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Nobel Prize for Physics Announced
what_the_frell writes "According to this Fox News article, two Americans and a Russian won the 2003 Nobel Prize for Physics for research in the field of quantum physics. The trio conducted research in superconductivity and superfluidity, detailed in this official Nobel article."
The technology of supraconductors is interrestingly enough used in the magnetic camera that gave the medical prize.
"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it."
- Niels Bohr
I could care less, but not without a lobotomy
Possibly because superconductivity is purely a quantum mechanical phenomena, applications don't get reported a lot, because it's hard to explain how such devices work to the general public.
Superconductivity also encompasses the Josephson effect. This is where paired electrons in a superconductor, when driven by microwave frequency radio signals, can pass through a thin insulating layer. The voltage generated across this layer is proportional to the microwave frequency. Thus, the unit of voltage is now determined by Josephson effect reference standards in labs all over the world.
An additional Josephson effect is an extreme sensitivity to magnetic fields. This is employed in SQUIDs (Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices). SQUIDS are used in detecting the magnetic fields from nerve currents in the brain, internal flaws in metal structures, or submerged submarines.
Brian Josephson won the Nobel in physics in 1973, after figuring this weird, electron tunneling effect out as a grad student in 1962.
Nobel Prize winners should be people whose invention "benefitted the whole mankind". Did these guys theoretical research achieve that?
Do you think the experimentalists would be doing anything other than flailing about without great theorists like Anthony Leggett? In an awards ceremony for Tony in the physics department at UIUC a few months ago, I heard experimentalists telling of how important their interaction with him was. How most of their major contributions to science stemmed from discussions with him. How he'd politely tell them when they were wasting their time (but were welcome to continue, since they might discover something new and unexpected, like that the 0th law of thermodynamics was wrong).
When the condensed matter theory group was moved to a different building, the experimentalists were happy that they'd have theorists walking past their labs. There was even a video [warning, 156M] of them trying to catch the theorists in big nets and force them to do calculations.
When did Physics change from an empirical science into a theoretical one?
Physics has always been about understanding. From my theorist perspective, it pisses me off to see all the experimentalists that get PhDs without having the slightest clue of what they've done. They have something strange happen in an experiment, manage to reproduce it, and they've gotten themselves a PhD. It's then a theorist's job to figure out why. Of course, I'm exaggerating here. I know several good experimentalists.
Now for my own little rant:
Why does everyone constrain physics into Theory and Experiment? What about those of us that do Computational Physics? You know, like lattice QCD? Our work is necessary and important, but I can guarantee it'll never get a Nobel.
Hrmm... now I'm gonna have to listen to one of my friends say "My advisor got the Nobel Prize and yours didn't."