Issues

The following is based on a talk presented by the author to the members of the Student Sections of the American Institute of Physics who attended the Houston meeting of the American Physical Society in February of this year. The purpose of the talk was to present background information to the students so that they might better understand some of the nuclear physics papers presented at the APS meeting.

A Conference on Physics of Nonthermal Radio Sources was held on December 3–4, 1962, at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. Organized by G. R. Burbidge (University of California, San Diego), L. Woltjer (Leiden), and A. G. W. Cameron (Goddard Institute), the purpose of the meeting was to review recent observational and theoretical results in this rapidly developing field. Radio‐frequency radiation characterized by a nonthermal spectral energy distribution has been detected from Jupiter and from active regions on the Sun; however, the meeting was restricted to discussion of objects located outside the solar system, the so‐called “discrete sources.” Over one thousand of these localized regions of celestial radio emission have now been studied at two or more frequencies.

A philosopher, on looking at two familiar ways of seeking knowledge and truth, finds them generating the same kind of knowledge and ending with the same truth