Nobel Prize Week--So Far

Three days, six Laureates:

Monday: John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka jointly won the prize in Physiology or Medicine "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent".  In other words, cell development isn't necessarily irreversible. Mature cells can return to a stem cell state and develop differently.  Explanation and some very promising medical uses here.

Tuesday: The 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland "for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems". That's to say they developed ways to work with individual particles without damaging them.  (And this one has the best chance for a mention on The Big Bang Theory.) More information here.

Wednesday: The 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded jointly to Robert J. Lefkowitz and Brian K. Kobilka "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors".  A giant step in understanding how our cells can sense and react to our environment.  Read more about it here.

It's been a big week for shared Nobel Prizes.  But next up is the Literature Prize.  Whoever gets it will almost certainly have it all to him/herself.  We'll see who it is tomorrow!

Nobel Prize in Physics 2011

It's Physics Day in Nobel Week.  This is a biggie.  It's the one Albert Einstein won, after all. 

(Drumroll) And the winners are--

"The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae" with one half to Saul Perlmutter and the other half jointly to Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess."

Anybody else thinking of the scene from Annie Hall when a young Woody Allen mutters morosely that the universe is expanding, and his distraught mother yells, "What is it your business?  Brooklyn is not expanding!" 

Well, it turns out it's expanding at an even faster rate than we once thought.  Listen to a phone interview in which Adam G. Riess remembers the moment he realized what his data was revealing. (And he gives a classy hat tip to fellow Laureate Einstein.  "Maybe he should be getting the Nobel Prize again!") 

The stars--distant supernovae and otherwise--have stories well worth the exploration.  Read more about Laureates' stellar explorations here.

Nobel Prize Week--Physics

What's the strongest, thinnest material?  The best heat conductor?  As good a conductor of electricity as copper?  And is completely transparent?

If you're a physicist, you've known the answer for several years.  But the rest of us learned today about the new wonder material graphene, a form of carbon that's just one atom thick.   The structure of graphene is a lot like chicken wire (see above).  Applications for the new material are still in the planning and testing stage, but its strength and unique properties may revolutionize electronics.  We may be using graphene chips instead of silicon chips one day soon.

Russian physicists Andre Geim and  Konstantin Novoselov have won this year's Nobel Prize in Physics "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene."  


We'll be hearing and learning much more about graphene in the weeks and months ahead.  For now, take a look at the background information about graphene on the Nobel Prize site.


If you have any students who think science is boring and that there isn't anything more to discover, here's the perfect answer.  Even carbon, it seems, still has a few surprises for us!