Summary of JD 9 supernovae: Past, present, and future

SN 1006 was the first (and for a very long time the only) event to be caught before peak light. A passage which, according to Stephenson, does not actually pertain to the SN, nevertheless makes clear that, even then, a hypothesis was more likely to be accepted if it made a prediction later verified, though the prediction was that something bad would happen to Emperor Sanjo In. The hypothesis was that the star was not new, but related to behavior of existing stars in Qichen Jianjun. According to the poster by P.J. Boner, Kepler made the opposite choice for his SN, calling it a genuinely new star formed out of the ether, rather than mere change in appearance. Indeed the distinction between true novae and variable stars was not drawn correctly until Hevelius's 1662 study of Mira, after Tycho had shown that his event (and the comet of 1577) were more distant than our Moon, a point disputed by many of his contemporaries, but accepted by Galileo, who applied a very early statistical method to many different observations of SN 1572. Tycho's main advantages were better equipment and hard work, again not so different from present conditions. © 2007 International Astronomical Union

Wired by Weber: The story of the first searcher and searches for gravitational waves

Joseph Weber started thinking about possibilities for detecting gravitational waves or radiation in about 1955. He designed, built, and operated the first detectors, from 1965 until his death in 2000. This paper includes discussions of his life, earlier work on chemical kinetics and what is now called quantum electronics, his published papers, pioneering work on gravitational waves, and its aftermath, both scientific and personal

Wired by Weber: The story of the first searcher and searches for gravitational waves

Joseph Weber started thinking about possibilities for detecting gravitational waves or radiation in about 1955. He designed, built, and operated the first detectors, from 1965 until his death in 2000. This paper includes discussions of his life, earlier work on chemical kinetics and what is now called quantum electronics, his published papers, pioneering work on gravitational waves, and its aftermath, both scientific and personal

Lest We Forget: Impact of the Great War on Physics & Astronomy

For astronomers, World War I began with the capture and imprisonment of a German eclipse expedition that had gone to the Crimea in August 1914 to look for bending of starlight by the sun, at the request of Einstein himself, who had, in 1911, predicted a value of about 0.8 arcsec (at the limb), one half of what definitive GR would say in 1915-16. Over the next few years Schwarzschild wrote his spherically symmetric solution to Einstein's equation, then died of service-related pemphigus. Physicists developed telesite meters to determine distances and directions to artillery fire, submarines, and aircraft. Paul Merrill learned to sensitive photographic emulsions to red and IR photons, later employing such plate to discover Tc on stellar surfaces (the first incontrovertible evidence of nuclear reactions inside). And much else. The end came with the 1919 establishment of the International Astronomical Union and International Union of Pure & Applied Physics and with Eddington's eclipse expedition which really did see relativistic light bending by the sun. A few words will be said about how parallel presentation of scientific advances and world history can help to fix both in our and our students' minds

Lest We Forget: Impact of the Great War on Physics & Astronomy

For astronomers, World War I began with the capture and imprisonment of a German eclipse expedition that had gone to the Crimea in August 1914 to look for bending of starlight by the sun, at the request of Einstein himself, who had, in 1911, predicted a value of about 0.8 arcsec (at the limb), one half of what definitive GR would say in 1915-16. Over the next few years Schwarzschild wrote his spherically symmetric solution to Einstein's equation, then died of service-related pemphigus. Physicists developed telesite meters to determine distances and directions to artillery fire, submarines, and aircraft. Paul Merrill learned to sensitive photographic emulsions to red and IR photons, later employing such plate to discover Tc on stellar surfaces (the first incontrovertible evidence of nuclear reactions inside). And much else. The end came with the 1919 establishment of the International Astronomical Union and International Union of Pure & Applied Physics and with Eddington's eclipse expedition which really did see relativistic light bending by the sun. A few words will be said about how parallel presentation of scientific advances and world history can help to fix both in our and our students' minds