The little-known story behind the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics(scientificamerican.com)
scientificamerican.com
The little-known story behind the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-little-known-origin-story-behind-the-2022-nobel-prize-in-physics/
88 comments
The ideas of lines of research being suppressed is a rich topic in science fiction novels. Usually hidden aliens or secret factions on Earth actively steer scientists away from certain topics, usually that will lead to break throughs in star drives or weapon-of-mass-destruction designs.
> Usually hidden aliens or secret factions on Earth actively steer scientists away from certain topics, usually that will lead to break throughs in star drives or weapon-of-mass-destruction designs.
What about if SETI@home had been programmed by aliens, so we all thought we were looking for them, but the code would never find them? :)
What about if SETI@home had been programmed by aliens, so we all thought we were looking for them, but the code would never find them? :)
Ther eality of research suppression is much more mundane, and illustrated well in "The Trouble with Physics" by Smolin. Basically with the way the tenure and granting systems work the only way to get a degree and a job is to work on whatever the leading scientists decide is correct, which is most often their own ideas. At that point anyone who wants to try another approach will be unable to get funding, because all the "leading" scientists don't think it is worth pursuing, and you won't be able to get letters of recommendation and endorsement as a Post-Doc because you aren't doing things that make your tenured boss look good.
I actively reject conspiracy theories on the premise that they’re conspiracy theories. However, I can’t deny that this one is interesting. What if this is actually happening?
Obviously the easiest way to provoke thought within the skeptic is to ask, “If it is within the realm of possibilities for the human race to invent a driver allowing interstellar travel, why shouldn’t an extraterrestrial race also be capable of it?”
I would assume someone would counter with the fact that extraterrestrial life hasn’t been discovered. A question to often revisited. For all we know extraterrestrial life surrounds their inhabited planets with strict ingress and egress policies.
Obviously the easiest way to provoke thought within the skeptic is to ask, “If it is within the realm of possibilities for the human race to invent a driver allowing interstellar travel, why shouldn’t an extraterrestrial race also be capable of it?”
I would assume someone would counter with the fact that extraterrestrial life hasn’t been discovered. A question to often revisited. For all we know extraterrestrial life surrounds their inhabited planets with strict ingress and egress policies.
I don't think what the OP is suggesting is necessarily a conspiracy. Institutions are wary of people who risk their credibility with claims that catch a lot of attention but may prove to be false. There's some incentive to make claims that capture a lot of attention and the field doesn't want to lose credibility.
If you think about how some scientists responded to speculation about Oumuamua you can see how they were nervous about speculation that could be sensationalized.
If you think about how some scientists responded to speculation about Oumuamua you can see how they were nervous about speculation that could be sensationalized.
The general idea, yes. I was pigeon-holing to the idea that aliens are carrying it out.
Or the Government, as in Asimov's "The Dead Past"
Similar 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.
Yes, i stumbled upon a reddit thread recently where the conversation devolved into actual hate for people who were curious about studying the "why's" of quantum. The most liked comment and prevailing attitude was, "it doesn't affect my research, so i don't care", which makes sense but those same people were getting upset that _anyone_ might want to make it _their_ research.
I'd heard of the hate before but it was so baffling to witness. I left a comment asking for explanations to my above observation and received no replies. As someone who's personally very interested in this type of research, it kinda terrifies me.
I'd heard of the hate before but it was so baffling to witness. I left a comment asking for explanations to my above observation and received no replies. As someone who's personally very interested in this type of research, it kinda terrifies me.
You shouldn't pay too much attention to the hate, what you find interesting is intensely personal and few others will ever understand. Foundations is in a much better spot than it was 50 years ago, and you can definitely succeed in it.
Having said that, as someone outside the field who peeks in every once and a while, it does seem like a lot of foundations research (that gets noticed at least) is about constructing flashy abstracts out of simple linear algebra. The interesting stuff always seems to belong to another field, like computation, error correction, encryption, etc. Combine this with many physicists' distaste for philosophy, and you'll get the current attitude towards foundations.
Having said that, as someone outside the field who peeks in every once and a while, it does seem like a lot of foundations research (that gets noticed at least) is about constructing flashy abstracts out of simple linear algebra. The interesting stuff always seems to belong to another field, like computation, error correction, encryption, etc. Combine this with many physicists' distaste for philosophy, and you'll get the current attitude towards foundations.
Weird, 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.
MWI is confirmed in a sense that it exactly matches the Schrodinger equation and doesn't add anything contradictory or ad hoc hypotheses, and is compatible with the rest of science. And the Schrodinger equation is verified quantitatively. This is as far as verification goes.
Shouldn't that be "does the Copenhagen intepretation even mean anything scientific"?
The 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. :-)
Why isn’t debating of the significance of quantum mechanics “real work”?
Because some debates are like, "Given the proposition 'x or not x', is x true?"
I’m not sure about what precisely you’re referring to. There is an entire school of mathematics that dismisses the law of excluded of middle and I’m not sure why that would not be “real work”.
There's no system of logic where 'x or not x is true' implies x.
The example you gave is not specific enough to guess what you are referring to.
I am referring to the fact that it is possible for indeterminacy to be an absolute fact and not a temporary artifact of incomplete development.
I can make that an axiom of my system. It'll cause explosion and is a next to useless system but it's still a system.
Why though? MWI works just fine.
He published a paper with some colleagues on a way to disprove Everettian Mechanics. It falls into the difficult but not impossible category. It involves looking for minuscule energy spikes that would be evidence of some kind of "collapse of the wave function" that would rule out Many Worlds.
The Copenhagen Interpretation isn't a theory, it it is an attitude.
The Copenhagen Interpretation isn't a theory, it it is an attitude.
Aside: both Kaiser and Carroll are above-average speakers and worth your time to see if you have the opportunity. They are professionals giving professional-physicist talks, though.
It is worth pointing out that zero actual information is transferred, it's just an inexact analogy to describe a problem space which lacks terms in plain English to describe it. It's not possible to communicate faster than light with this mechanism. What can be done is to generate same random numbers in two and only two distant places at the same time. That has great application in secure communications because it bypasses the entire need for potentially insecure key exchange mechanisms, but because the numbers generated are truly random they contain no information and this mechanism cannot be used to cause an effect faster than light, it does not violate relativity in any way.
How are the random numbers generated? Like, what are they generated from?
Quantum wave functions represent a probability distribution for the characteristics of an object in quantum mechanics, such as a particle or photon. When you measure it, that probability distribution resolves to a discrete value. So basically when you measure the spin of a particle, god rolls some dice to determine what it is. That’s one interpretation anyway.
So you’re talking about the collapse of the wave function.
If I collapse the wave function on one entangled particle, is the other entangled particle collapsed as well?
If I collapse the wave function on one entangled particle, is the other entangled particle collapsed as well?
Experiments upholding Bell's inequalities imply it is.
So couldn’t you send a bunch of entangled particles somewhere and collapse the wave function on them in sequence in some way as to communicate faster than the speed of light?
All you can do with your half of the pair is observe its state after the wave function collapsed. Whether it collapsed because you just poked it or because the other half of the pair was poked first can't be known without comparing notes afterward using classical means.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem
An interferometer can differentiate that. If a photon is in superposition, it exits interferometer on a certain path, if it's collapsed, it exits on a random path. If you send 100 such photons, you can send 1 bit this way with good precision.
Although not informed enough to comment on this, I do know that if it was true, it would break relativity and that would have come across my feed at some point.
So I would say you are missing something.
So I would say you are missing something.
I made it up. Any nonlocality breaks relativity, this doesn't break it further. You can still say the same thing - it's okay because why not. Or you mean it will be a paradox if they receive a message in the past? I guess it can be prevented if the entangled photon doesn't interfere with itself.
Information cannot move faster than the speed of light. If the non-locality has a random output, then it doesn't violate relativity because random noise cannot carry information (by definition it's no longer random if it does).
Think of the two entangled particles as telegraph operators that can communicate with each other infinitely fast -- the speed of light is no obstacle for them. But you cannot hand one of them a message to be transmitted because they simply ignore you.* You can ask either of them if they recently sent or received a message from the other, and what that message was, and they will tell you the truth. But they will only tell you this over subluminal channels, and they will not accept a message to be transmitted superluminally. We can prove they are communicating superluminally because of the Bell inequality, but we cannot control what they are communicating.
*More precisely, the act of handing one of them a message causes that one to communicate some random message to the other.
*More precisely, the act of handing one of them a message causes that one to communicate some random message to the other.
Thanks for the explanation, I think I understand better the underlying theory
No, because the only way to determine "who collapsed the wavefunction first" is to communicate subluminal.
In other words you can't detect the event of the wavefunction collapsing.
In other words you can't detect the event of the wavefunction collapsing.
It's definitely not going to let you perform superluminal signalling but it is still plenty weird, eg:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_pseudo-telepathy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_pseudo-telepathy
If 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
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
Noether’s lack of recognition has nothing to do with her gender. Her symmetry theorem is known to any undergrad student in physics.
The general public simply doesn’t know about physicists (beyond Einstein and Newton). In fact the general public is more likely to know of Neil deGrasse Tyson than far more influential physicists in the 20th century. Most people aren’t aware of Dirac, von Neumann, Schrödinger, Bohr, Wigner, etc…
The general public simply doesn’t know about physicists (beyond Einstein and Newton). In fact the general public is more likely to know of Neil deGrasse Tyson than far more influential physicists in the 20th century. Most people aren’t aware of Dirac, von Neumann, Schrödinger, Bohr, Wigner, etc…
I think she's actually genuinely underecognized, but that it has to do with that her most notable work is a theoretical result and not a physical theory, and thus something only appreciated by people who read theory, like university students in physics or mathematics.
But how? Literally, everyone in the field knows her.
If you’re talking about the general public, then she is under appreciated but so is pretty much every other physicist too.
If you’re talking about the general public, then she is under appreciated but so is pretty much every other physicist too.
What’s interesting about this discussion is that she had far more results in mathematics than physics. She was a pioneer in commutative algebra and discovered a lot of fundamental theorems and concepts in commutative algebra.
But sadly mathematicians are even less recognized. It is way easier to explain scientific discoveries than it is to explain mathematical discoveries.
Indeed, people in this thread are way overestimating how many average people even know who Euler is.
It’s OK if mathematicians are obscure in the general population. That’s part of the deal when you become a mathematician. I don’t know many footballers either.
I would much rather the general public filled their heads with basic mathematical concepts, rather than the names of mathematicians. As Feynman said (paraphrasing), knowing the name of something is rather useless if you don’t know anything else about it.
It’s OK if mathematicians are obscure in the general population. That’s part of the deal when you become a mathematician. I don’t know many footballers either.
I would much rather the general public filled their heads with basic mathematical concepts, rather than the names of mathematicians. As Feynman said (paraphrasing), knowing the name of something is rather useless if you don’t know anything else about it.
I'd suggest this meets the definition of hiding in plain sight.
The general public is interested in female contributions to science on the whole. And they would appreciate knowing about Noether. And the physics community by an large does know her.
But that information has not escaped the relatively esoteric setting of physics education.
On top of that I'd be curious how many of those who know of the symmetry conservation link, know of it as Noether's theorem and how many know Noether was a woman. I bet not much! Just speculation.
Again that would be hiding in plain sight in my book.
The general public is interested in female contributions to science on the whole. And they would appreciate knowing about Noether. And the physics community by an large does know her.
But that information has not escaped the relatively esoteric setting of physics education.
On top of that I'd be curious how many of those who know of the symmetry conservation link, know of it as Noether's theorem and how many know Noether was a woman. I bet not much! Just speculation.
Again that would be hiding in plain sight in my book.
NGL when learning Noether’s theorem I thought Emmy was short for something like Emiliano. It wasn’t until long afterwards that I found out that she was a she, and the struggles she had along the way because of that.
At the time I wouldn’t have cared anyway. I was bombarded with so many names of people through equations, experiments, etc that I didn’t care if they were a man, woman, or carrier pigeon. I just cared what the result meant and how I could use it. It’s only after the fact, long after I left academia, that I started to see these people as humans with real lives and stories.
At the time I wouldn’t have cared anyway. I was bombarded with so many names of people through equations, experiments, etc that I didn’t care if they were a man, woman, or carrier pigeon. I just cared what the result meant and how I could use it. It’s only after the fact, long after I left academia, that I started to see these people as humans with real lives and stories.
Of course, but normal people-- highschoolers, physics teachers in countries where those don't have physics degrees, etc.
> The general public simply doesn’t know about physicists (beyond Einstein and Newton).
I find this odd. We were taught about Rutherford/Bohr and their work in high school - unless the general public if full of people who haven't gone to school or dropped out before high school, they should know these scientists (even if one may not remember the specifics after a long time).
I find this odd. We were taught about Rutherford/Bohr and their work in high school - unless the general public if full of people who haven't gone to school or dropped out before high school, they should know these scientists (even if one may not remember the specifics after a long time).
My secondary school classes[1] covered a lot of those names but made no mention of Noether, which you'd think merits at least a "you won't understand it but here's why conservation laws exist". I'm not going to speculate on reasons/motivations but it really does seem to be a huge oversight.
[1] IB curriculum, not exactly a de minimis environment
[1] IB curriculum, not exactly a de minimis environment
If you did IB, you may have heard of Schrodinger and Bohr because of their involvement in quantum mechanics and the modelling of the atom model. I'd be shocked if you learned about Wigner for example.
Noether's theorem is a much more difficult result to teach high school students, because you do need some mathematical maturity before learning it. In the UK, you're taught it in a second year undergraduate course in classical mechanics. So it is not an oversight.
Also people here seem to be overstating the influence of Noether as a physicist. Yes, her theorem is a profound result in physics but the majority of her contributions were in pure mathematics.
Noether's theorem is a much more difficult result to teach high school students, because you do need some mathematical maturity before learning it. In the UK, you're taught it in a second year undergraduate course in classical mechanics. So it is not an oversight.
Also people here seem to be overstating the influence of Noether as a physicist. Yes, her theorem is a profound result in physics but the majority of her contributions were in pure mathematics.
Although I am a huge Noether fan, hidden in plain sight?She's one of the most important names in theoretical physics.
Wu 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.
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.
Ask 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.
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.
You 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.
No one on the street knows anything accurate about physics at all in that limit.
Lovelace gets way too much credit considering there are a bunch of much more important women even just within CS. "First programmer" is egregious IMO (often her label), as if Babbage didn't think to program it.
Lovelace gets way too much credit considering there are a bunch of much more important women even just within CS. "First programmer" is egregious IMO (often her label), as if Babbage didn't think to program it.
Perhaps you're right (I don't know), but I note that Lovelace had insight on the usefulness of computers for solving a broader class of problems than previously thought, and this was an important contribution in its own right
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace#Insight_into_pote...
In any case, often the opposite of what you are describing happens: women get disproportionately less credit than male collaborators, even when they made bigger contributions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matilda_effect
edit: Stephen Wolfram has this to say about her contributions:
> In his book, Idea Makers, Stephen Wolfram defends Lovelace's contributions. While acknowledging that Babbage wrote several unpublished algorithms for the Analytical Engine prior to Lovelace's notes, Wolfram argues that "there's nothing as sophisticated—or as clean—as Ada's computation of the Bernoulli numbers. Babbage certainly helped and commented on Ada's work, but she was definitely the driver of it." Wolfram then suggests that Lovelace's main achievement was to distill from Babbage's correspondence "a clear exposition of the abstract operation of the machine—something which Babbage never did".[91]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace#Insight_into_pote...
In any case, often the opposite of what you are describing happens: women get disproportionately less credit than male collaborators, even when they made bigger contributions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matilda_effect
edit: Stephen Wolfram has this to say about her contributions:
> In his book, Idea Makers, Stephen Wolfram defends Lovelace's contributions. While acknowledging that Babbage wrote several unpublished algorithms for the Analytical Engine prior to Lovelace's notes, Wolfram argues that "there's nothing as sophisticated—or as clean—as Ada's computation of the Bernoulli numbers. Babbage certainly helped and commented on Ada's work, but she was definitely the driver of it." Wolfram then suggests that Lovelace's main achievement was to distill from Babbage's correspondence "a clear exposition of the abstract operation of the machine—something which Babbage never did".[91]
If instead of asking a physicist you turn to a historian of science (that is a person deriving authority by virtue of being a subject matter expert instead of from being a rich programmer) you get something like the following story:
> It was attributed to her, but—as Herschel hinted—Babbage may have had an input; it is impossible to know how much. Most famously, one of her additional notes, G, sets out a table for calculating what are called the Bernoulli numbers, which carry great mathematical significance. Even if she was solely responsible for it, the chart is not a program, but shows the stages that would occur in a pre-programmed machine if one existed.
> Heroes are made, not born. If computer scientists feel they need a 19th-century ancestor, then perhaps Herman Hollerith should supplant Babbage? To tabulate the US census, Hollerith invented eponymous punched cards which are still being used 100 years later—and he also founded a company that became the international giant IBM.
> And as a female role model, the American mathematics graduate Grace Hopper seems eminently more suitable than London’s flighty Victorian socialite. A rear admiral in the US Navy during the Second World War, this programming pioneer gave her name to a powerful supercomputer. Hopper revolutionised the digital world by insisting that instead of forcing people to communicate in symbolic code, computers should be taught to speak English. She also made a permanent mark on the English language—the term “debugging” was coined after she removed a moth that had flown inside some circuitry.
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/science-and-technology/de...
> It was attributed to her, but—as Herschel hinted—Babbage may have had an input; it is impossible to know how much. Most famously, one of her additional notes, G, sets out a table for calculating what are called the Bernoulli numbers, which carry great mathematical significance. Even if she was solely responsible for it, the chart is not a program, but shows the stages that would occur in a pre-programmed machine if one existed.
> Heroes are made, not born. If computer scientists feel they need a 19th-century ancestor, then perhaps Herman Hollerith should supplant Babbage? To tabulate the US census, Hollerith invented eponymous punched cards which are still being used 100 years later—and he also founded a company that became the international giant IBM.
> And as a female role model, the American mathematics graduate Grace Hopper seems eminently more suitable than London’s flighty Victorian socialite. A rear admiral in the US Navy during the Second World War, this programming pioneer gave her name to a powerful supercomputer. Hopper revolutionised the digital world by insisting that instead of forcing people to communicate in symbolic code, computers should be taught to speak English. She also made a permanent mark on the English language—the term “debugging” was coined after she removed a moth that had flown inside some circuitry.
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/science-and-technology/de...
People will probably say Mark Rober..
Most people have no clue about mathematics and physics and also no interest in learning about those.
Most people have no clue about mathematics and physics and also no interest in learning about those.
[deleted]
I studied physics, Wu was not mentioned, Noether's theorem was mandatory knowledge.
The 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-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-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
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/publ...
That issue has certainly greatly improved since then.
> "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-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-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
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/publ...
That issue has certainly greatly improved since then.
We 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?
[deleted]
I think it's mostly eliminating random thermal motions that would otherwise swamp out the faint effects you're trying to measure, in this case such thermal effects would probably jiggle the cobalt atoms so much that they wouldn't line up properly.
Go low enough however and you do get strange quantum effect-related formation of Bose-Einstein condensates, and its even stranger newly discovered cousin, the Rydberg polaron:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rydberg_polaron
Go low enough however and you do get strange quantum effect-related formation of Bose-Einstein condensates, and its even stranger newly discovered cousin, the Rydberg polaron:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rydberg_polaron
Oh 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-postdoc...
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-postdoc...
I'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://archive.is/CSRZ4
Chien-Shiung Wu found evidence of entanglement in 1949.
This is not mentioned in the 2022 prize.
Chien-Shiung Wu found evidence of entanglement in 1949.
This is not mentioned in the 2022 prize.
She 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.
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.
The Nobel prize was about experiments showing that QM entanglement is different from 'normal' entanglement, so I 'm not surprised.
The 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.”
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.”
Could you link anything that gives a quick rundown on the difference between 'QM entanglement' and 'normal' entanglement?
I 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
But in QM, it's more complicated and it isn't a simple subject, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_test
prizes 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?
> 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.....
> 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.....
Poor mans Inflation proof bonds
The 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!
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!
> 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.
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.
Nobel 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.
Wu 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.
2022 was too late, as Wu passed in 1997.
Wait, 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?
I 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.
Oppenheimer and others also said she should have been included.
Read the Fine Article, to bring back a Slashdot-ism.
See 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.
And that Wu designed and conducted and was excluded from the prize.
The 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.
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.
If the magnet was really so big, I doubt that the Columbia football team would have been able to move it.
Can love be a consequence of quantum effects?
> 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