has been shown that although the f = e case can yield a TeV scale RH neutrino, the probability of detecting it at the LHC or a next-generation collider such as the ILC is far too small."

"[W]e investigated the effects of introducing an effective transition electromagnetic dipole moment [EMDM] operator between the LH light and the RH heavy neutrinos. ...As a result, a new scenario for leptogenesis whereby the lepton asymmetry is solely generated by the EMDM-type (instead of the usual Yukawa-mediated) interactions is possible. By exploring the key ingredients leading to , we have shown by explicit computations of the relevant diagrams in a toy model that, in principle, electromagnetic leptogenesis is a viable alternative for creating a lepton asymmetry. ...[T]here is no doubt that transition EMDM interactions between light and heavy neutrinos can have far-reaching consequences in the early universe."

"Sakharov published other papers in cosmology. ...[T]he most far-reaching, innovative, and original... concerned "". "s"... denote collectively not only protons and neutrons but also... unstable particles... created when protons and neutrons collide at extraordinarily high speeds. "Antibaryons"... carry the opposite electrical charge. When baryons and antibaryons collide, they annihilate each other, producing... exotic, unstable particles, such as pi-mesons, which are lighter than baryons, as well as radiation... "quanta"... or photons, which have no mass at all. The "background radiation" cosmologists discovered in the mid-1960s is... a remnant of the... annihilation of baryons and antibaryons... when the universe was created or shortly afterward. Baryons and antibaryons, in other words, are one form of matter and antimatter, respectively; electrons... and their opposite, positrons, are another."

"Sakharov tried to explain why exists... how there came to be a surplus of baryons... The consensus... was that there had to be baryon symmetry when the universe began. But there was no consensus on how symmetry broke down. ...According to Sakharov, for baryon asymmetry... the universe at the quantum level... had to have, in Christopher Korda's words, "an intrinsic ." ...[P]hysicists ...refer to the sequence... Sakharov described as "the Sakharov conditions.""

"Sakharov's conclusion was that ""—the difference between baryons and antibaryons in the universe—was not constant, as most... believed. ...[B]aryons, and in particular protons, can decay, and it was Sakharov's concept of proton decay and how it comes about that proved to be perhaps the most remarkable of all his contributions to cosmology. ...D. S. Chernavski, went as far as to say that, by showing theoretically that the proton can disnintegrate, he revealed "the basis of the universe." Ironically, Sakharov's ideas on the subject did not attract much attention for about a decade. But the development of... gauge theories in the late 1970s sparked new interest... even though proton decay has yet to be confirmed experimentally."

"A nucleus contains two protons and two neutrons. Under suitable circumstances a proton can change into a neutron and emit energy some of which materializes as a positron, similar to what happens in the positron emitters of... medicine."

"The finds itself in the heart of the sun, where there are lots of electrons and is instantly destroyed, turned into s. These try to rush away... but are interrupted by the crowd of electrically charged particles, electrons and protons... [R]epeatedly absorbed by electrons and then emitted with less energy... it will take a hundred thousand years before gamma rays... reach the surface... In doing so the rays lose lots of energy... changing from s to ultra-violet and at last into the rainbow of colours that are visible... So daylight is the result of antimatter being produced in the heart of the sun and, in part, of its annihilation."

"The laws of electricity and magnetism that underlie the existence of bulk matter don't care which bits... carry negative charge, and which... are positive. If we swapped all positives to negative, and all negatives to positive... resulting forces would be the same and the structures they built would... be unchanged. ...[T]o all outward appearances, nothing would appear different. Such a swapping of charges would turn what we know as matter into... antimatter. An anti-atom of would consist of a negative encircled by a positively charged . Paul Dirac... first predicted that such a mirror image of matter should exist."

"[H]ow can an electron with negative electrical charge emerge from the energy in a puff of light, which has no... charge? This is where nature's two forms of matter enter the story. The negatively charged electron has a positively charged form... the . The energy of a photon, a particle of light, becomes trapped in these two complementary pieces of substance. This... can also happen in reverse: an electron and a positron can annihilate one another, their individual energies being taken by the photons that rush from the scene of destruction at the speed of light. The emergence of substance from pure energy... is almost biblical in scope. With antimatter... we make contact with the gods of creation."

"In 1923 ... was investigating s... using a . ...The ...rays would knock electrons out of atoms... whose trails he could see... [I]n addition to knocking electrons out of the gas, they were ejecting them out of the walls of the chamber ...which interfered with the measurements... He... came up with the... idea of sweeping away the unwanted electrons by putting the chamber between the poles of a large magnet. ...[T]he clearer view revealed ...the magnetic forces seemed to make some of the 'electrons' curve 'the wrong way'. Today we know he was seeing s, but... [the] anomalous trails were a distraction from what he was trying to do. ...News about these images spread ...and five years later Skobeltsyn decided to show them at an international conference in Cambridge. ...[N]o one could offer an explanation. It was ironic that [this was]... the same year and... place that Dirac came up with his theoretical prediction of positrons... [A]s no one at the time had any reason to expect... positrons existed, he missed the big prize."

"Blackett had been working with a in Rutherford's group... a chamber that was ready for action every ten seconds or so, and took photos on ordinary film. ...[H]e accumulated ...pictures of trails made by s—a product of radioactive nuclear decays— ...bombarding nitrogen gas in the chamber. ...[I]n 1931 arrived ...His specialty was detecting nuclear radiation using s. ...Their big idea ...put one Geiger counter above a cloud chamber, and another... below. ...By connecting the Geiger counters to a ...a flash of light [and the cinematograph] captured the tracks of the cosmic rays on film. ...They noticed that ...a few tracks that appeared at first sight to be electrons, were ...curved the wrong way in the magnetic field. Blackett talked to Dirac about them... neither aware of the precious truth. ...It was only when they heard of Anderson's discovery that Blackett and Occhialini ...realized what they had."

"[L]uckily... they had more... Many of the pictures showed up to twenty... tracks ...from a copper plate just above the chamber ...roughly half of the particles were negatively charged and the rest positively charged. Blackett and Occhialini realized... the appearance of equal numbers of positrons and electrons must be... the result of s hitting the metal."

"Albert Einstein's equation E = mc^2, implies that energy (E) can be converted into mass (m)—radiation into matter—and Blackett and Ochialini had for the first time demonstrated the creation of matter, and antimatter, from radiation; they had proved that Anderson's new particle was not some weird extraterrestrial interloper."

"An ambitious plan took hold at Berkeley... to build an accelerator that would speed s such that when smashed into a target, there would be enough energy to produce an . ...When energy turns into massive particles they emerge in pairs, a particle... matched with its antiparticle, so the BeVatron was built with enough power to produce an antiproton in conjunction with a proton... Several ideas on how to isolate the antiproton 'needle' from the particle 'haystack' were presented... A small team... of , Emilio Segre, , and won the competition ...their idea worked ...and in 1955 they announced their discovery. One of the other teams led by that had entered the competition also gained success... with the discovery of the in 1957. So thirty years after Dirac['s]... seminal prediction, the basic pieces of the antiworld were in place: , antiproton, and ."

"Since antimatter will destroy any material object, it must be kept in a cage without material walls. The solution... a vacuum that is better than in outer space with magnetic and electric fields that confine the antiparticles, positrons, or antiprotons, as circulating beams. That is in effect what is done at particle physics laboratories such as CERN..."

"Magnetic fields that had been able to focus positrons into stable orbits were unable to control the wild antiprotons... Budker's idea was to pass the antiprotons through clouds of cold electrons. Although electrons are matter and antiprotons are antimatter, they are in no danger to one another: electrons are destroyed by their antiparticle, the positron, while the antiproton is at risk only from protons or neutrons. ...By 1974 Budker... succeeded in making and cooling antiprotons, but not in sufficient numbers to make an intense beam."

"It is just like matter except with a reversal of charges. ...We make it and study it in our laboratories, but find little of it in nature. The laws of physics for antimatter are almost an exact mirror of those for matter."

"For each type of matter particle there is a matching type of antimatter particle. ...[W]e can convert energy from radiation into a matched pair..."

"[T]heories suggest that, at very early times... all possible types of particles and antiparticles, existed equally in a hot, dense, and very uniform . ...[A]s the Universe expanded and cooled... annihilation could still occur whenever a particle met an antiparticle, but the reverse... creation of a particle and an antiparticle, became... rare."

"[H]igh energy laboratories can produce particles with energies similar to those that prevailed in the [very early] Universe... allows us to model the primordial production of small nuclei from collisions starting with s and s, long before stars began to form. Because we know... what energies are required for collisions to take apart... light elements [ less than 11] into... protons and neutrons, we can identify... the time at which the Universe became cold enough that this destruction practically ceased, and... production of elements started in earnest."

"The fate of antimatter to disappear was sealed by the time the Universe was no older than a millionth of a second."

"[T]he mystery of the missing antimatter... What laws of nature, not yet manifest in experiments and not part of our current Standard Model, were active in the early Universe, allowing the observed amount of matter to persist while all antimatter disappeared from the Universe?"

"The fact is that in Europe, faced with the choice between human rights and gas, many politicians pick gas."

"Now, six years after the Commission had assumed responsibility for the nation's atomic energy commission, industry was becoming restive over the delay in realizing the commercial applications of nuclear power. While most of the nation was preoccupied with the election campaign during autumn 1952, a clamor for a greater role in the development of atomic energy was rising among power equipment manufacturers and the electric utility industry."

"On Christmas Eve, two FBI agents arrived at Olden Manor and seized control of Oppenheimer's remaining classified papers. That same day, Oppenheimer received the AEC's letter of formal charges, dated December 23, 1953. ... The inclusion of Oppenheimer's opposition to the Super reflected the depth of McCarthyite hysteria that had enveloped Washington. Equating dissent with disloyalty, it redefined the role of government advisers and the very purpose of advice. The AEC's charges were not the kind of narrowly crafted indictment likely to bring conviction in a court of law. This was, rather, a political indictment and Oppenheimer would be judged by an AEC review panel appointed by the chairman of the AEC, Lewis L. Strauss."

"The US Atomic Energy Commission, created by Congress in 1946, grew into a uniquely powerful, mission-oriented bureaucracy. One of its main goals was the creation of a flourishing commercial nuclear power program. By the late 1950s, the AEC began to acquire frightening data about the potential hazards of nuclear technology. It decided, nevertheless, to push ahead with ambitious plans to make nuclear energy the dominant source of the nation's electric power by the end of the century. The AEC proceeded to authorize the construction of larger and larger nuclear reactors all around the country, the dangers notwithstanding. The AEC gambled that its scientists would, in time, find deft solutions to all the complex safety difficulties."

"New carbon-sucking technologies ... are so far from scalability at present that they are best described as fantasies of industrial absolution."

"There are people here who want to just continue business as usual. And the great facade is: 'Oh no, we'll be able to [use carbon capture to] capture everything.' . . . No scientist tells me we can capture it all. Can't do it. Can we capture some? Yes, and by the way, I'm for it. [It's up to the oil and gas industry] to show us they can capture all those emissions, to tell us whether it's really going to be part of the future. But don't lie to people and tell them it's green. And don't pretend to people that that's the main alternative."

"From quantum theory there follows the existence of so called zero-point oscillations; for example each oscillator in its lowest is not completely at rest but always is moving about its equilibrium position. Therefore electromagnetic oscillations also can never cease completely. Thus the quantum nature of the electromagnetic field has as its consequence zero point oscillations of the field strength in the lowest energy state, in which there are no light quanta in space... The zero point oscillations act on an electron in the same way as ordinary electrical oscillations do. They can change the eigenstate of the electron, but only in a transition to a state with the lowest energy, since empty space can only take away energy, and not give it up. In this way spontaneous radiation arises as a consequence of the existence of these unique field strengths corresponding to zero point oscillations. Thus spontaneous radiation is induced radiation of light quanta produced by zero point oscillations of empty space."

"We here face a fundamental problem of outstanding importance. Its solution may still require a radical change in our theories beyond our present imagining."

"One hopes will soon demonstrate the incorrectness of the hypothesis of zero-point energy, the theoretical untenability of which became glaringly obvious to me soon after the publication of the paper I coauthored with Mr. Stern."

"Zero-point energy is now dead as a doornail."

"In his Theorie der Wärmestrahlung, Planck emphasized that the existence of a zero-point energy was completely foreign to classical physics. However, it seemed to be a ghost-like entity which it was difficult to connect to experiments."

"I fear that your hatred of the zero-point energy extends to the electrodynamic emission hypothesis that I introduced and that leads to it. But what’s to be done? For my part, I hate discontinuity of energy even more than discontinuity of emission."

"The light-quantum has the peculiarity that it apparently ceases to exist when it is in one of its stationary states, namely, the zero state, in which its momentum and therefore also its energy, are zero. When a light-quantum is absorbed it can be considered to jump into this zero state, and when one is emitted it can be considered to jump from the zero state to one in which it is physically in evidence, so that it appears to have been created. Since there is no limit to the number of light-quanta that may be created in this way, we must suppose that there are an infinite number of light quanta in the zero state..."

"The way ahead is clear. We must repudiate the false promise of the Bush-Cheney energy plan and select the path of autonomy, self-restraint, and innovation. If we strengthen our resolve, accept a degree of self-discipline, and embrace the new technologies, we will escape the trap of dependency and establish a secure, sustainable, and responsible energy system; if we fail to do these things, we will condemn ourselves to rising bloodshed abroad and hardship at home. The choice is ours. The time of decision is now. It is not too late to abandon our allegiance to oil at any cost and embark on a new energy path. but it might soon be."

"Developments in society influence the energy system in many ways, but the energy system also affects society."

"No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50 thousand years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight."

"If reactors were safe, nuclear industries would not demand government-guaranteed, accident-liability protection, as a condition for their generating electricity."

"The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one."

"As I said, there is some merit in these views [that nuclear power is the "only way to save the planet from cooking"]. More accurately, there would be if limited and short-term reliance on nuclear energy, with all of its extreme hazards and unsolved problems — like waste disposal — was taken as an opportunity for rapid and extensive development of sustainable energy. That should be the highest priority, and very quickly, because severe threats of environmental catastrophe are not remote."

"The general question of nuclear power is not a simple one. It is hardly necessary to stress how dangerous it is after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, which has far from ended. Continued use of fossil fuels threatens global disaster, and not in the distant future. The sensible course would be to move as quickly as possible to sustainable energy sources, as Germany is now doing. The alternatives are too disastrous to contemplate."

"Normally you have to wait for generations to see the effect of the environment on mutations, and most mutant animals are pretty damaged so don’t live long. In a world affected by climate change, we really need to understand nuclear energy as an option, and its potential effects on natural populations. We know that exposure to acute radiation is terrible, but actually low levels are nowhere near as bad as we think. And many of the animals around Chernobyl have actually done very well, because the humans left – and it turns out we are way worse than radiation."

"In reality, the story of nuclear power development in the US over the last 50 years is beyond pitiful and would not pass muster under any “normal” business plan. How the nuclear industry gets away with it remains baffling."

"Fission is a process of deadly fascination; had nature chosen her constants just a little differently, we should have been deprived of its potential for social good and spared its power for social evil. Despite the former and despite the undeniable fact that the latter is responsible for nuclear and particle physics being decades in advance of what would otherwise have been their time, I know what my own choice for the constants would have been."

"In some sense, nuclear fission is not one of those developments in physics which arose logically and systematically in the course of progress. There was a great deal of accident and surprise in the process."

"On May 7, a few weeks after the accident at Three-Mile Island, I was in Washington. I was there to refute some of that propaganda that Ralph Nader, Jane Fonda and their kind are spewing to the news media in their attempt to frighten people away from nuclear power. I am 71 years old, and I was working 20 hours a day. The strain was too much. The next day, I suffered a heart attack. You might say that I was the only one whose health was affected by that reactor near Harrisburg. No, that would be wrong. It was not the reactor. It was Jane Fonda. Reactors are not dangerous."