p There is no doubt that the current revolution in natural science was started by physics and the physicists. The brilliant discoveries and the rapid advance of the physical sciences, especially since the Second World War, gave a powerful impetus to the development and radical change in all the other natural sciences.

p The inevitable penetration of physics into every branch of natural science is largely due to the fact that it makes a study both of the simplest and of the most common properties of matter. Physics is quite rightly called "the mother of mechanics". Progress in the physical sciences has an immediate influence on all the basic elements of modern production: energy, and the instruments of labour and techniques. Solid-state physics has a growing influence on the instruments of labour (raw and other materials). This is most evident nowadays, when we have been witnessing the emergence of atomic and nuclear energy and technology, electronic and laser technology, semiconductor and integral circuits, etc.

p It is no exaggeration to say that the advances in the physical sciences provided a starting point for the development of very many basic sciences (especially those emerging at the conjunction of the chemical and physical, and the biological and physical sciences) and many of the main engineering disciplines.

p Progress in physics has a great influence on the whole of the modern world-view, chiefly because of the close connection between physics and the theory of cognition. Fundamental departments of modern physics like the theory of the structure of matter, the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics are organically connected with the theory of cognition. This was pointed out by Lenin in his Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, in which he analysed the state of physics and drew the conclusion that modern physics tended to engender dialectical materialism.  [95•1 

p Let us recall that Lenin regarded the advances in physics over the last three decades of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century as gigantic and breathtaking. It is more than six decades since the publication of his Materialism and Empiric-Criticism in which he gave this assessment. We have good ground to say that the changes in this field since then are even greater and truly revolutionary.

p The revolutionary changes in physics ran along several closely interacting lines. A key role belonged to the new fundamental theories radically changing the most general notions concerning the nature of phenomena taking place in the surrounding world. These theories made it possible to take a new look (and a very fruitful one it was) at the phenomena and processes going forward in the microworld (on the level of the atom and elementary particles) and in the macroworld, including cosmological problems.

p A very important direction which determined the radical revolutionary changes in the fundamentals of physics consisted of the tremendous advances in technical facilities used in physical research and experiments.

p Of course, Albert Einstein’s special and general theory of relativity and the theory of quantum mechanics were the fundamental theories which provided the most important basis for the current scientific revolution in physics and largely in all the other natural sciences. They had the definitive role to play in the advance from classical physics to the new, so- called relativity physics, i.e., the physics based on the theory of relativity.

p Marx’s well-known dictum formulated in his "Theses on Feuerbach"—"the philosophers have only interpreted 96 the world in various ways; the point is to change it"  [96•1 —could also be applied to those working in the natural sciences: physicists, chemists and biologists. The STR, as the term itself implies, eliminates the shortcoming noted by Marx. The combination of science and technology itself testifies to the fact that a scientific discovery, i.e., explanation, is transformed into a technical solution, i.e., an active change of reality.

p Indeed, the giants of thought who shaped the beginnings of the current STR took the characteristic attitude of blending theory with being, with active influence on the processes going forward in reality, and this is impressively epitomised by the works of Einstein. He proved that it follows from the relativity of space, time and motion that the mass of a body depends on its velocity, and so on the energy of its motion. When a body approaches the extreme speed of 300,000 km. per second—its mass tends to infinity. Einstein’s suggestion that the mass of a body at rest also depends on its inner energy E was also of vast importance. That was the basis of the energetics of the STR. It turned out that if energy and mass were to be measured in conventional units, energy was equal to mass multiplied by the square of the velocity of light, c, that is E = m-c².

p Three million times more energy is generated by the fission of uranium nuclei than in the chemical reaction of fuel combustion (1 gr. of uranium produces more heat than 3 tons of burnt coal). But that is only a small part of the energy corresponding to the whole mass of the substance. Thermonuclear energy already uses a roughly 10 times greater share of the internal energy of particles as compared with the atomic energetics of the fission of heavy nuclei.

p Einstein’s formula opens up even grander horizons in the use of nuclear energy, and is latent with subsequent stages of the STR in energetics. The following simple arithmetical calculations will show the full energy potentialities of matter which spring from Einstein’s formula.

p According to Einstein’s formula, energy equals mass (let us say 1 gr.), multiplied by the square of the velocity of light, c. The velocity of light is equal to 300,000 km/sec, 97 or 3-10¹⁰ cm/sec. Consequently, c² = 9-10²⁰ cm/sec. Multiplying the mass in grams by c², we obtain the energy it contains in ergs. One kwh is equal to 3.6-10¹³ ergs, which means that the total energy latent in 1 gram of matter is equal to 9-10²⁰ ergs, and divided by 3.6-10¹³ is equal to 2.5-10’ kwh (or 25 million kwh).

p Of the reactions known at present, the full realisation of this energy can be obtained only from the collision of matter and anti-matter, i.e., in the so-called reaction of annihilation. It has been established that in the collision of any particle with a corresponding anti-particle they are annihilated, i.e., they disappear, while their energy and mass are transformed into energy, and fully so (as in radiation) without any breach of the law of preservation, i.e., with the full realisation of the whole of the energy according to Einstein’s formula E = m-c². This is thousands of times greater than the quantity of the energy generated per unit of mass in nuclear reactions.

p Thus, the revolution in physics is latent with revolutions in technology and in the whole of material production.

p Quantum mechanics is another line in the scientific revolution in physics, which is closely connected with nuclear physics and atomic energetics, and it heralds revolutionary changes in technology and production.

p The processes leading to the fission and fusion of nuclei could be understood only with the help of quantum notions. Quantum mechanics was the theoretical basis for the development of electronics and subsequently of lasers—quantum generators of light—i.e., the fundamental basis for an already visible revolutionary change in the technology of production.

p Laser radiation has tremendous potentialities.

p The properties of laser radiation—the possibility of focusing a beam in a very small volume of matter—make it possible in the presence of a thermonuclear target (a compound of deuterium and tritium) to create conditions for thermonuclear reactions, involving temperatures of tens of millions of degrees and a density of fuel that is hundreds of times bigger than the density of solids. That is one of the highly promising lines in the development of thermonuclear energetics.

p There is much promise in the use of laser technology in creating optical methods for processing information and 98 fast optical computers. This involves the substitution of optical means—wave beam guides—for cables and wires and the creation of an efficient and fast optical “memory” of great volume for electronic computers and a constant memory-store for information systems.

p All these ideas and discoveries have produced the theoretical basis for unprecedented progress in radio engineering and a triumphal advance of electronics, which has permeated and continues to permeate every branch of hardware and progressive types of technology.

p Highly instructive here is the influence which physics, notably quantum theory, has exerted on the chemical sciences. Mendeleyev’s periodic system, which was largely an empirical law of chemistry, has been provided with sound theoretical foundations by the development of quantum mechanics and the establishment of the quantum model of the atom. It has turned out that the arrangement of the elements which Mendeleyev discovered has a highly important yet very simple physical meaning. The serial element in Mendeleyev’s system (physicists call it atomic number) is equal to the number of positive charges, or, in other words, to the number of protons in the nucleus of the atoms of this element. Mendeleyev’s law has become one of the laws of atomic and nuclear physics.

p The use of quantum theory opens up tremendous potentialities for solid-state physics in acting on the fundamental properties of metals and crystals generally. The quantum properties of solids make it possible to use crystals as diverse physical instruments. The study of physical phenomena in thin semiconductor films has provided the basis for obtaining integral, hybrid and functional circuits, and this is directly connected with the miniaturisation and micro- miniaturisation of electronic devices and the development of the latest generations of computers.

p That is far from a full picture of the scientific revolution in 20th-century physics. Everything that has been said above relates to the scientific discoveries that have already been made and to their obvious importance for hardware and material production.

p But the revolution in physics continues. Its potentialities are multiplied many times over by the powerful facilities going to equip research in physics.

p One need only point to the Soviet experimental installations in plasma physics—Tokamak-3, and the even ,more powerful Tokamak-10. Soviet physicists obtained the world’s best results in heating plasma up to 7 million degrees with a density of the plasma column of 10¹² particles per cubic centimetre, a state in which it was maintained on Tokamak-3 for several hundreds of a second. There is every reason to expect that Tokamak-10 will help to raise the temperature and the density of the plasma, together with the time of its maintenance close to the parameters required for the start of a self-sustaining thermonuclear reaction in the chamber. At the same time, physicists are also searching for other ways of heating up the plasma to the level required for the start of thermonuclear reactions.

p Cecil Frank Powell, an English physicist, a Nobel Prize winner and a guest member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, wrote that the recently discovered astronomical objects like quasars and exploding galaxies are a source of tremendous energy, estimated to be of the order of 10⁶² ergs (i.e., three times more than the full energy of matter according to Einstein’s theory). The existence of such sources of energy can no longer be interpreted within the framework of conventional nuclear processes. Highly intriguing uniformities have also been established, he says, among the newly discovered particles. He expresses the hope that over the next century mankind will be able to comprehend these discoveries and create new sources of energy many times more productive than nuclear sources.  [99•1 

p The fantastic density of matter and, consequently inconceivable at present, energy potentialities are connected with so-called "black holes”.

For many years scientists in various countries have theoretically predicted the existence in space of such "black holes",