Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Science

Nobel Winner Steven Weinberg, Who Unified Two of Physics' Fundamental Forces, Has Died (livescience.com) 17

Long-time Slashdot reader Mogster quotes : Steven Weinberg, a Nobel-prize winning physicist whose work helped link two of the four fundamental forces, has died at the age of 88, the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) announced Saturday (July 24).

HIs work was foundational to the Standard Model, the overarching physics theory that describes how subatomic particles behave. His seminal work was a slim, three-page paper published in 1967 in the journal Physical Review Letters and entitled "A Model of Leptons." In it, he predicted how subatomic particles known as W, Z and the famous Higgs boson should behave — years before those particles were detected experimentally, according to a statement from UT Austin.

The paper also helped unify the electromagnetic force and the weak force and predicted that so-called "neutral weak currents" governed how particles would interact, according to the statement. In 1979, Weinberg and physicists Sheldon Glashow and Abdus Salam earned the Nobel Prize in physics for this work. Throughout his life, Weinberg would continue his search for a unified theory that would unite all four forces, according to the statement.

Weinberg also wrote a book called "The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe" — in 1977.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Nobel Winner Steven Weinberg, Who Unified Two of Physics' Fundamental Forces, Has Died

Comments Filter:
  • Suitable musical tribute... DJ Frane - Beyond The Time Vortex [youtube.com]

    I am your DJ

  • The last page of the PDF of his article shows the top of the next article in that issue of Physical Review Letters .. anyone else noticed one of the co-authors of that particular article is the famous textbook author JJ Sakurai, and it starts off talking about Weinberg's first sum rule.

  • by kevmeister ( 979231 ) on Saturday July 31, 2021 @05:10PM (#61642539) Homepage
    It's been a week since Steven Weinberg's passing. I read two newspapers and several on-line sources and this is the first I have heard of this sad news. A true giant is no longer with us and it's a week before it makes Slashdot and nothing on CNN or other on-line sites. I heard quickly when Hawking, Gell-Mann, and Feynman passed. Weinberg was clearly of similar stature, but seems that science is so out of style that it is no longer worth mention in the popular, or even less popular new sources.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by iggymanz ( 596061 )

      Why do you follow CNN? Nothing but agenda driven hack reporters and their science coverage abysmal.

      abcnews, CBS, BBC, AP, Reuters all covered it.

      yes, I'm surprised to see it on Slashdot now.

      • Amidst the political and pandemic manure-hurling of the past 18 months, both CNN and Fox have managed to put out some surprisingly interesting science articles. Just today, CNN is carrying an article on a claimed discovery of 890 million year old animal life: early sponges. They link to Nature, and the paper is open access. CNN [cnn.com]
        • yes that's fine, but type 890 million year sponge into google and find out lots more news sites covered it, and some others also did interview.

  • I guess it's time to finish reading his book. Damn.
    • by shanen ( 462549 )

      Citation required? I think you're referring to To Explain the World as a general history of science. Embarrassed to acknowledge that I only recently finished reading it (in May) and had already forgotten about it. Not that it was a bad book, but maybe kind of hard to remember because of the triple threading. Not just text and notes, but more mathematical and topical expansions in a section in between. (Many systems of notation to be reconciled.)

      (Recommended to me by someone I was interviewing... Maybe an

Every nonzero finite dimensional inner product space has an orthonormal basis. It makes sense, when you don't think about it.

Working...