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Jan 1, 1000
Creation of Light- Big Bang Theory
Estimated at 15 billion years ago, the Big Bang exploded all the matter in the universe out from one single immensly dense and hot point and initiated it's expansion to the size of the universe as we know it today. Theory tells us that at 10 e-43 seconds after the bang, the universe was largely dominated by radiation, or photons which are the fundamental unit of light (Krane, 1996, p. 534)
Big Bang Video -
Jan 1, 1000
Creation of Light- Creation Account
According to the Bible, in the beginning (best estimated by Biblical scolars to be roughly 6000 years ago) God said, "Let there be light" (Genesis 1:1-3). -
Speed of Light discovered as finite
Danish astronomer Olaf Roemer uses observations of Io, Jupiter's innermost moon to show the speed of light is finite. Dutch physicist Christian Huygens used Roemer's data to calculate an approximate measurement for the speed of light at 200,000 km/s (about 2/3 of the actual speed of light) (Cassidy, Holton, Rutherford, 2002, p. 378). -
Period: to
Timespan
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Einstein Proposes Special Relativity
This is Einstein's famous E=mc^2 equation. For the purpose of this timeline, the most important feature this theory is that light travels at a constant speed regardless of frame of reference or what the source of the light is (Magueijo, 2003, p. 35). -
Eistein Proposes General Relativity
While this theory mostly dealed with space-time and gravity, a major part of it relied on the speed of light being a universal speed limit of which nothing can be accellerated to this velocity, and nothing can be slowed down from this velocity (Magueijo, 2003, p. 43). -
Michelson measures speed of light
American physicist Albert A. Michelson's final and most accurate measurement of the speed of light was announced at 299,744 km/s two years after Michelson died. This value is only 2 km/s off from the accepted value today (Asimov, 2003). -
Proposal of the Existance of Neutrinos
Italian born, American physicist Enrico Fermi proposed the existance of the neutrino (Italian for "little neutral one") as a product of beta-decay (Tipler, 2003, p.531). -
First Detection of a Neutrino in a Lab
Clyde Cowan and Frederick Reines observe Fermi's neutrinos in a lab for the first time (Tipler, 2003, p. 351). -
Discovery that Neutrinos Possess Mass
At the Neutrino '98 conference in Takayama, Japan the Super-Ka miokande Collaberation presented their evidence for neutrino mass and published their data along with theoretical mass of less than 40 eV/c^2 for each of the 6 types of neutrinos they discovered (Super-Kamiokande Collaberation, 1998). -
CERN and OPERA Announce Observations of Neutrinos
CERN (Switzerland) and OPERA (Italy) were studying the transition of neutrinos between their muon and tau states as they travelled between the two locations and they found that the neutrinos were consistantly making the 455 mile trip a few billionths of a second faster than light would (Popular Science, 2011).
