Incerto sobre se publicaria ou n\u00e3o essa id\u00e9ia, Pauli quis ter a opini\u00e3o dos F\u00edsicos reunidos em T\u00fcbingen. Mandou ent\u00e3o a seguinte carta:<\/p>\n
\nDear Radioactive Ladies and Gentlemen<\/b>, <\/p>\n
As the bearer of these lines, to whom I graciously ask you to listen, will explain to you in more detail, because of the “wrong” statistics of the N- and Li-6 nuclei and the continuous beta spectrum, I have hit upon a desperate remedy to save the <\/b>“exchange theorem” (1) of statistics and the law of conservation of energy. <\/b>Namely, the possibility that in the nuclei there could exist electrically neutral particles, which I will call neutrons, that have spin 1\/2 and obey the exclusion principle and that further differ from light quanta in that they do not travel with the velocity of light. The mass of the neutrons should be of the same order of magnitude as the electron mass and in any event not larger than 0.01 proton mass. – The continuous beta spectrum would then make sense with the assumption that in beta decay, in addition to the electron, a neutron is emitted such that the sum of the energies of neutron and electron is constant. <\/p>\n
Now it is also a question of which forces act upon neutrons. For me, the most likely model for the neutron seems to be, for wave-mechanical reasons (the bearer of these lines knows more), that the neutron at rest is a magnetic dipole with a certain moment \u03bc. The experiments seem to require that the ionizing effect of such a neutron can not be bigger than the one of a gamma-ray, and then \u03bc is probably not allowed to be larger than e \u2022 (10-13cm). <\/p>\n
But so far I do not dare to publish anything about this idea, and trustfully turn first to you, dear radioactive people, with the question of how likely it is to find experimental evidence for such a neutron<\/b> if it would have the same or perhaps a 10 times larger ability to get through [material] than a gamma-ray. <\/p>\n
I admit that my remedy may seem almost improbable because one probably would have seen those neutrons, if they exist, for a long time. But nothing ventured, nothing gained, and the seriousness of the situation, due to the continuous structure of the beta spectrum, is illuminated by a remark of my honored predecessor, Mr Debye, who told me recently in Bruxelles: “Oh, It’s better not to think about this at all, like new taxes.<\/b>” Therefore one should seriously discuss every way of rescue. Thus, dear radioactive people, scrutinize and judge. – Unfortunately, I cannot personally appear in T\u00fcbingen since I am indispensable here in Z\u00fcrich because of a ball on the night from December 6 to 7. <\/b>With my best regards to you, and also to Mr. Back, your humble servant<\/b><\/p>\n
W. Pauli<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Traduzindo, porcamente, as partes em negrito:<\/p>\n
\n“Prezados(as) Senhores e Senhoras Radioativos(as).”<\/p>\n
“Eu cheguei a um rem\u00e9dio desesperado para salvar (…) a lei da conserva\u00e7\u00e3o da energia.”<\/p>\n
“Mas at\u00e9 agora n\u00e3o ousei publicar algo sobre essa id\u00e9ia, e confiantemente apresento-a a voc\u00eas, prezadas pessoas radioativas, com a quest\u00e3o de qu\u00e3o prov\u00e1vel seria encontrar evid\u00eancia experimental para tal n\u00eautron.”<\/p>\n
“Sr. Debye disse-me recentemente em Bruxelas:’Oh, \u00e9 melhor nem pensar sobre isso [o problema do espectro cont\u00ednuo], assim como sobre novos impostos'”.<\/p>\n
“Infelizmente, n\u00e3o posso aparecer pessoalmente em T\u00fcbingen j\u00e1 que sou indispens\u00e1vel aqui em Zurich por causa de um Baile na noite do dia 6 para o dia 7 de Dezembro.”<\/p>\n
“(…) seu humilde servi\u00e7al, W. Pauli”.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Aqueles que n\u00e3o entenderam a gra\u00e7a que vi nessa carta saibam que Pauli tinha fama de ser extremamente arrogante. A posi\u00e7\u00e3o assumida acima, se n\u00e3o de humildade, \u00e9 de um Pauli deliciosamente sarc\u00e1stico. Fico imaginando como os “senhores radioativos” n\u00e3o o mandaram \u00e0 Hure<\/i> que o pariu.<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
[1]:<\/b> Pauli nomeou-a N\u00eautron, mas, dois anos mais tarde, Chadwick roubou o termo para nomear a part\u00edcula que hoje conhecemos como N\u00eautron. Foi Fermi que mais tarde batizou a part\u00edcula como Neutrino. <\/p>\n
[2]:<\/b> Topei com um trecho da carta num artigo. Encontrei o restante atrav\u00e9s deste artigo<\/a> da Symmetry<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Se lhes faltava motivo para achar Pauli fant\u00e1stico, eis mais um: Em 1930, aconteceria em T\u00fcbingen, Alemanha, uma confer\u00eancia de F\u00edsicos Nucleares. \u00c0 \u00e9poca, um dos problemas da F\u00edsica Nuclear era a explica\u00e7\u00e3o para o espectro cont\u00ednuo de energia dos el\u00e9trons emitidos no decaimento beta. Pauli achava ter encontrado um solu\u00e7\u00e3o para o problema propondo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":518,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contos-da-fisica","category-fisicos"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/dimensional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/dimensional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/dimensional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/dimensional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/518"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/dimensional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/dimensional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/dimensional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/dimensional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/dimensional\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}