Talk:Hans Bethe

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Peer review This article was externally reviewed (December 14, 2005) by Nature. It was found to have 2 errors.

What, no mention of the famous "alpha beta gamma" paper by Alpher, Bethe and Gamow? — JIP | Talk 13:44, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

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[edit] Nature claims errors

Nature disputes the accuracy of this article; see http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/multimedia/438900a_m1.html and Wikipedia:External_peer_review#Nature. We're hoping they will provide a list of the alleged errors soon. —Steven G. Johnson 01:49, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

[Alpher, Bethe (in absentia), and Gamow] is the proper citation; it was Gamow's joke, not Bethe's. --Ancheta Wis 02:50, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Actually you could argue that the [2nd spoof paper] is a misnumbering because the [Alpher - Gamow] paper is genuine; it is only the attribution to Bethe that is humorous. --Ancheta Wis 03:34, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dyson Quote

I added the nice quote of Freeman Dyson who called Bethe "the supreme problem solver of the 20th century." Science History 13:56, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Nature errors to correct

  • It is not really accurate to say that Bethe discovered "stellar nucleosyntheis" He showed how nuclear reactions accounted for the energy output from stars.
  • Robert Wilson was not at Cornell before WWII; he came in 1947
    • Well I got the first one already. As for the latter, I guess the word "later" was not strong enough for their fact-checkers. --Fastfission 18:54, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Projectile Penetration Research

On reading in the Encyclopedia Britannia that projectile penetration was little understood Hans Bethe made a mathematical analysis useful enough to predict and compare to experimental results. [[1]]Larry R. Holmgren 20:07, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

"In 1939 Bethe calculated the Sun's energy production, which results from the fusion of four hydrogen atoms (each of mass 1.008) into one helium atom (mass 4.0039). No direct fusion is possible, but Bethe showed that the probabilities of the four steps of the "carbon cycle" can account for the energy output. A carbon isotope of mass 12 reacts successively with three hydrogen nuclei (protons) to form the nitrogen isotope of mass 15; energy is produced through the fusion of a fourth hydrogen nucleus to release a helium nucleus (alpha particle) and the original carbon isotope."
"Bethe became a U.S. citizen in 1941. At the beginning of World War II, Bethe had no U.S. clearance for military work. But, after reading in the Encyclopedia Britannica that the armour-piercing mechanism of grenades was not well understood, he formulated a theory that became the foundation for research on the problem. His work, unpublished except in classified reports, illustrated his faculty for developing highly mathematical theories to the point that their numerical results could be compared with the actual measurements."
"After working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the development of radar, Bethe headed the Theoretical Physics Division of the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, N.M. The development of the atomic bomb and the dropping of it on Hiroshima and Nagasaki created a strong feeling of social responsibility in Bethe and other Los Alamos physicists. He was one of the organizers and original contributors to The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Moreover, he lectured and wrote on the nuclear threat in order to increase public awareness of it."