Predicting This Year's Nobel Prize Winners In Physics

As is always at this time of the year, the guessing game begins on who will be awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Physics. A recent poll on what area and who will win it this year has been released. See if you agree.

Again, there's a shortage of women being considered for the nomination. I think Lene Hau and Deborah Jin are two physicists who have made significant advancement and discovery in physics who should also be in this select group of people.

However, as we ponder who will shine next week, we also pay tribute to another physics Nobel Laureate, Georges Charpak, who passed away on Sept. 29.

Dr. Charpak's chamber was a 4-inch square box of criss-crossed wires that measured, in fractions of a second, the trajectories of these exploded particles.

"My very modest contribution to physics has been in the art of weaving in space thin wires detecting the whisper of nearby flying charged particles produced in high-energy nuclear collisions," Dr. Charpak said at his Nobel Prize ceremony. "It is easy for computers to transform these whispers into a symphony understandable to physicists."

Dr. Charpak's design improved on other particle detectors, including the bubble and cloud chambers, which took photographs of the subatomic events and earned both of their inventors Nobel prizes.

Zz.