Post #1906563

A surprising number of discoveries in physics can be summed up by the sentence, “Wait, you mean that thing is REAL?” Murray Gell-Mann came up with quarks and thought it was an accounting trick that made it easier to categorize the “particle zoo.” Later, someone performed a scattering experiment and bounced particles off of quarks, demonstrating that they were real, physical things that could interact with other particles. Electric fields and magnetic fields were thought of as a mental model or a crutch for people who could not handle the vector math that described the strength and direction of magnetic or charge-based forces surrounding a particle. A crutch for experimental physicists such as Michael Faraday, who, building on the work of Hans Ørsted helped to prove that magnetic and electric fields were real, physical things by showing that they interacted with each other (laying the groundwork for every electric motor and generator in existence). Maxwell's famous equations predicted a “free running wave” that turned out to be all electromagnetic radiation, including light, radio waves, ultraviolet, etc. The cosmic microwave background turned out to be real and was discovered by engineers trying to track down the source of a signal that they thought was the result of faulty equipment. This is not a complete list. #physics