Thursday, September 22, 2011

2011 Nobel speculation

Here is some speculation about the upcoming Nobel prizes:
REUTERS - Researchers who developed ground-breaking leukaemia drugs, discovered dendrimers and confirmed Einstein's view that quantum entanglement is "spooky" are among Thomson Reuters 2011 top tips to win Nobel prizes for science. ...

Physics, to be announced on Tuesday Oct. 4

* Alain Aspect of the Institut d'Optique, Palaiseau France and the Ecole Polytechnique France, John Clauser, a research physicist at the U.S.-based J.F. Clauser & Associates, and Anton Zeilinger of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, for their tests of Bell's inequalities and research on quantum entanglement.

* Sajeev John of the University of Toronto and Eli Yablonovitch of the University of California Berkeley, for their invention and development of photonic band gap materials.

* Hideo Ohno, director of the Center for Spintronics Integrated Systems at Tohoku University in Japan for contributions to ferromagnetism in diluted magnetic semiconductors.
Einstein did not believe in quantum mechanics. Clauser thought that he was going to get a Nobel Prize for doing the experiment that disproves quantum mechanics.

But all those Bell test experiments confirmed quantum mechanics, and are consistent with the way that the theory has been understood since 1930. Many physicist view these experiments as a silly waste of time because they just confirm existing knowledge, and do not tell us anything new. Others say that it is the most profound work in the history of science.

No Nobel prize has been given for these experiments before. I would bet against. I think that a prize for something new is more likely, such as one for dark energy.

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