2025 Nobel Prize in Physics

It's unusual that a Nobel Prize in Physics is given to physicists working in the field that was the same as my PhD research work. It finally happened this year.

I did research work in tunneling spectroscopy in cuprate superconductors, and we did both superconductor-insulator-normal metal and superconductor-insulator-superconductor tunnel junctions, the latter of which is where we observe the Josephson tunneling current. Therefore, the work cited here is something that I'm quite familiar with. I just never realized till now that it was such a major discovery to be awarded a Nobel Prize. I know that one of my colleagues had John Clarke as his PhD advisor at Berkeley.

Interesting that this is such an old and well-established phenomenon and technique that is only now being recognized.

Zz. 

AI Will Pick Nobel Prize Winners in Physics

Please read the article carefully before you freak out. Hint: look at the date.

Zz.

2022 Nobel Prize In Physics Lectures

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

Zz.

RIP J. Robert Shrieffer

I'm sad to hear the passing of a giant in our field, and certainly in the field of Condensed Matter Physics. Nobel Laureate J. Robert Schrieffer has passed away at the age of 88. He is the "S" in BCS theory of superconductivity, one of the most monumental theories of the last century, and one of the most cited. So "complete" was the theory that, by early 1986, many people thought that the field of superconductivity has been fully "solved", and that nothing new can come out of it. Of course, that got completely changed after that.

Unfortunately, I wasn't aware of his predicament during the last years of Schrieffer's life. I certainly was not aware that he was incarcerated for a while.

Late in life, Dr. Schrieffer’s love of fast cars ended in tragedy. In September 2004, he was driving from San Francisco to Santa Barbara, Calif., when his car, traveling at more than 100 miles per hour, slammed into a van, killing a man and injuring seven other people.

Dr. Schrieffer, whose Florida driver’s license was suspended, pleaded no contest to felony vehicular manslaughter and apologized to the victims and their families. He was sentenced to two years in prison and released after serving one year.

Florida State placed Dr. Schrieffer on leave after the incident, and he retired in 2006.

I've met him only once while I was a graduate student, and he was already at Florida State/NHML at that time. His book and Michael Tinkham's were the two that I used when I decided to go into superconductivity.

Leon Cooper is the only surviving members left of the BCS trio.

Zz.

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.

Zz.

Not Insignificant Blunder on John Bardeen by UK's "Express"

OK, so to commemorate Feynman's 100th birthday, the UK's Daily Express decided to do a "Top 10" about physics. I thought this was going to be a fun read when I encountered #8 on the list:

It said "8. The only double winner is John Bardeen: 1956 (transistors) and 1972 (MRI images)"

Nope! The 1972 Nobel Prize in physics to Bardeen was for the theory of superconductivity. He is the "B" in BCS theory!

The Nobel Prize for MRI imaging was given in 2003 to Paul Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield.

How come news organizations don't do fact checking anymore nowadays?

Zz.

Lazy Reporting And Taking Way Too Much Credit

It is not surprising that whenever a major discovery is made or a major award is given, as many people and institutions want to ride the coattail and be a part of it. I understand that.

But sometime, it is stretching it a bit waaaay too much, especially when the report itself sounds very lazy and weak.

The recent announcement of the Nobel Prize in physics being awarded to 3 figures who are instrumental in the discovery of gravitational waves seem to be one such case. I stumble across this news article out of what I believe is a local newspaper called the "Gonzales Weekly Citizen". The headline said:

LSU scientists win Nobel Prize in Physics

Of course, that perked my interest since I didn't know any of the 3 men who were awarded the prize are known to be associated with LSU (Louisiana State University, for those who are not familiar with this).

Now, it seems that the reporter is playing fast and loose. Rainer Weiss is listed as an "adjunct professor" in the LSU physics dept. Now, we all know that an adjunct professor is nothing more than a "contractor". That person is not considered as a staff member, but rather hired on a per-term basis or based on a contract. In most cases, the person is probably associated by another institution rather than the one where he/she is an adjunct professor of.

In fact, in this case, Rainer Weiss is more well-known as being associated with MIT than anywhere else. It is what is listed in all the news report for this award. In fact, if you look at the Nobel Prize page that announced this award, the profile on Weiss says:

Affiliation at the time of the award: LIGO/VIRGO Collaboration, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA

No mention of LSU. In fact, the LIGO project itself is a consortium of many universities and it is jointly administered by MIT and Caltech. One of the facilities may be in Louisiana, and LSU is involved in the project, but that's about it. They should be proud of their contribution to the project, but to over play it to this level is not quite right.

So this news report is misleading at best!

But that's not all! There's a certain level of laziness in the reporting.

LSU adjunct professor and MIT professor Emeritus Rainer Weiss and California professor Emeritus Kip Thorne are co-founders of the collaboration. Weiss won half of the prize, and the other half went to the California Institute of Technology professors involved.

I'm sorry, but they could not even bother to mention Barry Barish name? He's being relegated to being part of the "... California Institute of Technology professors involved." REALLY!


As I said, rather lazy reporting.

Zz.

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!

Zz.

Nobel Prize Goes Vintage This Year

Wow. While deserving, I didn't see this one coming because I thought the ship had left the harbor a long time ago.

The Nobel committee decided to dig deep and went back in time to award the prize to 3 condensed matter physicists for work done in the early 70's. This year's prize goes to David Thouless, Duncan Haldane, and Michael Kosterlitz.

In the early 1970s, Kosterlitz and Thouless overturned the then-current theory that superconductivity could not occur in extremely thin layers.

 

"They demonstrated that superconductivity could occur at low temperatures and also explained the mechanism -- phase transition -- that makes superconductivity disappear at higher temperatures," explained the Foundation. 

 

Around a decade later, Haldane also studied matter that forms threads so thin they can be considered one-dimensional.

Any condensed matter student would have heard of the Haldane chain, and the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition. These are textbooks concepts that are now widely used and accepted. It certainly took then long enough to decide to award the prize to these people.

I wonder if the Nobel committee is delaying the prize for the gravitational wave for another year to make sure it is verified, and to narrow down the people they award it to. Just like the award for the Higgs, there are several people, more than 3, that can easily deserve the prize.

Zz.

Landau's Nobel Prize in Physics

This is a fascinating article. It describes, using the Nobel prize archives, the process that led to Lev Landau's nomination and winning the Nobel Prize in physics. But more than that, it also describes the behind-the-scenes nominating process for the Nobel Prize.

I'm not sure if the process has change significantly since then, but I would imaging that many of the mechanism leading up to a nomination and winning the prize are similar.

Zz.

LIGO Discovery And The Nobel Prize

Inevitably, the discussion that follows after the LIGO announcement of the detection of gravitational wave is the Nobel Prize. If there is a sure thing with regard to the Nobel Prize, is that this discovery will get someone this prize.

But just like the issue surrounding the discovery of the Higgs, the question comes up on who should deserve the prize for this discovery. Just like the Higgs, thousands of people were responsible in the work, both theorists and experimentalist. And typically, the Nobel committee will give the award to the individuals who either headed the collaboration, or made the most significant contribution to the physics that led to the discovery.

This news article lists the three most likely individuals who might be the front-runner for the Nobel Prize for this LIGO discovery.

"I think that most of the community would agree that the three pioneers of what became LIGO would be Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Ronald Drever," the head of one of LIGO's observatories in Hanford, Washington, Fred Raab, told Business Insider.

Weiss — who is a professor at MIT's Department of Physics — and Drever — now retired — are both experimentalists who made significant contributions to the concept, design, funding, and eventual construction of LIGO.

On the other hand, Thorne is a theorist, and the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at CalTech. Together with his students, Thorne conducted much of the work on what the detection of a gravitational wave would actually look like and how to identify that signal within the data

Unfortunately, Ronald Drever is in poor health, and the Nobel prize is not awarded posthumously. They may also have missed the deadline for this year's Nobel prize.

The news article discuss on whether the Nobel prize should increase the number of recipient from the maximum of 3 for each prize (outside of the Peace price). I think the change should be more on awarding the prize to deceased individuals. So what if that person is dead? If he/she did make a major enough contribution to warrant a prize, then it should be done. This is especially true for many women scientists who never received their recognition while they were alive back when women were not encouraged or had severe restrictions on their careers as scientists. Posthumous awards can correct these injustices.

Zz.

More On Neutrinos

People seem to want to learn more about neutrinos! With the latest Nobel prize being awarded to the discovery of neutrino mixing, it is a good time to have some general article on what we know about neutrinos. John Beacom has written a rather nice article here that should give you an idea of the physics of neutrinos and why it is an important study.

It just struck me as a rather interesting development. When SNO and Super-K were discovering all this, there was hardly any neutrino experiment in the US. Oh, there was plenty of US participation, but neutrino experiments were not big or a priority. This is understandable because, back then, the Tevatron was still going strong and LHC hasn't completely come into force yet. Now, how things have changed considerably. With the Tevatron gone and the center of high energy physics collider having shifted to CERN, the US is now trying to be a major player in neutrino studies, with MINOS, NOvA, and the proposed LBNE. In DOE/funding lingo, the US has abandoned the "Energy Frontier" and has gone into the "Intensity Frontier".

I believe there are still huge amount of amazing physics to be discovered from neutrinos. So it will be interesting how all these new generation of neutrino detectors will pan out.

Zz.

2015 Nobel Prize Work Free To Read

As a follow-up from yesterday's announcement of the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physics, the APS has made available the publications that are directly related to award to the two recipients this year.

Evidence for Oscillation of Atmospheric Neutrinos

Measurement of the Rate of ν_e + d → p + p +e ⁻ Interactions Produced by ⁸B Solar Neutrinos at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory

Direct Evidence for Neutrino Flavor Transformation from Neutral-Current Interactions in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory

Notice my earlier point, as you look at the authors list on each of these papers, that they were a huge amount of collaborators on these projects.

Zz.

2015 Nobel Prize For Neutrino Oscillation Discovery

The 2015 Nobel prize in physics went to Art McDonald and Takaaki Kajita for the discovery of neutrino oscillation at SNO and SuperKamiokande, respectively.

Now, for those readers who are not familiar with all this, do not get the impression that these two were working all by themselves and then discover these. They did not. There were huge number of people who were working on these projects, and the papers they produced listed a large number of authors. However, these two were either the leading scientist or the most prominent/significant figure representing each group. This is not unusual for an experimental discovery, especially in elementary particle physics, where the most prominent figure is singled out for the award.

When I read this, I must admit that I was a bit surprised. Not surprised that they are awarding it for the discovery of neutrino oscillation - it IS a major discovery. I was surprised because I somehow thought that this discovery had already been awarded the Nobel prize already! I mean, it was such a significant moment, and it is now already accepted that neutrino oscillation is a fact, that I somehow assumed the  Nobel prize had already been awarded for this discovery years ago. Obviously, I hallucinated that one.

Maybe the Nobel committee were debating all this time on who should deserve to receive the prize, considering the huge number of people involved, with several prominent physicists deserving it on each group.

In any case, the prize for this discovery was long overdue.

Zz.

25% Of Physics Nobel Laureates Are Immigrants

The people at Physics World have done an interesting but not surprising study on the number of Physics Nobel laureates who are/were immigrants. They found that this number is more than 1/4 of all Physics Nobel winners.

They discussed what they used as a criteria of an "immigrant", and the chart they showed certainly is very clear that there is a huge influx of these  talents into the US.

Still, it would be nice to see how many of these immigrants did their Nobel Prize winning work before they migrated. And I definitely want to see this statistics for the next 10-20 years, especially now that they US is severely cutting budgets into basic physics research, the effects of which will not be felt immediately.

In any case, it is that time of the year again where we all make our predictions or  guesses on who will win this prize this year. I am still pinning hopes that a woman will win this, considering that we have been having very strong candidates for several years.

Zz.

She's Still Radioactive!

She, as in Marie Curie.

This article examines what has happened to the personal effects of Marie Curie, the "Mother of Modern Physics".

Still, after more than 100 years, much of Curie's personal effects including her clothes, furniture, cookbooks, and laboratory notes remain contaminated by radiation, the Christian Science Monitor reports.

Regarded as national and scientific treasures, Curie's laboratory notebooks are stored in lead-lined boxes at France's national library in Paris.

While the library allows visitors to view Curie's manuscripts, all guests are expected to sign a liability waiver and wear protective gear as the items are contaminated with radium 226, which has a half-life of about 1,600 years, according to Christian Science Monitor.

What they didn't report, and this is where the devil-is-in-the-details part is missing, is what level of radioactivity is given off by these objects. You just don't want to sign something and not know the level you will be exposed to (which, btw, if you work in the US or at a US National Lab, a RWP (radiation work permit) must be posted at the door detailing the type of radiation and the level of radiation at a certain distance).

I suspect that this level is just slightly above background, and that's why they are isolated, but not large enough for concern. Still, the nit-picker in me would like to know such details!

Zz.

Yoichiro Nambu

This is a bit late, but I will kick myself if I don't acknowledge the passing of Yoichiro Nambu this past week. This person, if you've never heard of his name before, is truly a GIANT in physics, and not just in elementary particle. His work transcends any field of physics, and had a significant impact in condensed matter.

I wrote an entry on his work when he won the Nobel prize a few years ago. His legacy will live on long after him.

Zz.

Leon Lederman. Sold His Nobel Prize Medal

i find that it is sad that he had to resort to this.

Retired experimental physicist Leon Lederman is now 92 years old and facing serious health problems and memory loss. So he took to an online auction and sold his 1988 Nobel prize for his co-discovery of subatomic particle called the muon neutrino to cover his costs. The price of Nobel fame online? $765,002.

It had been only a few years ago that I mentioned about his efforts on the streets of Chicago to educate the public about physics. I wish more could have done to help him to not have him sell his medal.

Zz.

Val Fitch

We lost Nobel Laureate Charles Townes several days ago, and now another Nobel Laureate has passed away. Val Fitch died this past week at the age of 91. His work in CP-symmetry violation is still one of the most fundamental aspect of elementary particle physics that is still being investigated.

Zz.

I Win The Nobel Prize And All I Got Was A Parking Space

I'm sure it is a slight exaggeration, but it is still amusing to read Shuji Nakamura's response on the benefits he got from UCSB after winning the physics Nobel Prize. On the benefits of winning a Nobel Prize:

 "I don't have to teach anymore and I get a parking space. That's all I got from the University of California." 

 Zz.