2022 Nobel Prize In Physics Lectures

If you are bored over the holidays, here's something to keep you occupied for 2 hours.

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2018 Nobel Prize in Physics ... FINALLY, after 55 years!

I seriously thought that I'd never see this in my lifetime, and I'm terribly happy that I was wrong!

The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics has just been announced, and for the first time in more than 50 years, one of the winners is a woman!

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2018 was awarded “for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics” with one half to Arthur Ashkin “for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems”, the other half jointly to Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland “for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses”.

Congratulations to all, and especially to Donna Strickland.

I will admit that this wasn't something I expected. I didn't realize that the area of ultra-short laser pulses was in the Nobel Committee and nomination radar. But it is still very nice that this area of laser pulse-shaping technique is being recognized.

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2017 Physics Nobel Prize Goes To Gravitational Wave Discovery

To say that this is a no-brainer and no surprise are an understatement.

The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics goes to 3 central figures that made LIGO possible and the eventual discovery of gravitational wave in 2015.

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2017 was divided, one half awarded to Rainer Weiss, the other half jointly to Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves".

Congratulations to all of them!

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"Fart Detector" Wins Chinese Physics Prize

OK, there are many aspects this story.

When I first read the title, I honestly read it as "Fast detector", which is reasonable, because fast detectors are useful. But when I read it again, I did a double take. So of course, I had to open the link to the story and figure out what this is.

Turns out that that wasn't the original intent of this detector. Rather, it is trying to sniff any odor in a moving air and to locate the source. Of course, the media, even in China, took it to its most obvious "application" such as sniffing (pun intended) the source of a fart. Question is, what do you do when you find the culprit? Is it unlawful in China for someone to fart in public? Do you shame this individual for such an act?

Finally, it turns out that the prize given is the "Pineapple" prize because "...the fruit which in China is said to be so ugly that only the brave and curious would explore its delicious interior..."

Whaaaaaat????!!!!

I guess this is another example of beauty in the eye of the beholder. I had never, even a second, consider the pineapple to be an "ugly" fruit. In fact, if you've been in to Hawaii or the tropics (especially in South East Asia where the fruit is abundant), it is considered to be beautiful enough to be used as decorations!

In any case, I don't think this research work is "useless" to even qualify for an Ig Nobel prize.

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Which Famous Physicist Should Be Depicted In The Movie Next?

Eddie Redmayne won the Oscar last night for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in the movie "The Theory of Everything". So this got me into thinking of which famous physicist should be portrayed next in a movie biography. Hollywood won't choose someone who isn't eccentric, famous, or in the news. So that rules out a lot.

I would think that Richard Feynman would make a rather compelling biographical movie. He certainly was a very complex person, and definitely not boring. They could give the movie a title of "Sure You Must Be Joking", or "Six Easy Pieces", or "Shut Up And Calculate", although the latter may not be entirely attributed to Feynman.

Hollywood, I'm available for consultation!

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No Women Physics Nobel Prize Winner In 50 Years

This article reports on the possible reasons why there have been no Physics Nobel Prize for a woman in 50 years.

But there's also, of course, the fact that the prize is awarded to scientists whose discoveries have stood the test of time. If you're a theorist, your theory must be proven true, which knocks various people out of the running. One example is Helen Quinn, whose theory with Roberto Peccei predicts a new particle called the axion. But the axion hasn't been discovered yet, and therefore they can't win the Nobel Prize.
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Age is important to note. Conrad tells Mashable that more and more women are entering the field of physics, but as a result, they're still often younger than what the committee seems to prefer. According to the Nobel Prize website, the average age of Nobel laureates has even increased since the 1950s.
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But the Nobel Prize in Physics isn't a lifetime achievement award — it honors a singular accomplishment, which can be tricky for both men and women.

"Doing Nobel Prize-worthy research is a combination of doing excellent science and also getting lucky," Conrad says. "Discoveries can only happen at a certain place and time, and you have to be lucky to be there then. These women coming into the field are as excellent as the men, and I have every reason to think they will have equal luck. So, I think in the future you will start to see lots of women among the Nobel Prize winners. I am optimistic."

The article mentioned the names of 4 women who are the leading candidates for the Nobel prize: Deborah Jin, Lene Hau, Vera Rubin, and Margaret Murnane. If you noticed, I mentioned about Jin and Hau way back when already, and I consider them to have done Nobel caliber work. I can only hope that, during my lifetime, we will see a woman win this again after so long.

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Chemistry Nobel Prize Goes To Physicists

The Nobel Prize in chemistry this year goes to a team that was responsible for the development of fluorescence microscopy.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to three scientists whose work surpassed the long-established resolution limit for optical microscopes. The award went to Eric Betzig of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stefan W. Hell of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, and William E. Moerner of Stanford University “for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy.”

There is an important point here that should be addressed to the public, the politicians, and those who think that we can fund one part of science over another. Many of the instruments used in chemistry, biology, medicine, etc. came out of basic physics research. Before anyone else used these instruments, physicists were the first people to thought of the concept, develop the theory and instrumentation, and then used them. It is only after that that the potential applications for such a device can be envisioned in other fields.

This technique is not the first. The history of Nobel prizes is littered with many instruments that came out of physics but are now ubiquitous in other fields. STM/AFM instruments are indispensable in biology and chemistry, yet this is clearly an instrument that came out quantum mechanics and then developed by physicists once they knew that such a device can probe a sample of interest. Only after that is the possibility of applications in other areas can be seen.

So folks, when you choke the support, and the funding, of basic science/physics, please note that you are really choking off the upstream waters. You may not feel the effect right away, but eventually, your water supply will drop down to a trickle, and you don't quite now what happened. The instruments that those people funded by the NIH here in the US were all derivatives of devices invented out of physics!

Think about that next time you want to cut off your nose to spite your face.

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2014 Nobel Prize in Physics

So much for Nobel Prize prediction. This year, everyone got it wrong and not even close!

The Nobel prize in physics this year goes to the invention of the blue LED using GaN  semiconductors. It is an example of the periodicity of the Nobel committee to award to a practical and useful invention, which is actually the intent of Alfred Nobel when he first created the award.

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2014 Nobel Prize Prediction

As is customary at this time of the year, everyone is anticipating the announcement out of Sweden of this year's Nobel Prize award. Of course, there have been some guessing game on who will receive the prestigious prize. Science Watch has made its own predictions this year. Interestingly enough, all of their candidates are from Material Science/Condensed Matter field. Maybe this is to balance out the fact that last year, the winners were from elementary particle/high energy physics theory.

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2014 Ig Nobel Prize

As usual at this time of the year, the Ig Nobel Prizes has been awarded to a group of really serious but fun/useless/trivial/etc work. The award for physics this year is on the study on how slippery banana peel really is.

Physics: A Japanese team has finally tested whether, indeed, banana skins are really as slippery as slapstick comedy would have us believe. In “Frictional Coefficient under Banana Skin,” they show a banana skin reduces the friction between a shoe sole and the floor by about a fifth. 

But what caught my eye was the award given for Neuroscience, which I don't think is that trivial or useless.

Neuroscience: In “Seeing Jesus in Toast,” a team from China and Canada have clinched the neuroscience prize with an exploration of a phenomenon called face pareidolia, in which people see nonexistent faces. First, they tricked participants into thinking that a nonsense image had a face or letter hidden in it. Then, they carefully monitored brain activity in the participants they managed to convince, to understand which parts of our minds are to blame.

This is, actually, quite important in arguing against people who rely on "seeing" with their eyes as a primary source of evidence, which are often part of an anecdotal evidence.

I argued before on why our eyes are really not a reliable detector. That post came about because I've often been questioned about the validity of the existence of an electron simply because we haven't "seen" it with our eyes. I put forth a few facts on why our eyes is really a rather bad standard to use in detecting anything simply due to the limitations it has on a number of properties.

This paper about seeing Jesus in toast is another solid point to add to those arguments about us "seeing" something. It adds to the fact that we do not just see something, but also PROCESS the optical signal from our eyes via our brain. Our brain, due to either conditioning, evolution, etc., has added these filters, pattern recognition, etc. to help us interpret what we are seeing. And it is because of that that we have the potential to see something that isn't really there. This work clearly proves that!

It is another reason "seeing" with our eyes may not always be a reliable evidence.

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Deborah Jin Awarded IoP's Newton Medal

The UK's Institute of Physics has awarded JILA's Deborah Jin with this years Isaac Newton Medal, which is the IoP's most prestigious award.

In 1999 Jin and her then PhD student Brian DeMarco were the first researchers to cool a gas of fermionic atoms so low that the effects of quantum degeneracy could be observed. This phenomenon underpins the properties of electrons in solid materials, and the ability to create and control ultracold "Fermi gases" has since provided important insights into superconductivity and other electronic effects in materials. Working with Cindy Regal and Markus Greiner at JILA, Jin later created the first fermionic condensate in 2003, by cooling a gas of potassium atoms to nanokelvin temperatures.

I've always said that she deserves a Nobel Prize in physics for this work. It is also about time that a woman wins this after several deserving ones had been overlooked.

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From Mars to the Multiverse

The 2012 Isaac Newton Medal lecture given by Martin Rees.




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2011 Physics Nobel Prize Prediction

It happens every year at this time. Thomson-Reuters produces their prediction for the Nobel Prizes to be given out in October. They have listed the one for physics this year, and it looks like the area of quantum optics and condensed matter are well-represented. It is of no surprise to me that Alain Aspect/Anton Zeilinger/John Clauser are nominated. I think it is just a matter of time that they get the award.

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NAS Criticized For Hosting Templeton Prize Award

This is rather puzzling to me as well. The prestigious US National Academy of Sciences has agreed to host the award for the Templeton Prize. However, many scientists think this is a mistake.

"For the National Academy of Sciences to get involved with an organisation like this is dangerous," said Sir Harry Kroto, a British scientist who won the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1996 and later joined Florida State University.

"The National Academy should look very carefully at what the majority of its members feel about the apparent legitimising of the scientific credentials of the Templeton Foundation." he said.

This is certainly a strange decision. The NAS responded with this rather feeble response.

The NAS said it agreed to host the event because the winner was an NAS member. Sean Carroll, a physicist at California Institute of Technology, said: "Templeton has a fairly overt agenda that some scientists are comfortable with, but very many are not. In my opinion, for a prestigious scientific organisation to work with them sends the wrong message."

That makes very little sense. If a member of the NAS gets awarded with other strange awards, say the Discovery Institute want to award a member with the promotion of intelligent design, does that mean that the NAS would also host such a ceremony simply because the winner is an NAS member? I wouldn't think so.

I have a lot of respect for the NAS (even though many people think it is a little above a popularity club), but this decision by them is a head-scratcher.

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Physicist Wins Glamour Magazine Award

Yes, you read that right, GLAMOUR magazine, the fashion magazine for women. I kid you not. Apparently, they have this yearly award in various categories, including, get this, Science and Technology. Who knew?!

This year, the award is given to Prof. Athene Donald of Cambridge.

Professor Donald, who is the Deputy Head of the Department of Physics, beat out such candidates as scientist Baroness Susan Greenfield and internet entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox to win the prize from the iconic women's lifestyle magazine.

In announcing the award in their latest edition, the magazine praised Professor Donald as a "great role model" who has "forged a real path for herself in the male-dominated world of physics."

OK, I just wasted several minutes erasing something I wrote about my cynicism regarding a fashion magazine giving awards about Science and Technology and talking about role model. My head told me to just shut up and report the damn news! :)

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Russian Mathematician Wins Abel Prize

The mathematics equivalent of the Nobel Prizes has been awarded to the Russian-born mathematician Mikhail Gromov.

Gromov, 65, won the award "for his revolutionary contributions to geometry," says Abel Committee Chair Kristian Seip. The mathematician, who also holds a position at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in New York City, is credited with making advances in the fields of symplectic and Riemannian geometry, which are closely tied to areas of mathematical physics such as general relativity and string theory. He is also credited with founding the modern study of "geometric group theory," which injects notions of distance and curvature into the study of finite algebraic structures. Gromov's work "has had a tremendous impact on geometry and has reached from there into major applications in analysis and algebra," says George Andrews, president of the American Mathematical Society in Providence. "One cannot imagine a more worthy recipient."

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2008 Nobel Prize in Physics

The 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics has just been announced within the past 30 minutes.

Yoichiro Nambu, Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, IL, USA

"for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics"

and the other half jointly to

Makoto Kobayashi, High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), Tsukuba, Japan

and

Toshihide Maskawa,Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics (YITP), Kyoto University, Japan

"for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature"

The Thomson Reuters forecast for the Physics Nobel prize was completely wrong! :) And so was mine, but I think, in my defense, I didn't predict the graphene discovers will win it this year. I just think that they will win it some time soon, and as the importance of graphene emerges even more, then the discovery will be even more significant.

BTW, it is interesting to note that I highlighted recently issues regarding spontaneous symmetry breaking as the origin of mass. With this Nobel prize, and with the LHC looking for the Higgs, it clearly underlines the importance of the understanding of such symmetry breaking as one of the most fundamental aspect of our universe.

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Graphene Pioneers Follow in Nobel Footsteps

I guess it is a no-brainer to consider both Andre Geim and Kostya Noveselov as one of the possible candidates for the physics Nobel Prize some time soon with their discovery of graphene. I guess that since October is approaching fast, more of talks of Nobel prize dreams inevitably comes up.

Presented since 1975, the Europhysics Prize is one of the world’s most prestigious awards for condensed matter physics.

Many winners have subsequently been awarded the Nobel Prize in recognition of their achievements, including the last year Nobel Laureates Albert Fert, Peter Grünberg and Gerhard Ertl.

The "equivalent" prize in the US would be the Buckeley Prize for condensed matter physics, which also had many of its winners going on to win the Nobel prize.

With graphene being as "hot" of a research area as it is now, I wouldn't be surprised if Geim and Noveselov win it this year.

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