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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 winners will continue their research into superfluidity this evening, at the bar.
Let me elaborate a bit on your rather narrow-minded comment: superconductivity (SC) was discovered 1911 by K. Onnes. Not until 1935 F. London came up with a macroscopic description of the effect which explained the magnetic part of the problem, but not much further than that. 18 years leater in 1953 Ginzburg and Landau came up with a phenomenological approach (GL theory) which actually explained MANY things without the knowledge of the underlying microscopic mechanism. This was a great breaktrough because you could actually start to PREDICT things without knowing how it really worked in the guts. In particular they were of great importance in realizing that there are two types of SCs (I and II) from which only type II are relevant for industry. Type I "die" soon with small fields and have transition temperatures which are only a few K. Even though in 1957 Bardeen, Cooper and Shriffer (BCS) explained the microscopic theory of SC, GL theory remained one of the most important approaches to understand novel phases, such as the intermediate (Abrikosov) vortex phase in type II SCs. Type II SCs are important in industry because they remain superconducting for high fields. Problem is, you get vortices in the system. Abrikosov (who got also a Nobel medal) was the first to predict that these vortices make a lattice and constitute a NOVEL state of matter (within matter). In the meantime one has als high-T_c superconductors (the stuff MRI machines use) and for these NEW materials there is NO understanding on how SC works. BUT for these materials the Ginzburg Landau theory still applies and often makes predictions on how things will behave. Therefore THEORY IS IMPORTANT and these gentlemen deserve the award. As for Legett: he made important contributions in the world of superfluids as well as Bose Einstein condensation. IMHO his work on quantum tunneling with dissipation is the best. To summarize: no MRI with no GL theory.
As for your little rant: Theory and Experiment (and today also computational physics) should be COMPLEMENTARY to each other. You find many theory papers which do not seem to be close to reality. This does not mean they are garbage. It means that they are ahead of industrial applications. Often one sees experimental papers which simply say: "I measured this and look how cute it is". but they lack of ANY physical understanding. Now you tell me, which one is worse? Clearly Math is the language of Physics. But you need to know how to write in a languagel before you can create a nice poem... If as an experimentalist you do not even know how to "write", how can you then understand the theory pertinent to your experiment? All you are at that stage is an observer... and as we all know: everyone can observe.
It seems as if some experimentalists carry a large chip on the shoulder???