The article is published here courtesy of Yehuda Sabdarmish, editor of the Israeli Astronomical Society's Baton
Interviewers: Yehuda Sabdarmish and Albert Kalifa
Direct link to this page: https://www.hayadan.org.il/neeman_ias.html
At exactly two o'clock, Albert Kalifa and I, Yehuda Sabdarmish, arrived at the room on the fourth floor of the Faculty of Physics building at Tel Aviv University. We were greeted by the friendly secretary of Prof. Yuval Naman, Matilda, and after a short wait she led us to his room next door.
Prof. Yuval Naman smiled at us and shook our hands warmly and then sat down next to us. In a moment all the partitions fell and the conversation became cordial and fluid.
The figure of Prof. Yuval Naaman, and the story of his family, are deeply rooted in the annals of Israel and Zionism.
Yochaved's great-grandmother was orphaned in the great earthquake in Safed in 1837. She grew up, married 'Zorah-Alter Mosheli' the watchmaker, who built the clock on the Ottoman tower in Jaffa, and participated in the establishment of the Neve-Zedek neighborhood. She gave birth to Mordechai [who later emigrated from Egypt] and Ya'akov, later Ish Nili, and Sarah, Yuval's grandmother, who married a faithful father. They were among the sixty-six couples who founded Tel Aviv.
Yochaved's great-great-grandmother died in 1887 and was buried in the Menshieh cemetery. During the First World War, it was evacuated from there by order of the Turks, who set up a cannon position there, and was reburied in another cemetery, later, the cemetery on Trumpeldor Street. Her grave bears the earliest date of death in the cemetery. In the meantime, a son, Gedaliah, was born to the faithful couple. Growing up, he went down from Egypt to work for his uncle Mordechai Michali who became a well-known figure in the Egyptians. This Gedaliah, the father of Prof. Yuval Naaman, was sent to accompany Albert Einstein to the ship in Port Said, at the end of Einstein's visit to the Land of Israel (1923) on his way back to Europe.
Yuval Naman was born in Israel. Already from his youth, the boy stood out in his talent and perception. It was clear to his teachers that Yuval always finishes the annual study material at the beginning of the school year, so he skipped a grade several times.
What pushed you in the scientific direction, and where did your love for astronomy come from?
Prof. Yuval Neman smiles. He went to the cupboard in the corner of his room and pulled out an old book whose pages had turned yellow. He carefully places it on the table, and allows us to leaf through it. He pauses a bit and then adds: 'I got the book as a gift from my uncle and I remember that as a child, I read it several times and swallowed every word of it.
Albert and I flip carefully through the book. The date: 1910, French book: "D`eu` venons nous?" , "Where did we come from? "Written by an astronomer who was a Jesuit monk, Father Theophile Mora. THEOPHILE MOREUX. The Jesuits are active in astronomy and earth sciences, and recently also in biology. In Rome there is a papal observatory run by the Jesuits. In the first part of the book, images of planets, Saturn's rings, the sun and its spots, and many other cosmological sights appear and appear. Of the other four parts, natural sciences and anatomy. An impressive book that shaped the character of Yuval the child. At the age of 11, Yuval begins to attend high school. And for the bar mitzvah, he asks his parents for a gift, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and his parents made an effort and bought it for him, and it was quite an expense! Only now did the boy Yuval say goodbye to his French childhood, and dedicate himself with all his heart to the twenty-four volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The boy Yuval was also interested in Judaism. The Talmud teacher, Farhihu, who was surprised that a completely non-religious child was interested in the Talmud, affectionately called him "the rabbi of Kalkilia"
Well, we understand that you are one of the first astronomers in Israel?
Professor Yuval smiles and corrects us.
Astronomy in Israel began thousands of years ago, in the Golan Heights, in Rojum-e-Diri, where large stone circles with astronomical significance, the movement of the sun and the seasons were discovered. It is a kind of Israeli "Stone Edge". And even after that, let's not forget the discovery of the comet Hali and its cycle by the sages of the Mishnah!
Albert and I look at him in surprise!
Do you mean the comet Halley whose cycle is determined by Halley?
And again the professor smiles at us, showing us his great knowledge of Judaism:
Well, in the treatise "Parenthood" it is written and told about Rabbi Gamaliel and Rabbi Yehoshua who sailed in a ship. Rabbi Gamaliel had enough bread for the trip, but Rabbi Yehoshua brought semolina in addition to bread. And it is true that the trip was longer than Rabbi Gamliel thought and both of them also consumed the semolina and did not go hungry.
Rabbi Gamaliel asked Rabbi Yehoshua: How did you know we would be delayed? Rabbi Yehoshua answered him:
"One star every seventy years rises and misleads the sailors, and I said: Lest it rise and mislead us"
I looked at Albert who was also surprised and we decided to search and bring the quote from our sources for the judgment of the members of the association!
And Yuval Naman continues:
And of course also determining the diameter of the earth measured and calculated in 250 BC, with an accuracy of half a percent
by Erathostenes ERATHOSTENES who was also the librarian who founded the great library in Alexandria in Egypt]. Artosthenes measured the angle of inclination of the sun's rays in Alexandria on the day when the sun was in zenith in Aswan, and knowing the distance Alexandria-Aswan he could easily calculate the circumference of the earth and its diameter (!), however, Ptolemy, in his famous "Almget" inserted an important later , and inaccurately, who made Posdonium, which greatly reduces the diameter of the Earth. Based on this mistake in "Almjet" Columbus convinced the kings of Spain to give him ships to sail west on a short route to India. As we see, the road to America began with astronomical measurements made here, in our region!
Yuval Naaman turns away for a moment from matters of astronomy and tells us about his family, his son, Tadel - named after a gentile king who fought alongside Abraham - or, for short, Tadi, and his two granddaughters: Daphne the little and Liora the senior, who participate in special enrichment projects. It is obvious that they bring happiness to grandfather Yuval. I, Yehuda, do not hold back and whisper: "It's the gardens, professor, the gardens! Professor Yuval smiles.
It would be too short to recount all the deeds of Yuval Neman and the positions he held. Deputy head of the Amman, a military attaché in England, the atomic reactor in Nahal Sorak, and more, but we will expand and tell the story of the discovery of the omega minus particle.
While still in England Naam chose to attack a very complicated problem for which there is no hint of a solution, the problem of the elementary particles - list and sorting - and who else is missing? The list of elementary particles got longer and longer without order. What began in 1911 with the identification of the proton, to which the neutron was added in 1932, as particles found in the atomic nucleus, continued with the discovery of the particles carrying "strangeness" STRANGENESS, a new nuclear charge that was discovered in the fifties and then the names MESONS starting in 1949 so that by 1960 there were already about a hundred
Different "elemental particles" and there was no idea if that was all or if there were more and what their properties were. At the end of 1960, Naman identified the "order" behind the list that seemed so confusing (the order has since been called "the way of the eight") and proposed a test: he noticed an empty slot that remained in the same order, and in 1962 published a prediction of the properties of a particle that had not yet been discovered and was named "Omega -Minus" - "omega" because it is the last letter of the Greek alphabet, and "minus" because of its electrical charge, which according to the calculation is equal to the charge of the electron. The prediction gave the mass, electric charge, spin and strangeness.
In February 1964, while he was stationed in California, the Brookhaven Laboratory of the American Atomic Energy Commission announced that in an experiment designed to enable the formation of the omega-minus, it was indeed created and with exactly the properties predicted. Today there are omega-minus rays in accelerators. In this way the sorting was completed.
Note: The event is similar to what happened in chemistry, where there were dozens of elements without understanding the order, until the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev proposed the "periodic table" of the chemical elements - and there it was verified with the discovery of an element that filled an empty slot.
And more: in chemistry, the table helped to understand the structure of the atom (the atomic charge is the number of protons and the atomic weight is the number of protons and neutrons together)
The one who deciphered the reason for the order he found was also faithful to the particles - an order showing the existence of 3 "sub-particles" from which all the particles found up to that time were made, "bricks"
More fundamental, given the name QUARK and in faithful Hebrew suggests "Kort". If we call the three "A", "B", "C", then the proton is "Aab", the neutron is "Abb" and the omega-minus is "GGG".
The sorting according to the "Eight Way" was also proposed by the American physicist M. Gelman (about two months after Neman) and the existence of the carts were also proposed by Gelman and Zweig - two years after Neman. The existence of kerats was experimentally proven in 1969 and three physicists who did the experiment [Taylor, Friedman, Kendall] won the Nobel Prize for it in 1990. Gelman won the Nobel Prize in 1969.
I, Yehuda, who knows the story from scientific literature, knows what an injustice was done to this man, a worldly glory that was denied him. But, Prof. Yuval Naman, as usual, shrugs and smiles: "What to do even to receive a Nobel Prize, you need a lobby!"
A faithful professor also tells us about an astronomical idea that he developed with the Russian scientist Noviko, an idea that was supposed to explain the high energy emission from quasars - strange celestial bodies. The Neman-Novikov proposal regarding quasars started with the assumption that the universe expands from more than one center, and that quasars are the "white holes" - the cores of the expansion. That is - a universe in which every now and then a new big bang is formed, and the quasar is the nucleus of that bang. It turned out that quasars are not "white holes" and therefore neither are the nuclei of universes. However, the very principle of a universe with an (infinite?) series of explosions is accepted today - that is, a faithful Novikov universe on a scale 10 million times larger, so that the entire universe observed by us came out of only one explosion.
This model of a large-scale Naeman-Novikov universe was developed by the Russian cosmologist Andrey Linda in 1986, following on from Alan Goth's inflationary model (1982)
On the other hand, an idea about the evolution of the universes is gaining momentum. Suppose there are many universes and imagine that a universe creates a new universe in its own image using a black hole inside it. Evolution will make the universe that produces the most black holes forever, and see it is an easy miracle to prove that our universe produces black holes in the largest possible amount, it is enough that the charge of the electron or the mass of atomic particles would be slightly different, so that our universe would produce fewer black holes, then it would not survive. Well, we are a winning universe!
Tell us how your relationship with the Israeli Astronomical Society came about?
The connection with the association was established first through Rafi Steinitz [then an astronomer at Tel Aviv University] who introduced me to Dr. Zaychek, between 1966-68. Later there was also a connection through the son, Tadi, who participated in a large event organized by the association. Of course, I follow the association, and I am happy about its beneficial actions among teenagers and students. I understand that you also received a budget for the asteroid tracking activity?
Albert shakes his head in the negative "Unfortunately, we did not receive the budget! "
Prof. Yuval Neman is surprised: "I was sure you would win it.... Who did they give it to?
"To Mitzpe Ramon, I say, they took the Harsh sheep from us!
I add and tell him about school classes that have already registered for Magma surveillance (monitoring of bodies from the Earth's waters), about students who make observations into the night, about photographs of asteroids at magnitudes 16, 17, and even more that are taken at our observatory in Givatayim and about the lectures given on the subject. And Albert adds, as treasurer: We also had many expenses, we also bought a special focuser for this surveillance, and as you know, we are not a rich association that does not receive support from any body!
And what do you think about the activities of the association, the brochure, do you receive it, look through it?
I follow the activities of the association and am satisfied with its activities. As for the booklet, I receive it and very much enjoy reading the articles and articles that appear in it, although I must say that there was one article that was published without the review that was necessary in this case; A theory that claims to be a new theory about the universe. (The Simple Universe: Volume 26, Issue 3-4, Editor's Note), such an article must not be written without review by a scientific body.
Albert looks at me and we both smile. I do not hold back, and say: I wrote this article.
I explained to the professor that the system agreed to publish the article only after an explicit disclaimer was published and that in this case it was difficult to ignore things that stem from the theory and are now being brought up by others as well (the speed of light is changing, the expansion of the universe is accelerating, etc.). I thanked Prof. Neman who, despite his negative opinion, referred me to Prof. Milgrom at the Weizmann Institute.
And so the three of us sat there: Prof. Neman, Albert, and I, with the strength of our spirits creating universes and simultaneously erasing them. Fly to the edge of the universe and check to what extent Newton is proven, weigh galaxies with fun and immediately place them, marvel at Prof. Neman's phenomenal memory despite his age, and the time passes, and the conversation is fluid and enjoyable. With his characteristic smile, the professor analyzes for us where the name Albert of Albert Kalifa comes from, and we float from Albert Einstein to Albert the husband of Queen Victoria and from Albert Abraham Michelson (from the well-known Michelson-Morley experiment), to Abraham Lincoln, the president of the USA; And we are afraid to look at the clock, because instead of an hour
The conversation lasted for an hour and a half, but, just then, there is a knock on the door and Matilda, the secretary, enters the room. Yes, she knows her role, the conversations with Prof. Neman aim to never end. She reminds him of his next meeting.
Prof. Yuval Naman stands up, shakes our hands warmly and says that he enjoys being in our company. He does not forget to congratulate the association, and of course Yigal Fatal, his friend, who stands at its head, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary. Albert and I thank him for his attitude to the association and the time he devoted to us, and it was really, really nice to be in his company. We also say goodbye to Matilda the secretary, and run to the next interview.
Israel in space
Yedan and in it a collection of Yehuda Sverdarmish's articles
https://www.hayadan.org.il/BuildaGate4/general2/data_card.php?Cat=~~~524979570~~~129&SiteName=hayadan
