The Evidence for Modern Physics, How We Know What We Know

Introduction
	About Don Lincoln
	Scope
Guides
	Lesson 1—Do You Believe In Atoms?
		Ancient Thoughts
		John Dalton
		Robert Brown
		Albert Einstein
		Electron Microscopes
		Inside the Atom
	Lesson 2—Peering inside Protons and Neutrons
		Discovering the Structure of Atoms
		The Proton and Neutron
		Even Smaller Particles
		Inside the Proton and Neutron
	Lesson 3—Seeing Light as Wave and Particle
		Light as a Wave
		Heinrich Hertz
		Blackbodies
		Light as a Particle
		Further Experiments
	Lesson 4—The Paradox of Quantum Entanglement
		The Schrödinger Equation
		The Copenhagen Interpretation
		Schrödinger’s Cat
		The EPR Paradox
		Hidden Variables
		Conclusion
	Lesson 5—How We Know Special Relativity Is Real
		At the Center of the Universe
		Time Dilation
		Accounting for Relativity
		Magnetism
		Length Contraction
	Lesson 6—Why the Speed of Light Is the Speed Limit
		Measuring the Speed of Light
		Luminiferous Aether and Maxwell’s Equations
		The Michelson-Morley Experiment
		A Modern Measurement
	Lesson 7—Discovering Subatomic Particles
		Antimatter
		Carl Anderson and Cosmic Rays
		The Muon
	Lesson 8—How Do You Weigh a Quark?
		Adding Momentum to Einstein’s Equation
		Determining the Mass of Subatomic Particles
		The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
		Measuring the Lifetime of Short-Lived Subatomic Particles
		Measuring Particles with Longer Lifetimes
	Lesson 9—Capturing the Ghostly Neutrino
		Wolfgang Pauli
		Discovery of the Neutrino
		Quantum Chameleons
		Atmospheric Neutrinos
		Neutrino Oscillations
		Solar Neutrinos
	Lesson 10—The Search for the Higgs Boson
		The Electroweak Theory
		The Higgs Field and Higgs Boson
		Verifying the W and Z Bosons
		Early Searches for the Higgs Boson
		Finding Additional Data
		Conclusion
	Lesson 11—Are Man-Made Black Holes Dangerous?
		Strangelets
		False Vacuum
		Black Holes
		Cosmic Rays Save the Day
		Conclusion
	Lesson 12—How We Know What Stars Are Made Of
		Fingerprints of the Elements
		Blackbodies
		How Light Is Emitted from Different Material
		The Temperature of a Star
		Nuclear Fusion
	Lesson 13—Forming the Milky Way and Other Galaxies
		Classifying Galaxies
		Black Holes
		The Milky Way
		The Shape of the Milky Way
		The Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole
	Lesson 14—Finding Planets around Distant Stars
		The Doppler Effect and Central Mass
		51 Pegasi
		The Kepler Space Telescope
		Limitations of the Transit and Doppler Methods
		Conclusion
	Lesson 15—The Awesome Evidence for General Relativity
		Mercury’s Peculiar Orbit
		Deflection of Light off the Sun
		Clocks on Airplanes
		Relativity and GPS
	Lesson 16—The Hunt for Gravitational Waves
		Pulsars
		Visualizing Gravitational Waves
		Two Black Holes Collide
		Two Neutron Stars Collide
	Lesson 17—How We Know the Universe Began with a Bang
		Calculating the Distance of Stars
		Discovering Galaxies
		The Expanding Universe
		The Radio Signature of the Big Bang
	Lesson 18—The Case for Cosmic Inflation
		The Uniform Universe
		Escape Velocity
		Critical Mass
		Inflation
	Lesson 19—How We Know Dark Matter Exists
		Jan Oort and Fritz Zwicky
		Vera Rubin
		Gravitational Lensing
		Is Dark Matter Real?
		Modified Newtonian Dynamics
		Conclusion
	Lesson 20—How We Search for Dark Matter
		Hydrogen Gas
		Massive Compact Halo Objects
		Weakly Interacting Massive Particles
		Indirect Searches
		Particle Accelerators
		Direct Detection
	Lesson 21—How We Know the Universe Is Accelerating
		The Expansion of the Universe
		Dark Energy
		Einstein’s Biggest Blunder
		Is Dark Energy Constant?
		Conclusion
	Lesson 22—Measuring the Size and Age of the Universe
		Mapping the CMB
		The Geometry of the Universe
		Critical Mass
		Parameters of the Universe
	Lesson 23—What We Know about Quantum Foam
		The Second Quantum Revolution
		Virtual Photons
		The Magnetic Moment
		The Shelter Island Conference
		The Casimir Effect
	Lesson 24—Are Space and Time Quantized?
		Quantum Electrodynamics
		The Bohr Model
		Max Planck
		Alden Mead
		Conclusion
Supplementary Material
	Quiz
	Bibliography