whose usual province is the electron cloud of the atom, this descent to the nucleus opened new opportunities. nuclear magnetic resonance itself would later develop into magnetic resonance imaging, with a name chosen purposely to avoid the connotations of the word nuclear. Geology also adopted an instrument based on 20th century physics. The SQUID(Superconducting Quantum Interference Device), which relies on a peculiar quantum effect discovered in 1962, can detect otherwise imperceptible changes in magnetic fields induced by the presence of mineral deposits. In these countless other ways physics began to stimulate research in its sister sciences. The most influential achievements of the 1950's, however, were the invention of the laser and the development of the transistor. Both of these devices, which are direct applications of quantum mechanics, would transform science and spawn entire industries devoted to new technologies.Even as the Vietnam War was tearing at the fabric of America, the Beatles conquered the world, and the first astronauts landed on the Moon, two unrelated discoveries on opposite coasts of the country announced the opening of a new chapter in the history of physics. At Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were annoyed by a persistent hissing noise in their sensitive microwave receiver. Unable to suppress it no matter what they tried, they tracked it back to its surprising source: the cosmic background of microwave radiation that has been gradually cooling off since the Big Bang to a temperature of about three degrees Celsius above absolute zero. This astonishing observation reinvigorated research on cosmology, with General Relativity as its firm theoretical backbone. Four years later Jerome Friedman, Henry Kendall, and Richard Taylor, working at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in California, found the first experimental evidence for the existence of quarks, which ...
