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The little-known story behind the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics
- emmelaich 4y agohttps://archive.is/CSRZ4 https://archive.is/CSRZ4 Chien-Shiung Wu found evidence of entanglement in 1949. This is not mentioned in the 2022 prize.
- renox 4y agoThe Nobel prize was about experiments showing that QM entanglement is different from 'normal' entanglement, so I 'm not surprised.
- oh_my_goodness 4y agoCould you link anything that gives a quick rundown on the difference between 'QM entanglement' and 'normal' entanglement?
- renox 4y agoI should have said 'normal' correlations: if you put a black ball and a white ball in a box, if two persons pick one ball the result of their observation is correlated but there's nothing surprising here.. But in QM, it's more complicated and it isn't a simple subject, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_test
- nl 4y agoThe article shows how other people were mentioned in the 2022 prize who built on her work. It sounds like she should have been awarded the 1957 prize too: > In his Nobel lecture that December, Yang told the committee and guests how crucial Wu's experiment had been, making a bold statement that the results were due to Wu's team's courage and skill. Lee would later plead with the Nobel Committee to recognize Wu's work. Oppenheimer publicly stated that Wu should have shared in the 1957 prize. Segrè called the overthrow of parity “probably the major development of physics after the war.”
- readthenotes1 4y agoprizes are only for the living. Why would we think the Nobel prize committee would want to admit to making a mistake and not handing one out 25 years ago to wu?
- lamontcg 4y agoShe didn't find evidence of entanglement. She produced entangled states, but we only know that with hindsight. Most anything that gets done with elementary particles produces entangled states. The Aspect experiment and Bell's inequalities are the way we proved how quantum states are very fundamentally entangled. The important part of Aspect's experiment is the space-like separation of the events in the experiment. She still should have shared the 1957 Nobel Prize with Lee and Yang for their work on Parity. I don't understand why this article claims that she should have been associated with the 2022 Nobel, other than to generate clicks and engagement.
- photochemsyn 4y agoThe violation-of-conservation-of-parity experiment that Wu came up with to test the Lee-Yang hypothesis is well described here: > "The defining experiment involved cooling Cobalt-60 down to a hundredth of a degree Kelvin, a temperature at which its atoms can be induced to spin in one direction, and measure the number of electrons spun off from the top and bottom of the cobalt mass. If they are the same, then parity is conserved, since that way both the original cobalt atom and its opposite-spinning mirror copy will appear exactly the same. But, if one side emits more electrons than the other, parity would not be conserved, as whichever pole the atoms appear spewing from in the original, they will be spewing from the opposite pole in the mirror reflection, which would be like our clock hand stubbornly insisting on moving clockwise in spite of being reflected." https://womenyoushouldknow.net/razor-sharp-physics-chien-shiung-wu/ https://womenyoushouldknow.net/razor-sharp-physics-chien-shi... Another good one: > "To test the hypothesis, Wu needed three things. The first was a nucleus that decayed due to weak force (beta decay). The second was that the nucleus must have an intrinsic quantum mechanical spin. The third and the tricky thing was that all the nuclei spins must be made to point in the same direction. So why is this?" https://www.secretsofuniverse.in/parity-violation-weak-experiment/ https://www.secretsofuniverse.in/parity-violation-weak-exper... Richard Feynam wrote quite a bit about the Lee-Yang hypothesis on conservation of partity in weak decay processes and its experimental verification by Wu, that's where I first heard of it, symmetry in physical laws: https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_52.html https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_52.html Of course, Feynman's lectures were delivered to an all-male audience at Caltech, which didn't allow women until 1970 or so, see the class: https://physicstoday.scitation.org/na101/home/literatum/publisher/aip/journals/content/pto/2005/pto.2005.58.issue-4/1.1955479/production/images/large/1.1955479.figures.f2.jpeg https://physicstoday.scitation.org/na101/home/literatum/publ... That issue has certainly greatly improved since then.
- Waterluvian 4y agoWe seem to do a lot of cooling things down to near zero in physics. Is there something special about how things behave there? Or is it just basically a way to give us a slow motion view?
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- shusaku 4y agoIn addition to the nice biography about a superb scientist, I also found this interesting: > Wu might have been hesitant to discuss evidence of entanglement because throughout the 1950s and 1960s, such quantum-foundations work was stigmatized as junk science. Back then, explains David Kaiser, a professor of physics and history of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the idea of using an experiment to prove or disprove theories about quantum physics or to test for local hidden variables was “not even an inkling” for most physicists. Researchers who explored questions about entanglement often disguised their research because backlash could stymie a promising career. I suspect their are similar things going on today, like astronomers who want to look for signs of intelligent life but packaging it as something more mundane
- mr_mitm 4y agoSimilar things are for sure still going on. Sean Carroll regularly laments the fact that research of the foundation of quantum mechanics is often actively discouraged.
- kurthr 4y agoWeird, it seems like that's one of the most popular discussions in pop-sci. The real question is more philosophical... does Many Worlds even mean anything scientific (eg is it testable or a usefully simple model). Certainly, it's entertaining.
- lmm 4y agoShouldn't that be "does the Copenhagen intepretation even mean anything scientific"?
- whatshisface 4y agoThe answer to both is "no." It is really obvious that the answer is no, because they lead to the same predictions. There is real work being done in quantum foundations (which is not the same thing as fundamental physics), but it doesn't involve arguing about MWI and Copenhagen. :-)
- quantum_mcts 4y agoI've already quite a long time ago noticed that in particle physics we usually do stuff that quantum-computing people will call an "entaglement". We just don't phrase it like that, because we are used to it and we aren't much "in awe" about it. https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/40872/386 https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/40872/386
- soheil 4y agoNobel Prize in science is typically awarded several years or decades after the discovery to make sure it sticks, specially if the scientist is young like Wu was. See Frank Wilczek's Nobel prize in physics awarded in 2004 for the work he did when he was 22 in 1974.
- macintux 4y agoSee also the 1957 Nobel Prize discussed in the article that was awarded the same year as the discovery that overthrew parity because it was so unexpected. And that Wu designed and conducted and was excluded from the prize.
- slowmovintarget 4y agoWu was specifically excluded from the prize in 1957 while her male colleagues got the prize. She devised the experiment that knocked down parity. They won the prize for the idea. 2022 was too late, as Wu passed in 1997.
- soheil 4y agoWait, so by that logic all the male colleagues of every Nobel laureate should have also got a prize? Sounds like you're making a logical claim vs an evidence based one, do you have evidence to proof your claim or is it more like a sounds-like-something-that-would-happen-back-in-the-day-so-why-not-just-go-with-it type of argument?
- slowmovintarget 4y agoI don't know what you're on about. It's in the article. The two men that won the prize in 1957 also said she should have shared it with them due to how involved she was. Oppenheimer and others also said she should have been included. Read the Fine Article, to bring back a Slashdot-ism.
- evanb 4y agoThe turn-around time was a lot faster back then. To wit, Lee and Yang won in 1957; Wu's work was in 1956-57. Even today, experimental (rather than theoretical) work tends to get recognized a lot faster. For recent examples see LIGO, blue LEDs, graphene, all awarded within a decade. Wu's results were SO strong and outstanding that THEORISTS won a year later. So the committee obviously trusted Wu's results enough.
- ambicapter 4y ago> In 1945, when the silence between the U.S. and China lifted, China was embroiled in a brutal civil war, and relatives cautioned against returning too soon. By 1949, the year Wu observed evidence of the criterion for entanglement, Mao Zedong had established communism in the People's Republic of China, and McCarthyism was ramping up in the U.S., making travel home nearly impossible. She never saw her family again. This is tragic, but I can't help but think it would make it would make a heartbreaking movie, especially tied with her work on entanglement. edit: To be fair, I think the article goes down this route as well > Entanglement emerges from the most rigorous branches of mathematics and physics yet has poetic appeal. Abner Shimony, a philosopher and physicist, called it “passion at a distance.” Entanglement offers the wild notion that once certain particles or systems interact, they can no longer be described independently of one another.
- psychphysic 4y agoIf you like reading about Wu from a woman in physics hidden in plain sight aspect you might like the story of Emmy Noether[0]. A mathematician who worked a few doors down from Einstein and produced era defining result in physics. The connection between symmetry and conservation. Noether's theorem to this day is one of the most profound holy shit moments in many physicists education. Her life was been cut tragically short. [0] https://youtu.be/04ERSb06dOg https://youtu.be/04ERSb06dOg
- mhh__ 4y agoAlthough I am a huge Noether fan, hidden in plain sight?She's one of the most important names in theoretical physics.
- psychphysic 4y agoWu is quite well known too within the physicist community. But go to the street ask the first 100 people you come across to list their top 5 important contributions by woman in maths or physics. What's on it? How many will mention Noether? I'd say about as many as Wu. Less than 1. Probably few could name many. Maybe it'll be the woman led the team to image the black hole at the centre of the galaxy. Will anyone know her name though? I don't. Ada Lovelace is better known but not for maths or physics. She was a mathematician of course.
- Waterluvian 4y agoAsk them to name 5 of any gender and the youngest is probably Einstein or Hawking. There is definitely a gender bias. But there’s also a “people on the street don’t care as much as physicists think they ought to” bias.
- hackernewds 4y agoYou could argue there were (and are) disproportionately more men in science (for various reasons) and most important contributions have been through them (related to previous and other various reasons), without making the gender argument.
- oh_my_goodness 4y agoIf the magnet was really so big, I doubt that the Columbia football team would have been able to move it.
- noisy_boy 4y ago> In 2021 the U.S. Postal Service released a Forever stamp with Wu's portrait. > As the name suggests, Forever Stamps can be used to mail a one-ounce letter regardless of when the stamps are purchased or used and no matter how prices may change in the future. Forever Stamps are always sold at the same price as a regular First-Class Mail stamp.[0] [0]: https://about.usps.com/news/fact-sheets/forever-stamp-facts.htm#:~:text=As%20the%20name%20suggests%2C%20Forever,regular%20First%2DClass%20Mail%20stamp https://about.usps.com/news/fact-sheets/forever-stamp-facts.....
- h2odragon 4y agoPoor mans Inflation proof bonds
- studentik 4y agoCan love be a consequence of quantum effects?
- Agingcoder 4y agoThe machine's multiton magnet was so gigantic that, according to university folklore, a decade earlier administrators had to blast a hole in an exterior wall and recruit the football team to maneuver the block of iron into the building. Well, folklore or not, I know someone who specializes now in moving labs from one building to another. She told me the exact same story, except than in her case the problem was to get the machine out ( some kind of accelerator as well, and it had been built on premises). She had to make a hole in the wall too!
- rurban 4y agoOh my, these inaccuracies: Heisenberg did NOT study under Niels Bohr. He studied under Sommerfeld in Munich and then as Born's assistant in Goettingen. He just visited Bohr's lab. https://www.heisenberg-gesellschaft.de/2-student-and-postdoctoral-years-1920-ndash-1925.html https://www.heisenberg-gesellschaft.de/2-student-and-postdoc...