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Elders often teach us
You can't be too arrogant
Lip service should be left in Germany
Facts proved
The elders were right
The male protagonist of our story today
It is an achievement in the universe
Only slightly behind Einstein
Astrophysicist
But little is known
Many called him
Field of twentieth century astronomy
The most unknown genius
It's with him
The eccentric personality of the universe
Inseparable
Out of an appreciation for symmetry
He affectionately called his colleagues
Spherical Bastards
Spherical bastard
The reason was what he felt
These people look at it from any angle
It's all the same assholes
This swearler is an expert scientist
It's the Swiss astrophysicist
Fritz Zwicky
On Valentine's Day 1898, Zwicky was born in Varna, Bulgaria, but this did not give him a romantic character.
His father was a Swiss businessman and a well-known Bulgarian industrialist, and his mother was Czech.
As the eldest son in the family, his father wanted him to inherit the family's property, so when he was 6 years old, he sent him to his grandparents in Switzerland, hoping that he would learn business knowledge there.
Zwicky did not follow the path his father had hoped, and his interest soon shifted to mathematics and physics.
In 1916, he entered the ETH Zurich, where Einstein had studied.
In 1922, he received his doctorate.
In 1925, he accepted a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation and went to the United States to enter the California Institute of Technology.
There, he was lucky enough to get the chance to work with Robert Millikan.
Robert Millikan
Robert Millikan was a well-known experimental physicist in the United States, who measured the basic charge amount e through oil droplet experiments, and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1923.
How many people dream of working with such people, and when Zwicky got the invitation from Millikan, many people were red-eyed.
But when Zwicky saw his Bole, instead of thanking him, he said to him, "You never came up with any good ideas." ”
Although Millikan was very angry, he still kept a smile on his face and said to him, "Let's reflect on it, you are still too young!" ”
As a result, Zwicky actually laughed and said, "I don't have to worry at all, anyway, I have a new idea every two years." ”
Millikan finally couldn't help but get angry, "Well, then you go and study astronomy, and I don't believe you can have results in two years." ”
Zwicky did begin to study astronomy, and within two years the results were not mentioned, but he studied for a lifetime.
It turns out that Zwicky didn't say much, he was indeed a genius with enough wisdom.
Zwicky, who began to study astronomy, did not give up his love of physics, and with his unique ingenuity, decided to study both fields at the same time, which gave him a broader idea.
According to Einstein's theory of general relativity, light rays from distant stars are bent when they pass through a massive object closer to us.
Although astronomers at the time agreed that the distribution of galaxies in the universe was more or less uniform, Zwicky found that galaxies tended to congregate and form clusters.
In 1933, during the Great Depression in the United States, people had more leisure time under the depression, which gave Zwicky more time.
At the age of 35, he has devoted all his energy to the study of the Recess cluster.
After repeated calculations, he found that the dynamic mass of the Posterior Cluster was 160 times the photometric mass!
What's going on?
Is Newton's law of motion no longer applicable when calculating dynamic masses?
Zwicky repeatedly confirmed his scratch paper full of numbers and symbols, and reason told him that he had not miscalculated.
The answer, then, is only one, and the unaccounted for masses comes from some invisible galaxies.
Since they cannot be seen, their mass cannot be accurately measured by photometric methods.
So he came up with a whole new concept:
Dark matter
dark matter
But this concept is very difficult even for other astronomers to believe, after all, these substances can not be seen.
In addition, this concept is still a very annoying person to come up with, and it is even more difficult.
At that time, Zwicky's notoriety was far more famous than his research results.
Not only did he call his colleagues "spherical bastards," but in his self-published academic works, he attacked his colleagues, accusing them of "tampering with data to get most astronomers to accept the perversions they propose and to publish useless garbage in some flashy astronomical journals." ”
In his dictionary, "student = little garbage".
When the pastor says, "God say, let there be light!" Then there is light", he also has to coldly continue: "And there is an electromagnetic field." ”
Therefore, his image not only stinks in the astronomical world, but also among the common people...
Luckily, he met the German astronomer Walter Budd, perhaps with complementary personalities (are you sure not masochistic?). Ever since Bud came to Caltech, he has been inseparable from Zwicky.
Even though Zwicky occasionally teased him for being a Nazi because of his German roots, the two grew closer.
Walter Budd
Dark matter was not accepted by everyone, so they turned to other theories.
In 1934 they proposed that when a massive star reaches the end of its life, its core will be compressed by its own huge gravitational pull, a process that causes most of the neutrons and protons to be squeezed together, eventually forming an extremely dense neutron star.
Neutron stars are between 16 and 32 km in diameter, but they can reach 1.4 times the mass of the Sun.
Not only that, but they also proposed that the implosion of this stellar nucleus would trigger a huge explosion in the outer layer of the star, which Zwicky called a supernova.
When they erupt, these objects can reach 10 billion times brighter than the Sun, and Zwicky also predicted that supernova explosions would produce Galactic cosmic rays (high-energy particles from galaxies outside the solar system).
Later, Nobel laureate in physics Thorne reviewed Zwicky and Bud's 1934 paper on supernovae, neutron stars, and cosmic rays as "one of the most prescient documents in the history of physics and astronomy."
Compared with invisible and untouchable dark matter, supernovae with ultra-high brightness have been accepted.
So Zwicky managed to convince The California Institute of Technology to build a 48-inch Schmidt telescope on the Paloma Observatory.
A 48-inch TV is a common thing for us now, but it was nearly 100 years ago.
Since then, Zwicky has used this telescope to observe supernovae again and again, and by his death in 1974, Zwicky had discovered a total of 122 supernovae, a record that was not broken until 12 years ago.
Paloma Observatory
In 1948, at the age of 50, Zwicky gave a lecture at Oxford University in which he took the opportunity to discuss the concept of morphology.
This is a concept originally applied by Goethe to scientific research, and Zwicky developed it as a composite method for constructing and studying problems that contain multidimensional, unquantifiables.
He also applied this approach to areas beyond astrophysics, such as advancing the development of power plants and propellants, and discussing legal issues in space travel and space colonization.
He later founded the Society for the Study of Morphology and actively promoted the development of "general morphology" for more than 40 years before his death.
In addition to the previously mentioned concepts, Zweicky proposed the idea of gravitational lenses, developed standard candlelight for estimating distances in distant deep space, published a six-volume comprehensive catalog of galaxies and galaxy clusters, authored more than 300 articles, published 10 books, and held 25 patents.
It can be said that he played a pivotal role in the development of astronomy.
Compared with other astronomers of the same period, Zwicky did not receive the respect that matched his contribution.
Since Zwicky often brought her young daughter Barbarina to work with her, it also gave her a first-hand experience of how unpopular her father was.
"In the hallway of the Caltech astronomy building, everyone was hiding from him," she recalled. ”
In the face of criticism, Babalina has been trying to justify her father's name, but with little success.
Zwicky died in the United States on February 8, 1974, and the right and wrong surrounding him are difficult to judge today, after decades.
I believe that with the passage of time, history will forget his "bad deeds" and only remember his outstanding contributions to science.
Source: Fermi Sciences
Edit: Fengyao