YEAR IN REVIEW 2000: MATHEMATICS-AND-PHYS-SCIENCES


Meaning of YEAR IN REVIEW 2000: MATHEMATICS-AND-PHYS-SCIENCES in English

Astronomy (For information on Eclipses, Equinoxes and Solstices, and Earth Perihelion and Aphelion in 2000, see Table. Physics Atomic and Optical Physics. Since 1960, when the first laser was made, applications for these sources of highly intense, highly monochromatic light have grown tremendously. What gives a beam of laser light its intensity and purity of colour is its characteristic coherencei.e., all its radiation, which has been emitted from a large number of atoms, shares the same phase (all the components of the radiation are in step). In 1997 physicists first created the matter equivalent of a laser, an atom laser, in which in the output is a beam of atoms that exists in an analogous state of coherence, and in 1999 research groups reported significant progress in the development of atom lasers. The atom laser operates according to the principles of quantum mechanics. In this description of the behaviour of matter and radiation, the state of an atom is defined by a wave function, a solution of the equation developed by the Austrian quantum physicist Erwin Schrdinger to describe the wave behaviour of matter. The wavelength of this function, known as the de Broglie wavelength, defines the atom's momentum. In an atom laser the beam comprises atoms that are all described by the same wave function and have the same de Broglie wavelength. Consequently, the atoms are coherent in the same way that light is coherent in a conventional laser. The first step in making an atom laser is to prepare a gas of atoms in this coherent form. This was first achieved in 1995 by means of a technique for trapping atoms of rubidium and chilling them to temperatures just billionths of a degree above absolute zero (0 K, -273.15 C, or -459.67 F) to form a new kind of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). In a BEC the constituent atoms exist in the same quantum state and act as a single macroscopic quantum blob, having properties identical to that of a single atom. In the next step to an atom laser, a method is needed to allow a portion of the trapped BEC to emerge as a beam. In the case of a conventional laser, light is confined in a resonant cavity comprising two mirrors aligned face-to-face, and it is allowed to escape the cavity by making one of the mirrors partially transparent. In an atom laser, the problem of allowing atoms to leave the trap to form a beam is much more difficult because they are held in a very precisely controlled combination of magnetic and optical fields. In 1997 Wolfgang Ketterle and colleagues of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) devised a way, based on the application of pulses of radio-frequency energy, to extract a controlled fraction of atoms from a trapped BEC of sodium atoms. The beam, which traveled downward under the influence of gravity, took the form of bursts of atoms that were all in the same quantum state. In 1999 two teams of physicists reported advances in techniques for extracting a beam of atoms from a trapped BEC. A U.S.Japanese team led by William Phillips of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, Md., applied a technique known as stimulated Raman scattering to trapped sodium atoms. The coherent atoms were made to absorb a pulse of light from an external laser at one frequency and emit it at a slightly lower (less energetic) frequency. In the process the atoms gained a small amount of momentum, which gave them a kick out of the trap in the direction of the laser beam. By shifting the direction of the laser, the researchers were able to change the direction of the atom pulses that emerged from the trap. Theodor W. Hnch and colleagues of the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, Garching, Ger., and the University of Munich, Ger., used an augmentation of the MIT technique. They began with a BEC of rubidium atoms in a very stable magnetic trap and then punched a small hole in the trap with a constant weak radio-frequency field. Unlike previous atom lasers, which emitted pulsed beams, this one produced a continuous beam lasting 0.1 second, the duration limited only by the number of atoms in the trap. Although atom lasers were in their infancy, it was possible to speculate on their applications. Importantly, because the de Broglie wavelengths of the atoms are much shorter than the wavelengths of laser light, atom lasers offered the possibility for timekeeping, microscopy, and lithography techniques that are more precise than light-based methods. Perhaps even more exciting was the prospect of atom holography, by which interfering beams of atoms would be used to build tiny solid objects atom by atom (analogous to the use of interfering light beams in conventional holography to create images). Such structures, which could be as small as nanometres (billionths of a metre) in size, would have myriad uses in electronics, biomedicine, and other fields. Although atom lasers were attracting much scientific attention, conventional lasers were by no means at the end of their useful development. NIST physicists in Boulder, Colo., built a laser monochromatic to 0.6 Hz (a stability of one part in 1014). Todd Ditmire and colleagues of Lawrence Livermore (Calif.) National Laboratory employed a powerful laser to demonstrate tabletop hot nuclear fusion; using light pulses from a laser with a peak intensity of 21016 w per sq cm, they fused atoms of deuterium (a form of heavy hydrogen) to produce helium-3 and a burst of neutrons. In the same laboratory Thomas Cowan and colleagues used a device called the Petawatt laser to induce nuclear fission in uranium and, at the same time, create particles of antimatter called positronsthe first time laser energy was converted into antiparticles. At the other end of the energy range, a collaboration of physicists from the University of Tokyo, the Bavarian Julius Maximilian University of Wrzburg, Ger., and the University of Lecce, Italy, fabricated the first room-temperature semiconductor laser to emit light in the blue region of the spectrum. Particle Physics. The hunt continued for the elusive Higgs boson, the hypothetical subatomic particle proposed by theoretical physicists as a mechanism to account for the reason that the elementary particles exhibit the rest masses that they do. The standard model, the current mathematical theory describing all of the known elementary particles and their interactions, does not account for the origin of the widely differing particle masses and requires an invented particle to be added into the mathematics. Confirmation of the existence of the Higgs boson would make the standard model a more complete description. During the year physicists working at the Large Electron-Positron (LEP) collider at CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics) in Geneva produced data containing tantalizing hints of the Higgs boson, but the evidence was too uncertain for a claim of discovery. In addition, theoretical calculations lowered the limits on the predicted mass of the particle such that its observationif it existsmight be in reach of particle-collision energies achievable by the Tevatron accelerator at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), Batavia, Ill. The adequacy of the standard model came under pressure as the result of data collected during the year. A number of experimental groups were searching for and measuring small asymmetries in particle properties associated with the behaviour of quantum mechanical systems under reversal of the direction of time (T) or, equivalently, under the combined operation of the replacement of each particle with its antiparticle (charge conjugation, or C) and reflection in space such that all three spatial directions are reversed (parity, or P). According to the standard model, particle interactions must be invarianti.e., their symmetries must be conservedunder the combined operation of C, P, and T, taken in any order. This requirement, however, was coming under question as precise measurements were made of violations of the invariance of the combination of C and P (CP) or, equivalently, of T. Physicists working at the KTeV experiment at Fermilab measured the amount by which the decay of particles called neutral kaons (K mesons) violates CP invariance. Kaons usually decay by one of two routesinto two neutral pions or into two charged pionsand the difference in the amount of CP invariance between the two decay routes can be precisely determined. Although the magnitude of the difference found by the KTeV researchers could be made to fit the standard model if appropriate parameters were chosen, the values of those parameters fell at the edge of the range allowed by other experiments. In a related development, physicists led by Carl Weiman of NIST in Boulder measured the so-called weak charge QW of the cesium nucleus and found the value to be slightly different from that predicted by the standard model. The Fermilab and NIST results may well be early signs of physical processes lying beyond the scope of the standard model. Mathematics The major mathematical news in 1999 was the proof of the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture. In 1993 Andrew Wiles of Princeton University proved a special case of the conjecture that was broad enough to imply Fermat's Last Theorem. (About 1630 Pierre de Fermat had asserted that there are no solutions in positive integers to an + bn = cn for n > 2.) The full conjecture had now been proved by associates and former students of Wiles: Brian Conrad and Richard Taylor of Harvard University, Christophe Breuil of the Universit de ParisSud, and Fred Diamond of Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. In 1955 Yutaka Taniyama of the University of Tokyo first observed a remarkable relationship between certain mathematical entities from two previously unrelated branches of mathematics. Although Taniyama could not prove that this relationship existed for all cases, his conjecture, that every elliptic curve is modular, had profound implications for reformulating certain problems, such as Fermat's Last Theorem, from one branch of mathematics to another in which different tools and mathematical structures might provide new insights. Initially, most mathematicians were skeptical of the general case, but following Taniyama's suicide in 1958, his friend and colleague Goro Shimura (now at Princeton) continued to advance the case, and Shimura's name was added: the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture. Elliptic curves have equations of the form y2 = ax3 + bx2 + cx + d (the name elliptic curves derives from the study of the length, or perimeter, of ellipses). One major goal of algebraic geometry is to identify their rational solutions for elliptic curvespoints (x, y) on the curve with both x and y as rational numbers. For elliptic curves with rational coefficientsthat is, where a, b, c, and d are rational numbersany tangent to the curve at a rational point, or any pair of rational points on the curve, can be used to generate another rational point. A key question is how many generators are required for each curve in order to determine all rational solutions. One approach is to broaden the domain for x and y to include complex numbers a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i = , so that the curves for the equations become compact surfaces (loosely speaking, the surface contains only a finite number of pieces). Such surfaces can be classified by their topological genus, the number of holes through the surface. The equations for lines and conic sections (circles, ellipses, hyperbolas, and parabolas) have surfaces with genus 0, and such curves have either no rational points or an easy-to-describe infinite class of them. For elliptic curves, which have genus 1 (a torus, or doughnut shape), there is no easy way to tell whether there are infinitely many rational points, finitely many, or none at all. While direct classification of the generators of elliptic curves proved difficult, another branch of mathematics offered a promising new approach to the problem. While difficult to visualize, the numerous symmetries of modular functions produce a rich structure that facilitates analysis. Shimura had observed that the series of numbers that fully characterize a particular modular function (a special complex-valued function) corresponded exactly to the series of numbers that fully characterize a certain elliptic curve. This is where the idea began of reformulating problems involving elliptic curves into problems involving modular functions, or curves. A solution to the Fermat equation an + bn = cn for n > 2 would correspond to a rational point on a certain kind of elliptic curve. Gerhard Frey of the University of Saarland, Ger., had conjectured in 1985, and Kenneth Ribet of the University of California, Berkeley, proved in 1986, that such a companion curve cannot be a modular curve. Wiles, however, showed that all semistable elliptic curves (involving certain technical restrictions) are modular curves, leading to a contradiction and hence the conclusion that Fermat's last theorem is true. Conrad and the others extended Wiles's result to prove the full Taniyama-Shimura conjecture. In particular, they showed that any elliptic curve y2 = ax3 + bx2 + cx + d can be parametrized by modular functions; this means that there are modular functions f and g with y = f(z) and x = g(z) so that the curve has the form 2 = a3 + b2 + c + d. The elliptic curve is thus a projection of a modular curve; hence, rational points on the elliptic curve correspond to rational points on the modular curve. Results proved previously for modular elliptic curvessuch as how to tell if all rational points come from a single generatornow are known to apply to all elliptic curves. Paul J. Campbell Chemistry Nuclear Chemistry. Two research groups in 1999 reported strong new evidence that the so-called island of stability, one of the long-sought vistas of chemistry and physics, does exist. The island consists of a group of superheavy chemical elements whose internal nuclear structure gives them half-lives much longer than those of their lighter short-lived neighbours on the periodic table of elements. Chemists and nuclear physicists had dreamed of reaching the island of stability since the 1960s. Some theorists speculated that one or more superheavy elements may be stable enough to have commercial or industrial applications. Despite making successively heavier elements beyond the 94 known in natureup to element 112 (reported in 1996)researchers had found no indication of the kind of significantly longer half-life needed to verify the island's existence. The first important evidence for comparatively stable superheavy elements came in January when scientists from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia, and the Lawrence Livermore (Calif.) National Laboratory (LLNL) announced the synthesis of element 114. The work was done at a particle accelerator operated by Yury Oganesyan and his associates at Dubna. Oganesyan's group bombarded a film of plutonium-244, supplied by LLNL, with a beam of calcium-48 atoms for 40 days. Fusion of the two atoms resulted in a new element that packed an unprecedented 114 protons into its nucleus. Of importance was the fact that the element remained in existence for about 30 seconds before decaying into a series of lighter elements. Its half-life was a virtual eternity compared with those of other known superheavy elements, which have half-lives measured in milliseconds and microseconds. The new element lasted about 100,000 times longer than element 112. Adding to Oganesyan's confidence about reaching the island of stability was the behaviour of certain isotopes that appeared as element 114 underwent decay. Some isotopes in the decay chain had half-lives that were unprecedentedly long. One, for instance, remained in existence for 15 minutes, and another lasted 17 minutes. In June, Kenneth E. Gregorich and a group of associates at the Lawrence Berkeley (Calif.) National Laboratory (LBNL) added to evidence for the island of stability with the synthesis of two more new elements. If their existence was confirmed, they would occupy the places for element 116 and element 118 on the periodic table. In the experiment, which used LBNL's 224-cm (88-in) cyclotron, Gregorich's group bombarded a target of lead-208 with an intense beam of high-energy krypton-86 ions. Nuclei of the two elements fused, emitted a neutron, and produced a nucleus with 118 protons. After 120 microseconds the new nucleus emitted an alpha particle and decayed into a second new element, 116. This element underwent another alpha decay after 600 microseconds to form an isotope of element 114. Although the lifetimes of elements 118 and 116 were brief, their decay chains confirmed decades-old predictions that other unusually stable superheavy elements can exist. If there were no island of stability, the lifetimes of elements 118 and 116 would have been significantly shorter. According to Gregorich, the experiments also suggested an experimental pathway that scientists could pursue in the future to synthesize additional superheavy elements. Carbon Chemistry. Ever since 1985, when the first representative of the all-carbon molecules, called fullerenes was synthesized, researchers had speculated that these hollow, cage-shaped molecules may exist in nature. The first fullerene, C60, comprising 60 carbon atoms, was made accidentally in the laboratory as scientists tried to simulate conditions in which stars form. In 1994 Luann Becker, then of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, Calif., and associates provided evidence for natural fullerenes when they announced detection of C60 in the Allende meteorite, which formed 4.6 billion years agoaround the time of the formation of the solar systemand which fell in Mexico in 1969. In 1999 Becker, currently of the University of Hawaii, and colleagues strengthened their case when they reported finding a range of fullerenes in a crushed sample of the meteorite, extracted with an organic solvent. Included were C60, C70, higher fullerenes in the C76C96 range, and significant amounts of carbon-cluster moleculespossibly fullerenesin the C100C400 range. Becker's group speculated that fullerenes may have played a role in the origin of life on Earth. Fullerenes contained in meteorites and asteroids that bombarded the early Earth may have carried at least some of the carbon essential for life. In addition, atoms of gases contributing to the evolution of an atmosphere conducive to life may have been trapped inside the fullerenes' cagelike structure. Interest in fullerenes led to the 1991 discovery of elongated carbon molecules, termed carbon nanotubes, which form from the same kind of carbon vapour used to produce fullerenes. Nanotubes were named for their dimensions, which are on the nanometre scale. In the 1990s interest intensified in using nanotubes as electronic devices in ultrasmall computers, microscopic machines, and other applications. During the year Ray H. Baughman of AlliedSignal, Morristown, N.J., and associates reported development of nanotube assemblies that flex as their individual nanotube components expand or contract in response to electric voltages. The scientists regard the assemblies as prototype electromechanical actuators, devices that can convert electric energy into mechanical energy. The nanotube actuators have several attractive characteristics. For instance, they work well at low voltages and have high thermal stability and diamond-like stiffness. Baughman speculated that nanotubes may eventually prove superior to other known materials in their ability to accomplish mechanical work or generate mechanical stress in a single step. Space Exploration During 1999, assembly of the International Space Station was delayed, the loss of the Mars Climate Observer cast a shadow over the interplanetary capabilities of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the new Chandra X-ray Observatory started producing striking images of the high-energy universe. Astronaut Charles (Pete) Conrad, commander of the second manned mission to the Moon, died of injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident on July 8. (See Obituaries.)

Britannica English vocabulary.      Английский словарь Британика.