October 11, 2019

Every year in the first week of October, the Nobel Foundation in Sweden awards Nobel Prizes to artists, economists, scientists, and peace workers who—in keeping with the vision of the Swedish chemist and industrialist Alfred Nobel—have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. Today, World Book looks at the first three prizes, in the scientific categories of physiology or medicine, physics, and chemistry.

Nobel Prize medal (Credit: Nobel Foundation)

On Monday, October 7, 2019, the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was given jointly to the scientists William G. Kaelin, Jr., Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe, and Gregg L. Semenza for their work showing how cells adapt to the changing availability of oxygen. Kaelin, Ratcliffe, and Semenza identified the molecular machinery that allows cells to respond to changes in oxygen levels. Their discoveries offer promising new strategies in the treatment of such diseases and maladies as anemia, cancer, heart attacks, and strokes.

William G. Kaelin, Jr., was born in New York and is a professor of medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School. Peter J. Ratcliffe of the United Kingdom is the director of clinical research at the Francis Crick Institute in London and director of the Target Discovery Institute at the University of Oxford. Gregg L. Semenza, also from New York, is a professor of genetic medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

On Tuesday, October 8, the Nobel Foundation announced the prize for physics had been awarded to the Canadian-American cosmologist James Peebles and to the Swiss scientists Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz for their work on explaining the evolution of the universe and for discovering distant exoplanets (planets beyond our solar system). Among other things, Peebles theorized how matter in the young universe swirled into galaxies. In 1995, Mayor and Queloz discovered an exoplanet orbiting a star elsewhere in our home galaxy, the Milky Way, enhancing the study of planetary systems beyond our own that could support life.

James Peebles is the Albert Einstein professor of science at Princeton University in New Jersey. Michel Mayor is an astrophysicist and professor emeritus of astronomy at the University of Geneva. Didier Queloz is a professor of physics at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, and at the University of Geneva.

On Wednesday, October 9, the Nobel Foundation announced that John B. Goodenough of the United States, M. Stanley Whittingham of the United Kingdom, and Akira Yoshino of Japan would share the prize for chemistry for developing and refining rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. The lightweight, rechargeable, and powerful batteries are used in everything from mobile phones to laptop computers and electric vehicles. They can also store great amounts of energy from solar and wind power, further enabling the possibility of a fossil fuel-free future.

At 97 years old, John B. Goodenough is the oldest ever recipient of the Nobel Prize. He is currently the Virginia H. Cockrell Chair in Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. M. Stanley Whittingham is a distinguished professor at Binghamton University, State University of New York. Akira Yoshino is an honorary fellow at Tokyo’s Asahi Kasei Corporation and a professor at Meijo University in Nagoya, Japan.

October 5, 2018

Every year in the first week of October, the Nobel Foundation in Sweden awards Nobel Prizes to artists, economists, scientists, and peace workers who–in keeping with the vision of chemist and industrialist Alfred Nobel–have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. On Monday, the foundation awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to scientists James P. Allison of the United States and Tasuku Honjo of Japan for their research on immunotherapy that stimulates the body’s immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells. Allison and Honjo helped develop powerful new therapies to treat, and in some instances cure, certain types of cancer.

Nobel Prize medal (Credit: Nobel Foundation)

James P. Allison is with the department of immunology at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. Tasuku Honjo is a professor in the department of immunology and genomic medicine at Kyoto University.

On Tuesday, the Nobel Foundation announced the prize for physics had been awarded to three scientists: Arthur Ashkin (from the United States), Gérard Mourou (France), and Donna Strickland (Canada) for their groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics. Ashkin invented “optical tweezers,” an instrument that uses lasers to manipulate such tiny objects as atoms, viruses, and living cells. Mourou and Strickland worked together to generate the shortest and most intense laser pulses ever created. This technology has many useful applications and is the basis for LASIK eye surgery. The pair published an article on the laser research in 1985, when Mourou was teaching at the University of Rochester in New York and Strickland was a graduate student there.

Arthur Ashkin’s prize-winning work was conducted while he worked at Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey. At age 96, he is the oldest Nobel Prize recipient ever. Gérard Mourou is currently with the École Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France. Donna Strickland is associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Strickland is just the third woman in 117 years to win the Nobel Prize in physics. Polish-born scientist Marie Curie shared the prize in 1903 for her research on radiation. In 1963, German-born scientist Maria Goeppert Mayer shared the prize for her research on atomic nuclei.

On Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2018, the Nobel Foundation announced that Americans Frances H. Arnold and George P. Smith would share the prize for chemistry with Sir Gregory Winter of the United Kingdom for using directed evolution to synthesize proteins. This process mimics natural selection, the driving force of biological evolution, in a laboratory to create novel proteins with useful properties.

Arnold is currently a professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. She is the fifth woman to win the chemistry prize. Smith is a former professor at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Winter is affiliated with the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.

March 15, 2018

Yesterday, March 14, famed British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking died in Cambridge, England, at age 76. Hawking made some of the most important discoveries about gravity since Albert Einstein. Einstein, a German-born physicist, invented general relativity, the modern theory of gravity, in 1915. Hawking worked to increase our understanding of the earliest history of the universe. His work supported the theory that the universe began in a cosmic explosion called the big bang.

British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking answers questions on a computer attached to his wheelchair during an interview in 2007. Hawking died on March 14, 2018. Credit: © John Raoux, AP Photo

Hawking is probably best known for his theories about objects called black holes. A black hole’s gravitational force is so strong that nothing—not even light—can escape it. Hawking used a field of physics called quantum mechanics to show that a black hole nevertheless gives off particles and radiation until it eventually disappears. These emissions became known as Hawking radiation. He also proposed that tiny, atom-sized primordial black holes were produced in the early moments after the big bang. In addition, Hawking worked to combine quantum mechanics and gravity into a single unified theory.

Three of Hawking’s books became international best sellers. They were A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (1988), The Universe in a Nutshell (2001), and The Grand Design (2010), which he co-wrote with American physicist Leonard Mlodinow. Following the success of A Brief History of Time, Hawking became a recognizable figure in popular culture, appearing in or lending his distinctive image and voice to various television shows. In 1991, American director Errol Morris made A Brief History of Time into an award-winning documentary film.

Hawking suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), an incurable disease of the nervous system. He could not speak or move more than a few hand and face muscles. Using a wheelchair and a computer voice simulator, however, he wrote and gave professional and public lectures around the world.

Hawking received numerous prestigious awards, including the Royal Society’s Copley Medal, the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, and the American Presidential Medal of Freedom. He spoke on issues concerning science and society, such as genetic engineering, the colonization of space, and artificial intelligence.

Stephen William Hawking was born on Jan. 8, 1942, in Oxford, England. In 1966, he received a doctorate degree from Cambridge University. He afterward held a variety of research posts there. From 1979 to 2009, he held the prestigious position of Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, a chair once held by the English scientist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton.

October 4, 2017

Yesterday, October 3, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden, awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics to three American scientists. Rainer Weiss of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) shared the prize with Barry Barish and Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) for their work on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) experiment that led to the discovery of gravitational waves.

Nobel Prize medal (Credit: Nobel Foundation)

The existence of gravitational waves was predicted in 1915 by the German-born American physicist Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. A gravitational wave is a type of radiation that carries gravitational force. Scientists think that violent cosmic events create powerful gravitational waves. The waves, however, are difficult to detect because they grow weaker as they travel outward from their source. Researchers expect the waves that reach Earth to be very weak. The strongest waves might change the separation between two balls 0.6 mile (1 kilometer) apart by less than a thousandth of the diameter of the nucleus of an atom. Detecting such waves presented a significant challenge in physics.

Over years of research and collaboration, Thorne made important predictions of what the detection of gravitational waves would actually look like and how to identify them. He and Weiss helped develop plans to build large interferometers, devices that use light waves or other waves to make precise measurements, that could detect gravitational waves from cosmic sources. These sources include such violent cosmic events as collisions between black holes and neutron stars, the smallest and densest type of star known. Barish is widely credited for overseeing LIGO from its construction in 1999 to its first measurements in 2002. In 2016, LIGO scientists announced that they had detected gravitational waves coming from two colliding black holes. The gravitational waves had been detected by LIGO on Sept. 14, 2015. Since then, gravitational waves have been detected three more times.

Rainer Weiss was born on Sept. 29, 1932, in Berlin, Germany. He immigrated to the United States in 1938, and he earned a Ph.D. degree from MIT in 1962. Kip S. Thorne was born on Jun. 1, 1940, in Logan, Utah. He studied physics at Caltech and received his Ph.D. degree at Princeton University in New Jersey in 1965. Barry C. Barish was born on Jan. 27, 1936, in Omaha, Nebraska. He studied physics at the University of California at Berkeley, where he received his Ph.D. degree in 1962.

October 5, 2016

Yesterday, October 4, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden, awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in physics to three British scientists now working in the United States. David J. Thouless of the University of Washington in Seattle, F. Duncan M. Haldane of Princeton University, and J. Michael Kosterlitz of Brown University in Rhode Island shared the prize for their predictions on how matter reacts when pushed to its limits.

Nobel Prize medal (Credit: Nobel Foundation)

The physicists used topology to predict what happens to single-atom-thick films or chains at extremely low temperatures. Topology is a branch of mathematics that deals with properties of geometric figures that cannot be changed by stretching, squeezing, or twisting. Thouless, Haldane, and Kosterlitz created topological models to explain the strange behavior of these materials near absolute zero, the temperature at which atoms and molecules have the least amount of heat possible. Later researchers used complex laboratory techniques to confirm the predictions.

Far from being purely theoretical, the laureates’ work may eventually yield real-world dividends. Because their models accurately predict the behavior of exotic states of matter, engineers are exploring the possibilities of using such materials for applications in superconducters and quantum computers. Superconductors are materials that conduct electric current without resistance at extremely low temperatures. Quantum computers are machines that perform calculations by taking advantage of certain principles in quantum mechanics. Quantum computers can perform complex calculations that are practically impossible with traditional computers. The work of Thouless, Haldane, and Kosterlitz may well contribute to the next generation of advanced electronics.

October 6, 2015

Nobel prize medal (Credit: Nobel Foundation)

Tuesday, October 6, two scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for their discovery that tiny subatomic particles called neutrinos have mass. Takaaki Kajita of Japan and Arthur B. McDonald of Canada shared the prize. The subject of their work, neutrinos, are so astonishingly small that they barely seem to exist at all. Thousands of billions of neutrinos constantly stream through Earth—and through the matter of our bodies—like wind through a screen door. Kajita and McDonald confirmed a remarkable property of the neutrino. As the particle moves through space, it can oscillate, or shift, between three different types. A mathematical consequence of this strange shapeshifting behavior is that at least one type of neutrino must have mass.

Scientists had previously doubted that neutrinos had any mass at all because they move so fast—nearly at the speed of light. In theory, only massless particles can travel at the speed of light. But unlike photons (particles of light), neutrinos barely interact with ordinary matter. Atoms, the building blocks of matter, can readily deflect or absorb photons, forcing light to travel in a zigzagging path. But neutrinos are so tiny, even compared to microscopic atoms, that they simply pass straight through the empty space between and within atoms. Only a handful among billions and billions of neutrinos ever bumps into an atom’s nucleus (core) or the electrons that surround it.

The three types of neutrinos are named after larger “partner” particles: (1) the electron, (2) the muon, and (3) the tau. Each type of neutrino is produced by a different physical process. For example, nuclear reactions in the sun’s core produce electron-neutrinos. High-energy particles called cosmic rays produce muon-neutrinos when they strike Earth’s atmosphere.

Despite the enormous challenge of detecting these ghostly particles, scientists have built machines that measure the rare collisions between neutrinos and bits of matter. Kajita worked at one such machine, the Super-Kamiokande detector, buried deep beneath Earth’s surface. In 1998, Kajita showed that far fewer muon-neutrinos from cosmic rays were showing up in the detector than the amount predicted by theory. In 2001, McDonald, working at another detector, the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, showed that only a third of the neutrinos coming from the sun were electron-neutrinos—even though the sun only produces electron-neutrinos.

The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory consists of a large spherical water tank surrounded by sensors. The sensors detect flashes of light that occur when neutrinos interact with the water. (Sudbury Neutrino Observatory)

Kajita and McDonald’s detailed measurements provided conclusive evidence that the neutrinos from cosmic rays and the sun had not gone missing—they simply changed their identities on their way to the detectors. This shapeshifting ability—oscillation—is explained by a branch of physics called quantum mechanics. In quantum mechanics, a particle’s state—which includes its mass, energy, position, and speed—can be described mathematically as a “wave of probability.” In other words, a neutrino’s state, at any point in time, is not set in stone. Instead, the particle’s state is smeared out among a range of probabilities, which are distributed in a wavelike pattern. At certain points on a neutrino’s “wave of probability,” its state is most likely to be an electron-neutrino. At other points, its state is more likely to be a muon- or tau-neutrino. Thus, by the time an electron-neutrino created in the sun’s core reaches Earth, a different state may have bobbed up on the crest of its probability wave—rendering the particle invisible to electron-neutrino detectors.

If neutrinos had no mass, the complex math of quantum mechanics indicates that oscillation would be impossible to observe. Since Kajita and McDonald showed that neutrinos oscillate, the only logical conclusion is that at least one type of neutrino must have at least some mass. Scientists have yet to measure a neutrino’s mass precisely. But the discovery that at least one version of the particle’s mass is nonzero has many important implications for physics.

July 20, 2015

Physicists have added another type of subatomic particle to the so-called “particle zoo” of quantum mechanics: the pentaquark. This rare, fleeting particle is—as its name implies—made of five smaller particles, called quarks. Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider announced the discovery on July 14, though it was based on detailed measurements taken years earlier during the collider’s atom-smashing operations.

Huge and complex particle accelerators have greatly expanded our understanding of the science of physics. This photograph shows a particle detector at an accelerator called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Physicists at the LHC recently announced the discovery of the pentaquark. (© Maximilien Brice, CERN)

Quarks are elementary particles—that is, pieces of matter that do not seem to consist of anything smaller. Instead, quarks form building blocks for larger particles, called hadrons. Protons and neutrons are two types of hadrons, each containing three quarks. Protons and neutrons, in turn, form the nuclei (cores) of atoms. To understand how small quarks are, consider that atoms are already far too small to see with the naked eye. Then consider that the inside of an atom is almost entirely empty space. If a hydrogen atom were 4 miles (6 kilometers) wide, the single proton inside its nucleus would be the size of a tennis ball. Such is the scale of hadrons and the quarks they contain.

Three-quark hadrons—like protons and neutrons—are called baryons. Mesons are another type of hadron, consisting of just two quarks. Scientists have observed almost three hundred distinct types of hadrons, but until recently, all of these hadrons seem to have contained just two or three quarks. Scientists had predicted that five-quark hadrons—pentaquarks—could exist, theoretically. Now they have experimental proof.

Protons and neutrons are the only stable types of hadrons. All other known types of hadrons, once created, tend to disintegrate within a few hundred-millionths of a second. This difficulty, along with the fact that hadrons are so vanishingly small, makes measuring their presence difficult. But the Large Hadron Collider, based at the CERN organization in Switzerland, was specially built for this task. It accelerates hadrons around an underground ring 17 miles (27 miles) in circumference, causing them to travel at nearly the speed of light. At such speeds, collisions between even the tiniest objects are inevitable over time. New types of hadrons, like pentaquarks and other unstable particles, are created in the debris of such collisions. By carefully and accurately measuring signals from the collisions, and observing the patterns over time, physicists have been able to detect the presence of many new types of particles.

In 2012, physicists at the Large Hadron Collider announced they had found evidence for the Higgs boson, a particle believed to give other particles their mass. The discovery of pentaquarks, while not as earth-shattering as that of the Higgs boson, helps flesh out our understanding of how matter behaves at the smallest scales.

Other World Book articles: 

• Physics (2008-a Back in time article)
• Physics (2012-a Back in time article)
• Physics (2014-a Back in time article)

October 8, 2014

Two Japanese scientists and one American scientist have won the 2014 Nobel Prize in physics for their invention of the energy-efficient, environmentally friendly blue light-emitting diode (LED). Named were Isamu Akasaki of Meijo University and Nagoya University and Hiroshi Amano of Nagoya University of Japan; and American Shuji Nakamura of the University of California, Santa Barbara. In a press release annoucing the award, the Nobel Foundation said the blue LED has revolutionized lighting. “In the spirit of Alfred Nobel,” the foundation said, “the Prize rewards an invention of greatest benefit to mankind; using blue LEDs, white light can be created in a new way. With the advent of LED lamps we now have more long-lasting and more efficient alternatives to older light sources.” About 25 percent of the world’s electrical energy consumption goes toward making light.

Like traditional incandescent light bulbs, LED’s give off light in response to an electric current. But LED’s use electric power much more efficiently than traditional incandescents do. When electric current flows through an incandescent light bulb, most of it is transformed into heat. But in an LED, almost all of the electric current results in light. The devices can be used in a variety of applications, from small colored lights on automobile dashboards to bright street lamps. Some LED’s can last 100 times as long as incandescent bulbs and 10 times as long as fluorescent bulbs.

Light-emitting diodes (LED’s) serve as light sources in many traffic signals. Such signals rarely need replacement because LED’s last far longer than incandescent or fluorescent light bulbs. (© Richard Levine, Alamy Images)

Other researchers had created red and green in the 1950′s, but the blue LED stumped scientists for some 30 years. Blue LED’s enable light bulb manufacturers to efficiently create white-colored light. Beginning in the late 1980′s, Akasaki, Amano, and Nakamura worked separately and alone to create the blue LED by using gallium nitride in the layers of semiconducting materials that make up a LED. A semiconductor is a material that conducts electric current better than an insulator like glass, but not as well as a conductor like copper. A computer chip is a piece of a semiconductor, usually silicon, that contains an electronic circuit. Semiconductors are also used to make solar cells and some lasers.

The Nobel Foundation said, “The Laureates challenged established truths; they worked hard and took considerable risks. They built their equipment themselves, learnt the technology, and carried out thousands of experiments. Most of the time they failed, but they did not despair; this was laboratory artistry at the highest level.”

Additional World Book articles:

• Electric light
• Energy supply

October 8, 2013

Two physicists who developed a theory explaining what gives particles mass have won the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics. Mass is a property related to weight. Peter Higgs of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and Francois Englert of the University Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium were recognized for setting off a 40-year search for a particle, later known as the Higgs boson, which gives mass to the subatomic particles that have that property. The discovery of the Higgs boson—a landmark in scientific research—was announced in 2012 by scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, at the CERN research center in Switzerland. The Higgs is so fundamental to the nature of matter that it has been called the “god particle.”

A giant detector records the particles produced during the collisions between two circulating beams of high-energy particles that takes place in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Using this process, physicists were able to discover the existence of the Higgs boson (© CERN).

Physicists had greeted the discovery of the Higgs boson with excitement because it allowed them to complete the Standard Model, the theory that describes the particles that make up matter and how they interact through forces. The Standard Model has had enormous success in accounting for the interactions between and behavior of elementary particles. However, physicists still could not explain how particles attained mass.

Higgs and Englert were among several physicists who proposed that a missing particle was the source of the mass found in subatomic particles. However, many physicists argued that things could not be so simple, and they proposed models with many additional particles. But the simplest model—proposed by Higgs and his colleagues—became the favorite among physicists.

One property of the Higgs is that it undergoes extremely rapid decay—breaking down into photons and other subatomic particles soon after it appears. A particle accelerator with very high energy is needed to pick out the elusive Higgs among the debris of particle collisions. In the LHC, scientists finally had a particle accelerator powerful enough to reveal the Higgs.

Additional World Book articles:

• Boson
• Nobel, Alfred
• Supersymmetry
• Physics 2012 (a Back in Time article)
• Found—The Top Quark (a special report)

October 9, 2012

The 2012 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to American physicist David Wineland of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and the University of Colorado in Boulder and to French physicist Serge Haroche of the College de France and the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris for their work in the field of quantum optics. Quantum optics is the study of how light as individual particles called photons interacts with matter.

The laws of physics used to describe and predict the behavior of objects that we  encounter in our daily lives were first described by the English scientist Sir Isaac Newton. These laws use such terms as force, velocity, and acceleration to describe the world around us. But extremely small particles seem to follow a different set of rules. These rules are called quantum mechanics. The rules of quantum mechanics deal with single atoms or even smaller particles called subatomic particles.

Many physicists had long believed that trapping and studying quantum particles was impossible. They had thought that simply studying quantum particles in an experiment would destroy the particles. However, Wineland and Haroche, working independently, were able to devise experiments that allowed them to isolate and study quantum particles without destroying them.

Magnesium ions appear in an ion trap, in a false-color image. As more ions are loaded into the trap, they squeeze closer together. (©Signe Seidelin and John Chiaverini/NIST)

Wineland was able to trap and study particles called ions (electrically charged atoms) by surrounding them with electric fields. The experiment is done at an extremely low temperature and in a vacuum (a space with little air or other matter). The scientists then fire a laser into the trap. This causes an ion to achieve a certain quantum state–being in two places at the same time. Haroche was able to trap and study photons using a set of two special mirrors. While the photon is bouncing between the mirrors, a single atom is placed into the same space. The interaction between the atom and the photon allows the particles to be studied.

The work done by Wineland has led to the development of a clock 100 times as accurate as the clock currently used as the standard. Scientists hope that both experiments have paved the way for the development of a quantum computer. This type of computer could use the ability of quantum particles to be in two places at the same time to run at speeds far beyond those of current computers. However, because quantum particles behave in such strange ways, controlling them is a major obstacle. These experiments may provide a step in overcoming this problem.