tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/nobel-prize-in-physics-33593/articles
Nobel Prize in Physics – The Conversation
2023-10-04T12:33:56Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/214931
2023-10-04T12:33:56Z
2023-10-04T12:33:56Z
Making ‘movies’ at the attosecond scale helps researchers better understand electrons − and could one day lead to super-fast electronics
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551941/original/file-20231004-25-lxu197.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=172%2C12%2C2703%2C1090&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Attosecond light pulses help researchers understand the movement of electrons. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/news/2022-01-27-researchers-use-attosecond-x-ray-pulses-track-electron-motion-highly-excited">Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Electrons moving around in a molecule might not seem like the plot of an interesting movie. But a group of scientists will receive the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2023/press-release/">2023 Nobel Prize in physics</a> for research that essentially <a href="https://theconversation.com/nobel-prize-in-physics-prize-awarded-for-work-unveiling-the-secrets-of-electrons-214880">follows the movement of electrons</a> using ultrafast laser pulses, like capturing frames in a video camera. </p>
<p>However, electrons, which partly <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/electron">make up atoms</a> and form the glue that bonds atoms in molecules together, don’t move around on the same time scale people do. They’re much faster. So, the tools that <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=fO8mIS8AAAAJ&hl=en">physicists like me</a> use to capture their motion have to be really fast – attosecond-scale fast.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nrel.gov/comm-standards/editorial/scientific-notation.html">One attosecond</a> is one billionth of a billionth of a second (10<sup>-18</sup> second) – the ratio of one attosecond to one second is the same as the ratio of one second to the age of the universe. </p>
<h2>Attosecond pulses</h2>
<p>In photography, capturing clear images of fast objects requires a camera with a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/technology/shutter-photography">fast shutter</a> or a fast strobe of light to illuminate the object. By taking multiple photos in quick succession, the motion of the object can be clearly resolved.</p>
<p>The time scale of the shutter or the strobe must match the time scale of motion of the object – if not, the image will be blurred. This same idea applies when researchers attempt to <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2023/10/advanced-physicsprize2023.pdf">image the ultrafast motion of electrons</a>. Capturing attosecond-scale motion requires an attosecond strobe. The 2023 <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2023/press-release/">Nobel laureates in physics</a> made seminal contributions to the generation of such attosecond laser strobes, which are very short pulses generated using a powerful laser.</p>
<p>Imagine the electrons in an atom are constrained within the atom by a wall. When a femtosecond (10<sup>-15</sup> second) laser pulse from a high-powered femtosecond laser is directed at atoms of a noble gas such as argon, the strong electric field in the pulse lowers the wall.</p>
<p>This is possible because the laser electric field is comparable in strength to the electric field of the nucleus of the atom. Electrons see this lowered wall and pass through in a bizarre process called <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-did-a-breakthrough-speed-test-in-quantum-tunnelling-and-heres-why-thats-exciting-113761">quantum tunneling</a>. </p>
<p>As soon as the electrons exit the atom, the laser’s electric field captures them, accelerates them to high energies and slams them back into their parent atoms. This process of recollision results in creation of attosecond bursts of laser light.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551903/original/file-20231003-29-34udqs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A diagram showing how electrons gain, then release energy when exposed to a laser's electric field, with a pink arrow showing the laser's energy and small drawings of spheres stuck together indicating the atom." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551903/original/file-20231003-29-34udqs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551903/original/file-20231003-29-34udqs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551903/original/file-20231003-29-34udqs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551903/original/file-20231003-29-34udqs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551903/original/file-20231003-29-34udqs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551903/original/file-20231003-29-34udqs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551903/original/file-20231003-29-34udqs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A laser’s electric field allows electrons to escape from the atom, gain energy and then release energy as they’re reabsorbed back into the atom.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2023/press-release/">Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Attosecond movies</h2>
<p>So how do physicists use these ultrashort pulses to make movies of electrons at the attosecond scale?</p>
<p>Conventional movies are made one scene at a time, with each instant captured as a frame with video cameras. The scenes are then stitched together to form the complete movie. </p>
<p>Attosecond movies of electrons use a similar idea. The attosecond pulses act as strobes, lighting up the electrons so researchers can capture their image, over and over again as they move – like a movie scene. This technique is called <a href="https://web.mit.edu/gediklab/research.html">pump-probe spectroscopy</a>.</p>
<p>However, imaging electron motion directly inside atoms is currently challenging, though researchers are developing several approaches using advanced microscopes to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2017.97">make direct imaging possible</a>. </p>
<p>Typically, in pump-probe spectroscopy, a “pump” pulse gets the electron moving and starts the movie. A “probe” pulse then lights up the electron at different times after the arrival of the pump pulse, so it can be captured by the “camera,” such as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoemission_spectroscopy">photoelectron spectrometer</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Vy71bJJ9EnU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Pump-probe spectroscopy.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The information on the motion of electrons, or the “image,” is captured using sophisticated techniques. For example, a photoelectron spectrometer detects how many electrons were removed from the atom by the probe pulse, or a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrometer">photon spectrometer</a> measures how much of the probe pulse was absorbed by the atom.</p>
<p>The different “scenes” are then stitched together to make the attosecond movies of electrons. These movies help provide fundamental insight, with help from <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/wcms.1673">sophisticated theoretical models</a>, into attosecond electronic behavior. </p>
<p>For example, researchers have measured <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aab2160">where the electric charge is located</a> in organic molecules at different times, on attosecond time scales. This could allow them to control electric currents on the molecular scale.</p>
<h2>Future applications</h2>
<p>In most scientific research, fundamental understanding of a process leads to control of the process, and such control leads to new technologies. <a href="https://theconversation.com/tenacious-curiosity-in-the-lab-can-lead-to-a-nobel-prize-mrna-research-exemplifies-the-unpredictable-value-of-basic-scientific-research-214770">Curiosity-driven research</a> can lead to unimaginable applications in the future, and attosecond science is likely no different. </p>
<p>Understanding and controlling the behavior of electrons on the attosecond scale could enable researchers to use <a href="https://doi.org/10.1021/acsomega.0c02098">lasers to control chemical reactions</a> that they can’t by other means. This ability could help engineer new molecules that cannot be created with existing chemical techniques.</p>
<p>The ability to modify electron behavior could lead to ultrafast switches. Researchers could potentially convert an <a href="https://www.mpg.de/6694490/light-frequencies-electronics">electric insulator to a conductor on attosecond scales</a> to increase the speed of electronics. Electronics currently process information at the picosecond scale, or 10<sup>-12</sup> of a second. </p>
<p>The short wavelength of attosecond pulses, which is typically in the extreme-ultraviolet, or EUV, regime, may see applications in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_ultraviolet_lithography">EUV lithography</a> in the semiconductor industry. EUV lithography uses laser light with a very short wavelength to etch tiny circuits on electronic chips.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551901/original/file-20231003-25-g5a55f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A line of silver pipes and machinery, in a bright room, with red and blue handles." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551901/original/file-20231003-25-g5a55f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551901/original/file-20231003-25-g5a55f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=240&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551901/original/file-20231003-25-g5a55f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=240&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551901/original/file-20231003-25-g5a55f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=240&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551901/original/file-20231003-25-g5a55f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551901/original/file-20231003-25-g5a55f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551901/original/file-20231003-25-g5a55f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Linac Coherent Light Source at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://science.osti.gov/bes/suf/User-Facilities/X-Ray-Light-Sources/LCLS">Department of Energy</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the recent past, free-electron lasers such as the <a href="https://lcls.slac.stanford.edu/">Linac Coherent Light Source</a> at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in the United States have emerged as a source of bright X-ray laser light. These now generate pulses on the attosecond scale, opening many possibilities for research using attosecond X-rays.</p>
<p>Ideas to generate laser pulses on the zeptosecond (10<sup>-21</sup> second) scale have also been proposed. Scientists could use these pulses, which are even faster than attosecond pulses, to study the motion of particles like protons within the nucleus. </p>
<p>With numerous research groups actively working on exciting problems in attosecond science, and with <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2023/press-release/">2023’s Nobel Prize in physics</a> recognizing its importance, attosecond science has a long and bright future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214931/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Niranjan Shivaram receives funding from the National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy. </span></em></p>
The 2023 Nobel Prize in physics recognized researchers studying electron movement in real time − this work could revolutionize electronics, laser imaging and more.
Niranjan Shivaram, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Purdue University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/214867
2023-10-04T10:06:05Z
2023-10-04T10:06:05Z
How we hired 2023 Nobel laureate Anne L'Huillier – and why we knew she was destined for greatness
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551821/original/file-20231003-29-rkpekw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=58%2C3%2C1061%2C925&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">L'Huillier and her husband at the Nobel prize celebration in Lund. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sune Svanberg</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Most of the atomic physics division at Lund University were assembled in a spacious room with a big screen to await <a href="https://theconversation.com/nobel-prize-in-physics-awarded-for-work-unveiling-the-secrets-of-electrons-214880">the announcement of the 2023 Nobel laureates in physics</a> from the Royal Academy of Sciences on October 3. Of course, the Nobel secrecy is perfect, but there was still some expectation in the air.</p>
<p>When the screen with the laureates appeared, and with our colleague <a href="https://www.atomic.physics.lu.se/research/attosecond-physics-from-lasers-to-applications/group-members/anne-lhuillier/">Anne L'Huillier´s</a> face included, the roar almost lifted the roof – the big lasers in the basement must have been brought out of alignment! </p>
<p>L'Huillier, however, was nowhere to be seen – she had been giving a lecture to students.</p>
<h2>New laser facility</h2>
<p>About 30 years ago, the atomic physics group in Lund was considering a new research orientation. We ultimately selected the field of high-power laser-matter interaction. For this purpose, we managed to acquire a quite unique laser in 1992 (called a terawatt laser), firing 10 ultrashort pulses per second. </p>
<p>This was possible thanks to good academic contacts with leading laser groups in the US and Europe, as well as with industrial partners. The generous support by the <a href="https://www.wallenberg.org/en">Wallenberg Foundation</a> (a key player in Swedish research financing) secured the realisation of arguably the most attractive system at the time for performing advanced research in a novel field of atomic physics. </p>
<p>At this point, L'Huillier was an up and coming researcher in France. Only years earlier, in 1987, had she discovered that many different overtones of light arise when you transmit infrared laser light through a noble gas – as a result of the gas and laser interacting. </p>
<p>With our new facility, we were able to attract L´Huillier to come to Lund with her own dedicated experimental set-up. This came quite naturally since we had, as project preparation, also visited the <a href="https://www.cea.fr/english/Pages/Welcome.aspx">CEA Saclay Center</a> where she was employed. I also invited her to be one of the key speakers at the inauguration of our new facility in Lund.</p>
<p>When on site for the experiments, it immediately became clear to us that L'Huillier was an extremely talented physicist, both regarding experiments and theory, with great promise for the future. We published our <a href="https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.48.4709">first joint paper</a> in 1993.</p>
<p>L'Huillier felt good about Lund and, for many different reasons, decided to stay on. At first, she was employed on a lectureship and later on a dedicated professorship, which we got funded. This was a strike of luck for Lund – L'Huillier could easily have obtained prestigious positions elsewhere. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="L'Huillier." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552020/original/file-20231004-27-ub1q9e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/552020/original/file-20231004-27-ub1q9e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552020/original/file-20231004-27-ub1q9e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552020/original/file-20231004-27-ub1q9e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552020/original/file-20231004-27-ub1q9e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1023&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552020/original/file-20231004-27-ub1q9e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1023&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/552020/original/file-20231004-27-ub1q9e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1023&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">L'Huillier.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sune Svanberg</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>She was also very dedicated to learning Swedish. That says a lot. In a small country like Sweden, the natural language in an international endeavour like science is English, but L'Huillier became absolutely fluent in our “exotic” language.</p>
<p>At an early stage, I transferred the leadership of the high-power Laser laboratory to L´Huillier and <a href="https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/lucat/user/b397f426de6e2a942dbab05b63c2a3e7">Claes-Göran Wahlström</a>. With the help of many talented collaborators, the field has developed tremendously in Lund, making it one of the leading hubs in this fascinating research field. </p>
<p>L´Huillier energetically pursued her work with <a href="https://www.rp-photonics.com/high_harmonic_generation.html">high harmonics</a> and the associated formation of <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03047-w#:%7E:text=Attosecond%20pulses%20can%20reveal%20what,has%20happened%E2%80%9D%2C%20says%20Nisoli.">attosecond laser pulses</a>. These were the areas for which she ultimately won the Nobel prize – work that has helped scientists gain a window into the high-speed world of electrons.</p>
<p>In particular, she could show that processes earlier considered to occur instantaneously in fact come about with an extremely short delay.</p>
<h2>Modest and rigorous</h2>
<p>L´Huillier is absolutely brilliant. Despite that, she has always had quite a low-key personality. She cares a lot for her collaborators and students. It is perhaps her modesty and lack of interest in fame and glamour that makes her such a great physicist. She doesn’t cut corners and has a deep, genuine interest in science. </p>
<p>She has been, and is, a true role model for young scientists – female and male alike – showing how excellent research can be combined with enthusiastic teaching. </p>
<p>L´Huillier eventually talked to the Royal Academy in Stockholm during a scheduled break in her class. She later joined our celebration party, beaming and extremely happy. Clearly this was the ultimate achievement, the diamond among the many other distinctions she had already received. </p>
<p>The celebrations went on all afternoon, together with university leadership and students alike. L´Huillier was in an endless row of interviews. Receiving the highest scientific award will certainly change her life, but I am sure that she will always remain the same generous and modest person that we all came to know her as. </p>
<p>Our warmest congratulations to our “own” Nobel laureate!</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214867/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sune Svanberg is an emeritus professor at Lund University, who received the initial funding for the build up of the Lund High Power Laser Facility.</span></em></p>
L'Huillier was busy teaching when she her Nobel prize was awarded.
Sune Svanberg, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Lund University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/214907
2023-10-04T01:42:55Z
2023-10-04T01:42:55Z
What is an attosecond? A physical chemist explains the tiny time scale behind Nobel Prize-winning research
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551866/original/file-20231003-27-fn9thz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C3%2C2295%2C1292&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Work in attosecond physics has led to a better understanding of how electrons move around. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/image-of-an-atomic-structure-consisting-of-protons-royalty-free-image/1337003441?phrase=electron">Oselote/iStock via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A group of three researchers earned the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2023/10/popular-physicsprize2023.pdf">2023 Nobel Prize in physics</a> for work that has revolutionized how scientists study the electron – by illuminating molecules with attosecond-long flashes of light. But how long is an attosecond, and what can these infinitesimally short pulses tell researchers about the nature of matter?</p>
<p><a href="https://www.austincollege.edu/aaron-harrison/">I first learned</a> of this area of research as a graduate student in physical chemistry. My doctoral adviser’s group had a project dedicated to studying <a href="http://bromine.cchem.berkeley.edu/atto.htm">chemical reactions with attosecond pulses</a>. Before understanding why attosecond research resulted in the most prestigious award in the sciences, it helps to understand what an attosecond pulse of light is.</p>
<h2>How long is an attosecond?</h2>
<p>“Atto” is the <a href="https://www.nrel.gov/comm-standards/editorial/scientific-notation.html">scientific notation prefix</a> that represents 10<sup>-18</sup>, which is a decimal point followed by 17 zeroes and a 1. So a flash of light lasting an attosecond, or 0.000000000000000001 of a second, is an extremely short pulse of light. </p>
<p>In fact, there are approximately as many attoseconds in one second as there are seconds in the <a href="https://81018.com/universeclock/">age of the universe</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551859/original/file-20231003-21-rkpekw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A diagram showing an attosecond, depicted as an orange collection of hexagons, on the left, with the age of the universe, depicted as a dark vacuum on the right, and a heartbeat, depicted as a human heart, in the middle." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551859/original/file-20231003-21-rkpekw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551859/original/file-20231003-21-rkpekw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=256&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551859/original/file-20231003-21-rkpekw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=256&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551859/original/file-20231003-21-rkpekw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=256&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551859/original/file-20231003-21-rkpekw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=322&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551859/original/file-20231003-21-rkpekw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=322&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551859/original/file-20231003-21-rkpekw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=322&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An attosecond is incredibly small when compared to a second.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2023/press-release/">©Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Previously, scientists could study the motion of heavier and slower-moving atomic nuclei with <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/femtosecond-laser">femtosecond (10<sup>-15</sup>) light pulses</a>. One thousand attoseconds are in 1 femtosecond. But researchers couldn’t see movement on the electron scale until they could generate attosecond light pulses – electrons move too fast for scientists to parse exactly what they are up to at the femtosecond level.</p>
<h2>Attosecond pulses</h2>
<p>The rearrangement of electrons in atoms and molecules guides a lot of processes in physics, and it underlies practically every part of chemistry. Therefore, researchers have put a lot of effort into figuring out how electrons are moving and rearranging. </p>
<p>However, electrons move around very rapidly in physical and chemical processes, making them difficult to study. To investigate these processes, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/spectroscopy">scientists use spectroscopy</a>, a method of examining how matter absorbs or emits light. In order to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-physchem-040215-112025">follow the electrons in real time</a>, researchers need a pulse of light that is shorter than the time it takes for electrons to rearrange. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Vy71bJJ9EnU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Pump-probe spectroscopy is a common technique in physics and chemistry and can be performed with attosecond light pulses.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As an analogy, imagine a camera that could only take longer exposures, around 1 second long. Things in motion, like a person running toward the camera or a bird flying across the sky, would appear blurry in the photos taken, and it would be difficult to see exactly what was going on. </p>
<p>Then, imagine you use a camera with a 1 millisecond exposure. Now, motions that were previously smeared out would be nicely resolved into clear and precise snapshots. That’s how using the attosecond scale, rather than the femtosecond scale, can illuminate electron behavior. </p>
<h2>Attosecond research</h2>
<p>So what kind of research questions can attosecond pulses help answer?</p>
<p>For one, breaking a chemical bond is a fundamental process in nature where electrons that are shared between two atoms separate out into unbound atoms. The previously shared electrons undergo ultrafast changes during this process, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aax0076">attosecond pulses</a> made it possible for researchers to follow the real-time breaking of a chemical bond. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys620">ability to generate attosecond pulses</a> – the research for which three researchers earned the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2023/press-release/">2023 Nobel Prize in physics</a> – first became possible in the early 2000s, and the field has <a href="https://phys.org/news/2010-04-electrons-science-attosecond-scale.html">continued to grow rapidly</a> since. By providing shorter snapshots of atoms and molecules, attosecond spectroscopy has helped researchers understand electron behavior in single molecules, such as how <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-32313-0">electron charge migrates</a> and how <a href="https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0086775">chemical bonds</a> between atoms break. </p>
<p>On a larger scale, attosecond technology has also been applied to studying how electrons behave in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abb0979">liquid water</a> as well as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s42005-021-00635-y">electron transfer in solid-state semiconductors</a>. As researchers continue to improve their ability to produce attosecond light pulses, they’ll gain a deeper understanding of the basic particles that make up matter.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214907/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aaron W. Harrison does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Three scientists won the 2023 Nobel Prize in physics for their work developing methods to shoot laser pulses that only last an attosecond, or a mind-bogglingly tiny fraction of a second.
Aaron W. Harrison, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Austin College
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/214880
2023-10-03T19:26:40Z
2023-10-03T19:26:40Z
Nobel prize in physics awarded for work unveiling the secrets of electrons
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551709/original/file-20231003-21-aqjkmc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C26%2C964%2C607&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Screenshot at</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 2023 Nobel prize in physics <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2023/press-release/">has been awarded</a> to a trio of scientists for pioneering tools used to study the world of electrons.</p>
<p>Electrons are sub-atomic particles that play a role in many phenomena we see every day, from electricity to magnetism. This year’s three Nobel physics laureates demonstrated a way to create extremely short pulses of light in order to investigate processes that involve electrons.</p>
<p><a href="https://physics.osu.edu/people/agostini.1">Pierre Agostini</a> from The Ohio State University in the US, <a href="https://www.mpg.de/348075/quantum-optics-krausz">Ferenc Krausz</a> from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany and <a href="https://www.atomic.physics.lu.se/research/attosecond-physics-from-lasers-to-applications/group-members/anne-lhuillier/">Anne L’Huillier</a> from Lund University in Sweden will share the prize sum of 11 million Swedish kronor (£822,910). </p>
<p>Changes in electrons typically occur in a few tenths of an “attosecond”, which is a billionth of a billionth of a second. In order to study such brief events, special technology was needed. </p>
<p>The laureates developed experimental methods that produced pulses of light so short that they are measured in attoseconds. These could then be used to study the fleeting dynamics of electrons in physical matter – something that wasn’t previously possible.</p>
<p>The attosecond pulses, the shortest flashes of light ever produced, sparked a revolution in photonics – the science of light waves. They were used to take snapshots of electrons in different physical systems, such as in atoms, chiral molecules – molecules that are mirror images of one another – and very tiny nanoparticles among others.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-an-attosecond-a-physical-chemist-explains-the-tiny-time-scale-behind-nobel-prize-winning-research-214907">What is an attosecond? A physical chemist explains the tiny time scale behind Nobel Prize-winning research</a>
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<p>The laureates have all contributed to enabling the investigation of such processes. For the first time, these quick pulses allowed scientists to match up the time scale of their observations to the natural, very fast time scales at which electron dynamics occurred.</p>
<p>This achievement required significant innovations in laser science and engineering – innovations that this year’s Nobel laureates worked on for decades.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Anne L´Huiller, Lund University." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551714/original/file-20231003-23-smtq3j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551714/original/file-20231003-23-smtq3j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551714/original/file-20231003-23-smtq3j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551714/original/file-20231003-23-smtq3j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551714/original/file-20231003-23-smtq3j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551714/original/file-20231003-23-smtq3j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551714/original/file-20231003-23-smtq3j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anne L´Huiller, Lund University.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">wikipedia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>L’Huillier discovered a new effect that arose as the result of interactions between laser light and atoms in a gas. This interaction could be used to produce pulses of ultraviolet light that were each a few hundred attoseconds long. </p>
<p>Agostini and Krausz took this discovery even further. In 2001, Agostini was able to <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1059413">produce short light pulses</a> and measure their width. The series of bursts produced using something called the <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2017.0475">RABBIT technique</a> lasted just 250 attoseconds. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Ferenc Krausz." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551850/original/file-20231003-23-u8z27z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551850/original/file-20231003-23-u8z27z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551850/original/file-20231003-23-u8z27z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551850/original/file-20231003-23-u8z27z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551850/original/file-20231003-23-u8z27z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1095&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551850/original/file-20231003-23-u8z27z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1095&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551850/original/file-20231003-23-u8z27z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1095&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ferenc Krausz.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">wikipedia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At around the same time, Krausz developed a different experimental approach, using it to successfully <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/35107000">isolate a light pulse</a> that lasted 650 attoseconds.</p>
<p>The two approaches developed by Agostini and Krausz form the basis for much attosecond research carried out today.</p>
<h2>Exciting applications</h2>
<p>There are some exciting potential applications for these attosecond pulses. </p>
<p>They could be used to study previously <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2023/10/advanced-physicsprize2023.pdf">unknown physical phenomena</a> in different types of material.</p>
<p>A spin-off area known as <a href="https://site.physics.georgetown.edu/%7Evankeu/webtext2/Workspace/Optical%20telecom/webpage%20directories/ultrafast%20switching.htm">ultra-fast switching</a> could also one day lead to the development of very fast-working electronics.</p>
<p>Attosecond pulse science could also find uses in medical diagnostics. By exposing a blood sample to a very fast pulse of light, scientists can detect tiny changes in the molecules in that sample. This could lead to a new way of diagnosing disorders, including cancer.</p>
<p>Our team at King’s has been working to combine the resolution on physical processes that attosecond pulses enable with novel <a href="https://www.attokings.com/">advances in quantum information processing</a>. This would create pulses of quantum light at the attosecond time scale that could have applications in quantum computing.</p>
<p>The award of the Nobel prize in this field inspires us to redouble our efforts to break novel ground. We wish our colleagues continued success, and we are eager to see what they will surprise us with next.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214880/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amelle Zaïr receives funding from EPSRC, STFC XFEL hub and The Royal Society.</span></em></p>
The 2023 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded “for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter”.
Amelle Zaïr, Senior Lecturer of Physics, King's College London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/192062
2022-11-08T11:50:20Z
2022-11-08T11:50:20Z
Four common misconceptions about quantum physics
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489048/original/file-20221010-12-vbbj25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4578%2C3095&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Shrödinger's cat is world famous, but what does it really mean?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/29233640@N07/8132455446">Robert Couse-Baker/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Quantum mechanics, the theory which rules the microworld of atoms and particles, certainly has the X factor. Unlike many other areas of physics, it is bizarre and counter-intuitive, which makes it dazzling and intriguing. When the 2022 Nobel prize in physics was <a href="https://theconversation.com/nobel-prize-physicists-share-prize-for-insights-into-the-spooky-world-of-quantum-mechanics-191884">awarded to Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger</a> for research shedding light on quantum mechanics, <a href="https://twitter.com/skdh/status/1577870071526998016?s=20&t=Vqj_K2asXmLTO2ezwN3jyw">it sparked excitement and discussion</a>.</p>
<p>But debates about quantum mechanics – be they on chat forums, in the media or in science fiction – can often get muddled thanks to a number of persistent myths and misconceptions. Here are four.</p>
<h2>1. A cat can be dead and alive</h2>
<p>Erwin Schrödinger could probably never have predicted that his <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/130812-physics-schrodinger-erwin-google-doodle-cat-paradox-science">thought experiment</a>, Schrödinger’s cat, would attain <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/schrodingers-cat">internet meme status</a> in the 21st century.</p>
<p>It suggests that an unlucky feline stuck in a box with a kill switch triggered by a random quantum event – radioactive decay, for example – could be alive and dead at the same time, as long as we don’t open the box to check.</p>
<p>We’ve long known that quantum particles can be in two states – for example in two locations – at the same time. We call this a superposition. </p>
<p>Scientists have been able to show this in the famous double-slit experiment, where a single quantum particle, such as a photon or electron, can go through two different slits in a wall simultaneously. How do we know that? </p>
<p>In quantum physics, each particle’s state is also a wave. But when we send a stream of photons – one by one – through the slits, it creates a pattern of two waves interfering with each other on a screen behind the slit. As each photon didn’t have any other photons to interfere with when it went through the slits, it means it must simultaneously have gone through both slits – interfering with itself (image below).</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Image of a light interference pattern." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489003/original/file-20221010-22-dbq37n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489003/original/file-20221010-22-dbq37n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489003/original/file-20221010-22-dbq37n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489003/original/file-20221010-22-dbq37n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489003/original/file-20221010-22-dbq37n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489003/original/file-20221010-22-dbq37n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489003/original/file-20221010-22-dbq37n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Interference pattern.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/diffraction-light-double-slit-experiment-test-1842566269">grayjay</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For this to work, however, the states (waves) in the superposition of the particle going through both slits need to be “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/10/beyond-weird-decoherence-quantum-weirdness-schrodingers-cat/573448">coherent</a>” – having a well defined relationship with each other.</p>
<p>These superposition experiments can be done with objects of ever increasing size and complexity. One <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/44348">famous experiment</a> by Anton Zeilinger in 1999 demonstrated quantum superposition with large molecules of <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccasuhrawardi/2021/04/30/this-nobel-prize-winning-molecule-could-be-the-best-thing-for-anti-aging/?sh=60c6e0036ada">Carbon-60</a> known as “buckyballs”.</p>
<p>So what does this mean for our poor cat? Is it really both alive and dead as long as we don’t open the box? Obviously, a cat is nothing like an individual photon in a controlled lab environment, it is much bigger and more complex. Any coherence that the trillions upon trillions of atoms that make up the cat might have with each other is extremely shortlived.</p>
<p>This does not mean that quantum coherence is impossible in biological systems, just that it generally won’t apply to big creatures such as cats or a human.</p>
<h2>2. Simple analogies can explain entanglement</h2>
<p>Entanglement is a quantum property which links two different particles so that if you measure one, you automatically and instantly know the state of the other – no matter how far apart they are.</p>
<p>Common explanations for it <a href="https://hackaday.com/2015/11/11/what-do-bertlmanns-socks-mean-to-the-nature-of-reality/">typically involve everyday objects</a> from our classical macroscopic world, such as dice, cards or even pairs of odd-coloured socks. For example, imagine you tell your friend you have placed a blue card in one envelope and an orange card in another. If your friend takes away and opens one of the envelopes and finds the blue card, they will know you have the orange card.</p>
<p>But to understand quantum mechanics, you have to imagine the two cards inside the envelopes are in a joint superposition, meaning they are both orange and blue at the same time (specifically orange/blue and blue/orange). Opening one envelope reveals one colour determined at random. But opening the second still always reveals the opposite colour because it is “spookily” linked to the first card.</p>
<p>One could force the cards to appear in a different set of colours, akin to doing another type of measurement. We could open an envelope asking the question: “Are you a green or a red card?”. The answer would again be random: green or red. But crucially, if the cards were entangled, the other card would still always yield the opposite outcome when asked the same question.</p>
<p>Albert Einstein attempted to explain this with classical intuition, suggesting the cards could have been provided with a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/news011129-15">hidden, internal instruction set</a> which told them in what colour to appear given a certain question. He also rejected the apparent “spooky” action between the cards that seemingly allows them to instantly influence each other, which would mean communication faster than the speed of light, something forbidden by Einstein’s theories.</p>
<p>However, Einstein’s explanation was subsequently ruled out by <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-bells-theorem-proved-spooky-action-at-a-distance-is-real-20210720/">Bell’s theorem</a> (a theoretical test created by the physicist John Stewart Bell) and experiments by 2022’s Nobel laureates. The idea that measuring one entangled card changes the state of the other is not true. Quantum particles are just mysteriously correlated in ways we can’t describe with everyday logic or language – they don’t communicate while also containing a hidden code, as Einstein had thought. So forget about everyday objects when you think about entanglement. </p>
<h2>3. Nature is unreal and ‘non-local’</h2>
<p>Bell’s theorem is often said to prove that nature isn’t “local”, that an object isn’t just directly influenced by its immediate surroundings. Another common interpretation is that it implies properties of quantum objects aren’t “real”, that they do not exist prior to measurement.</p>
<p>But Bell’s theorem <a href="https://twitter.com/ericcavalcanti/status/1578319993673986049">only allows us to say</a> that quantum physics means nature isn’t both real and local if we assume a few other things at the same time. These assumptions include the idea that measurements only have a single outcome (and not multiple, perhaps in parallel worlds), that cause and effect flow forward in time and that we do not live in a “clockwork universe” in which everything has been predetermined since the dawn of time. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Entanglement concept." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489006/original/file-20221010-22-964bew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489006/original/file-20221010-22-964bew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489006/original/file-20221010-22-964bew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489006/original/file-20221010-22-964bew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489006/original/file-20221010-22-964bew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489006/original/file-20221010-22-964bew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489006/original/file-20221010-22-964bew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Entanglement concept.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/particle-quantum-entanglement-correlation-mechanics-3d-1457191784">Jurik Peter/Shuttestock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite Bell’s theorem, nature may well be real and local, <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-38987-5_6">if you allowed for breaking some other things</a> we consider common sense, such as time moving forward. And further research will hopefully narrow down the great number of potential interpretations of quantum mechanics. However, most options on the table — for example, time flowing backwards, or the absence of free will — are at least as absurd as giving up on the concept of local reality. </p>
<h2>4. Nobody understands quantum mechanics</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://www.ornl.gov/media/76081#:%7E:text=DEAN%3A%20The%20one%20of%20the,theory%20my%20entire%20professional%20career.">classic quote</a> (attributed to physicist <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1965/feynman/biographical/">Richard Feynman</a>, but in this form also paraphrasing <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1922/bohr/biographical/">Niels Bohr</a>) surmises: “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand it.”</p>
<p>This view is widely held in public. Quantum physics is supposedly impossible to understand, including by physicists. But from a 21st-century perspective, quantum physics is neither mathematically nor conceptually particularly difficult for scientists. We understand it extremely well, to a point where we can predict quantum phenomena with high precision, simulate highly complex quantum systems and even start to <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-we-created-the-first-ever-blueprint-for-a-real-quantum-computer-72290">build quantum computers</a>.</p>
<p>Superposition and entanglement, when explained in the language of quantum information, requires no more than high-school mathematics. Bell’s theorem doesn’t require any quantum physics at all. It can be derived in a few lines using probability theory and linear algebra. </p>
<p>Where the true difficulty lies, perhaps, is in how to reconcile quantum physics with our intuitive reality. Not having all the answers won’t stop us from making further progress with quantum technology. We can simply just <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/shut-up-and-calculate-does-a-disservice-to-quantum-mechanics">shut up and calculate</a>.</p>
<p>Fortunately for humanity, Nobel winners Aspect, Clauser, and Zeilinger refused to shut up and kept asking why. Others like them may one day help reconcile quantum weirdness with our experience of reality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192062/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alessandro Fedrizzi receives funding from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) (EP/T001011/1). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mehul Malik receives funding from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) (EP/P024114/1) and the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant PIQUaNT (950402). </span></em></p>
Nope, ‘entangled’ particles don’t communicate.
Alessandro Fedrizzi, Professor of Physics, Heriot-Watt University
Mehul Malik, Professor of Physics, Heriot-Watt University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/191940
2022-10-07T01:46:53Z
2022-10-07T01:46:53Z
How philosophy turned into physics – and reality turned into information
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488677/original/file-20221007-21010-xxbv1k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=19%2C25%2C4229%2C2783&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/-SmCKTIcH5E">Daniels Joffe / Unsplash</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Nobel Prize in physics this year has been <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2022/summary/">awarded</a> “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nobel-prize-physicists-share-prize-for-insights-into-the-spooky-world-of-quantum-mechanics-191884">Nobel prize: physicists share prize for insights into the spooky world of quantum mechanics</a>
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<p>To understand what this means, and why this work is important, we need to understand how these experiments settled a long-running debate among physicists. And a key player in that debate was an Irish physicist named <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stewart_Bell">John Bell</a>.</p>
<p>In the 1960s, Bell figured out how to translate a philosophical question about the nature of reality into a physical question that could be answered by science – and along the way broke down the distinction between <em>what we know</em> about the world and how the world <em>really is</em>.</p>
<h2>Quantum entanglement</h2>
<p>We know that quantum objects have properties we don’t usually ascribe to the objects of our ordinary lives. Sometimes light is a wave, sometimes it’s a particle. Our fridge never does this.</p>
<p>When attempting to explain this sort of unusual behaviour, there are two broad types of explanation we can imagine. One possibility is that we perceive the quantum world clearly, just as it is, and it just so happens to be unusual. Another possibility is that the quantum world is just like the ordinary world we know and love, but our view of it is distorted, so we can’t see quantum reality clearly, as it is.</p>
<p>In the early decades of the 20th century, physicists were divided about which explanation was right. Among those who thought the quantum world just is unusual were figures such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg">Werner Heisenberg</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr">Niels Bohr</a>. Among those who thought the quantum world must be just like the ordinary world, and our view of it is simply foggy, were <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein">Albert Einstein</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Schr%C3%B6dinger">Erwin Schrödinger</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-quantum-entanglement-a-physicist-explains-the-science-of-einsteins-spooky-action-at-a-distance-191927">What is quantum entanglement? A physicist explains the science of Einstein’s ‘spooky action at a distance’</a>
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<p>At the heart of this division is an unusual prediction of quantum theory. According to the theory, the properties of certain quantum systems that interact remain dependent on each other – even when the systems have been moved a great distance apart.</p>
<p>In 1935, the same year he devised his <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/986572">famous thought experiment</a> involving a cat trapped in a box, Schrödinger coined the term “entanglement” for this phenomenon. He argued it is absurd to believe the world works this way.</p>
<h2>The problem with entanglement</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488669/original/file-20221006-12631-77ng4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488669/original/file-20221006-12631-77ng4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488669/original/file-20221006-12631-77ng4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488669/original/file-20221006-12631-77ng4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488669/original/file-20221006-12631-77ng4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488669/original/file-20221006-12631-77ng4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1091&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488669/original/file-20221006-12631-77ng4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1091&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488669/original/file-20221006-12631-77ng4x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1091&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Niels Bohr (left) and Albert Einstein (right) argued for many years over whether the world was really as fuzzy and strange as quantum mechanics suggested.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#/media/File:Niels_Bohr_Albert_Einstein_by_Ehrenfest.jpg">Paul Ehrenfest</a></span>
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<p>If entangled quantum systems really remain connected even when they are separated by large distances, it would seem they are somehow communicating with each other instantaneously. But this sort of connection is not allowed, according to Einstein’s theory of relativity. Einstein called this idea “spooky action at a distance”.</p>
<p>Again in 1935, Einstein, along with two colleagues, devised <a href="https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.47.777">a thought experiment</a> that showed quantum mechanics can’t be giving us the whole story on entanglement. They thought there must be something more to the world that we can’t yet see.</p>
<p>But as time passed, the question of how to interpret quantum theory became an academic footnote. The question seemed too philosophical, and in the 1940s many of the brightest minds in quantum physics were busy using the theory for a very practical project: building the atomic bomb.</p>
<p>It wasn’t until the 1960s, when Irish physicist John Bell turned his mind to the problem of entanglement, that the scientific community realised this seemingly philosophical question could have a tangible answer.</p>
<h2>Bell’s theorem</h2>
<p>Using a simple entangled system, Bell <a href="https://journals.aps.org/ppf/abstract/10.1103/PhysicsPhysiqueFizika.1.195">extended</a> Einstein’s 1935 thought experiment. He showed there was no way the quantum description could be incomplete while prohibiting “spooky action at a distance” and still matching the predictions of quantum theory.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488670/original/file-20221006-18-ox9h0a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488670/original/file-20221006-18-ox9h0a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488670/original/file-20221006-18-ox9h0a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488670/original/file-20221006-18-ox9h0a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488670/original/file-20221006-18-ox9h0a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488670/original/file-20221006-18-ox9h0a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488670/original/file-20221006-18-ox9h0a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488670/original/file-20221006-18-ox9h0a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">John Bell in his office at CERN in Switzerland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://cds.cern.ch/record/1823944">CERN</a></span>
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<p>Not great news for Einstein, it seems. But this was not an instant win for his opponents. </p>
<p>This is because it was not evident in the 1960s whether the predictions of quantum theory were indeed correct. To really prove Bell’s point, someone had to put this philosophical argument about reality, transformed into a real physical system, to an experimental test.</p>
<p>And this, of course, is where two of this year’s Nobel laureates enter the story. First <a href="https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/proving-that-quantum-entanglement-is-real">John Clauser</a>, and then <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.47.460">Alain Aspect</a>, performed the experiments on Bell’s proposed system that ultimately showed the predictions of quantum mechanics to be accurate. As a result, unless we accept “spooky action at a distance”, there is no further account of entangled quantum systems that can describe the observed quantum world.</p>
<h2>So, Einstein was wrong?</h2>
<p>It is perhaps a surprise, but these advances in quantum theory appear to have shown Einstein to be wrong on this point. That is, it seems we do not have a foggy view of a quantum world that is just like our ordinary world.</p>
<p>But the idea that we perceive clearly an inherently unusual quantum world is likewise too simplistic. And this provides one of the key philosophical lessons of this episode in quantum physics.</p>
<p>It is no longer clear we can reasonably talk about the quantum world beyond our scientific description of it – that is, beyond the <em>information</em> we have about it.</p>
<p>As this year’s third Nobel laureate, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/438743a">Anton Zeilinger</a>, put it:</p>
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<p>the distinction between reality and our knowledge of reality, between reality and information, cannot be made. There is no way to refer to reality without using the information we have about it.</p>
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<p>This distinction, which we commonly assume to underpin our ordinary picture of the world, is now irretrievably blurry. And we have John Bell to thank.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/better-ai-unhackable-communication-spotting-submarines-the-quantum-tech-arms-race-is-heating-up-179482">Better AI, unhackable communication, spotting submarines: the quantum tech arms race is heating up</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191940/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Evans receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Foundational Questions Institute.</span></em></p>
Quantum mechanics raised tough philosophical questions about the nature of the world – and a physicist named John Bell figured out how experiments could answer them.
Peter Evans, Lecturer, The University of Queensland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/191884
2022-10-04T13:15:46Z
2022-10-04T13:15:46Z
Nobel prize: physicists share prize for insights into the spooky world of quantum mechanics
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488060/original/file-20221004-16-nzmxg7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6386%2C4260&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of the Nobel Committee for Physics announce the winners of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics (L-R on the screen) Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.alamy.com/secretary-general-of-the-royal-swedish-academy-of-sciences-hans-ellegren-c-eva-olsson-l-and-thors-hans-hansson-r-members-of-the-nobel-committee-for-physics-announce-the-winners-of-the-2022-nobel-prize-in-physics-l-r-on-the-screen-alain-aspect-john-f-clauser-and-anton-zeilinger-during-a-press-conference-at-the-royal-swedish-academy-of-sciences-in-stockholm-sweden-on-october-4-2022photo-jonas-ekstromer-tt-code-10030-image484884852.html?imageid=AD349CFE-58DF-4ECA-8C06-D7FFAB83D939&p=0&pn=1&searchId=eb5f38dd260158c9c72eaeb3929f9ed1&searchtype=0">TT News Agency / Alamy Stock Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 2022 Nobel prize in physics <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2022/press-release/">has been awarded</a> to a trio of scientists for pioneering experiments in quantum mechanics, the theory covering the micro-world of atoms and particles. </p>
<p>Alain Aspect from Université Paris-Saclay in France, John Clauser from J.F. Clauser & Associates in the US, and Anton Zeilinger from University of Vienna in Austria, will share the prize sum of 10 million Swedish kronor (US$915,000) “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”.</p>
<p>The world of quantum mechanics appears very odd indeed. In school, we are taught that we can use equations in physics to predict exactly how things will behave in the future – where a ball will go if we roll it down a hill, for example. </p>
<p>Quantum mechanics is different from this. Rather than predicting individual outcomes, it tells us the probability of finding subatomic particles in particular places. A particle can actually be in several places at the same time, before “picking” one location at random when we measure it.</p>
<p>Even the great Albert Einstein himself was unsettled by this – to the point where he was <a href="https://theconversation.com/einsteins-two-mistakes-139003">convinced that it was wrong</a>. Rather than outcomes being random, he thought there must be some “hidden variables” – forces or laws that we can’t see – which predictably influence the results of our measurements.</p>
<p>Some physicists, however, embraced the consequences of quantum mechanics. John Bell, a physicist from Northern Ireland, made an important breakthrough in 1964, <a href="https://theconversation.com/quantum-weirdness-passes-the-atomic-walk-test-37495">devising a theoretical test</a> to show that the hidden variables Einstein had in mind don’t exist. </p>
<p>According to quantum mechanics, particles can be “entangled”, spookily connected so that if you manipulate one then you automatically and immediately also manipulate the other. If this spookiness – particles far apart mysteriously influencing each other instantaneously – were to be explained by the particles communicating with each other through hidden variables, it would require faster-than-light communication between the two, which Einstein’s theories forbid.</p>
<p>Quantum entanglement is a challenging concept to understand, essentially linking the properties of particles no matter how far apart they are. Imagine a light bulb that emits two photons (light particles) that travel in opposite directions away from it. </p>
<p>If these photons are entangled, then they can share a property, such as their polarisation, no matter their distance. Bell imagined doing experiments on these two photons separately and comparing the results of them to prove that they were entangled (truly and mysteriously linked).</p>
<p>Clauser put Bell’s theory into practice at a time when doing experiments on single photons was almost unthinkable. In 1972, just eight years after Bell’s famous thought experiment, Clauser showed that light could indeed be entangled. </p>
<p>While <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.28.938">Clauser’s results</a> were groundbreaking, there were a few alternative, more exotic explanations for the results <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0375960175906556?via%3Dihub">he obtained</a>. </p>
<p>If light didn’t behave quite as the physicists thought, perhaps his results could be explained without entanglement. These explanations are known as loopholes in Bell’s test, and Aspect was the first to challenge this.</p>
<p>Aspect came up with an ingenious experiment to rule out one of the most important potential loopholes in Bell’s test. He showed that the entangled photons in the experiment aren’t actually communicating with each other through hidden variables to decide the outcome of Bell’s test. This means <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.49.91">they really are spookily linked</a>.</p>
<p>In science it is incredibly important to test the concepts that we believe to be correct. And few have played a more important role in doing this than Aspect. Quantum mechanics has been tested time and again over the past century and survived unscathed.</p>
<h2>Quantum technology</h2>
<p>At this point, you may be forgiven for wondering why it matters how the microscopic world behaves, or that photons can be entangled. This is where the vision of Zeilinger really shines.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488063/original/file-20221004-18-4r0onq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/488063/original/file-20221004-18-4r0onq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488063/original/file-20221004-18-4r0onq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488063/original/file-20221004-18-4r0onq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488063/original/file-20221004-18-4r0onq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488063/original/file-20221004-18-4r0onq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/488063/original/file-20221004-18-4r0onq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Austrian quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger stands in his office at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI)</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.alamy.com/viena-austria-02nd-july-2018-02072018-austria-vienna-the-austrian-quantum-physicist-anton-zeilinger-stands-in-his-office-at-the-institute-of-quantum-optics-and-quantum-information-iqoqi-of-the-austrian-academy-of-sciences-aw-zeilinger-is-one-of-the-worlds-leading-minds-working-on-a-completely-new-way-of-transmitting-information-by-means-of-a-spooky-remote-effect-0-credit-matthias-rderdpaalamy-live-news-image217025930.html?imageid=5A336ADB-5DA5-4356-B202-AAEDE6046061&p=173981&pn=1&searchId=926a8f4a3b6a4b4af978223e04b94dc0&searchtype=0">dpa picture alliance / Alamy Stock Photo</a></span>
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<p>We once harnessed our knowledge of classical mechanics to build machines, to make factories, leading to the industrial revolution. Knowledge of the behaviour of electronics and semiconductors has driven the digital revolution. </p>
<p>But understanding quantum mechanics allows us to exploit it, to build devices that are capable of doing new things. Indeed, many believe that it will drive the next revolution, of quantum technology.</p>
<p>Quantum entanglement <a href="https://theconversation.com/scientists-discover-how-to-harness-the-power-of-quantum-spookiness-by-entangling-clouds-of-atoms-95612">can be harnessed in computing</a> to process information in ways that were not possible before. Detecting small changes in entanglement can allow sensors to detect things with greater precision than ever before. Communicating with entangled light can also guarantee security, as measurements of quantum systems can reveal the presence of the eavesdropper.</p>
<p>Zeilinger’s work paved the way for the quantum technological revolution by showing how it is possible to link a series of entangled systems together, to build the quantum equivalent of a network. </p>
<p>In 2022, these applications of quantum mechanics are not science fiction. We have the first <a href="https://www.ibm.com/quantum">quantum computers</a>. The Micius satellite <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/china-reaches-new-milestone-in-space-based-quantum-communications/">uses entanglement</a> to enable secure communications across the world. And <a href="https://theconversation.com/better-ai-unhackable-communication-spotting-submarines-the-quantum-tech-arms-race-is-heating-up-179482">quantum sensors</a> are being used in applications from medical imaging to detecting submarines.</p>
<p>Ultimately, the 2022 Nobel panel have recognised the importance of the practical foundations producing, manipulating and testing quantum entanglement and the revolution it is helping to drive.</p>
<p>I am pleased to see this trio receiving the award. In 2002, I started a PhD at the University of Cambridge that was inspired by their work. The aim of my project was to make a simple semiconductor device to generate entangled light. </p>
<p>This was to greatly simplify the equipment needed to do quantum experiments and to allow practical devices for real-world applications to be built. Our <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature04446">work was successful</a> and it amazes and excites me to see the leaps and bounds that have been made in the field since.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191884/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Young does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The discovery that particles can be spookily connected has lead to a technological revolution.
Robert Young, Professor of Physics and Director of the Lancaster Quantum Technology Centre, Lancaster University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/169493
2021-10-08T12:27:11Z
2021-10-08T12:27:11Z
None of the 2021 science Nobel laureates are women – here’s why men still dominate STEM award winning
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425281/original/file-20211007-18946-pf7buf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1223%2C321%2C7020%2C5166&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Frances Arnold received the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://nobelprize.qbank.se/mb/?h=7f34a741c65f2309fcc548afd9fd944e&_ga=2.87363736.1458753097.1633524725-438278705.1633524725">© Nobel Media. Photo: Alexander Mahmoud</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>All of the 2021 Nobel Prizes in science were awarded to men. </p>
<p>That’s a return to business as usual after a couple of good years for female laureates. In 2020, <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2020/charpentier/facts/">Emmanuelle Charpentier</a> and <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2020/doudna/facts/">Jennifer Doudna</a> won the chemistry prize for their work on the CRISPR gene editing system, and <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2020/ghez/facts/">Andrea Ghez</a> shared in the physics prize for her discovery of a supermassive black hole.</p>
<p>2019 was another year of all male laureates, after <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2018/arnold/facts/">biochemical engineer Frances Arnold</a> won in 2018 for chemistry and Donna Strickland received the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2018/strickland/facts/">2018 Nobel Prize in physics</a>. </p>
<p>Strickland and Ghez were only the third and fourth female physicists to get a Nobel, following <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1903/marie-curie/facts/">Marie Curie in 1903</a> and <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1963/mayer/facts/">Maria Goeppert-Mayer 60 years later</a>. When asked how that felt, Strickland noted that at first it was surprising to realize so few women had won the award: “But, I mean, I do live in a world of mostly men, so seeing mostly men <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/10/02/653779921/donna-strickland-becomes-first-woman-in-more-than-50-years-to-win-physics-nobel-">doesn’t really ever surprise me either</a>.”</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-10-09/only-20-nobels-sciences-have-gone-women-why">rarity of female Nobel laureates</a> raises questions about women’s exclusion from education and careers in science and the <a href="https://thebestschools.org/magazine/brilliant-woman-greedy-men/">undervaluing of women’s contributions on science teams</a>. Women researchers have come a long way over the past century, but there’s overwhelming evidence that women remain underrepresented in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math.</p>
<p>Studies have shown that those women who persist in these careers face explicit and implicit barriers to advancement. Bias is most intense in fields that are dominated by men, where women lack a critical mass of representation and are often viewed as tokens or outsiders. This bias is even more intense for transgender women and nonbinary individuals.</p>
<p>As things are getting better in terms of equal representation, what still holds women back in the lab, in leadership and as award winners?</p>
<h2>Good news at the start of the pipeline</h2>
<p>Traditional stereotypes hold that women “don’t like math” and “aren’t good at science.” Both <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/03/both-genders-think-women-are-bad-basic-math">men and women report these viewpoints</a>, but researchers have <a href="https://www.apa.org/action/resources/research-in-action/share.aspx">empirically disputed them</a>. Studies show that girls and women avoid STEM education not because of cognitive inability, but because of early exposure and experience with STEM, educational policy, cultural context, stereotypes and a lack of exposure to role models. </p>
<p>For the past several decades, efforts to improve the representation of women in STEM fields have focused on countering these stereotypes with <a href="http://www.apsbridgeprogram.org/igen/">educational reforms</a> and <a href="https://girlswhocode.com/">individual</a> <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5383">programs</a> that can increase the number of girls entering and staying in what’s been called the STEM pipeline – the path from K-12 to college and postgraduate training.</p>
<p><iframe id="qE27X" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/qE27X/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>These approaches are working. Women are increasingly likely to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1615/JWomenMinorScienEng.2012002908">express an interest in STEM careers and pursue STEM majors</a> in college. Women now make up half or more of workers in psychology and social sciences and are increasingly represented in the scientific workforce, though computer and mathematical sciences are an exception. </p>
<p>According to the American Institute of Physics, women earn about 20% of bachelor’s degrees and 18% of Ph.D.s in physics, <a href="https://www.aip.org/taxonomy/term/155">an increase from 1975</a> when women earned 10% of bachelor’s degrees and 5% of Ph.D.s in physics.</p>
<p>More women are graduating with STEM Ph.D.s and earning faculty positions. But they encounter glass cliffs and ceilings as they advance through their academic careers.</p>
<h2>What’s not working for women</h2>
<p>Women face a number of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.21.080195.000401">structural and institutional barriers</a> in academic STEM careers.</p>
<p>In addition to issues related to the gender pay gap, the structure of academic science often makes it difficult for women to <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781135943974">get ahead in the workplace</a> and to balance work and life commitments. Bench science can require years of dedicated time in a laboratory. The strictures of the tenure-track process can make maintaining work-life balance, responding to family obligations and <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-todays-long-stem-postdoc-positions-are-effectively-anti-mother-51550">having children</a> or taking family leave difficult, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312711417730">if not impossible</a>.</p>
<p>Additionally, working in male-dominated workplaces can <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.21.080195.000401">leave women feeling isolated</a>, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2777808">perceived as tokens</a> and susceptible to <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24994/sexual-harassment-of-women-climate-culture-and-consequences-in-academic">harassment</a>. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010344929577">Women often are excluded</a> from networking opportunities and social events, left to feel they’re outside the culture of the lab, the academic department and the field.</p>
<p>When women lack a critical mass in a workplace – making up about 15% or more of workers – they are <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2884712">less empowered to advocate for themselves</a> and more likely to be perceived as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1999.tb08353.x">a minority group and an exception</a>. When in this minority position, women are more likely to be pressured to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-017-9454-2">take on extra service</a> as tokens on committees or <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/Ghost-Advising/242729">mentors to female graduate students</a>.</p>
<p>With fewer female colleagues, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243917735900">women are less likely</a> to build relationships with female collaborators and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-010-0256-y">support and advice networks</a>. This isolation can be exacerbated when women are unable to participate in work events or <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2018/02/07/conferences-should-be-more-family-friendly-women-scholars-children-opinion">attend conferences because of family or child care</a> responsibilities, and because of an inability to use research funds to reimburse child care.</p>
<p>Universities, <a href="https://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/Fulltext/2002/10000/Increasing_Women_s_Leadership_in_Academic.23.aspx">professional associations</a> and federal funders have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.20225">worked to address a variety</a> of these structural barriers. Efforts include creating family-friendly policies, increasing transparency in salary reporting, enforcing Title IX protections, providing mentoring and support programs for women scientists, protecting research time for women scientists and targeting women for hiring, research support and advancement. These programs have had mixed results. </p>
<p>For example, research indicates that family-friendly policies such as leave and onsite child care <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scu006">can exacerbate gender inequity</a>, resulting in increased research productivity for men and increased teaching and service obligations for women.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People haven’t really updated their mental images of what a scientist looks like since Wilhelm Roentgen won the first physics Nobel in 1901.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/sftaf5z8">Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Implicit biases about who does science</h2>
<p>All of us – the general public, the media, university employees, students and professors – have <a href="https://theconversation.com/most-people-think-man-when-they-think-scientist-how-can-we-kill-the-stereotype-42393">ideas of what a scientist</a> and a Nobel Prize winner look like. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13039">That image</a> is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1949-8594.2002.tb18217.x">predominantly male, white and older</a> – which makes sense given 96% of the science Nobel Prize winners have been men.</p>
<p>This is an example of an <a href="https://www.pbs.org/video/pov-implicit-bias-peanut-butter-jelly-and-racism/">implicit bias</a>: one of the unconscious, involuntary, natural, unavoidable assumptions that all of us – men and women – form about the world. People make decisions <a href="https://theconversation.com/measuring-the-implicit-biases-we-may-not-even-be-aware-we-have-74912">based on subconscious assumptions, preferences and stereotypes</a> – sometimes even when they are counter to their explicitly held beliefs.</p>
<p>Research shows that an implicit bias against women <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-a-scientist-looks-like/">as experts and academic scientists</a> is pervasive. It manifests itself by valuing, acknowledging and rewarding men’s scholarship over women’s scholarship. </p>
<p>Implicit bias can work against women’s hiring, advancement and recognition of their work. For instance, women seeking academic jobs are more likely to be viewed and judged based on <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2018/preliminary/paper/nZ24K7b2">personal information and physical appearance</a>. Letters of recommendation for women are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-018-9541-1">more likely to raise doubts</a> and use language that results in negative career outcomes.</p>
<p>Implicit bias can affect women’s ability to publish research findings and gain recognition for that work. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023117738903">Men cite their own papers 56% more</a> than women do. Known as the “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312711435830">Matilda Effect</a>,” there is a gender gap in recognition, award-winning and <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/08/16/new-research-shows-extent-gender-gap-citations">citations</a>. </p>
<p>Women’s research is less likely to be cited by others, and their <a href="https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/R7AQT1">ideas are more likely to be attributed to men</a>. Women’s solo-authored research takes <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/04/20/study-finds-women-economics-write-papers-are-more-readable-face-longer-publication">twice as long</a> to move through the review process. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-06678-6">Women are underrepresented</a> in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12950">journal editorships</a>, as senior scholars and lead authors, and as peer reviewers. This marginalization in research gatekeeping positions works against the promotion of women’s research.</p>
<p>When a woman becomes a world-class scientist, implicit bias works <a href="https://doi.org/10.1128/JVI.00739-17">against the likelihood</a> that she will be <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/12/women-are-invited-to-give-fewer-talks-than-men-at-top-us-universities/548657/">invited as a keynote or guest speaker</a> to share her research findings, thus <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.12198">lowering both her visibility in the field</a> and the likelihood that she will be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312711435830">nominated for awards</a>. This gender imbalance is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096517000580">notable in how infrequently</a> <a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/public_editor/2017/11/17/we-need-more-womens-voices-in-the-news.html">women experts</a> are <a href="https://www.poynter.org/news/lack-female-sources-ny-times-front-page-stories-highlights-need-change">quoted in news stories</a> on most topics.</p>
<p>Women scientists are afforded less of the respect and recognition that should come with their accomplishments. Research shows that when people talk about male scientists and experts, they’re more likely to use their surnames and more likely to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1805284115">refer to women by their first names</a>. </p>
<p>Why does this matter? Because experiments show that individuals referred to by their surnames are more likely to be viewed as famous and eminent. In fact, one study found that calling scientists by their last names led people to consider them 14% more deserving of a National Science Foundation career award.</p>
<p>Seeing men as prize winners has been the history of science, but it’s not all bad news. Recent research finds that in the biomedical sciences, women are making significant gains in winning more awards, though on average these awards are typically <a href="https://hbr.org/2019/02/research-women-are-winning-more-scientific-prizes-but-men-still-win-the-most-prestigious-ones">less prestigious and have lower monetary value</a>.</p>
<p>Addressing structural and implicit bias in STEM will hopefully prevent another half-century wait before the next woman is acknowledged with a Nobel Prize for her contribution to physics. I look forward to the day when a woman receiving the most prestigious award in science is newsworthy only for her science and not her gender.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-more-women-dont-win-science-nobels-104370">an article originally published</a> on Oct. 5, 2018.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169493/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mary K. Feeney is Program Director for the National Science Foundation's Science of Science: Discovery, Communication, and Impact (SoS:DCI) program.</span></em></p>
Science fields are improving at being more inclusive. But explicit and implicit barriers still hold women back from advancing in the same numbers as men to the upper reaches of STEM academia.
Mary K. Feeney, Professor and Lincoln Professor of Ethics in Public Affairs, Arizona State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/169423
2021-10-07T00:36:47Z
2021-10-07T00:36:47Z
What is chaos? A complex systems scientist explains
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425107/original/file-20211006-27-6s91r0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=241%2C0%2C7245%2C4765&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tiny changes, like a butterfly's wing flapping, can be amplified downstream in a chaotic system.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/paper-butterflies-royalty-free-image/1225435005">Catherine Falls Commercial/Moment via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Chaos evokes images of the dinosaurs running wild in Jurassic Park, or my friend’s toddler ravaging the living room.</p>
<p>In a chaotic world, you never know what to expect. Stuff is happening all the time, driven by any kind of random impulse.</p>
<p>But chaos has a deeper meaning in connection to physics and climate science, related to how certain systems – like the weather or the behavior of a toddler – are fundamentally unpredictable.</p>
<p>Scientists define chaos as the amplified effects of tiny changes in the present moment that lead to long-term unpredictability. Picture two almost identical storylines. In one version, two people bump into each other in a train station; but in the other, the train arrives 10 seconds earlier and the meeting never happens. From then on, the two plot lines might be totally different.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425131/original/file-20211006-23-fbedlp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="busy indoor train terminal" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425131/original/file-20211006-23-fbedlp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425131/original/file-20211006-23-fbedlp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425131/original/file-20211006-23-fbedlp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425131/original/file-20211006-23-fbedlp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425131/original/file-20211006-23-fbedlp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425131/original/file-20211006-23-fbedlp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425131/original/file-20211006-23-fbedlp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Who doesn’t meet in the crowd if the train arrives a few seconds sooner?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/motion-at-liverpool-street-station-royalty-free-image/157731956">urbancow/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Usually those little details don’t matter, but sometimes tiny differences have consequences that keep compounding. And that compounding is what leads to chaos.</p>
<p>A shocking series of discoveries in the 1960s and ‘70s showed just how easy it is to create chaos. Nothing could be more predictable than the swinging pendulum of a grandfather clock. But if you separate a pendulum halfway down by adding another axle, the swinging becomes <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0Z8wLLPNE0">wildly unpredictable</a>.</p>
<h2>Chaos is different from random</h2>
<p>As <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=suSGxQ8AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">a complex systems scientist</a>, I think a lot about <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/drove-not-drived/544595/">what is random</a>.</p>
<p>What’s the difference between a pack of cards and the weather?</p>
<p>You can’t predict your next poker hand – if you could, they’d throw you out of the casino – whereas you can probably guess tomorrow’s weather. But what about the weather two weeks from now? Or a year from now?</p>
<p>Randomness, like cards or dice, is unpredictable because we just don’t have the right information. Chaos is somewhere between random and predictable. A hallmark of chaotic systems is predictability in the short term that breaks down quickly over time, as in river rapids or <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/1940591">ecosystems</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425109/original/file-20211006-23-182joa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="panels of a shaded road through four seasons" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425109/original/file-20211006-23-182joa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425109/original/file-20211006-23-182joa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=210&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425109/original/file-20211006-23-182joa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=210&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425109/original/file-20211006-23-182joa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=210&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425109/original/file-20211006-23-182joa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425109/original/file-20211006-23-182joa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425109/original/file-20211006-23-182joa5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chaos can explain why climate is predictable while weather isn’t.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/seasons-in-a-park-royalty-free-image/1160011332">Sören Lubitz Photography/Moment via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why chaos theory matters</h2>
<p>Isaac Newton envisioned physics as a set of rules governing a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clockwork_universe">clockwork universe</a> – rules that, once set in motion, would lead to a predetermined outcome. But chaos theory proves that even the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect">strictest rules and nearly perfect information can lead</a> to unpredictable outcomes.</p>
<p>This realization has practical applications for deciding what kinds of things are predictable at all. Chaos is why no weather app can tell you the weather two weeks from now – it’s just impossible to know.</p>
<p>On the other hand, broader predictions can still be possible. We can’t forecast the weather a year from now, but we still know what the weather is like this time of year. That’s how <a href="https://theconversation.com/warming-is-clearly-visible-in-new-us-climate-normal-datasets-159684">climate can be predictable</a> even when the weather isn’t. Theories of chaos and randomness help scientists sort out which kinds of predictions make sense and which don’t.</p>
<p><em>Read other short accessible explanations of newsworthy subjects written by academics in their areas of expertise for The Conversation U.S. <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/significant-terms-105996">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169423/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mitchell Newberry does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Part of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for work modeling Earth’s climate using its chaotic, complex weather. To scientists, chaos lies in the gray zone between randomness and predictability.
Mitchell Newberry, Assistant Professor of Complex Systems, University of Michigan
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/125086
2019-10-11T09:11:44Z
2019-10-11T09:11:44Z
Nobel Prize in Physics: how the first exoplanet around a sun-like star was discovered
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296479/original/file-20191010-188829-s5tlui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Artist impression of the exoplanet 51 Pegasi b.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.eso.org/public/russia/images/eso1517a/">ESO/M. Kornmesser/Nick Risinger</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for “contributions to our understanding of the evolution of the universe and Earth’s place in the cosmos”. Half the prize went to <a href="https://theconversation.com/nobel-prize-in-physics-james-peebles-master-of-the-universe-shares-award-124916">cosmologist Jim Peebles</a>, and the other half was awarded jointly to Michel Mayor and my colleague Didier Queloz for the first discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star. As someone who has spent a decade <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/exoplanets-100">studying exoplanets</a>, I know that this award marks a long-awaited recognition of one of the greatest revolutions in modern astronomy, one that has radically changed our perception of our place in the universe. </p>
<p>An exoplanet, or extrasolar planet, is a planet orbiting a star beyond our solar system. For thousands of years across many civilisations, humans have wondered whether worlds existed beyond the Earth and the solar system. It is humbling to realise that this question was only answered a mere 24 years ago.</p>
<p>In 1995, Mayor and Queloz <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/378355a0">discovered a giant exoplanet</a> orbiting a sun-like star, 51 Pegasi. The planet, known as 51 Peg b, was similar in mass to Jupiter but 100 times closer to its host star, giving it a temperature of over 1,000°C. The discovery was radical in many ways, not least because it was altogether so different to the planets in our solar system and contradicted theories of planetary formation and evolution.</p>
<p>In our solar system, giant planets such as Jupiter and Saturn are five to ten times further from the sun than the Earth and have temperatures below -100°C. Jupiter and Saturn were thought to <a href="https://www.space.com/18389-how-was-jupiter-formed.html">have formed</a> in a gaseous disc around the infant sun by accumulating gas and ice, possibly even further away from the sun than they are now. The discovery of a “hot Jupiter” located so close to its star provided the first hint that planets could form in an extremely diverse array of other ways outside our solar system.</p>
<p>The discovery of 51 Peg b was a result of both technological prowess and serendipity. First, they had access to what was at the time one of the world’s most accurate instruments for measuring wavelengths of light from other stars, the <a href="http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1996A%26AS..119..373B&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper=YES&type=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf">ELODIE spectrograph</a> at the Haute-Provence Observatory in southern France. But the time it takes to gather the evidence to prove the existence of an exoplanet depends on its mass, its distance from the star and how long it takes it to complete an orbit.</p>
<p>Existing theories and the model of our solar system meant that scientists didn’t expect to find any large planets with short orbits that could be found quickly. So no one was actively searching for them at the time. Mayor and Queloz were conducting what they thought would be a long-term programme that could take years before finding a planet around another star. But, within about a year of starting observations, they discovered the first signs that the existing planetary theories were incomplete.</p>
<p>Their discovery came using a technique known as the <a href="http://www.planetary.org/explore/space-topics/exoplanets/radial-velocity.html">radial velocity method</a>. When a planet orbits around a star, the star also moves in a similar, but much smaller, orbit around the centre of mass of the whole system. In other words, the planet’s gravitational tug on the star causes it to wobble around a point between them.</p>
<p>Because of this movement, the light from the star when seen from Earth changes, in what is known as a Doppler shift. When the star is moving towards an observer, its light has smaller wavelengths than when the star is stationary, making the light appear more blue. When the star is moving away from the observer, the light shifts to longer, redder wavelengths. </p>
<p>Detecting such wavelength shifts periodically indicates that another object, in this case a planet, is orbiting the star. And by measuring them over time, you can calculate the speed at which the star is moving towards or away from you (the radial velocity) and how long the planet’s orbit takes. The maximum radial velocity gives you a measure of the mass of the planet because larger planets located closer to the star cause the star to move faster.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296481/original/file-20191010-188819-u7g4bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296481/original/file-20191010-188819-u7g4bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296481/original/file-20191010-188819-u7g4bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296481/original/file-20191010-188819-u7g4bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296481/original/file-20191010-188819-u7g4bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296481/original/file-20191010-188819-u7g4bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296481/original/file-20191010-188819-u7g4bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/resources/289/infographic-profile-of-planet-51-pegasi-b/">NASA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The movement of the sun due to Jupiter has a maximum radial velocity of 13 m/s, and the planet’s orbit takes 12 years. This means accurately determining the mass and complete orbit of a Jupiter-like planet around a sun-like star would take 12 years using a light-measuring spectrograph accurate to a few m/s. To find an Earth-like planet around a sun would be even harder because the maximum radial velocity would be just 9 cm/s.</p>
<p>In the early 1990s, the best spectrographs on Earth were capable of precisions of over 10 m/s, which meant that they were not capable of detecting planets as big, slow and far away from a star as Jupiter. But 51 Peg b was a Jupiter-size planet 100 times closer to its star, with an orbit of just 4.2 days rather than 12 years. This meant its maximum radial velocity was significantly higher at nearly 60 m/s, well within the range of Mayor and Queloz’s spectrograph.</p>
<p>After they had found the first signs of a planet with such a short orbit, the two scientists made further observations and detailed analyses that confirmed the properties of what we now know of as the hot Jupiter, 51 Peg b. Despite the intense scrutiny the results were subjected to, their findings were <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234232314_The_Planet_around_51_Pegasi">quickly confirmed</a> by other teams using other instruments. </p>
<p>Mayor and Queloz’s revolutionary discovery of 51 Peg b sparked an avalanche of astronomical observations over the next two decades revealing the ubiquity and diversity of exoplanets that we know today. <a href="https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/faq/6/how-many-exoplanets-are-there/">Over 4,000 exoplanets</a> are now known, spanning the entire gamut of planetary properties, ranging from hot Jupiters to Earth-size planets in the habitable-zones of their host stars. That means there are planets that are likely at the right temperatures for <a href="https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/what-is-an-exoplanet/how-do-we-find-habitable-planets/">liquid water to exist</a> on their surfaces, and for life as we know it to evolve.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125086/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nikku Madhusudhan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz thought it would take years to find a planet outside the solar system – they did it in months.
Nikku Madhusudhan, Reader in Astrophysics and Exoplanetary Science, University of Cambridge
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/125096
2019-10-10T23:32:58Z
2019-10-10T23:32:58Z
Why don’t more women win science Nobels?
<p>All of the 2019 Nobel Prizes in science were awarded to men. </p>
<p>That’s a return to business as usual, after <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2018/arnold/facts/">biochemical engineer Frances Arnold</a> won in 2018, for chemistry, and Donna Strickland received the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2018/strickland/facts/">2018 Nobel Prize in physics</a>. </p>
<p>Strickland was only the third female physicist to get a Nobel, following <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1903/marie-curie/facts/">Marie Curie in 1903</a> and <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1963/mayer/facts/">Maria Goeppert-Mayer 60 years later</a>. When asked how that felt, she noted that at first it was surprising to realize so few women had won the award: “But, I mean, I do live in a world of mostly men, so seeing mostly men <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/10/02/653779921/donna-strickland-becomes-first-woman-in-more-than-50-years-to-win-physics-nobel-">doesn’t really ever surprise me either</a>.”</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-10-09/only-20-nobels-sciences-have-gone-women-why">rarity of female Nobel laureates</a> raises questions about women’s exclusion from education and careers in science. Female researchers have come a long way over the past century. But there’s overwhelming evidence that women remain underrepresented in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math.</p>
<p>Studies have shown those who persist in these careers face explicit and implicit barriers to advancement. Bias is most intense in fields that are predominantly male, where women lack a critical mass of representation and are often viewed as tokens or outsiders.</p>
<p>When women achieve at the highest levels of sports, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2508.2006.00402.x">politics</a>, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1002790/">medicine</a> and science, they <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2011.607313">serve as role models</a> for everyone – especially for girls and other women. </p>
<p>As things are getting better in terms of equal representation, what still holds women back in the lab, in leadership and as award winners?</p>
<h2>Good news at the start of the pipeline</h2>
<p>Traditional stereotypes hold that women “don’t like math” and “aren’t good at science.” Both <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/03/both-genders-think-women-are-bad-basic-math">men and women report these viewpoints</a>, but researchers have <a href="https://www.apa.org/action/resources/research-in-action/share.aspx">empirically disputed them</a>. Studies show that girls and women avoid STEM education not because of cognitive inability, but because of early exposure and experience with STEM, educational policy, cultural context, stereotypes and a lack of exposure to role models. </p>
<p>For the past several decades, efforts to improve the representation of women in STEM fields have focused on countering these stereotypes with <a href="http://www.apsbridgeprogram.org/igen/">educational reforms</a> and <a href="https://girlswhocode.com/">individual</a> <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5383">programs</a> that can increase the number of girls entering and staying in what’s been called the STEM pipeline – the path from K-12 to college to postgraduate training.</p>
<p><iframe id="qE27X" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/qE27X/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>These approaches are working. Women are increasingly likely to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1615/JWomenMinorScienEng.2012002908">express an interest in STEM careers and pursue STEM majors</a> in college. Women now make up half or more of workers in psychology and social sciences and are increasingly represented in the scientific workforce, though computer and mathematical sciences are an exception. </p>
<p>According to the American Institute of Physics, women earn about 20% of bachelor’s degrees and 18% of Ph.D.s in physics, <a href="https://www.aip.org/taxonomy/term/155">an increase from 1975</a> when women earned 10% of bachelor’s degrees and 5% of Ph.D.s in physics.</p>
<p>More women are graduating with STEM Ph.D.s and earning faculty positions. But they encounter glass cliffs and ceilings as they advance through their academic careers.</p>
<h2>What’s not working for women</h2>
<p>Women face a number of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.21.080195.000401">structural and institutional barriers</a> in academic STEM careers.</p>
<p>In addition to issues related to the gender pay gap, the structure of academic science often makes it difficult for women to <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781135943974">get ahead in the workplace</a> and to balance work and life commitments. Bench science can require years of dedicated time in a laboratory. The strictures of the tenure-track process can make maintaining work-life balance, responding to family obligations and <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-todays-long-stem-postdoc-positions-are-effectively-anti-mother-51550">having children</a> or taking family leave difficult, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312711417730">if not impossible</a>.</p>
<p>Additionally, working in male-dominated workplaces can <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.21.080195.000401">leave women feeling isolated</a>, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2777808">perceived as tokens</a> and susceptible to <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24994/sexual-harassment-of-women-climate-culture-and-consequences-in-academic">harassment</a>. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010344929577">Women often are excluded</a> from networking opportunities and social events, left to feel they’re outside the culture of the lab, the academic department and the field.</p>
<p>When women lack a critical mass in a workplace – making up about 15% or more of workers – they are <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2884712">less empowered to advocate for themselves</a> and more likely to be perceived as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1999.tb08353.x">a minority group and an exception</a>. When in this minority position, women are more likely to be pressured to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-017-9454-2">take on extra service</a> as tokens on committees or <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/Ghost-Advising/242729">mentors to female graduate students</a>.</p>
<p>With fewer female colleagues, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243917735900">women are less likely</a> to build relationships with female collaborators and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-010-0256-y">support and advice networks</a>. This isolation can be exacerbated when women are unable to participate in work events or <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2018/02/07/conferences-should-be-more-family-friendly-women-scholars-children-opinion">attend conferences because of family or child care</a> responsibilities and an inability to use research funds to reimburse child care.</p>
<p>Universities, <a href="https://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/Fulltext/2002/10000/Increasing_Women_s_Leadership_in_Academic.23.aspx">professional associations</a> and federal funders have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.20225">worked to address a variety</a> of these structural barriers. Efforts include creating family-friendly policies, increasing transparency in salary reporting, enforcing Title IX protections, providing mentoring and support programs for women scientists, protecting research time for women scientists and targeting women for hiring, research support and advancement. These programs have mixed results. </p>
<p>For example, research indicates that family-friendly policies such as leave and onsite child care <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scu006">can exacerbate gender inequity</a>, resulting in increased research productivity for men and increased teaching and service obligations for women.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People haven’t really updated their mental images of what a scientist looks like since Wilhelm Roentgen won the first physics Nobel in 1901.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/sftaf5z8">Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Implicit biases about who does science</h2>
<p>All of us – the general public, the media, university employees, students and professors – have <a href="https://theconversation.com/most-people-think-man-when-they-think-scientist-how-can-we-kill-the-stereotype-42393">ideas of what a scientist</a> and a Nobel Prize winner looks like. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13039">That image</a> is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1949-8594.2002.tb18217.x">predominantly male, white and older</a> – which makes sense given 97% of the science Nobel Prize winners have been men.</p>
<p>This is an example of an <a href="https://www.pbs.org/video/pov-implicit-bias-peanut-butter-jelly-and-racism/">implicit bias</a>: one of the unconscious, involuntary, natural, unavoidable assumptions that all of us – men and women – form about the world. People make decisions <a href="https://theconversation.com/measuring-the-implicit-biases-we-may-not-even-be-aware-we-have-74912">based on subconscious assumptions, preferences and stereotypes</a> – sometimes even when they are counter to their explicitly held beliefs.</p>
<p>Research shows that an implicit bias against women <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-a-scientist-looks-like/">as experts and academic scientists</a> is pervasive. It manifests itself by valuing, acknowledging and rewarding men’s scholarship over women’s scholarship. </p>
<p>Implicit bias can work against women’s hiring, advancement and recognition of their work. For instance, women seeking academic jobs are more likely to be viewed and judged based on <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2018/preliminary/paper/nZ24K7b2">personal information and physical appearance</a>. Letters of recommendation for women are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-018-9541-1">more likely to raise doubts</a> and use language that results in negative career outcomes.</p>
<p>Implicit bias can affect women’s ability to publish research findings and gain recognition for that work. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023117738903">Men cite their own papers 56% more</a> than women do. Known as the “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312711435830">Matilda Effect</a>,” there is a gender gap in recognition, award-winning and <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/08/16/new-research-shows-extent-gender-gap-citations">citations</a>. </p>
<p>Women’s research is less likely to be cited by others, and their <a href="https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/R7AQT1">ideas are more likely to be attributed to men</a>. Women’s solo-authored research takes <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/04/20/study-finds-women-economics-write-papers-are-more-readable-face-longer-publication">twice as long</a> to move through the review process. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-06678-6">Women are underrepresented</a> in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12950">journal editorships</a>, as senior scholars and lead authors and as peer reviewers. This marginalization in research gatekeeping positions works against the promotion of women’s research.</p>
<p>When a woman becomes a world-class scientist, implicit bias works <a href="https://doi.org/10.1128/JVI.00739-17">against the likelihood</a> that she will be <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/12/women-are-invited-to-give-fewer-talks-than-men-at-top-us-universities/548657/">invited as a keynote or guest speaker</a> to share her research findings, thus <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.12198">lowering her visibility in the field</a> and the likelihood that she will be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312711435830">nominated for awards</a>. This gender imbalance is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096517000580">notable in how infrequently</a> <a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/public_editor/2017/11/17/we-need-more-womens-voices-in-the-news.html">women experts</a> are <a href="https://www.poynter.org/news/lack-female-sources-ny-times-front-page-stories-highlights-need-change">quoted in news stories</a> on most topics.</p>
<p>Women scientists are afforded less of the respect and recognition that should come with their accomplishments. Research shows that when people talk about male scientists and experts, they’re more likely to use their surnames and more likely to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1805284115">refer to women by their first names</a>. </p>
<p>Why does this matter? Because experiments show that individuals referred to by their surnames are more likely to be viewed as famous and eminent. In fact, one study found that calling scientists by their last names led people to consider them 14% more deserving of a National Science Foundation career award.</p>
<p>Seeing mostly men has been the history of science. Addressing structural and implicit bias in STEM will hopefully prevent another half-century wait before the next woman is acknowledged with a Nobel Prize for her contribution to physics. I look forward to the day when a woman receiving the most prestigious award in science is newsworthy only for her science and not her gender.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-more-women-dont-win-science-nobels-104370">an article originally published</a> on Oct. 5, 2018.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125096/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mary K. Feeney receives research funding from the National Science Foundation and the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics, ASU.</span></em></p>
Progress has been made toward gender parity in science fields. But explicit and implicit barriers still hold women back from advancing in the same numbers as men to the upper reaches of STEM academia.
Mary K. Feeney, Professor and Lincoln Professor of Ethics in Public Affairs and Associate Director of the Center for Science, Technology and Environmental Policy Studies, Arizona State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/124930
2019-10-08T21:49:46Z
2019-10-08T21:49:46Z
Nobel Prize in Physics for two breakthroughs: Evidence for the Big Bang and a way to find exoplanets
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296084/original/file-20191008-128652-16ovxuu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Artist's rendering of a Jupiter-sized exoplanet and its host, a star slightly more massive than our sun. Image credit:</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4674">ESO/NASA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Did the universe really begin with a Big Bang? And if so, is there evidence? Are there planets around other stars? Can they support life? </p>
<p>The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics goes to three scientists who have provided deep insights into all of these questions. </p>
<p>James Peebles, <a href="https://phy.princeton.edu/people/p-james-peebles">an emeritus professor of physics</a> at Princeton University, won half the prize for a body of work he completed since the 1960s, when he and a team of physicists at Princeton attempted to detect the remnant radiation of the dense, hot ball of gas at the beginning of the universe: the Bang Bang. </p>
<p>The other half went to Michel Mayor, <a href="http://www.planetary.org/connect/our-experts/profiles/michel-mayor.html">an emeritus professor of physics from the University of Geneva</a>, together with Didier Queloz, <a href="http://obswww.unige.ch/%7Equeloz/Welcome.html">also a Swiss astrophysicist at the University of Geneva</a> and <a href="https://www.astro.phy.cam.ac.uk/directory/prof-didier-queloz">the University of Cambridge</a>. Both made breakthroughs with the discovery of the first planets orbiting other stars, also known as exoplanets, beyond our solar system.</p>
<p>I am an <a href="http://www.novastella.org">astrophysicist</a> and was delighted to hear of this year’s Nobel recipients, who had a profound impact on scientists’ understanding of the universe. A lot of my own work on exploding stars is guided by theories describing the structure of the universe that James Peebles himself laid down. </p>
<p>In fact, one might say that Peebles, of all this year’s Nobel winners, is the biggest star of the real “Big Bang Theory.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296088/original/file-20191008-128681-quk6go.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296088/original/file-20191008-128681-quk6go.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296088/original/file-20191008-128681-quk6go.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296088/original/file-20191008-128681-quk6go.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296088/original/file-20191008-128681-quk6go.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296088/original/file-20191008-128681-quk6go.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296088/original/file-20191008-128681-quk6go.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296088/original/file-20191008-128681-quk6go.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nobel Prize winners in physics, from left, James Peebles in Princeton, N.J., Didier Queloz in London and Michel Mayor in Madrid.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Nobel-Physics/38f8572988cd40fdba43aab73b2a714b/29/0">AP Photo/Frank Augstein</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The real Big Bang Theory</h2>
<p>As Peebles and his Princeton team rushed to complete their discovery in 1964, they were scooped by two young scientists at nearby Bell Labs, <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1978/penzias/biographical/">Arno Penzias</a> and <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1978/wilson/biographical/">Robert Wilson</a>. The remaining radiation from the Big Bang was predicted to be microwave energy, in much the same form used by countertop ovens.</p>
<p>It was a serendipitous finding because Penzias and Wilson had constructed an antenna to detect this microwave radiation which was used in satellite communications. But they were mystified by a persistent source of noise in their measurements, like the fuzz of a radio tuned between stations. </p>
<p>Penzias and Wilson talked to Peebles and his colleagues and learned that this static they were hearing was the radiation left over from the Big Bang itself. Penzias and Wilson <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1978/summary/">won the Nobel Prize in 1978</a> for their discovery, though Peebles and his team <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/148306">provided the crucial interpretation</a>. </p>
<p>Peebles has also made decades of pivotal contributions to the study of the matter which pervades the cosmos but is invisible to telescopes, known as <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy">dark matter</a>, and the equally mysterious energy of empty space, known as dark energy. He has done foundational work on the formation of galaxies, as well as to how the Big Bang gave rise to the first elements – hydrogen, helium, lithium – on the <a href="https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/periodic-table/">periodic table</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296085/original/file-20191008-128648-1ijlkkj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296085/original/file-20191008-128648-1ijlkkj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296085/original/file-20191008-128648-1ijlkkj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296085/original/file-20191008-128648-1ijlkkj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296085/original/file-20191008-128648-1ijlkkj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296085/original/file-20191008-128648-1ijlkkj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296085/original/file-20191008-128648-1ijlkkj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296085/original/file-20191008-128648-1ijlkkj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">First discovery of an exoplanet just earned the Nobel Prize for Physics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/resources/289/infographic-profile-of-planet-51-pegasi-b/">NASA/JPL-Caltech</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Finding planets beyond our solar system</h2>
<p>For their Nobel Prize-winning work, Mayor and Queloz carried out a survey of nearby stars using a <a href="http://www.obs-hp.fr/www/guide/elodie/elodie-eng.html">custom-built instrument</a>. Using this instrument, they could detect the wobble of a star – a sign that it is being tugged by the gravity of an orbiting exoplanet. </p>
<p>In 1995, in a landmark discovery <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/378355a0">published in the journal Nature</a>, they found a star in the constellation Pegasus rapidly wobbling across the sky, in response to an unseen planet with half the mass of Jupiter. This exoplanet, dubbed <a href="https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/resources/289/infographic-profile-of-planet-51-pegasi-b/">51 Pegasi b</a>, orbits close to its central star, well within the orbit of Mercury in our own solar system, and completes one full orbit in just four days. </p>
<p>This surprising discovery of a “hot Jupiter,” quite unlike any planet in our own solar system, excited the astrophysical community and inspired many other research groups, including the <a href="https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/keplerscience/">Kepler space telescope team</a>, to search for exoplanets. </p>
<p>These groups are using both the same wobble detection method as well as new methods, such as looking for light dips caused by exoplanets passing over nearby stars. Thanks to these research efforts, more than 4,000 exoplanets have now been discovered.</p>
<p>[ <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=expertise">Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get a digest of academic takes on today’s news, every day.</a></em> ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124930/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert T Fisher receives funding from NASA. </span></em></p>
Scientists who discovered planets in far off stellar systems and the fundamentals of the Big Bang Theory have earned the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Robert T. Fisher, Associate Professor of Physics, UMass Dartmouth
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/124916
2019-10-08T17:42:42Z
2019-10-08T17:42:42Z
Nobel Prize in Physics: James Peebles, master of the universe, shares award
<p>During the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISKY4T-38cI">press conference</a> in which he was revealed as one of the winners of the 2019 <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2019/summary/">Nobel Prize in Physics</a>, James (Jim) Peebles was asked to point to a single discovery or breakthrough from his long career that would put the award in context. Peebles demurred, replying instead: “It’s a life’s work.”</p>
<p>That’s a perfect description of his contribution to our understanding of the universe. His is a career so influential that he is widely recognised as one of the key architects of the field of physical cosmology, the study of the universe’s origin, structure and evolution. I am sure I am not alone in regarding Peebles as the greatest living cosmologist.</p>
<p>Peebles’s research career started in the early 1960s. The Canadian-born scientist earned his undergrad at the University of Manitoba and later gained his PhD in the group of Robert Dicke at Princeton University in New Jersey in 1962. He has remained there ever since. Peebles now holds the title of Albert Einstein Professor of Science at Princeton. </p>
<p>In the 1960s, Dicke’s group was working on theoretical predictions – and the corresponding observational consequences – for the state of the “primordial” universe, the phase immediately following the Big Bang lasting for a few hundred thousand years. At that time the Big Bang theory for the formation of the universe was not yet fully accepted, despite observational evidence that galaxies were moving away from each other.</p>
<p>Dicke’s group was working on the theory that if the universe was expanding, then it must have been much smaller, hotter and denser in the past. The prediction was that the thermal radiation from this epoch might be still be observable today as <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-cmb-how-an-accidental-discovery-became-the-key-to-understanding-the-universe-45126">background radiation</a> pervading the universe. The Princeton group was also designing instruments to try to detect it.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, working for Bell Labs (also in New Jersey), had detected an unusual persistent background noise in their experiment. They were investigating the use of high altitude “echo” balloons, a kind of early satellite communication.</p>
<p>When Penzias and Wilson approached Dicke’s group for advice, it became clear that they had actually detected the relic background radiation. We call it the cosmic microwave background (CMB) because the radiation peaks in the microwave part of the electromagnetic spectrum.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296065/original/file-20191008-128648-rcicsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296065/original/file-20191008-128648-rcicsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296065/original/file-20191008-128648-rcicsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296065/original/file-20191008-128648-rcicsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296065/original/file-20191008-128648-rcicsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296065/original/file-20191008-128648-rcicsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/296065/original/file-20191008-128648-rcicsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A map of the universe’s cosmic microwave background radiation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/media/101080/">NASA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1965ApJ...142..414D&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper=YES&type=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf">resulting</a> <a href="http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1965ApJ...142..419P">papers</a> were arguably the birth of the field of observational cosmology, a branch of physics that has revolutionised our view of the cosmos and our place within it. Peebles played a pivotal role in our theoretical understanding of the primordial universe and its evolution, but he also recognised that the CMB was a treasure trove of information that could be plundered. In particular, it holds clues about the formation of cosmic structures – the galaxies – and indeed clues about the fundamental nature of the universe itself. </p>
<p>Much of Peebles’s work has focused on understanding the emergence and growth of structure in the universe from the relatively smooth primordial conditions encoded in the CMB. In the process he has helped define an entire field of study.</p>
<p>For example, in the early 1970s, he was one of the first to run computer simulations of cosmic structure formation, a practice that is an entire branch of research today, where cosmologists <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-discovered-that-life-may-be-billions-of-times-more-common-in-the-multiverse-96565">explore toy universes</a>.</p>
<h2>Dark matter</h2>
<p>Peebles helped usher in the “dark sector” to our model of the universe, becoming a pioneer of (what is now called) the <a href="https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Peebles1/frames.html">standard cosmological model</a>. In this model, the universe is dominated by <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-dark-gravity-to-phantom-energy-whats-driving-the-expansion-of-the-universe-60433">mysterious forms of matter and energy</a> that we are yet to fully understand, but whose existence is supported by observational evidence. Normal matter now has an almost negligible cosmic relevance compared to this dark matter and dark energy.</p>
<p>Peebles has produced such an immense body of work it is impossible to do it all justice in this short article. In one of his most influential papers, <a href="http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1982ApJ...263L...1P">he linked</a> the subtle fluctuations in the temperature of the CMB – which reflect ripples in the density of matter shortly after the Big Bang – with the way in which matter is distributed on a large-scale throughout the present day universe. The link exists because all the structure we see around us today must have grown through the evolution of those primordial seeds.</p>
<p>Peebles advanced the concept of a dark matter component to the universe and its implications for the evolution of structure. Through this, and other work, he helped establish the theoretical framework for our picture of how galaxies have formed and evolved. And he demonstrated how observations of the CMB and the distribution of galaxies could be used as evidence to help measure key cosmological parameters, the numbers that feature in the equations we use to describe the nature of the universe. </p>
<p>The influence of Peebles doesn’t end there. Aside from his monumental contributions to fundamental research, spanning the CMB, dark matter, dark energy, inflation, <a href="https://www.universetoday.com/51797/nucleosynthesis/">nucleosynthesis</a>, structure formation and galaxy evolution, his textbooks have educated generations of cosmologists. They will do for years to come. His Principles of Physical Cosmology is on my desk right now. </p>
<p>In the Nobel press conference, Peebles was keen to highlight that he didn’t work alone. But to say that he has been largely responsible for shaping our understanding of the universe is a cosmic understatement.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124916/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Geach receives funding from the Royal Society and the Science and Technology Facilities Council</span></em></p>
The Princeton cosmologist helped pioneer our current model of the universe and began a whole new branch of physics.
James Geach, Professor of Astrophysics and Royal Society University Research Fellow, University of Hertfordshire
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104370
2018-10-05T23:38:00Z
2018-10-05T23:38:00Z
Why more women don’t win science Nobels
<p>One of the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2018/strickland/facts/">2018 Nobel Prizes in physics</a> went to Donna Strickland, a major accomplishment for any scientist. Yet much of the news coverage has focused on the fact that she’s only the third female physicist to receive the award, after <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1903/marie-curie/facts/">Marie Curie in 1903</a> and <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1963/mayer/facts/">Maria Goeppert-Mayer</a> 60 years later.</p>
<p>Though biochemical engineer <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2018/arnold/facts/">Frances Arnold</a> also won this year, for chemistry, the rarity of female Nobel laureates raises questions about women’s exclusion from education and careers in science. Female researchers have come a long way over the past century. But there’s overwhelming evidence that women remain underrepresented in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math.</p>
<p>Studies have shown those who persist in these careers face explicit and implicit barriers to advancement. Bias is most intense in fields that are predominantly male, where women lack a critical mass of representation and are often viewed as tokens or outsiders.</p>
<p>When women achieve at the highest levels of sports, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2508.2006.00402.x">politics</a>, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1002790/">medicine</a> and science, they <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2011.607313">serve as role models</a> for all of us, especially for girls and other women. But are things getting better in terms of equal representation? What still holds women back in the classroom, in the lab, in leadership and as award winners?</p>
<h2>Good news at the start of the pipeline</h2>
<p>Traditional stereotypes hold that women “don’t like math” and “aren’t good at science.” Both <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/03/both-genders-think-women-are-bad-basic-math">men and women report these viewpoints</a>, but researchers have <a href="https://www.apa.org/action/resources/research-in-action/share.aspx">empirically disputed them</a>. Studies show that girls and women avoid STEM education not because of cognitive inability, but because of early exposure and experience with STEM, educational policy, cultural context, stereotypes and a lack of exposure to role models. </p>
<p>For the past several decades, efforts to improve the representation of women in STEM fields have focused on countering these stereotypes with <a href="http://www.apsbridgeprogram.org/igen/">educational reforms</a> and <a href="https://girlswhocode.com/">individual</a> <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5383">programs</a> that can increase the number of girls entering and staying in what’s been called the STEM pipeline – the path from K-12 to college to postgraduate training.</p>
<p><iframe id="qE27X" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/qE27X/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>These approaches are working. Women are increasingly likely to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1615/JWomenMinorScienEng.2012002908">express an interest in STEM careers and pursue STEM majors</a> in college. Women now make up half or more of workers in psychology and social sciences and are increasingly represented in the scientific workforce, though computer and mathematical sciences are an exception. According to the American Institute of Physics, women earn about 20 percent of bachelor’s degrees and 18 percent of Ph.D.s in physics, <a href="https://www.aip.org/taxonomy/term/155">an increase from 1975</a> when women earned 10 percent of bachelor’s degrees and 5 percent of Ph.D.s in physics.</p>
<p>More women are graduating with STEM Ph.D.s and earning faculty positions. But they go on to encounter glass cliffs and ceilings as they advance through their academic careers.</p>
<h2>What’s not working for women</h2>
<p>Women face a number of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.21.080195.000401">structural and institutional barriers</a> in academic STEM careers.</p>
<p>In addition to issues related to the gender pay gap, the structure of academic science often makes it difficult for women to <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781135943974">get ahead in the workplace</a> and to balance work and life commitments. Bench science can require years of dedicated time in a laboratory. The strictures of the tenure-track process can make maintaining work-life balance, responding to family obligations, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-todays-long-stem-postdoc-positions-are-effectively-anti-mother-51550">having children</a> or taking family leave difficult, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312711417730">if not impossible</a>.</p>
<p>Additionally, working in male-dominated workplaces can <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.21.080195.000401">leave women feeling isolated</a>, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2777808">perceived as tokens</a> and susceptible to <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24994/sexual-harassment-of-women-climate-culture-and-consequences-in-academic">harassment</a>. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010344929577">Women often are excluded</a> from networking opportunities and social events and left to feel they’re outside the culture of the lab, the academic department and the field.</p>
<p>When women lack critical mass – of about 15 percent or more – they are <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2884712">less empowered to advocate for themselves</a> and more likely to be perceived as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1999.tb08353.x">a minority group and an exception</a>. When in this minority position, women are more likely to be pressured to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-017-9454-2">take on extra service</a> as tokens on committees or <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/Ghost-Advising/242729">mentors to female graduate students</a>.</p>
<p>With fewer female colleagues, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243917735900">women are less likely</a> to build relationships with female collaborators and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-010-0256-y">support and advice networks</a>. This isolation can be exacerbated when women are unable to participate in work events or <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2018/02/07/conferences-should-be-more-family-friendly-women-scholars-children-opinion">attend conferences because of family or child care</a> responsibilities and an inability to use research funds to reimburse child care.</p>
<p>Universities, <a href="https://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/Fulltext/2002/10000/Increasing_Women_s_Leadership_in_Academic.23.aspx">professional associations</a>, and federal funders have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.20225">worked to address a variety</a> of these structural barriers. Efforts include creating family-friendly policies, increasing transparency in salary reporting, enforcing Title IX protections, providing mentoring and support programs for women scientists, protecting research time for women scientists, and targeting women for hiring, research support and advancement. These programs have mixed results. For example, research indicates that family-friendly policies such as leave and onsite child care <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scu006">can exacerbate gender inequity</a>, resulting in increased research productivity for men and increased teaching and service obligations for women.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239534/original/file-20181005-72103-13n5zz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People haven’t done a good job updating their mental images of what a scientist looks like since Wilhelm Roentgen won the first physics Nobel in 1901.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/sftaf5z8">Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Implicit biases about who does science</h2>
<p>All of us – the general public, the media, university employees, students and professors – have <a href="https://theconversation.com/most-people-think-man-when-they-think-scientist-how-can-we-kill-the-stereotype-42393">ideas of what a scientist</a> and a Nobel Prize winner looks like. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13039">That image</a> is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1949-8594.2002.tb18217.x">predominantly male, white and older</a> – which makes sense given 97 percent of the science Nobel Prize winners have been men.</p>
<p>This is an example of an <a href="https://www.pbs.org/video/pov-implicit-bias-peanut-butter-jelly-and-racism/">implicit bias</a>: one of the unconscious, involuntary, natural, unavoidable assumptions that all of us, men and women, form about the world around us. People make decisions <a href="https://theconversation.com/measuring-the-implicit-biases-we-may-not-even-be-aware-we-have-74912">based on subconscious assumptions, preferences and stereotypes</a> – sometimes even when they are counter to their explicitly held beliefs.</p>
<p>Research shows that an implicit bias against women <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-a-scientist-looks-like/">as experts and academic scientists</a> is pervasive. It manifests itself by valuing, acknowledging and rewarding men’s scholarship over women’s scholarship. Implicit bias can work against women’s hiring, advancement and recognition of their work. For instance, women seeking academic jobs are more likely to be viewed and judged based on <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2018/preliminary/paper/nZ24K7b2">personal information and physical appearance</a>. Letters of recommendation for women are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-018-9541-1">more likely to raise doubts</a> and use language that results in negative career outcomes.</p>
<p>Implicit bias can affect women’s ability to publish research findings and gain recognition for that work. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023117738903">Men cite their own papers 56 percent more</a> than women do. Known as the “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312711435830">Matilda Effect</a>,” there is a gender gap in recognition, award winning and <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/08/16/new-research-shows-extent-gender-gap-citations">citations</a>. Women’s research is less likely to be cited by others and their <a href="https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/R7AQT1">ideas are more likely to be attributed to men</a>. Women’s solo-authored research takes <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/04/20/study-finds-women-economics-write-papers-are-more-readable-face-longer-publication">twice as long</a> to move through the review process. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-06678-6">Women are underrepresented</a> in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12950">journal editorships</a>, as senior scholars and lead authors, and as peer reviewers. This marginalization in research gatekeeping positions works against the promotion of women’s research.</p>
<p>When a woman becomes a world-class scientist, implicit bias works <a href="https://doi.org/10.1128/JVI.00739-17">against the likelihood</a> that she will be <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/12/women-are-invited-to-give-fewer-talks-than-men-at-top-us-universities/548657/">invited as a keynote or guest speaker</a> to share her research findings, thus <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.12198">lowering her visibility in the field</a> and the likelihood that she will be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312711435830">nominated for awards</a>. This gender imbalance is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096517000580">notable in how infrequently</a> <a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/public_editor/2017/11/17/we-need-more-womens-voices-in-the-news.html">women experts</a> are <a href="https://www.poynter.org/news/lack-female-sources-ny-times-front-page-stories-highlights-need-change">quoted in news stories</a> on most topics.</p>
<p>Women scientists are afforded less of the respect and recognition that should come with their accomplishments. Research shows that when people talk about male scientists and experts, they’re more likely to use their surnames and more likely to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1805284115">refer to women by their first names</a>. Why does this matter? Because experiments show that individuals referred to by their surnames are more likely to be viewed as famous and eminent. In fact, one study found that calling scientists by their last names led people to consider them 14 percent more deserving of a National Science Foundation career award.</p>
<h2>Female physics laureate No. 3</h2>
<p>Strickland winning a Nobel Prize as an associate professor in physics is a major accomplishment; doing so as a woman who has almost certainly faced more barriers than her male counterparts is, in my view, monumental.</p>
<p>When asked what it felt like to be the third female Nobel laureate in physics, Strickland noted that at first it was surprising to realize so few women had won the award: “But, I mean, I do live in a world of mostly men, so seeing mostly men <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/10/02/653779921/donna-strickland-becomes-first-woman-in-more-than-50-years-to-win-physics-nobel-">doesn’t really ever surprise me either</a>.”</p>
<p>Seeing mostly men has been the history of science. Addressing structural and implicit bias in STEM will hopefully prevent another half-century wait before the next woman is acknowledged with a Nobel Prize for her contribution to physics. I look forward to the day when a woman receiving the most prestigious award in science is newsworthy only for her science and not her gender.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104370/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mary K. Feeney receives research funding from the National Science Foundation and the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics, ASU. </span></em></p>
Progress has been made toward gender parity in science fields. But explicit and implicit barriers still hold women back from advancing in the same numbers as men to the upper reaches of STEM academia.
Mary K. Feeney, Associate Professor and Lincoln Professor of Ethics in Public Affairs and Associate Director of the Center for Science, Technology and Environmental Policy Studies, Arizona State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104459
2018-10-04T21:38:19Z
2018-10-04T21:38:19Z
Why I’m not surprised Nobel Laureate Donna Strickland isn’t a full professor
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239414/original/file-20181004-52669-3vayrm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Noble Prize winner Donna Strickland, right, is followed by media to her lab in Waterloo, Ont., on Oct. 2, 2018. Strickland is among three physicists who were awarded the prize for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Donna Strickland, an associate professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada, was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in physics. The third woman to have ever been awarded this prize in 117 years, she shares it with Arthur Ashkin and Gérard Mourou.</p>
<p>Strickland explained <a href="http://fortune.com/2018/10/02/donna-strickland-nobel-prize-professor/">that she’s been treated as an equal by her male peers</a>, which does bring a ray of hope in a rather bleak time for women. Her experience is also different than that of many. </p>
<p>Women make up 27 per cent of full professors in the academy as a whole, and in science, technology, engineering and math, that number is much lower. For <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/the-equity-myth">racialized and Indigenous women</a> in all fields, the numbers go down even further. </p>
<p>The rank of full professor offers more pay, more prestige and more opportunities to be selected for senior leadership roles within a university.</p>
<p>As Kirsty Duncan, Canada’s minister of science, explained in an opinion piece last summer, <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/science-is-still-sexist-i-know-from-my-own-experience/article35336218/">sexism was a problem for her and still is a problem for women in universities</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.caut.ca/latest/2018/04/employment-and-wage-equity-remain-elusive-academics-canadas-universities-and-colleges">A 2018 report</a> from the Canadian Association of University Teachers also concluded that, despite talk by universities and colleges of a commitment to inclusive institutions, progress on equity has been exceptionally slow.</p>
<h2>The twins of sexism and racism</h2>
<p>The reasons why so few women get Nobel Prizes and achieve full professorship, and even fewer who are racialized or Indigenous do, are interconnected.</p>
<p>It’s the twins of sexism and racism. As <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/the-equity-myth">political scientist Malinda Smith</a> shows, there are a number of factors — she calls them the “dirty dozen” — that normalize gender and racial biases. This results in a tiny demographic (white, male) as the predictable winners in a rigged game. </p>
<p>Examples of the “dirty dozen” include white male students receiving more opportunities to network. Then there are <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/10/06/study-suggests-language-recommendation-letter-writers-use-may-disadvantage-women">the reference letters</a>. While female students might have better grades, it is more likely in letters of reference that their professors will talk about them as having potential or being hard workers, compared to white men who are cast as brilliant. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/maude-abbott-the-canadian-scientist-who-deserved-a-nobel-prize-102877">Maude Abbott: The Canadian scientist who deserved
a Nobel prize</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>On top of that, workload concerns leave women less time for research. For example, women, particularly if racialized or Indigenous, are <a href="https://www.caut.ca/sites/default/files/caut_equity_report_2018-04final.pdf">more likely to get sessional work</a>, with significantly lower pay scales, higher teaching loads and little time for research. </p>
<p>Finally, tenure-track women are less likely to get competitive research funding, and when they do, they <a href="https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.170901">often earn less money than men</a>.</p>
<p>To become a full professor, one needs to apply and be evaluated by committees repeatedly — first for a tenure-track position, then for tenure and promotion — usually with an impressive portfolio of research funding and peer-reviewed publications. This is a portfolio that requires extensive research time, collaborations and support to achieve.</p>
<p>Women scientists are victims of a systemic inequity that impacts us all.</p>
<h2>A reward system biased towards men</h2>
<p>I have just completed a research project on the role of the Nobel Prize in university rankings and the impact on equity. The study found that influential university rankings judge institutions based on the number of articles published by faculty and staff in top-ranked journals. </p>
<p>It found that this reward system is biased towards men. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239390/original/file-20181004-52688-1ypxdo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239390/original/file-20181004-52688-1ypxdo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239390/original/file-20181004-52688-1ypxdo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239390/original/file-20181004-52688-1ypxdo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239390/original/file-20181004-52688-1ypxdo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239390/original/file-20181004-52688-1ypxdo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239390/original/file-20181004-52688-1ypxdo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Noble Prize winner Donna Strickland in her lab. Strickland co-invented a method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses which has a variety of applications, including corrective laser eye surgery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Men <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2016/03/after-years-growth-female-first-authorship-top-medical-journals-has-stalled">are more likely to publish other men</a> in top-ranked health and <a href="https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/women-edged-out-of-last-named-authorships-in-top-journals">science</a> journals. The role of sexism in terms of who gets published and what gets published isn’t considered when deciding who and what is ranked as world-class. </p>
<p>This can impact our health. For example, an abundance of studies demonstrate the bias against including women in health research, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/30/fda-clinical-trials-gender-gap-epa-nih-institute-of-medicine-cardiovascular-disease">the harm to women’s health when they are not included in all stages of research studies</a>.</p>
<p>The majority of decision-makers who create or accept the metrics used to decide who and what is world-class are white and male — including ranking advisories, university leaders, top journal editors and adjudication committees for major awards. Sexism and racism are reinforced and normalized through these feedback loops.</p>
<p>This Boys Club impacts women when they go up for promotion at research-intensive universities, because how they are deemed worthy or unworthy is largely based on how many publications they have in top-ranked journals, awards and, depending on the field, the research funding that they bring in. </p>
<h2>Science as the heroic man</h2>
<p>All the talk of equity over the last 30 years has really been a distraction from talking about how little progress has actually been made. Not because women, racialized and Indigenous scholars are less productive or doing less innovative work, but because of sexism and racism. </p>
<p>As education scholar Annette Henry reminds us, it’s also important to understand how issues intersect — white women might get in but we still need <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13613324.2015.1023787?src=recsys">to look at white privilege so racialized women have opportunities as well.</a></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/and-then-there-were-three-finally-another-woman-awarded-a-nobel-prize-in-physics-104323">And then there were three: finally, another woman awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Since 2003, 95 per cent of Nobel Prize winners with university appointments have been male. Yet the <a href="http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU-Methodology-2018.html#2">Nobel Prize and Fields Medal in Math count for 30 per cent</a> of how the influential <a href="http://www.shanghairanking.com">ARWU Rankings</a> determine which universities are “world class.” </p>
<p>By promoting and accepting this ranking as legitimate, universities reinforce a sexist and racist metric as the way to determine the quality of a university and what counts in the wider academic systems.</p>
<p>The Nobel as an indicator of world-class research maintains the illusion that science is conducted by the heroic man and — very, very rarely — a woman. Men are represented as toiling away to make great discoveries. </p>
<p>What is left out is the reality of science as a collaborative effort — with women most likely not receiving credit for their work. What is left out is that the Nobel is decided by a few men.</p>
<h2>White men decide who is world-class</h2>
<p>In the case of the Nobel, <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/facts/nobel-prize-facts/">a few (mainly Swedish and Norwegian) white men</a> ultimately decide who is best in the fields of physics, medicine, chemistry, advocating for world peace and literature.</p>
<p>Incidentally, this year the Nobel Prize for literature was <a href="https://theconversation.com/should-all-nobel-prizes-be-canceled-for-a-year-97996">cancelled</a> after the Swedish Academy announced it was investigating <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/01/jean-claude-arnault-centre-nobel-scandal-jailed-rape">allegations of sexual misconduct and other improprieties by the husband</a> of a key member of the committee that awards the literature prize.</p>
<p>The Nobel adjudication committees mirror society. Predominately white men decide on who and what is world class, and based on these decisions, who to invite into the club. </p>
<p>Once in a while someone who isn’t part of the demographic gets in, but the status quo remains intact. </p>
<p>What Strickland achieved is impressive. But it isn’t a sign that the patriarchy is being smashed.</p>
<p><em>This is a corrected version of a story originally published Oct. 4, 2018. The earlier story said the Nobel Prize for literature was cancelled in 2018 because of allegations of rape against a former committee chair. The allegations were against the husband of a committee member, not a member of the committee.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104459/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Stack does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
What Strickland achieved is impressive. But it isn’t a sign that the patriarchy is being smashed.
Michelle Stack, Associate Professor, University of British Columbia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104282
2018-10-03T05:14:24Z
2018-10-03T05:14:24Z
Arthur Ashkin’s optical tweezers: the Nobel Prize-winning technology that changed biology
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238983/original/file-20181002-85608-q4o4py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/abstract-red-laser-beam-isolated-on-631003721?src=ynKx9mYkRVMRbxz64yP0sg-1-5">Maryna Stamatova/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to three pioneers of the laser technology that has made a big impact on the world. Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland were recognised for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses, which today is used in laser eye surgery. The other recipient was Arthur Ashkin for his groundbreaking work on optical tweezers. This method of using light to capture and manipulate tiny objects has changed the way we’re able to study microscopic life. </p>
<p>But how can light be used to move matter? The energy carried by light is fundamental to life on our planet. But as well as energy, light beams also have a momentum, which is called <a href="https://phys.org/news/2018-08-momentum-year-mystery.html">radiation pressure</a>. This means that if I shine a laser pointer at you, in addition to making you ever so slightly hotter, it will push you away with a very small force.</p>
<p>To use this force to lift something as big as, say, an apple would be almost impossible. The laser power required would run to many megawatts, probably enough to vaporise the apple before it got off the ground. But when an object gets ten times smaller in each direction it also gets 1,000 times lighter. So moving from something the size of an apple to a single cell means that the laser power needed to lift it falls from megawatts to milliwatts, a similar power to that of a laser pointer.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238998/original/file-20181002-85620-rx6l89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238998/original/file-20181002-85620-rx6l89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238998/original/file-20181002-85620-rx6l89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238998/original/file-20181002-85620-rx6l89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238998/original/file-20181002-85620-rx6l89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238998/original/file-20181002-85620-rx6l89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238998/original/file-20181002-85620-rx6l89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Arthur Ashkin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nobel Foundation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As long ago as 1970, Ashkin (working at the world famous Bell Telephone Laboratories) began studying how you could use radiation pressure to <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.24.156">accelerate and trap</a> individual particles. Over the next 15 years he refined his ideas, brilliantly making the laser systems involved ever less complicated as time went on.</p>
<p>In 1986, working with Steven Chu (who later won his own Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 for work on trapping atoms and ultimately became US secretary for energy) he published his <a href="https://www.osapublishing.org/ol/abstract.cfm?uri=ol-11-5-288">seminal paper</a> on what we now call optical tweezers. In this paper, Ashkin showed that if the laser beam was focused very tightly using a microscope then, rather than pushing objects away with radiation pressure, it would counter-intuitively attract particles towards it. When the laser beam was then moved, the particles would follow it, held in the focus of the beam at all times. </p>
<p>Since then, optical tweezers have been used by many physicists and engineers, who have extended the technique so that it can <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0030401807008784">trap many particles at once</a> and even transform the tweezers into <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1006911428303">optical spanners</a> that cause the objects to spin. This later area is one of my own research interests and I remember, as a young researcher, the thrill of Ashkin asking me for a copy of my talk at a conference.</p>
<h2>Impact in biology</h2>
<p>Perhaps the greatest impact of optical tweezers has been in biophysics. Optical tweezers can be used to <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2408388/">sort healthy cells</a> from infected ones, or identify those that <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-13205-6">might be cancerous</a>. It is also possible to use optical tweezers to measure both the <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1507.05321">minute movements</a> of a trapped object (equivalent to a few atoms in diameter) and <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-02525-9_32">similarly tiny forces</a>. </p>
<p>Turning optical tweezers from a manipulation tool into a measurement device has allowed biologists to study the workings of the <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.chemrev.6b00638">individual molecular motors</a> which are responsible for movement in the biological world. Such motors transport chemicals within molecules, allow cells to swim and, when acting collectively, allow whole creatures to move.</p>
<p>Ashkin showed us all just what can be done by having an idea and then seeing it through to completion. For years he worked in a minority field, pioneering and then refining his ideas inventing techniques that scientists now use as as essential tools of their trade - thank you Arthur.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104282/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Miles Padgett receives funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the European Union
Miles Padgett is employed by the University of Glasgow</span></em></p>
Using lasers to trap and move particles changed the way we’re able to study microscopic life.
Miles Padgett, Kelvin Chair of Natural Philosophy (Physics and Astronomy), University of Glasgow
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104274
2018-10-02T20:56:33Z
2018-10-02T20:56:33Z
2018 Nobel Prize for physics goes to tools made from light beams – a particle physicist explains
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239067/original/file-20181003-695-1082hzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 2018 Nobel Prize for physics recognized discoveries that can make more powerful lasers.</span> </figcaption></figure><figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239027/original/file-20181002-101582-dsaoih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239027/original/file-20181002-101582-dsaoih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239027/original/file-20181002-101582-dsaoih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239027/original/file-20181002-101582-dsaoih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239027/original/file-20181002-101582-dsaoih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239027/original/file-20181002-101582-dsaoih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239027/original/file-20181002-101582-dsaoih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Arthur Ashkin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.Nobelprize.org">Niklas Elmehed. © Nobel Media</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239029/original/file-20181002-101558-4607n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239029/original/file-20181002-101558-4607n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239029/original/file-20181002-101558-4607n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239029/original/file-20181002-101558-4607n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239029/original/file-20181002-101558-4607n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239029/original/file-20181002-101558-4607n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239029/original/file-20181002-101558-4607n7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Gerard Mourou.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.Nobelprize.org">Niklas Elmehed. © Nobel Media</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Our world is full of light, and we depend upon it to power life on our planet. So it is appropriate to honor three scientists who invented new ways of using light rays to explore our world.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2018/summary/">The 2018 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland</a> for developing tools made from light beams. <a href="https://history.aip.org/phn/11409018.html">Ashkin</a> won half of the prize for his work on optical tweezers, which are beams of light that can actually manipulate tiny objects like cells or atoms, while <a href="https://www.polytechnique.edu/annuaire/en/users/gerard.mourou">Mourou</a> and <a href="https://uwaterloo.ca/physics-astronomy/people-profiles/donna-strickland">Strickland</a> won the other half for creating technology that generates high-intensity, ultra-short laser pulses, which are used for eye surgeries, material sciences, studies of very fast processes and plasma physics, among others. </p>
<p>Alfred Nobel specified in his will that the physics prize should be awarded for <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/">“the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics,”</a> so as a physicist I think he’d be pleased that this year’s award recognizes inventions made in the 1970s and 1980s that have led to practical applications that benefit mankind. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239031/original/file-20181002-101585-1oz9yex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239031/original/file-20181002-101585-1oz9yex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239031/original/file-20181002-101585-1oz9yex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239031/original/file-20181002-101585-1oz9yex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239031/original/file-20181002-101585-1oz9yex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239031/original/file-20181002-101585-1oz9yex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239031/original/file-20181002-101585-1oz9yex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Donna Strickland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.Nobelprize.org">Niklas Elmehed. © Nobel Media</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Donna Strickland is only the third woman to win the Nobel Prize in physics, out of 210 recipients, and the first since 1963. <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1903/summary/">Marie Curie was the first, in 1903</a>; she won another one in <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1911/summary/">1911 for chemistry</a>. <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1963/summary/">Maria Goeppert-Mayer was the second</a>. Hopefully in the future the Nobel Prize committee can lower the average of 60 years between women laureates being named. </p>
<h2>What are optical tweezers?</h2>
<p>Using light to manipulate our world has become very important in science and medicine over the past several decades. This year’s physics Nobel recognizes the invention of tools that have facilitated advances in many fields. Optical tweezers use light to hold tiny objects in place or measure their movement. It may seem odd that light can actually hold something in place, but it has been well-known for more than a century that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_pressure">light can apply a force on physical objects through what is known as radiation pressure</a>. In 1969, Arthur Ashkin used lasers <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.24.156">to trap and accelerate micron sized objects</a> such as tiny spheres and water droplets. This led to the invention of optical tweezers that use two or more focused laser beams aimed in opposite directions to attract a target particle or cell toward the center of the beams and hold it in place. Each time the particle moves away from the center, it encounters a force pushing it back toward the center.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239010/original/file-20181002-85608-1k4vl5k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239010/original/file-20181002-85608-1k4vl5k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239010/original/file-20181002-85608-1k4vl5k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239010/original/file-20181002-85608-1k4vl5k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239010/original/file-20181002-85608-1k4vl5k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239010/original/file-20181002-85608-1k4vl5k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239010/original/file-20181002-85608-1k4vl5k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Optical Cell Rotator uses laser beams from optical fibers to hold living cells in place. The beams can be used to rotate the cells for detailed imaging.</span>
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<p><a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1997/summary/">Steven Chu, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William D. Phillips won the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics</a> for development of laser cooling traps, known as optical traps, that hold atoms within a confined space. <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.57.314">Askhin and Chu worked together at Bell Laboratories in the 1980s</a> laying the foundation for work on optical traps. While Chu continued work with neutral atoms, Ashkin pursued larger, biological targets. <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/235/4795/1517">In 1987, Ashkin used optical tweezers to examine an individual bacterium</a> – without harming the microbe. Now optical tweezers are routinely used in studies of molecules and cells.</p>
<p>Ashkin earned his bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and his Ph.D. from Cornell. He started at Bell Laboratories in 1952 and retired in 1992. But he assembled a home laboratory to continue his scientific investigations. He has been awarded more than 45 patents.</p>
<h2>Why are fast laser pulses important?</h2>
<p>Gerard Mourou and Donna Strickland worked together at the University of Rochester, where they developed the technique called <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0030401885901208">chirped pulse amplification for laser light</a>. Strickland was a graduate student and Mourou was her thesis advisor in the mid-1980s. At the time, progress on creating brighter lasers had slowed. Stronger lasers tended to damage themselves. Strickland and Mourou invented a way to create more intense light, but in short pulses. </p>
<p>You are probably most familiar with laser pointers or barcode scanners, which are just some of the ways we use lasers in everyday life. But these are relatively low-intensity lasers. Many scientific applications need much stronger ones. </p>
<p>To solve this problem, Mourou and Strickland used lasers with very short (ultrashort) pulses – quick bursts of light separated in time. With chirped pulse amplification, the pulses are stretched in time, making them longer and less intense, and then the pulses are amplified up to a million times. When these pulses are compressed again (through reversing the process used to stretch), the pulses are much more intense than can be created without the chirped pulse amplification technique. As an analogy, consider a thick rubber band. When the band is stretched, the rubber becomes thinner. When it is released, it returns to its original thickness. Now imagine that there is a way to make the stretched rubber band thicker. When the band is released, it will end up thicker than than the original band. This is essentially what happens with the laser pulse.</p>
<p>There are a variety of ways the stretching and amplification can be done, but nearly all of the highest-power lasers in the world use some variation of this technique. Since the invention of chirped pulse amplification, the maximum intensity of new lasers has continued a dramatic rise.</p>
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<span class="caption">The chirped pulse amplification technique creates extremely intense pulses of light by stretching in time short pulses of light before amplifying them up to a million times. When the pulse is compressed again, it results in pulses that are a million times more intense than the original light.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/10/popular-physicsprize2018.pdf">NobelPrize.org</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>In my own field of particle physics, chirped pulse amplification-based lasers are used <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/312/5772/374.full">to accelerate beams of particles</a>, possibly providing a path to greater acceleration in a shorter distance. This could lead to lower-cost, high-energy accelerators that can push the bounds of particle physics – enabling us to detect evermore elusive particles and gain a better understanding of the universe. </p>
<p>But not all particle accelerators are behemoths like the Large Hadron Collider, which has a circumference of 17 miles. There are some 30,000 industrial particle accelerators worldwide that are used closer to home for material preparation, cancer treatment and medical research. Mourou and Strickland’s work may be used to shrink the size of these accelerators making them smaller and cheaper. </p>
<p>Ultrafast, high-intensity lasers are also now being <a href="http://spie.org/newsroom/2509-ultrashort-pulse-laser-eye-surgery-uses-fiber-technology-at-16-microns">used in eye surgery</a>. It can be used to treat the cornea (surface of the eye) to improve vision in some patients. The chirped pulse amplification invention is also used in attosecond science for studying ultrafast processes. An attosecond is one million trillionth of a second. By having lasers that produce pulses every attosecond, we can get a snapshots of extremely fast processes such as atoms losing an electron (ionizing) and then recapturing it.</p>
<p>The Nobel Prize-winning work was the basis for Strickland’s Ph.D. thesis from the University of Rochester. Dr. Strickland is now an associate professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Mourou became the founding director of the Center for Ultrafast Optical Science at the University of Michigan in 1990. He later became director of the Laboratorie d’Optique de Applique in France.</p>
<p>The 2018 Nobel Prize in physics shines a light on the pioneering work of these three scientists. Over the past three decades, their inventions have created avenues of science and medical treatments that were previously unattainable. It is certain that we will continue to benefit from their work for a long time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104274/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Todd Adams receives funding from the U.S. Department of Energy. </span></em></p>
The Nobel Prize for physics was awarded to three scientists for the inventions of optical tweezers – in which two laser beams can hold a tiny object – and a method for creating powerful lasers.
Todd Adams, Professor of Physics, Florida State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/85161
2017-10-04T00:42:09Z
2017-10-04T00:42:09Z
How fair is it for just three people to receive the Nobel Prize in physics?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188682/original/file-20171003-18916-171bnxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Alfred Nobel didn't foresee the current era of mega scientific collaboration.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nobelprize.org/press/#/image-details/584fbf368409c20d00efa01f/552bd85dccc8e20c00e7f979?sh=false">© Nobel Media AB Pi Frisk</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Nobel Foundation statutes decree that “<a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/facts/">in no case</a>” can a Nobel Prize be divided between more than three people. So it may not raise many eyebrows that the 2017 award in physics went to <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2017/press.html">just three scientists on the LIGO team</a> for their “decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.”</p>
<p>But <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/497557a">science is increasingly collaborative</a> across teams (including scientists and engineers), across nations and across disciplines. The majority of all scientific articles <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1136099">are co-authored</a>. Of these, over 25 percent are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0131816">internationally co-authored</a>. LIGO – more than most projects – represents these trends. One of the group’s most important papers involves <a href="https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102">355 co-authors from at least 20 countries</a>.</p>
<p>So with cutting-edge science being carried out in large international collaborations, who actually winds up on the rostrum in Stockholm? As a student of science dynamics, I have tracked how and why scientists link up with one another, in what fields, and how it improves the outcomes. These allegiances have an impact on who receives an award like a Nobel Prize, since international collaborations are more highly cited than national or sole-authored work. </p>
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<span class="caption">A LIGO optics technician who is not a recipient of the Nobel Prize.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/image/ligo20151214">Matt Heintze/Caltech/MIT/LIGO Lab</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<h2>Shifting norms around collaboration and credit</h2>
<p>Scientific discoveries these days typically rely on advances in the underlying technology and equipment used in experimentation. To enable breakthroughs, LIGO, CERN, the Human Genome Project and others rely on new technologies, which in turn are built often by large international teams. And within science, it’s becoming standard to more broadly recognize contributions like these than in the past. </p>
<p>This is a shift in social behavior, since scientists have always had collaborators and helpers – they just didn’t grant them a place on the “author” list. Now, there is a greater tendency to list the technical people who make discoveries possible. At CERN, for example, new discoveries, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.191803">such as the Higgs Boson</a>, are claimed in articles that list engineers and computer scientists as well as the theorists who develop the experiments.</p>
<p>And the fact that the Nobel Prize is offered specifically for physics is out of step with the tendency for interdisciplinary contributions to be fundamental to breakthroughs. A quick glance at the list of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.93.042006">contributing institutions for LIGO</a> shows collaborators from a school of mathematics, space science, departments of informatics, as well as cosmologists, astrophysics observatories, supercomputing centers and many others.</p>
<p>While practitioners have expanded the way contributions are credited, awards like the Nobel Prizes haven’t caught up. The little bit of science history taught in school still focuses on individual contributors such as Marie Curie and Albert Einstein. Harder to explain or visualize are the cross-disciplinary collaborations that constitute most of science today.</p>
<h2>The rich get richer</h2>
<p>In a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0134164">study I conducted with the Nobel Library in Sweden</a>, we compared Nobel Prize winners in physiology or medicine to a matched group of scientists to examine productivity, impact, coauthorship and international collaboration patterns. The laureate’s co-author network reveals significant differences from the non-laureate network. Laureates are more likely to build bridges across a network by reaching out to a non-obvious collaborator, such as <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2000/">physicist Jack Kilby</a> working with a materials scientist to develop new materials for microprocessors. They were more likely to exploit “structural holes” – gaps between fields that offer enticing but unrealized possibilities. </p>
<p>This process builds their reputation within as well as across scientific fields. (For example, both physicists and materials scientists read Kilby’s paper.) In science, reputation is the coin of the realm. It’s gained through cooperation as well as attention to the outputs of science – <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2091085">the journal article</a>.</p>
<p>When publishing any scientific article, there is a basic conundrum – someone must receive the prime place on the list of authors. In some fields, authors covet the first place; in others, the last place. And the benefits of being the primary author go far beyond a single article. There’s a phenomenon called the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.159.3810.56">“Matthew Effect” in science</a>, referring to the observation in the Gospel of Matthew that the “rich get richer.” The noted author of an article is much more likely to receive attention into the future.</p>
<p>Creative networkers like Jack Kilby grow their network in several fields as a result of their work, enhancing citations and reputation.</p>
<p>Searchable databases such as Google Scholar accentuate the Matthew effect, since a search will prioritize the articles with lots of citations. It has long been noted that <a href="http://www.enid-europe.org/conference/abstract%20pdf/Klavans_Boyack_superstars.pdf">only a few “superstars” in science emerge over time</a> – but current practices have supercharged the process because of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.98.2.404">agglomerating effects of being listed as the primary author</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188684/original/file-20171003-18916-1lcaai2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188684/original/file-20171003-18916-1lcaai2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188684/original/file-20171003-18916-1lcaai2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188684/original/file-20171003-18916-1lcaai2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188684/original/file-20171003-18916-1lcaai2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188684/original/file-20171003-18916-1lcaai2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188684/original/file-20171003-18916-1lcaai2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188684/original/file-20171003-18916-1lcaai2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Nobel stage in Stockholm doesn’t have space for everyone.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nobelprize.org/press/#/image-details/585104ccffb1110d00062b3e/552bd85dccc8e20c00e7f979?sh=false">© Nobel Media AB Pi Frisk.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Who stays behind</h2>
<p>The Matthew Effect is likely part of the reason that three white men came out “on top” in the case of the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics. The downside of needing a primary author on a collaborative paper means that collaborators, such as notable women who also worked on LIGO, sit in the shadows. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.1097">Women’s names are much more likely</a> to be listed second, third or farther down the list of authors on scientific papers. It can be difficult for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2001003">women to claim to top spot</a>.</p>
<p>No doubt when the current Nobel Prize winners in physics accept their award, they will point to “others” who have been instrumental in helping. Yet, the essentially collaborative nature of the work – many paying nations, many collaborating disciplines, a multitude of people – begs the question: Can the award fairly be claimed by three (white, American, male) people? The Nobel Prize, developed to recognize 19th-century creativity, may no longer reflect the true contributions within 21st-century science.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85161/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caroline Wagner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Today’s scientific research is characterized by interdisciplinary, international collaboration. Awards like the Nobel Prizes haven’t caught up.
Caroline Wagner, Milton & Roslyn Wolf Chair in International Affairs, The Ohio State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/66491
2017-10-03T11:33:06Z
2017-10-03T11:33:06Z
An award with real gravity: how gravitational waves attracted a Nobel Prize
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188490/original/file-20171003-14213-qgtfak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An illustration of the collision of two black holes, an event detected for the first time ever by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/image/ligo20160211d">The SXS (Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes) Project</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics, <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2017/press.html">awarded overnight in Sweden</a> by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, began with a discussion 42 years ago between two scientists in a hotel room in Washington DC.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.its.caltech.edu/%7Ekip/index.html/">Kip Thorne</a>, a theoretical physicist from Caltech, and <a href="http://web.mit.edu/physics/people/faculty/weiss_rainer.html">Rainer (Rai) Weiss</a>, an experimentalist from MIT, debated what would have seemed to most physicists like a far-fetched, borderline crazy idea: the detection of ripples in the fabric of spacetime called <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/gravitational-waves-9473">gravitational waves</a>.</p>
<p>But the two young men were serious. Weiss had written a <a href="https://dcc.ligo.org/public/0038/P720002/001/P720002-00.pdf">detailed technical paper</a> outlining a proposal for an experiment that would go on become <a href="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/">LIGO</a> (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory). </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/gravitational-waves-arrive-in-europe-84635">Gravitational Waves arrive in Europe</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Thorne, meanwhile, had thought a lot about potential sources of gravitational waves and had developed a deep appreciation of just how much their detection would tell us about exotic astrophysical objects such as black holes and neutron stars.</p>
<p>A great collaboration was forged that night. And it was soon strengthened by <a href="http://www.caltech.edu/news/caltech-mourns-passing-ligo-co-founder-ronald-w-drever-54336">Ronald Drever</a>, a brilliant experimental physicist who joined the faculty at Caltech. The three came from very different cultural backgrounds.</p>
<p>Thorne grew up in a Mormon family in the US state of Utah. Weiss was born in Berlin, Germany, and when he was a child, his half-Jewish family escaped the Nazis by first moving to Prague and then fleeing Czechoslovakia just before it was invaded. Drever hailed from Glasgow, in Scotland, and had a thick Scottish accent.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188592/original/file-20171003-12115-114vw4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188592/original/file-20171003-12115-114vw4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188592/original/file-20171003-12115-114vw4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188592/original/file-20171003-12115-114vw4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188592/original/file-20171003-12115-114vw4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188592/original/file-20171003-12115-114vw4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188592/original/file-20171003-12115-114vw4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188592/original/file-20171003-12115-114vw4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ronald Drever, a LIGO co-founder.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">American Physical Society</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They were united by their passion to “hear” the universe with gravitational waves. </p>
<p>Gravitational waves are emitted from some of the universe’s most catastrophic events such as exploding stars and colliding black holes. Every source emits gravitational waves differently. For sources detectable by LIGO, these waves have the same frequencies as the sound waves we can hear.</p>
<p>By studying the precise “sound” of a gravitational wave, it is possible to reconstruct the event that created it. They offer a unique window on the universe, allowing us to probe black holes and other extreme objects.</p>
<p>Together, they developed the ideas behind LIGO, obtained the support of Caltech and MIT, and secured research funding from the US National Science Foundation. Most importantly, they inspired two generations of physicists around the world to devote their lives to the quest for gravitational waves. </p>
<h2>The chirp heard round the world</h2>
<p>It took many years of dedicated teamwork to realise the vision of LIGO. The laboratory took shape under the leadership of experimental physicist <a href="http://pma.caltech.edu/content/barry-c-barish">Barry Barish</a>, now an emeritus professor at Caltech.</p>
<p>He created the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, an international team now numbering more than 1,000 scientists working on all aspects of LIGO science and technology, from laser physics to data analysis algorithms to astrophysics.</p>
<p>Australia was an early international partner in the consortium, and Australian scientists made important contributions to LIGO instrumentation, theoretical modelling and data analysis.</p>
<p>The instrument was so complex that it had to be built in two stages. The first stage of LIGO operated through the 2000s, demonstrating the technology that would be needed to detect gravitational waves. Not until the second stage, Advanced LIGO, was the equipment sensitive enough to detect the gravitational waves themselves.</p>
<p>The newly refurbished Advanced LIGO was ready to go in late 2015. Then, on September 14 that year, days after Advanced LIGO was switched on, a burst of gravitational waves shook the mirrors used to monitor the curvature of spacetime by a distance of about one-thousandth of the size of a proton.</p>
<p>While this seems unimaginably small, LIGO is an instrument of unimaginable sensitivity. Even without the aid of a computer algorithm, scientists could see in the data the telltale signature of a merging pair of black holes, each 30 times more massive than the Sun.</p>
<p>They could also “hear” it: the gravitational-wave signal of LIGO’s black hole merger, converted into audio, makes a characteristic chirping sound.</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="11" data-image="" data-title="The sound of two black holes colliding" data-size="166960" data-source="LIGO" data-source-url="https://soundcloud.com/newyorktimes/the-sound-of-two-black-holes-colliding" data-license="" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/320/ligo-chirp-1080p.m4a" type="audio/mp4">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
The sound of two black holes colliding.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="https://soundcloud.com/newyorktimes/the-sound-of-two-black-holes-colliding">LIGO</a><span class="download"><span>163 KB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/320/ligo-chirp-1080p.m4a">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<p>When news of the discovery broke, science enthusiasts took to social media to celebrate with their <a href="https://twitter.com/BBC_WHYS/status/697841364956909568">own renditions</a>.</p>
<p>By the time of the first announcement, Ron Drever was in a nursing home back in Scotland, sick with dementia. Nonetheless he was cognisant of the LIGO discovery, and was able to enjoy Kip Thorne’s visit sharing memories of LIGO’s early days. <a href="http://www.caltech.edu/news/caltech-mourns-passing-ligo-co-founder-ronald-w-drever-54336">Ron Drever died</a> in March this year.</p>
<p>This year’s prize, to <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2017/">Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne</a>, “for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves”, continues the Nobel tradition of honouring astronomical discoveries of extreme phenomena in which Einstein’s general relativity plays a major role. </p>
<p>One of us (Levin), was fortunate to carry out dissertation research under Kip Thorne’s supervision. As much as he must be savouring this great Nobel honour, we’re certain that the feeling pales in comparison to the moment he set eyes on LIGO’s detection data for the first time. </p>
<p>A century after Albert Einstein’s prediction, and after a lifetime of searching, there it was: the gravitational waves from two ill-fated black holes.</p>
<h2>A new era in astronomy</h2>
<p>The discovery is a milestone in 21st-century science. While the detection of gravitational waves confirmed Einstein’s theory, it also marked the beginning of a new way of gazing up at the heavens: gravitational-wave astronomy.</p>
<p>Since the first detection, the collaboration has published on detections from more black holes, and is yet to publish all of the exciting results from the <a href="https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/news/ligo20170825">second advanced LIGO observation run</a> that finished in late August.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/expect-the-unexpected-from-the-big-data-boom-in-radio-astronomy-84059">Expect the unexpected from the big-data boom in radio astronomy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/gravitational-waves-arrive-in-europe-84635">For the latest published discovery</a>, the two LIGO instruments were joined by another experiment in Italy called Virgo. This allowed for a far better understanding of the direction to the colliding black holes, forging the way for conventional telescopes to try to catch a glimpse of these violent events. </p>
<p>Australia continues to play an important role in gravitational-wave astronomy. The newly funded Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Gravitational-wave Discovery (<a href="http://www.swinburne.edu.au/news/latest-news/2016/09/new-arc-centre-of-excellence-for-gravitational-wave-discovery-announced.php">OzGrav</a>) will make the most of LIGO discoveries while laying the groundwork for the next generation of gravitational-wave detectors. One day, we might even have our own gravitational-wave lab Down Under.</p>
<p>With LIGO and other detectors, we can explore Einstein’s hidden universe. But for all the gravitational waves we anticipate, the most exciting prospect to us is that we might see something that no one has predicted. So watch this space.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66491/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eric Thrane receives funding from the ARC. He is affiliated with OzGrav.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Lasky receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yuri Levin received funding from the Australian Research Council</span></em></p>
The 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to scientists who helped pioneer the discovery of gravitational waves. Australia is playing an important role in gravitational-wave astronomy.
Eric Thrane, Senior Lecturer in Physics & Astronomy, ARC Future Fellow, Node Leader, ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav), Monash University
Paul Lasky, Lecturer and ARC Future Fellow, Monash University
Yuri Levin, Professor at Columbia University, Group Leader at Flatiron Institute, and Adjunct Professor at Monash University, Monash University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/84562
2017-09-27T23:37:05Z
2017-09-27T23:37:05Z
Why Canada must not be shut out of the neutron technology it invented
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187641/original/file-20170926-10570-ss0751.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C28%2C3194%2C1965&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Chalk River Laboratories in 2012. Canada's role as a world leader in neutron-scattering is at risk because of a failure to invest in infrastructure renewal at the facility.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the 1950s, physicists at Canada’s Chalk River Laboratories, led by <a href="https://cns-snc.ca/media/history/pioneers/b_brockhouse/bbrockhouse.html">Bertram Brockhouse,</a> developed an important new method that revealed the positions of
atoms and how they move in materials.</p>
<p>With his colleagues, Brockhouse – who would later share a Nobel Prize in Physics for his work – helped create a technique called neutron scattering, and specifically gave birth to <a href="http://www.spectroscopyonline.com/neutron-spectroscopy">neutron spectroscopy.</a></p>
<p>By directing a beam of neutrons at a sample material and measuring how the neutrons ricocheted off the atoms, and how they slowed down and sped up in the process, Brockhouse made it possible to look into materials and understand their atomic architecture and dynamics.</p>
<p>These pioneering neutron-scattering developments, first established at Chalk River’s National Research Universal (NRU) reactor in eastern Ontario and further developed at the McMaster Nuclear Reactor in Hamilton, Ont., were a creation of basic science. </p>
<p>What motivated Brockhouse (who joined the faculty at McMaster University in 1962) and his contemporaries was to understand the possibilities of neutron beam technology.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187643/original/file-20170926-10570-1ttfe5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187643/original/file-20170926-10570-1ttfe5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187643/original/file-20170926-10570-1ttfe5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187643/original/file-20170926-10570-1ttfe5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187643/original/file-20170926-10570-1ttfe5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187643/original/file-20170926-10570-1ttfe5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187643/original/file-20170926-10570-1ttfe5s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bertram Brockhouse won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1994 for his neutron-scattering discoveries at Chalk River.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Creative Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today, neutron-scattering is recognized as an essential tool for understanding the structure and dynamics of materials, part of a suite of complementary techniques including <a href="http://photon-science.desy.de/research/students__teaching/primers/synchrotron_radiation/index_eng.html">synchrotron radiation</a> and <a href="https://www.jic.ac.uk/microscopy/intro_EM.html">electron microscopy</a>.</p>
<p>Some 60 years later, the discovery made by scientists at the Chalk River Laboratories is producing major scientific advances and delivering huge economic benefits all over the world.</p>
<p>Canada’s scientific and economic competitors, including the United States, the European Union, Japan, Australia and China, have developed and are making new investments in stand-alone neutron-scattering facilities. They do so frequently with the assistance of the Canadians who still know the technology best.</p>
<p>They are investing billions of dollars to access the information that neutron scattering alone can provide. That will allow them to understand, develop and perfect materials, from superconductors (materials with no electrical resistance) to auto parts, towards improving the quality of life for people everywhere.</p>
<p>Neutron scattering played an important part, for example, in the 1988 discovery of a scientific curiosity called <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1412.7691.pdf">giant magnetoresistance</a>. By 1994, that basic science discovery, later recognized with the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics, had become the platform of choice for data storage in our computers, tablets and cellphones.</p>
<h2>Future in doubt in Canada</h2>
<p>While neutron scattering continues to grow in importance and Canada enjoys international recognition as its ancestral home, its future here in Canada is nonetheless very much in doubt.</p>
<p>The NRU reactor at Chalk River, where the bulk of Canada’s neutron-scattering work has traditionally been done, <a href="http://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/historic-nru-reactor-to-close-in-2018">is set to close in March</a>. There’s no foreseeable replacement. </p>
<p>Besides the issue of the cost to operate the NRU reactor as a source of neutron beams — the stated reason for closing the reactor — an underlying truth is that scientific infrastructure requires investment to keep it current.</p>
<p>And the neutron-scattering infrastructure at Chalk River has receded from the forefront for some time due to a lack of consistent renewal. </p>
<p>Canadian scientists have coped by expanding their access to newer, foreign neutron facilities, but there is little doubt that our wonderful legacy in this science, one that brought the Nobel Prize to Canada, has been hollowed out over time.</p>
<p>While neutron scattering is itself more important than ever, the generation of Canadian scientists who inherited and maintained the legacy of neutron scattering has less reason to stay here.</p>
<p>We invented this game, and now we’re on the sidelines.</p>
<h2>A realistic alternative</h2>
<p>McMaster University and the University of Saskatchewan have formed the <a href="http://cins.ca/2017/02/27/canadian-neutron-initiative-goes-public/">Canadian Neutron Initiative</a> because we believe there is both a strong reason to maintain Canada’s proud place in this important field and a practical alternative to make it happen.</p>
<p>Today, the federal government spends more than $100 million annually to operate the NRU reactor at Chalk River. For about a fifth of that cost, we propose that Canada invest strategically in the neutron facilities of our international partners and in exploiting the neutron-scattering capabilities of the <a href="https://mnr.mcmaster.ca/index.php/about">McMaster Nuclear Reactor.</a></p>
<p>This would guarantee Canadian scientists access to neutron-scattering infrastructure to keep our country at the forefront of this key scientific capability until the federal government can consider the larger possibility of building a stand-alone neutron-scattering facility.</p>
<p>Although it started operating in 1959, the McMaster Nuclear Reactor is expected to remain viable for many years, in part due to the fact that it’s a relatively low-power reactor.</p>
<p>Today, McMaster is building a new $9 million facility that will tap neutron beams from its reactor to re-establish some of the work that will be lost at Chalk River. </p>
<h2>Time to increase science spending</h2>
<p>This will not only generate unique and exciting science, but it will also help us buy time during the five to 10 years it would take for Canada to fully establish foreign partnerships and consider a stand-alone neutron source that would compete globally. </p>
<p>And the McMaster Nuclear Reactor has capacity for even greater neutron innovation.</p>
<p>Canada already punches above its weight in international science, but its spending on science is well below its weight. The Canadian Neutron Initiative is proposing an investment that will pay off.</p>
<p>The ability to perform materials research with neutron beams is something that Canadian industrial, government and academic researchers absolutely require to be competitive, and we need it now. </p>
<p>Unless this type of initiative is successful, Canada won’t be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84562/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span><a href="mailto:gaulin@mcmaster.ca">gaulin@mcmaster.ca</a> receives funding from NSERC, CFI, ORF. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Root is the Executive Director of the Sylvia Fedoruk Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation, a wholly owned subsidiary of the University of Saskatchewan, funded by Innovation Saskatchewan, an agency of the Province of Saskatchewan, for a mandate from 2012-2019. John Root is also the Director of the Canadian Neutron Beam Centre, which, prior to 2012, was 35% supported by an NSERC Major Resource Support grant administered by McGill University, to maintain facilities in a state of readiness for access by academic researchers. </span></em></p>
Canada is a world leader in the field of neutron scattering, winning a Nobel Prize in 1994 for its invention. But the looming shutdown of facilities at Chalk River puts us on the sidelines.
Bruce Gaulin, McMaster University
John Root, Executive Director of the Sylvia Fedoruk Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation, University of Saskatchewan
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/69306
2016-11-24T09:14:49Z
2016-11-24T09:14:49Z
Holograms are no longer the future, but we must not forget them – here’s why
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147244/original/image-20161123-19685-1i36y0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The future's so bright ...</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sean Johnston</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://courses.ncssm.edu/gallery/collections/toys/html/exhibit01.htm">Stereoscopes</a> entertained every Victorian home with their ability to produce three-dimensional pictures. Typewriters and later fax machines were once essential for business practices. Photo printers and video rentals came and went from high streets. </p>
<p>When innovative technologies like these come to the end of their lives, we have various ways of remembering them. It might be through rediscovery – hipster subculture popularising retro technologies like valve radios or vinyl, for example. Or it might be by fitting the technology into a narrative of progress, such as the way we laugh at the brick-sized mobile phones of 30 years ago next to the sleek smartphones of today. </p>
<p>These stories sometimes simplify reality but they have their uses: they let companies align themselves with continual improvement and justify <a href="http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160612-heres-the-truth-about-the-planned-obsolescence-of-tech">planned obsolescence</a>. Even museums of science and technology tend to chronicle advances rather than document dead-ends or unachieved hopes. </p>
<p>But some technologies are more problematic: their expectations have failed to materialise, or have retreated into an indefinite future. <a href="http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20141209-sinclair-c5-30-years-too-soon">Sir Clive Sinclair’s C5</a> electric trike was a good example. Invisible in traffic, exposed to weather and excluded from pedestrian and cycle spaces, it satisfied no one. It has not been revived as retro-tech, and fits uncomfortably into a story of transport improvement. We risk forgetting it altogether. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0EQetm_qWDg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>When we are talking about a single product like the C5, that is one thing. But in some cases we are talking about a whole genre of innovation. Take the hologram, for instance. </p>
<p>The hologram was conceived by Hungarian engineer <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1971/gabor-bio.html">Dennis Gabor</a> some 70 years ago. It was breathlessly reported in the media from the early 1960s, <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1971/">winning Gabor</a> the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1971, and hologram exhibitions attracted audiences of tens of thousands during the 1980s. Today, tens of millions of people have heard of them, but mostly through science fiction, computer gaming or social media. None of those representations bear much resemblance to the real thing.</p>
<p>When I first began researching the history of the field, my raw materials were mostly typical fodder for historians: unpublished documents and interviews. I had to hunt for them in neglected boxes in the homes, garages and memories of retired engineers, artists and entrepreneurs. The companies, universities and research labs that had once kept the relevant records and equipment had often lost track of them. The reasons were not difficult to trace. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0ics3RVSn9w?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>The future that never came</h2>
<p>Holography had been conceived by Gabor as an improvement for <a href="http://www.explainthatstuff.com/electronmicroscopes.html">electron microscopes</a>, but after a decade its British developers <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AtATDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA56&lpg=PA56&dq=T.+E.+Allibone,+%22White+and+black+elephants+at+Aldermaston,%22+Journal+of+Electronics+and+Control,+4+(1958),+179-92.&source=bl&ots=BGwdi8yVdF&sig=7d1amUWGCDMC5brtMdeTF6hxjBk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjwoui6nb_QAhUDLcAKHfwlD6QQ6AEIGzAA#v=onepage&q=T.%20E.%20Allibone%2C%20%22White%20and%20black%20elephants%20at%20Aldermaston%2C%22%20Journal%20of%20Electronics%20and%20Control%2C%204%20(1958)%2C%20179-92.&f=false">publicly dubbed</a> it an impractical white elephant. At the same time, American and Soviet researchers were quietly <a href="https://www.academia.edu/1784560/The_parallax_view_the_military_origins_of_holography">developing</a> a Cold War application: bypassing inadequate electronic computers by holographic image processing showed good potential, but it could not be publicly acknowledged.</p>
<p>Instead, the engineering industry <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=iPfU_powAgAC&pg=PA101&lpg=PA101&dq=%E2%80%98Lensless+photography+uses+laser+beams+to+enlarge+negatives,+microscope+slides%E2%80%99,+Wall+Street+Journal,+5+Dec.+1963&source=bl&ots=UZNTUoJYCI&sig=lvZ5gv6SLrE5npbqlhjFahDXFpQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjcrLj0nb_QAhUPOsAKHbANAL0Q6AEIGzAA#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%98Lensless%20photography%20uses%20laser%20beams%20to%20enlarge%20negatives%2C%20microscope%20slides%E2%80%99%2C%20Wall%20Street%20Journal%2C%205%20Dec.%201963&f=false">publicised</a> the technology as “lensless 3D photography” in the 1960s, predicting that traditional photography would be replaced and that holographic television and home movies were imminent. Companies and government-sponsored labs pitched in, eager to explore the rich potential of the field, <a href="http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/proceeding.aspx?articleid=755546">generating</a> 1,000 PhDs, 7,000 patents and 20,000 papers. But by the end of the decade, none of these applications were any closer to materialising.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147235/original/image-20161123-19722-rtb9ew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147235/original/image-20161123-19722-rtb9ew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147235/original/image-20161123-19722-rtb9ew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1039&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147235/original/image-20161123-19722-rtb9ew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1039&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147235/original/image-20161123-19722-rtb9ew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1039&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147235/original/image-20161123-19722-rtb9ew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1306&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147235/original/image-20161123-19722-rtb9ew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1306&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147235/original/image-20161123-19722-rtb9ew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1306&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Exhibition time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sean Johnston</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>From the 1970s, artists and artisans began taking up holograms as an art form and home attraction, leading to a wave of public exhibitions and a cottage industry. Entrepreneurs flocked to the field, attracted by expectations of guaranteed progress and profits. Physicist Stephen Benton of Polaroid Corporation and later MIT <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tLWlCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=benton+%22is+not+a+technological+speculation,+it+is+a+historical+inevitability%22&source=bl&ots=bajjz-yDEv&sig=BjCw9DT-5MH6SvDLkPzy9AWl6Yw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiPka2e6r7QAhXEIsAKHRrjDmkQ6AEIGzAA">expressed</a> his faith: “A satisfying and effective three-dimensional image”, he said, “is not a technological speculation, it is a historical inevitability”. </p>
<p>Not much had emerged a decade later, though unexpected new potential niches sprang up. Holograms were touted for magazine illustrations and billboards, for instance. And finally there was a commercial success – holographic security patches on credit cards and bank notes.</p>
<p>Ultimately, however, this is a story of failed endeavour. Holography has not replaced photography. Holograms do not dominate advertising or home entertainment. There is no way of generating a holographic image that behaves like the image of Princess Leia projected by R2-D2 in Star Wars, or Star Trek’s <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Holographic_program">holographic doctor</a>. So pervasive are cultural expectations even now that it is almost obligatory to follow such statements with “… yet”. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pUaxXsqGeFI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Preserving disappointment</h2>
<p>Holography is a field of innovation where art, science, popular culture, consumerism and cultural confidences intermingled; and was shaped as much by its audiences as by its creators. Yet it doesn’t fit the kind of stories of progress that we tend to tell. You could say the same about <a href="http://uk.ign.com/articles/2010/04/23/the-history-of-3d-movie-tech">3D cinema</a> and <a href="http://technosnowball.co.uk/blog/the-history-of-3d-television/">television</a> or the <a href="http://io9.gizmodo.com/seriously-scary-radioactive-consumer-products-from-the-498044380">health benefits</a> of radioactivity, for example. </p>
<p>When a technology does not deliver its potential, museums are less interested in holding exhibitions; universities and other institutions less interested in devoting space to collections. When the people who keep them in their garages die, they are likely to end up in landfill. As the Malian writer Amadou Hampâté Bâ <a href="http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0011/001145/114582f.pdf">observed</a>: “When an old person dies, a library burns”. Yet it is important we remember these endeavours. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147240/original/image-20161123-19696-1wl2oa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147240/original/image-20161123-19696-1wl2oa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147240/original/image-20161123-19696-1wl2oa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147240/original/image-20161123-19696-1wl2oa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147240/original/image-20161123-19696-1wl2oa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147240/original/image-20161123-19696-1wl2oa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147240/original/image-20161123-19696-1wl2oa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147240/original/image-20161123-19696-1wl2oa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Miaow.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/voyagernz/8222687289/in/photolist-dwBqsv-apzuWc-bmTXsg-7k3XAz-3ehBt-4jJmwV-3Q9FwQ-CgHut-7k3XAg-4do6X-4xQMtQ-4docc-3q65-6P8Jmx-bdm8EV-5A4G4x-ku7yU-21vFU-GrV4z-eUkXuc-pG9XX7-brUnBD-5qDcfS-ah5iM-6UTNVC-5voJvS-mvjmAd-2Nqaq-rY85q-mZAxM-4Q2ctc-25E3hz-4PSRag-prNmDY-rY85A-gPXPZb-3PeDon-nCs58-rY85u-rY85w-56gq8U-bvQLQ-c5cMb-prQZaG-4Vnyzb-25UwiZ-6BRNuP-7fEBPC-5rBUN8-6bp3rG">Murray Adamson</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Technologies like holograms were created and consumed by an exceptional range of social groups, from classified scientists to countercultural explorers. Most lived that technological faith, and many gained insights from sharing frustrating or secret experiences of innovation. </p>
<p>It gets left to us historians to hold these stories of unsuccessful fields together, and arguably that’s not sufficient. By remembering our endeavours with holograms or 3D cinema or radioactive therapy we may help future generations understand how technologies make society tick. For that vital reason, preserving them needs to be more of a priority.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69306/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sean Johnston has received funding for this research from
Shearwater Foundation (now defunct), the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland and the
American Institute of Physics Center for the History of Physics. </span></em></p>
When technologies let us down, they tend to be forgotten. There’s a very good reason why this should be resisted.
Sean F. Johnston, Professor of Science, Technology and Society, University of Glasgow
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/59369
2016-05-18T05:48:36Z
2016-05-18T05:48:36Z
A bit of numeracy can take the heat out of the asylum debate
<p>Fear of “innumerate and illiterate” asylum seekers arriving in Australia is immigration minister Peter Dutton’s <a href="http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2016/05/18/labor-calls-on-pm-to-reject-refugee-comments.html">latest broadside</a> in the ongoing to-and-fro over asylum seeker policy.</p>
<p>Unfortunately for the asylum debate, numeracy is rather lost. In this regard, we can all learn something from the 1938 Physics Nobel Laureate <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1938/fermi-bio.html">Enrico Fermi</a>.</p>
<p>Fermi was renowned for his back-of-the-envelope numerical estimates, having calculated the yield of the first atomic bomb blast based on the distance its shock wave carried some shredded tissue paper he had brought to the <a href="http://www.atomicheritage.org/profile/enrico-fermi">Trinity test</a>.</p>
<p>He is also known among physicists for his “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem">Fermi problems</a>”, with which he livened up PhD oral examinations. It’s an approach that can be applied to the current asylum seeker discussion.</p>
<p>One Fermi problem that has been handed down to generations of physicists asks: “how many piano tuners work in Chicago?”.</p>
<h2>The piano problem</h2>
<p>This question has nothing particularly to do with physics. But answering it requires a skill that physics students should develop: the ability to make plausible estimates from reasonable assumed figures.</p>
<p>One response to the piano problem goes like this: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>There were about 500,000 households in Chicago, of which about a fifth have a piano, so there are about 100,000 pianos.</p></li>
<li><p>If a typical piano needs tuning every two years, 50,000 pianos need tuning per year.</p></li>
<li><p>If it takes a piano tuner three hours to tune a piano, a full-time worker (working 2,000 hours a year) can tune about 660 pianos in a year.</p></li>
<li><p>So there’s enough work for about 75 piano tuners in Chicago.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Of course, different estimates for the assumed figures will give different <a href="https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/Numbers/Math/Mathematical_Thinking/fermis_piano_tuner.htm">estimates for the number of piano tuners</a>, but the point is the approach, and the order of magnitude of the result.</p>
<p>Fermi had an <a href="http://abyss.uoregon.edu/%7Ejs/cosmo/lectures/lec28.html">extraterrestrial</a> <a href="http://www.seti.org/seti-institute/project/details/fermi-paradox">version</a> too: “Where are all the other civilisations in the galaxy?”. One answer to this is summarised in the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120821-how-many-alien-worlds-exist">Drake equation</a>.</p>
<p>At heart, the solution to the piano problem and the extraterrestrial Drake equation are similar: identify all the factors that affect the solution, make plausible estimates and multiply them out.</p>
<h2>The refugee problem</h2>
<p>We can apply the same approach to the increasingly divisive issue of asylum seeker policy.</p>
<p>In Australia, and in Europe, the debate has polarised into two camps: one driven by compassion for individuals escaping dire circumstances; the other by the need to regulate migration across national borders.</p>
<p>The “compassion” side recognises our common humanity, and our existing <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-australias-obligations-under-the-un-refugee-convention-16195">commitments</a> to provide asylum to those escaping persecution. </p>
<p>The “controlled migration” side recognises that there are limits to the capacity for any nation to absorb a sudden, large influx of immigrants. Indeed, Nauru, where refugees constitute more than <a href="http://unhcr.org/556725e69.html">3%</a> of its population, has had well-publicised problems.</p>
<p>In this confused situation, Fermi, who himself <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/enrico-fermi-9293405#early-career-in-physics">immigrated</a> to the United States to escape anti-semitic laws in Mussolini’s Italy, might well ask:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>How many refugees can the wealthy nations of the world accommodate? </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The question, and its answer, is about capacity, not political will. But given this proviso, if the answer is “fewer than there are people in need”, then there is genuinely no solution to be found. On the other hand, if the answer is “more than there are in need”, then there is capacity, at least. </p>
<h2>Crunching the numbers</h2>
<p>So what’s the answer? The first part is straightforward: the number of international asylum applications each year fluctuates between <a href="http://unhcr.org/556725e69.html">one and two million</a>.</p>
<p>The debatable part of the calculation requires an estimate of the number of immigrants a nation can take each year.</p>
<p>To give some Australian <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1415/RefugeeResettlement#_ftnref14">context</a>, there are around 190,000 immigrants coming to Australia each year under our migrant program, and between 6,000 and 12,000 refugees arriving annually under our refugee resettlement program.</p>
<p>My estimate is that a wealthy nation can comfortably accommodate refugees up to about 0.2% of its population per year.</p>
<p>Why 0.2%? Why not 1%? Well, after ten years at 1% annual intake, 10% of the population would be a first-generation refugee migrant. This is a number that will start to be felt as a significant demographic shift, with the potential for political backlash.</p>
<p>At 0.2% annual intake, it would take 50 years to reach this level. This is plenty of time for both immigrants and social structures to adapt and integrate.</p>
<p>For Australia, the <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs%40.nsf/94713ad445ff1425ca25682000192af2/1647509ef7e25faaca2568a900154b63?OpenDocument">current population</a> is about 24 million so a 0.2% annual intake equals about 48,000 refugee places that we could comfortably resettle per year. </p>
<p>This is lower than our skilled migration program admits, and larger than the proposed refugee and humanitarian quotas of the Liberal party (<a href="https://www.liberal.org.au/our-plan/protecting-our-borders">18,750</a>) and the Labor party (<a href="http://www.alp.org.au/asylumseekers">27,000</a>). The Greens have a more expansive policy (<a href="http://greens.org.au/refugees">50,000</a>).</p>
<p>Indeed, this is the root of the political problem that some have described as “<a href="https://theconversation.com/nothing-seems-able-to-make-nauru-asylum-seekers-an-issue-58895">wicked</a>”: the global demand for asylum dwarfs all of these numbers, so Australian politicians cannot unilaterally fix the issue.</p>
<p>Instead, they play at the edges, variously exploiting it for <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/peter-dutton-says-illiterate-and-innumerate-refugees-would-take-australian-jobs-20160517-goxhj1.html">political gain</a> or wringing their hands.</p>
<p>But resettlement should be shared across the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (<a href="http://www.oecd.org/">OECD</a>) representing <a href="http://www.oecd.org/about/membersandpartners/">wealthy nations</a> that can afford to carry the load. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://data.oecd.org/pop/population.htm">total population</a> of the OECD nations is more than a billion. A resettlement rate of 0.2% across the OECD equals more than two million refugee places per year. This is larger than the typical number of annual asylum applications.</p>
<p>So Fermi has given us an answer: there is international capacity to distribute the flow of asylum seekers across the wealthy countries of the world. </p>
<p>An orderly and politically manageable process to achieve this requires international coordination. This is a diplomatic problem that Fermi can’t answer.</p>
<p>But with political will, it has been solved in earlier decades of conflict-driven migration.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59369/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Stace is a member of the Labor party. </span></em></p>
What a Nobel prize-winning physicist can teach us about about trying to deal with the current global crisis over asylum seekers and refugees.
Thomas Stace, Associate Professor in Physics, The University of Queensland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/18978
2013-10-08T11:18:54Z
2013-10-08T11:18:54Z
Could the Higgs Nobel be the end of particle physics?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32603/original/vbkhf6dt-1381172412.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C134%2C1122%2C836&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Spelling out the end?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Claudia Marcelloni/CERN</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics has been <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2013/">awarded</a> to François Englert and Peter Higgs for their work that explains why subatomic particles have mass. They predicted the existence of the Higgs boson, a fundamental particle, which was confirmed last year by experiments conducted at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.</p>
<p>But today’s celebrations mask a growing anxiety among physicists. The discovery of the Higgs boson is an undoubted triumph, but many note that it hasn’t brought us any closer to answering some of the most troubling problems in fundamental science.</p>
<p>A senior physicist went so far as to tell me that he was “totally unexcited by the discovery of the Higgs boson”. Though not the typical reaction, this discovery threatens to close a chapter of 20th century physics <a href="http://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/insight/2012/11/19/the-boring-boson/">without a hint</a> of how to start writing the next page.</p>
<p>Until July last year, when physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) announced its <a href="http://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/insight/2012/07/04/higgs-boson-discovered/">discovery</a>, the Higgs boson remained the last missing piece of the Standard Model of particle physics, a theory that describes all the particles that make up the world we live in with stunning accuracy. The Standard Model has passed every experimental test thrown at it with flying colours, and yet has some rather embarrassing holes.</p>
<p>According to astronomical measurements, the matter described by the Standard Model that makes up the stars, planets and ultimately us, only accounts for a tiny fraction of the universe. We appear to be a thin layer of froth, floating on top of an invisible ocean of dark matter and dark energy, about which we know almost nothing.</p>
<p>Worse still, according to the Standard Model, we shouldn’t exist at all. The theory predicts that, after the Big Bang, equal quantities of matter and antimatter should have obliterated each other, leaving an empty universe. </p>
<p>Both of these are good scientific reasons to doubt that the Standard Model is the end of the story when it comes to the laws of physics. But there is another, aesthetic principle that has led many physicists to doubt its completeness – the principle of “naturalness”.</p>
<p>The Standard Model is regarded as a highly “unnatural” theory. Aside from having a large number of different particles and forces, many of which seem surplus to requirement, it is also very precariously balanced. If you change any of the 20+ numbers that have to be put into the theory even a little, you rapidly find yourself living in a universe without atoms. This spooky fine-tuning worries many physicists, leaving the universe looking as though it has been set up in just the right way for life to exist.</p>
<p>The Higgs’s boson provides us with one of the worst cases of unnatural fine-tuning. A surprising discovery of the 20th century was the realisation that empty space is
far from empty. The vacuum is, in fact, a broiling soup of invisible “virtual” particles, constantly popping in and out of existence.</p>
<p>The conventional wisdom states that as the Higgs boson passes through the vacuum it interacts with this soup of virtual particles and this interaction drives its mass to an absolutely enormous value – potentially up to a hundred million billion times larger than the one measured at the LHC.</p>
<p>Theorists have attempted to tame the unruly Higgs mass by proposing extensions of the Standard Model. The most popular of which is “supersymmetry”, which introduces a heavier super-particle or “sparticle” for every particle in the Standard Model. These sparticles cancel out the effect of the virtual particles in the vacuum, reducing the Higgs mass to a reasonable value and eliminating the need for any unpleasant fine-tuning.</p>
<p>Supersymmetry has other features that have made it popular with physicists. Perhaps its best selling point is that one of these sparticles provides a neat explanation for the mysterious dark matter that makes up about a quarter of the universe.</p>
<p>Although discovering the Higgs boson may have been put forward as the main reason for building the 27km Large Hadron Collider (LHC), what most physicists have really been waiting for is a sign of something new. As Higgs himself said shortly after the discovery last year, “[The Higgs boson] is not the most interesting thing that the LHC is looking for”.</p>
<p>So far however, the LHC has turned up <a href="http://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/insight/2013/07/19/standard-model-stands-firm/">nothing</a>.</p>
<p>If supersymmetry is really responsible for keeping the Higgs boson’s mass low, then sparticles should show up at energies not much higher than where the LHC found the Higgs. The fact that nothing has been found has already <a href="http://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/insight/2012/11/12/supersymmetry-in-a-spin/">ruled out</a> many popular forms of supersymmetry. </p>
<p>This has led some theorists to abandon naturalness altogether. One relatively new idea known as “split-supersymmetry” accepts fine-tuning in the Higgs mass, but keeps the other nice features of supersymmetry, like a dark matter particle.</p>
<p>This may sound like a technical difference, but the implications for the nature of our universe are profound. The argument is that we live in a fine-tuned universe because it happens to be one among an effectively infinite number of different universes, each with different laws of physics. The constants of nature are what they are because if they were different atoms could not form, and hence we wouldn’t be around to wonder about them.</p>
<p>This anthropic argument is in part motivated by developments in string theory, a potential “theory of everything”, for which there are a vast number (roughly 10<sup>500)</sup> different possible universes with different laws of physics. (This huge number of universes is often used as a criticism of string theory, sometimes derided as a “theory of everything else” as no one has so far found a solution that corresponds to the universe we live in.) However, if split-supersymmetry is right, the lack of new physics at the LHC could be indirect evidence for the existence of the very multiverse anticipated by string theory.</p>
<p>All of this could be rather bad news for the LHC. If the battle for naturalness is lost, then there is no reason why new particles must appear in the next few years. Some physicists are campaigning for an even larger collider, four times longer and seven times more powerful than the LHC. </p>
<p>This monster collider could be used to settle the question once and for all, but it’s hard to imagine that such a machine will get the go ahead, especially if the LHC fails to find anything beyond the Higgs.</p>
<p>We are at a critical juncture in particle physics. Perhaps after it restarts the LHC in 2015, it will uncover new particles, naturalness will survive and particle physicists will stay in business. There are reasons to be optimistic. After all, we know that there must be something new that explains dark matter, and there remains a good chance that the LHC will find it.</p>
<p>But perhaps, just perhaps, the LHC will find nothing. The Higgs boson could be particle physics’ swansong, the last particle of the accelerator age. Though a worrying possibility for experimentalists, such a result could lead to a profound shift in our understanding of the universe, and our place in it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18978/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Harry Cliff is affiliated with the University of Cambridge, CERN, the LHCb experiment.</span></em></p>
The 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to François Englert and Peter Higgs for their work that explains why subatomic particles have mass. They predicted the existence of the Higgs boson, a fundamental…
Harry Cliff, Particle Physicist and Science Museum Fellow, University of Cambridge
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/18939
2013-10-06T20:59:38Z
2013-10-06T20:59:38Z
The not-so-noble past of the Nobel Prizes
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32520/original/k7v4k9gm-1381092566.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Nobel Prize is not scratch-proof.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">aktivioslo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When physicist Richard Feynman was asked which now-deceased person from history he would most like to speak with, and what he would say, he said: “My father. I would tell him that I won the Nobel Prize.” The prestige of a Nobel Prize is not in doubt, but its 112-year history has been controversial and colourful.</p>
<p>The story behind the Prize is well known: industrialist Alfred Nobel stipulated in his 1895 will that most of his fortune be used to establish a fund to award five annual prizes “to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.” Prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace were first awarded in 1901; economics was added in 1969.</p>
<p>The Nobel Prize is held in such regard that other prizes are sometimes defined in terms of it. The Fields Medal is informally known as the “Nobel Prize of Maths”. The recent Milner Fundamental Physics Prize has been called the “Russian Nobel”. The Israeli Wolf Prize referred to as the “Pre-Nobel” prize, because of the many recipients who later win the Nobel. Conversely, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ig-nobels-2013-from-attaching-penises-to-stargazing-beetles-18120">Ig Nobel Prize</a>* is an American parody of the Nobel, given to “honour achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think”. </p>
<p>But there have been quite a few controversies, even if we don’t consider the often-politicised peace prize. For instance, half of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa for their discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature. Many felt that Nicola Cabibbo also deserved the award, as his work on two quark families laid the foundation for Kobayashi and Maskawa.</p>
<p>Such complications arise because of a rule to not award the prize to more than three people. In 1965 the Physics Prize went to Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Julian Schwinger and Richard Feynman for their contributions to quantum electrodynamics, but not to Freeman Dyson who had mathematically demonstrated that their three approaches were equivalent. </p>
<p>A similar problem was anticipated for the development of quantum chromodynamics, which was based on published research articles by David Gross, David Politzer and Frank Wilczek as well as a lecture series by Gerard ‘t Hooft. Fortunately, ’t Hooft received the prize for another contribution in 1999, allowing the other three to share the prize in 2004.</p>
<h2>The No-Bell prize</h2>
<p>There has also been an unfortunate history of the Nobel committee not recognising the achievements of women. Columbia University researcher Chien-Shiung Wu experimentally confirmed the beta decay theoretical prediction of Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee, helping them win the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics, though she herself did not receive it. </p>
<p>Rosalind Franklin’s work on X-ray diffraction images of DNA confirmed its helical structure, for which Francis Crick, James Watson and Maurice Wilkins received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. Franklin herself was never even nominated, and tragically died at age 37 of ovarian cancer. </p>
<p>And Joycelyn Bell Burnell did not share in the 1974 Nobel Prize for the first observation of radio pulsars, despite the fact that she was the one who had actually observed them. She shared the observations with her doctoral thesis adviser Antony Hewish, who did receive the Prize. The astronomy community has so universally condemned that award that it is often called the “No-Bell” prize.</p>
<p>The gravitas of the prize has also given rise to a number of urban legends. The most popular one is that there is no Mathematics Prize because Nobel’s wife (or mistress) was clandestinely involved with a Swedish mathematician. This is not true, though. What is true is that when the 2010 Physics laureate Andre Geim was informed of his recognition by the Swedish Academy, he replied, “The Nobel Prize has interrupted my work. I’m not sure it is a useful interruption, though it certainly is a pleasant one.”</p>
<p>Ironically, receiving the prize that recognises a great accomplishment is often accompanied with a decline in scientific accomplishment. This is most likely due to the deluge of social demands placed upon the laureates, who are perceived not just as a great scientist but also a sage. </p>
<p>French biochemist André Lwoff, winner of the 1965 physiology or medicine prize, speaking on behalf of his colleagues, observed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have gone from zero to the condition of movie stars. We have been submitted to what may be called an ordeal. We are not used to this sort of public life which has made it impossible for us to go on with our work…Our lives are completely upset…When you have organised your life for your work and then such a thing happens to you, you discover that you are faced with fantastic new responsibilities, new duties.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Richard Feynman claimed in his memoirs that he was almost afraid of winning because he might never again do any notable work, though in reality he made several notable accomplishments. The most bizarre post-Nobel career is undoubtedly that of Brian Josephson, who shared the 1973 physics prize for devising the eponymous solid-state junction. Afterwards Josephson became a follower of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and attempted to reconcile quantum physics with transcedental meditation. He is now director of the Mind-Matter Unification Project at Cambridge University, working hard to keep Britain at the “forefront of research” on telepathy.</p>
<p>The Nobel’s combination of science and politics can create unusual relationships. Linus Pauling is the only person to have won two unshared Nobel Prizes, Chemistry in 1954 and Peace in 1962. Following the peace prize, Pauling was invited to dinner at the White House with John F. Kennedy in honour of all the nation’s Nobel Prize Winners. He attended, despite the fact that just hours before Pauling had been picketing the White House against the Kennedy administration’s policies on atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. Kennedy greeted Pauling with a quip: “I understand you’ve been around the White House a couple of days already.” Pauling grinned and answered yes. Kennedy added, “I hope you will continue to express your feelings.” The two men shook hands.</p>
<hr>
<p>*<em>Physicist Andre Geim is the first person to receive both the Nobel and Ig Nobel Prizes. The former for developing a new two-dimensional material called graphene and the latter for magnetically levitating a live frog.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18939/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Jackson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
When physicist Richard Feynman was asked which now-deceased person from history he would most like to speak with, and what he would say, he said: “My father. I would tell him that I won the Nobel Prize…
Mark Jackson, Postdoctoral Researcher, Centre de Cosmologie Physique de Paris
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.