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The Nobel Prize in Physics 2017
- mabbo 9y agoThe key achievement, imho: > In the mid-1970s, Rainer Weiss had already analysed possible sources of background noise that would disturb measurements, and had also designed a detector, a laser-based interferometer, which would overcome this noise. Over 40 years ago, Weiss figured out how to do it. And finally, within his lifetime, he got to see it happen and actually work.
- davrosthedalek 9y agoHere at MIT, there was some discussion if he would get it at all -- the experimentalists were not included for the Higgs 2013. It's great that they gave him half of it!
- pletnes 9y agoThat doesn’t mean they will never get it.
- lokimedes 9y agoGood thing he did. As for the Higgs discovery, the nature of the experimental facilities and the generations of physicists who designed them would have made it very difficult to point to singular recipients. Since the prize is never given to collaborations, the best alternative whould have been the spokespersons for ATLAS and CMS and perhaps the LHC/CERN director. But still that would have been misrepresenting the efforts of thousands. I think the Nobel Committee should fix this by allowing the prize to be awarded to collaborations. (An accepting, but slightly disgruntled co-discoverer of a new particle)
- linkmotif 9y agoYou discovered a particle?
- KGIII 9y agoI think there is also room for more prestigious awards to be named and given out. Perhaps one could function exclusively to shine a light on collaborative efforts? I also think there's a little that some of us can do in this same/similar space. Maybe not at this scale, but quite a few of us have sold their company and made a few dollars. It's not terribly expensive to start a small managed trust and provide things like scholarships in perpetuity. It's not the prestige of a Nobel, but it's a little something that can go a long ways.
- davrosthedalek 9y agoIn that sense, we should also think about crowd-founded science. For example, travel costs are always a problem. There are also many table-top experiments which could be realized just with a small cash infusion. Most contributions to universities do not actually benefit an experiment in a direct way.
- KGIII 9y agoThe closest I've come to that was helping somebody attend a conference. That's a good idea, I think.
- specialist 9y agoI'm very interested novel funding strategies. A friend of mine is directly funding early stage research related to Lyme Disease. Like an angel investor? Helping to bridge the gap between an idea and applying for grants.
- davrosthedalek 9y agoPlease thank you friend for me. Edit: Altruistic angel investor, I would call it. There is no pay-out coming, except maybe for acknowledgment in a paper and pride to have helped.
- ISL 9y agoCheck out the Breakthrough Prize.
- pducks32 9y agoAs a physicist who’s listened to him talk about the experiment, it really really makes you take a step back and marvel at how incredible that detector was. And 40 years ago even. He could imagine it but to build it to such an accuracy is incredible and I’m so happy they won it. The teams at LIGO also deserve so so much credit. They work tirelessly!
- QAPereo 9y agoAnd then, just as icing on a massive and impressive cake? Totally unforeseen rates of intermediate mass BH mergers! What a time to be alive!
- physicsnerd 9y agoThis has great implications for blockchain. The interferometer is basically a blockchain at it's core. The trust circle it generates enables physicist to investigate bigger and bigger beams. Very excited!
- StavrosK 9y agoI am entirely unsure whether you're joking.
- fsck--off 9y agoThe account is 25 minutes old, so I would assume so
- BasDirks 9y agoAnd as we all know, after 25 minutes of exposure to HN, one loses any and all sense of humor.
- SimbaOnSteroids 9y agoDear lord, do the Germans know we're encroaching on their turf?
- davrosthedalek 9y agoAs a German, I don't find this funny.
- StavrosK 9y agoThat joke was so self-referential my brain short-circuited, well done.
- IncRnd 9y agoSurely, You're Joking, Mr. Nerd.
- bdz 9y agoLove the popular science and scientific background PDFs.
- mstade 9y agoThis is probably the first time I actually recognize the name of one of the recipients: Kip Thorne. I learned about him when I read about the movie Interstellar, for which he was an executive producer. Then when reading up on him, it turns out he's been involved with a bunch of things I've read about or seen in the past. When I saw the announcement, I was unreasonably happy for a person I've never known nor met. Funny what a little recognition can do.
- soundsop 9y agoMe too, although I recognized his name because I read his book Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy. That was over 20 years ago.
- nothis 9y agoI believe we're in a small golden age for science fiction. There were completely wack aspects to Interstellar but it's still the most "science-y" science-fiction movie to make a mainstream impact since... 2001: A Space Odyssey, basically. I was so happy. I'd say that an executive producer and scientific advisor of the movie winning a nobel prize in physics is a sign that this is about as serious as a Hollywood-budget science fiction movie can get. It's great. Part of me wants to make a sarcastic joke about corn fields and bookshelves, now, but fuck it, those shots of the wormhole alone more than make up for it!
- likelynew 9y agoI think it's a stretch by far to call either Interstellar or 2001: A Space Odyssey most scientifically accurate movie. Using a correct simulation of black hole is one thing, but this alone does not make necessarily make it very accurate. This is not the first time I am seeing this, and I don't know it pops up everywhere. There are parts in the movies which make me cringe, like bending gravity by hands inside a black hole, and giving some strange bar code. Or the highly incorrect approximation of probability from TARS. If I were to select an interesting scientifically accurate sci-fi movie, I would select martian or primer. The later is more consistent than what is evident on watching it for first time.
- FBISurveillance 9y agoThis is a well deserved one. I've been watching LIGO back from their first announcement last year. Really happy with their progress and happy to see taxpayer dollars well spent.
- davrosthedalek 9y agoVery true. Also congratulations to the hosting institutes and funding agencies, who allowed to keep them going for 40 years.
- melling 9y agoKip S. Thorne Should be a household name. He has written several books and was consulted by Christopher Nolan for the movie Interstellar: https://www.amazon.com/Science-Interstellar-Kip-Thorne/dp/0393351378 https://www.amazon.com/Science-Interstellar-Kip-Thorne/dp/03...
- B4TMAN 9y ago*Interstellar.
- thechao 9y agoKip Thorne and Neil deGrasse Tyson are my five-year-old daughter’s favorite physicists.
- peter303 9y agoKip Thorne was sort of hippie physicist in the 1970s. But CalTech recognized his brillance in hiring him. Generality Relativity was sort of a graveyard from 1920s to 1960s because there were too few doable experiments and specialized solutions of the core equation was intractable. Then several thing gelled then. Clever physicists like Thorne and Hawking started developing specialized GR solutions. Computer numerical methods could find other solutions. Atomic clocks became sensitive to measure GR in Earth’s gravity. GR is now a routinely observed effect observed billions of times a day in computing GPS positions.
- maaaats 9y agoHow normal is it for the Nobel Prizes to be for something done so recently? Often I feel the stuff is at least a decade old, if not decades. (Other than the Peace one, which is supposed to be for the last year).
- vanderZwan 9y agoWell, let's put it this way: some of my friends (who unlike me didn't drop out of physics) were discussing if LIGO would get the Nobel Prize this morning, and the main point wasn't whether it was deserved (everyone agreed to that), but that the Nobel Prize doesn't get awarded that quickly most of the time.
- SimbaOnSteroids 9y agoI'm just a casual observer so I'm probably way off, so grain of salt but, I believe we'll see more prizes get awarded more quickly as the people who initially lay out the theoretical physics and design the experiments to test their hypothesis are no longer living long enough to see the results of their experiments because the technology to test their ideas lags so far behind what would be needed. Just think of Higgs and the fact that the LHC had to be planned, funded, built, and then used to confirm the Higgs-Boson. Same deal with LIGO.
- pducks32 9y agoThe big piece of LIGO was the incredible effort that went into data analysis and verification. The second these things were detected a monumental effort went into confirming it meaning when it happened again the methods were already in place. This heavily contributed to how quickly these results were accepted.
- samfriedman 9y agoThe Higgs particle experiment was awarded the Nobel just a year after the discovery.
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- nickcw 9y agoKip Thorne (with others) wrote the standard text book I used at university on Gravity: "Gravitation" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitation_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitation_(book) It is a mighty tome, with lots of advanced maths (like tensor calculus), and I can't say I got through very much of it as a Physics undergraduate! I was pleased to see him pop up again as a science adviser for the movie Interstellar and have enjoyed reading his much more accessible book - "The Science of Interstellar" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Science_of_Interstellar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Science_of_Interstellar
- dandare 9y agoIt reminded me of this old article describing various sources of gravitational waves and our ability to detect them. http://www.tapir.caltech.edu/~teviet/Waves/gwave_spectrum.html http://www.tapir.caltech.edu/~teviet/Waves/gwave_spectrum.ht... I don't know how accurate it is today but I remember being fascinated by the possibilities.
- lifeisstillgood 9y agoI try to have an analogy for humanity's place in the universe. I think the best is a colony of ants floating on a branch in the Pacific Ocean. But with careful attention to wind, smell those ants have worked out shipping and landmass. Now they just found out how to detect Skyscrapers. One day they will be able to read the menus at the deli by Central Park. Let's discuss science funding again shall we?
- tryingagainbro 9y agoFrom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGO Two large observatories were built in the United States with the aim of detecting gravitational waves by laser interferometry. These can detect a change in the 4 km mirror spacing of less than a ten-thousandth the charge diameter of a proton, equivalent to measuring the distance to Proxima Centauri with an accuracy smaller than the width of a human hair Wow, feeling like a true parasite, relatively a few brilliant people are doing the heavy lifting. These guys should be the real Michael Jordans (nothing against Jordan or sports)
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoWould be really interesting to read a undergrad level piece on how they exclude [systematic] errors ... that accuracy makes me wonder many things, like what temperatures they're using and what the expansivity of common materials (steel, say) at those temps. What's the contraction (expansion) per km of the Earth like, can you detect flexing in the crust? /lazy-digression
- KGIII 9y agoDon't be bashful, email one of the people listed in the papers. There's surely some published research with names attached. Be clear, don't be verbose, be polite, and be grateful, thanking them for their time and contributions. Be sure to mention that the award was what triggered your curiosity. Also, make sure to ask them to put you in touch with the right person, if they aren't the right person. You're probably looking for someone with 'materials' near their name. There may also be a coordinator for the project. If so, first try them. Seriously, go ahead and ask. Chances are, you're even welcome to ask follow up questions. I'm retired but I always enjoyed it when people legitimately wanted to know more about what I was doing. It was only a problem if I was busy, but I still made time. It just sometimes took a while.
- pducks32 9y agoYes this is so important. These are professors and from all the physicists I have ever met they are all incredible open to questions. Remember that these people sit there and think about these problems all day so they love talking about them. Just be polite and especially verbose.
- byebyetech 9y agoCongratulations to Kip Thorne. I used to attend his lectures and sometimes greet him in the parking lot if I happen to come across at Caltech. Even though Caltech is not far from Hollywood I always thought these people are the real super stars. Caltech has probably 20+ Nobel laureates.
- KGIII 9y agoYour post made me curious. I hit up Google and got a result that may turn into a bit of a time sink. If you're very busy, you may not want to click on this link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_university_affiliation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_u... I was a bit surprised by some of the results. I honestly wasn't expecting Harvard to be that high. MIT was right where I expected it to be. CalTech was lower than I expected, but your number is too low. Berkeley really surprised me.
- smeyer 9y agoCan I ask what surprised you about Harvard? It's been historically strong in the sciences, medicine, and economics, and produces lots of the sorts of politicians that frequently win the peace prize. Which sorts of other universities were you expecting to be higher?
- KGIII 9y agoI'd expected more politicians and less science, and seeing as they give away more science awards... I was expecting them and Berkeley to be much lower on the list. Those where the two most striking.
- dragonwriter 9y agoHarvard and Berkeley are huge schools compared to CalTech and MIT, which affects placement on lists that count number of affiliated people with some trait.
- klogw 9y agoThis interview with Rana X Adhikari from Caltech who is involved with LIGO does give a perspective on the technical difficulties in carrying out such precise measurements and eliminating noise: https://blog.ycombinator.com/the-technical-challenges-of-measuring-gravitational-waves-rana-adhikari-of-ligo/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/the-technical-challenges-of-mea... Also to me, it seems that Barry Barish got his share of the Nobel more as he was the leader of the LIGO project and less due to his direct involvement with some experimental or theoretical work as is the case with most Nobel prize. Am I wrong in saying that? Also if this is true then has this occurred in past also when someone was awarded a Nobel prize more because of their leadership in starting a project or an institution then their direct involvement with the actual work?
- jessriedel 9y agoI'm very interested in this question. In the age of massive physical collaborations, it is an oft-debated question whether the Nobel committee should be awarding the prizes to the collaborations themselves and/or the leaders thereof. I don't know anything about Barish's history.
- eru 9y agoDon't the original rules stipulate that at most three people can share a price?
- davrosthedalek 9y agoI think that was added later.
- tlb 9y agoSuch a rule probably wouldn't have seemed necessary before the rise of big physics during WWII.
- amelius 9y agoPerhaps, but I expect you become a leader of such a project only after you've already accomplished a lot.
- indescions_2017 9y agoCongrats to three truly brilliant scientists. This is how Hard Sci/Tech is done. Decades long commitments even when everyone around you thinks it impossible! For a gripping day by day account of advanced LIGO's first candidate detection event and ensuing aftermath. From the very first email with subject line: "Very interesting event on ER8". To publishing the breakout paper “Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger”. Read Harry Collins' Gravity's Kiss: The Detection of Gravitational Waves https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/gravitys-kiss https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/gravitys-kiss
- leeoniya 9y agoare there videos of the acceptance speeches or ceremonies anywhere? i always want to watch them. are they televised or streamed?
- icebraining 9y agoThe Nobel Prize has a YouTube channel, not sure if it has all speeches or if they're complete: https://www.youtube.com/user/thenobelprize/search?query=speech https://www.youtube.com/user/thenobelprize/search?query=spee...
- greeneggs 9y agoThe Nobel lectures given by the recipients are generally targeted at a broad audience, and some of the lectures are extremely good. The ceremony is in Stockholm on Dec. 9. You can see the old speeches if you choose the year, then click on the laureate and "Nobel lecture." The older ones only have illustrated transcripts available---no video---but I still recommend them. https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1998/stormer-lecture.html https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/19...
- leeoniya 9y agothis is sad: https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_organizations/nobelfoundation/publications/lectures/ https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_organizations/nobelfoundati... everything is basically paywalled. we get to see teen choice awards shived down our throats but the speeches of the greatest minds of our times are inaccessible.
- greeneggs 9y agoNo, all the Nobel speeches are there, from the link I gave. They are the same speeches, with the same illustrations and the same English translations, as you get in those books. Even the biographical sketches are the same. I don't know that the books include anything not on the website.
- selimthegrim 9y agoI'm disappointed Ron Drever wasn't remembered - but I hope he will get mentioned in the speeches.
- TorKlingberg 9y agoI hope all this means there will be funding for LISA. Basically an enormous LIGO in space, so no earth vibrations and no tunnels needed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Interferometer_Space_Antenna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Interferometer_Space_Ant...
- lisper 9y agoA video describing the LIGO mirror suspension: https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/video/ligo20170216v https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/video/ligo20170216v It's worth watching. The engineering behind just this part of the system is jaw-dropping.
- dumbfounder 9y agoIt blows my mind that accelerating a mass gives off gravitational waves. But it makes total sense since mass increases with speed, if only the tiniest bit until you get close to the speed of light. Which is probably why you can't detect the waves unless you have some massive event (pun intended) like 2 black holes colliding. Do those waves come at a cost of energy? Just what the heck is a gravitational wave?
- dumbfounder 9y agoAnd can those waves be refracted, reflected, and/or focused?
- comicjk 9y agoSure - you manipulate gravity waves using large masses (the only thing we know of which interacts with gravity). It's not very practical to move stars around in order to make a lens, though.
- BenjiWiebe 9y agoLet's make a gravitational wave telescope.
- mikeash 9y agoThe waves do come at a cost of energy. That's why these black holes collide in the first place: they're orbiting each other, but the orbits decay because they radiate away kinetic energy as gravitational waves. Eventually it decays enough that they collide. The same thing happens for all orbits, but the amount of energy radiated away is so small that it basically doesn't matter. Black holes are so massive and so small that they can get close enough for it to become significant. The amount of energy involved is colossal. The first detected collision was estimated to have converted the equivalent of three solar masses to energy, which is about 2 x 10^47 joules of energy. Released over 20 milliseconds, it briefly output more power than all the stars in the universe combined by a factor of 50.
- empath75 9y ago> Just what the heck is a gravitational wave? A ripple in space time as two massive bodies orbit each other. Mass bends space time, if the mass moves, it's going to change how it bends space time, if it moves in a regular pattern (an orbit), that creates a wave.
- eatbitseveryday 9y agoAre gravitational waves = "gravimetric distortion" [1]? [1] http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Gravimetric_distortion http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Gravimetric_distortion
- debt 9y agoI visited the LIGO at Caltech a few months before they discovered gravitational waves cause I was such a hipster nerd about it. It's strange because they're just a few nondescript buildings in the middle of the campus yet they're there detecting lil nano hems and haws in the fabric of the universe.
- tanderson92 9y agoThe actual instruments are not at Caltech. The instruments next to Central Engineering Services / Steele House / Annenberg are just test equipment afaik. The instrument sites are in Washington and Louisiana.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]