He Touched Nothing — Oversized Drop-Shoulder T-Shirt

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TEE-SCI-CN-PAU-01-M-BK T-Shirt

Piece

He Touched Nothing Oversized Drop-Shoulder T-Shirt

$ 2,345.00

Description

In 1930 Pauli proposed by letter a particle nobody could detect, addressing those gathered at Tübingen as “dear radioactive ladies and gentlemen”; the neutrino was not observed until 1956. The print is his portrait beside a burst lamp.

A Author

Wolfgang Pauli

B Subject

Quantum Physics

C Aesthetic

Photocopy · Collage

Exploration

Pauli's colleagues held that equipment broke down when he walked into a laboratory. One of them banned him from his own, half in jest, and Pauli collected the cases with genuine interest.

The anecdote covers the other thing. In 1930, to save the conservation of energy in beta decay, he postulated a particle with no charge, almost no mass and practically undetectable. He did it by letter and with embarrassment: he wrote that he had done something terrible in proposing a particle that could never be observed.

It was observed in 1956, twenty-six years later. They sent him a telegram.

Postulating the invisible to save a law is a risky operation and almost always wrong. Here it came off, and that is why it is remembered; nobody keeps the archive of the times it did not.

Details