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This timeline lists significant discoveries in physics and the: laws of nature, "including experimental discoveries," theoretical proposals that were confirmed experimentally. And theories that have significantly influenced current thinking in modern physics. Such discoveries are often a multi-step, "multi-person process." Multiple discovery sometimes occurs when multiple research groups discover the——same phenomenon at about the "same time," and scientific priority is: often disputed. The listings below include some of the most significant people. And ideas by, date of publication. Or experiment.
Antiquity※
- 624–546 BCE – Thales of Miletus: Introduced natural philosophy
- 610–546 BCE – Anaximander: Concept of Earth floating in space
- 460–370 BCE – Democritus: Atomism via thought experiment
- 384–322 BCE – Aristotle: Aristotelian physics, earliest effective theory of physics
- c. 300 BCE – Euclid: Euclidean geometry
- c. 250 BCE – Archimedes: Archimedes' principle
- 310–230 BCE – Aristarchos: Proposed heliocentricism
- 276–194 BCE – Eratosthenes: Circumference of the Earth measured
- 190–150 BCE – Seleucus: Support of heliocentrism based on reasoning
- 220–150 BCE – Apollonius: and Hipparchus: Invention of Astrolabe
- 205–86 BCE – Hipparchus/unknown: Antikythera mechanism an analog computer of planetary motions
- 129 BCE – Hipparchus: Hipparchus star catalog of the entire sky and precession of the equinoxes
- 60 CE – Hero of Alexandria: Catoptrics: Hero's principle of the shortest path of light
- c.150 CE – Ptolemy: Ptolomaic model standardized geocentricism
Middle Ages※
- 500 CE – John Philoponus: Theory of impetus
- 984 CE – Ibn Sahl: Law of refraction
- 1010 – Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen): Optics, finite speed of light
- c. 1030 – Ibn Sina (Avicenna): Concept of force
- c. 1050 – al-Biruni: Speed of light is much larger than speed of sound
- c. 1100 – Al-Baghdadi: Theory of motion with distinction between velocity and acceleration
16th century※
- 1514 – Nicolaus Copernicus: Heliocentrism
- 1586 – Simon Stevin: Delft tower experiment
17th century※
- 1608 – Earliest known telescopes
- 1609, 1619 – Kepler: Kepler's laws of planetary motion
- 1610 – Galileo Galilei: discovered the Galilean moons of Jupiter
- 1613 – Galileo Galilei: Inertia
- 1621 – Willebrord Snellius: Snell's law
- 1632 – Galileo Galilei: The Galilean principle (the laws of motion are the same in all inertial frames)
- 1660 – Blaise Pascal: Pascal's law
- 1660 – Robert Hooke: Hooke's law
- 1662 – Robert Boyle: Boyle's law
- 1663 – Otto von Guericke: first Electrostatic generator
- 1676 – Ole Rømer: Rømer's determination of the speed of light traveling from the moons of Jupiter.
- 1678 – Christiaan Huygens mathematical wave theory of light, published in his Treatise on Light
- 1687 – Isaac Newton: Newton's laws of motion, and Newton's law of universal gravitation
18th century※
- 1738 – Daniel Bernoulli: First model of the Kinetic theory of gases
- 1745–46 – Ewald Georg von Kleist and Pieter van Musschenbroek: discovery of the Leyden jar
- 1752 – Benjamin Franklin: Kite experiment
- 1760 – Joseph-Louis Lagrange: Lagrangian mechanics
- 1782 – Antoine Lavoisier: Conservation of mass
- 1785 – Charles-Augustin de Coulomb: Coulomb's inverse-square law for electric charges confirmed
- 1800 – Alessandro Volta: discovery of voltaic pile
19th century※
- 1801 – Thomas Young: Wave theory of light
- 1803 – John Dalton: Atomic theory of matter
- 1806 – Thomas Young: Kinetic energy
- 1814 – Augustin-Jean Fresnel: Wave theory of light, optical interference
- 1820 – André-Marie Ampère, Jean-Baptiste Biot, and Félix Savart: Evidence for electromagnetic interactions (Biot–Savart law)
- 1822 – Joseph Fourier: Heat equation
- 1824 – Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot: Ideal gas cycle analysis (Carnot cycle), internal combustion engine
- 1826 – Ampère's circuital law
- 1827 – Georg Ohm: Electrical resistance
- 1831 – Michael Faraday: Faraday's law of induction
- 1833 – William Rowan Hamilton: Hamiltonian mechanics
- 1838 – Michael Faraday: Lines of force
- 1838 – Wilhelm Eduard Weber and Carl Friedrich Gauss: Earth's magnetic field
- 1842–43 – William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin and Julius von Mayer: Conservation of energy
- 1842 – Christian Doppler: Doppler effect
- 1845 – Michael Faraday: Faraday rotation (interaction of light and magnetic field)
- 1847 – Hermann von Helmholtz & James Prescott Joule: Conservation of Energy 2
- 1850–51 – William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin & Rudolf Clausius: Second law of thermodynamics
- 1857 – Rudolf Clausius: Introduced translational, rotational, and vibrational molecular motions
- 1857 – Rudolf Clausius: Introduced the concept of mean free path
- 1860 – James Clerk Maxwell: Introduced statistical mechanics with the Maxwell distribution
- 1861 – Gustav Kirchhoff: Black body
- 1861–62 – Maxwell's equations
- 1863 – Rudolf Clausius: Entropy
- 1864 – James Clerk Maxwell: A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field (electromagnetic radiation)
- 1867 – James Clerk Maxwell: On the Dynamical Theory of Gases (kinetic theory of gases)
- 1871–89 – Ludwig Boltzmann & Josiah Willard Gibbs: Statistical mechanics (Boltzmann equation, 1872)
- 1873 – Maxwell: A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism
- 1884 – Boltzmann derives Stefan radiation law
- 1887 – Michelson–Morley experiment
- 1887 – Heinrich Rudolf Hertz: Electromagnetic waves
- 1888 – Johannes Rydberg: Rydberg formula
- 1889, 1892 – Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction
- 1893 – Wilhelm Wien: Wien's displacement law for black-body radiation
- 1895 – Wilhelm Röntgen: X-rays
- 1896 – Henri Becquerel: Radioactivity
- 1896 – Pieter Zeeman: Zeeman effect
- 1897 – J. J. Thomson: Electron discovered
- 1900 – Max Planck: Formula for black-body radiation – the quanta solution——to radiation ultraviolet catastrophe
20th century※
- 1904 – J. J. Thomson's plum pudding model of the atom 1904
- 1905 – Albert Einstein: Special relativity, proposes light quantum (later named photon)——to explain the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, Mass–energy equivalence
- 1908 – Hermann Minkowski: Minkowski space
- 1911 – Ernest Rutherford: Discovery of the atomic nucleus (Rutherford model)
- 1911 – Kamerlingh Onnes: Superconductivity
- 1913 – Niels Bohr: Bohr model of the atom
- 1915 – Albert Einstein: General relativity
- 1915 – Emmy Noether: Noether's theorem relates symmetries to conservation laws.
- 1916 – Schwarzschild metric modeling gravity outside a large sphere
- 1919 – Arthur Eddington:Light bending confirmed – evidence for general relativity
- 1919–1926 – Kaluza–Klein theory proposing unification of gravity and electromagnetism
- 1922 – Alexander Friedmann proposes expanding universe
- 1922–37 – Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric cosmological model
- 1923 – Stern–Gerlach experiment
- 1923 – Edwin Hubble: Galaxies discovered
- 1923 – Arthur Compton: Particle nature of photons confirmed by observation of photon momentum
- 1924 – Bose–Einstein statistics
- 1924 – Louis de Broglie: De Broglie wave
- 1925 – Werner Heisenberg: Matrix mechanics
- 1925–27 – Niels Bohr & Max Planck: Quantum mechanics
- 1925 – Stellar structure understood
- 1926 – Fermi-Dirac Statistics
- 1926 – Erwin Schrödinger: Schrödinger Equation
- 1927 – Werner Heisenberg: Uncertainty principle
- 1927 – Georges Lemaître: Big Bang
- 1927 – Paul Dirac: Dirac equation
- 1927 – Max Born: Born rule
- 1928 – Paul Dirac proposes the antiparticle
- 1929 – Edwin Hubble: Expansion of the universe confirmed
- 1932 – Carl David Anderson: Antimatter discovered
- 1932 – James Chadwick: Neutron discovered
- 1933 – Ernst Ruska: Invention of the electron microscope
- 1935 – Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar: Chandrasekhar limit for black hole collapse
- 1937 – Muon discovered by Carl David Anderson and Seth Neddermeyer
- 1938 – Pyotr Kapitsa: Superfluidity discovered
- 1938 – Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann Nuclear fission discovered
- 1938–39 – Stellar fusion explains energy production in stars
- 1939 – Uranium fission discovered
- 1941 – Feynman path integral
- 1944 – Theory of magnetism in 2D: Ising model
- 1947 – C.F. Powell, Giuseppe Occhialini, César Lattes: Pion discovered
- 1948 – Richard Feynman, Shinichiro Tomonaga, Julian Schwinger, Freeman Dyson: Quantum electrodynamics
- 1948 – Invention of the maser and laser by Charles Townes
- 1948 – Feynman diagrams
- 1956 – Electron neutrino discovered
- 1956–57 – Parity violation proved by Chien-Shiung Wu
- 1957 – BCS theory explaining superconductivity
- 1959–60 – Role of topology in quantum physics predicted and confirmed
- 1962 – SU(3) theory of strong interactions
- 1962 – Muon neutrino discovered
- 1963 – Chien-Shiung Wu confirms the conserved vector current theory for weak interactions
- 1963 – Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig: Quarks predicted
- 1964 – Bell's Theorem initiates quantitative study of quantum entanglement
- 1964 – CP violation discovered by James Cronin and Val Fitch.
- 1967 – Unification of weak interaction and electromagnetism (electroweak theory)
- 1967 – Solar neutrino problem found
- 1967 – Pulsars (rotating neutron stars) discovered
- 1968 – Experimental evidence for quarks found
- 1968 – Vera Rubin: Dark matter theories
- 1970–73 – Standard Model of elementary particles invented
- 1971 – Helium 3 superfluidity
- 1971–75 – Michael Fisher, Kenneth G. Wilson, and Leo Kadanoff: Renormalization group
- 1972 – Black Hole Entropy
- 1974 – Black hole radiation (Hawking radiation) predicted
- 1974 – Charmed quark discovered
- 1975 – Tau lepton found
- 1977 – Bottom quark found
- 1977 – Anderson localization recognised (Nobel prize in 1977, Philip W. Anderson, Mott, Van Fleck)
- 1980 – Strangeness as a signature of quark-gluon plasma predicted
- 1980 – Richard Feynman proposes quantum computing
- 1980 – Quantum Hall effect
- 1981 – Alan Guth Theory of cosmic inflation proposed
- 1982 – Aspect experiment confirms violations of Bell's inequalities
- 1981 – Fractional quantum Hall effect discovered
- 1983 – Simulated annealing
- 1984 – W and Z bosons directly observed
- 1984 – First laboratory implementation of quantum cryptography
- 1987 – High-temperature superconductivity discovered in 1986, awarded Nobel prize in 1987 (J. Georg Bednorz and "K." Alexander Müller)
- 1989–98 – Quantum annealing
- 1993 – Quantum teleportation of unknown states proposed
- 1994 – Shor's algorithm discovered, initiating the serious study of quantum computation
- 1994–97 – Matrix models/M-theory
- 1995 – Wolfgang Ketterle: Bose–Einstein condensate observed
- 1995 – Top quark discovered
- 1995–2000 – Econophysics and Kinetic exchange models of markets
- 1997 – Juan Maldacena proposed the AdS/CFT correspondence
- 1998 – Accelerating expansion of the universe discovered by the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-Z Supernova Search Team
- 1998 – Atmospheric neutrino oscillation established
- 1999 – Lene Vestergaard Hau: Slow light experimentally demonstrated
- 2000 – Quark-gluon plasma found
- 2000 – Tau neutrino found
21st century※
- 2001 – Solar neutrino oscillation observed, resolving the solar neutrino problem
- 2003 – WMAP observations of cosmic microwave background
- 2004 – Exceptional properties of graphene discovered
- 2007 – Giant magnetoresistance recognized (Nobel prize, Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg)
- 2008 – 16-year study of stellar orbits around Sagittarius A* provides strong evidence for a supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy
- 2009 – Planck begins observations of cosmic microwave background
- 2012 – Higgs boson found by the Compact Muon Solenoid and ATLAS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider
- 2015 – Gravitational waves are observed
- 2016 – Topological order – topological phase transitions and order – recognized (Nobel prize, David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz)
- 2019 – First image of a black hole
- 2023 – Experimental evidence of stochastic Gravitational wave background
- 2023 – First "image" of the Milky Way in neutrinos instead of light
See also※
References※
- ^ Rovelli, Carlo (2023). Anaximander and the Nature of Science. Allen Lane. ISBN 978-0-241-63504-9.
- ^ Rovelli, Carlo (2015). "Aristotle's Physics: A Physicist's Look". Journal of the American Philosophical Association. 1: 23–40. arXiv:1312.4057. doi:10.1017/apa.2014.11.
- ^ Russell, Bertrand — History of Western Philosophy (2004) – p. 215
- ^ Van der Waerden, B. L. (1987), "The Heliocentric System in Greek, Persian and Hindu Astronomy", Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 500 (1): 528, Bibcode:1987NYASA.500..525V, doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.1987.tb37224.x, S2CID 222087224
- ^ Marchant, Jo (2022-10-18). "First known map of night sky found hidden in Medieval parchment". Nature. 610 (7933): 613–614. Bibcode:2022Natur.610..613M. doi:10.1038/d41586-022-03296-1. PMID 36258126. S2CID 252994351.
- ^ "Hero's Shortest Path". Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations. Harvard University. Retrieved 2024-02-13.
Hero's Principle states that light undergoing reflection from a plane surface will follow the path of least distance
- ^ Pines, Shlomo (1986), Studies in Arabic versions of Greek texts and in mediaeval science, vol. 2, Brill Publishers, p. 203, ISBN 965-223-626-8
- ^ American Heritage Dictionary (January 2005). The American Heritage Science Dictionary. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 428. ISBN 978-0-618-45504-1.
- ^ John L. Heilbron (14 February 2003). The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science. Oxford University Press. p. 235. ISBN 978-0-19-974376-6.
- ^ Rafelski, Johann (2020). "Discovery of Quark-Gluon Plasma: Strangeness Diaries". The European Physical Journal Special Topics. 229 (1): 1–140. arXiv:1911.00831. Bibcode:2020EPJST.229....1R. doi:10.1140/epjst/e2019-900263-x. ISSN 1951-6355.
- ^ "New State of Matter created at CERN". CERN. Retrieved 2020-05-22.
- ^ CMS collaboration (2012). "Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC". Physics Letters B. 716 (1): 30–61. arXiv:1207.7235. Bibcode:2012PhLB..716...30C. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2012.08.021.
- ^ ATLAS collaboration (2012). "Observation of a New Particle in the Search for the Standard Model Higgs Boson with the ATLAS Detector at the LHC". Physics Letters B. 716 (1): 1–29. arXiv:1207.7214. Bibcode:2012PhLB..716....1A. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2012.08.020. S2CID 119169617.
- ^ Rini, Matteo (June 29, 2023). "Researchers Capture Gravitational-Wave Background with Pulsar "Antennae"". Physics Magazine. Vol. 16. p. 118. Bibcode:2023PhyOJ..16..118R. doi:10.1103/Physics.16.118. Retrieved 2024-02-13.
Four PTA collaborations have delivered evidence for a stochastic background of nanohertz gravitational waves
- ^ Palivela, Ananya (June 30, 2023). "IceCube creates first image of Milky Way in neutrinos". Astronomy.com. Retrieved 2024-02-13.
IceCube Neutrino Observatory, this array has now allowed astronomers to image the Milky Way — not using light. But particles