Sunday, October 03, 2021
Annual Nobel speculation thread
Once more, the annual tradition: Who do people think will win the Nobel this year in physics or chemistry? I have repeately and incorrectly suggested Aharonov and Berry for geometric phases. There is a lot of speculation on social media about Aspect, Zeilinger, and Clauser for Bell's inequality tests. Social media speculation has included quantum cascade lasers as well as photonic bandgap/metamaterials. Other suggestions I've seen online have included superconducting qubits (with various combinations of people) and twisted bilayer graphene, though both of those may be a bit early.
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11 comments:
Wouldn't be surprised if they did something that no one was thinking of. Could honor discovery of QGP, for instance. Not sure who you'd give the prize to though—maybe Maiani?
Both Aharanov and Berry have people before them doing very similar things. If you have not read the Ehrenberg–Siday paper ten years before Aharanov-Bohm, you should. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0370-1301/62/1/303 Similarly with Berry, there were also a number of earlier papers, particularly Pancharatnam.
I'm still waiting for Kane and Mele.
Aspect and Zeilinger for important contributions to quantum information and Bell inequality tests.
Well, in this game you're always going to be wrong until you're right, Doug.
We still don't have an experimental prize for the Higgs. I have no idea who that would go to, but if the Committee doesn't have the chops to take that decision head-on then I don't know what they're doing.
In Astro, there is surely a prize in the waiting for the WMAP + Planck teams. Again, not entirely clear who gets it, but WMAP's PI haunts some familiar hallways.
-Derek
What about time crystals?
PPP, no trolling :-)
It might be a good year for an anyon nobel: Leinaas and Myrheim. (1) this last year was the first time we can say that anyons have been observed in experiment [Mainly Manfra's experiments, but also Feve] (2) these are Scandinavians, and that makes them home-town favorites.
Steve, I like that one quite a bit.
It's a good shout. Thors Hans Hansson is still the chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, and he certainly likes his fractional quantum Hall physics.
In seriousness - I am going to go out on a limb and say biological physics will finally get the recognition it deserves as a part of physics. There’s no reason, in my opinion, why John Hopfield should not have a Nobel for example.
Well that was unexpected! I honestly never give climate scientists their rightful credit, glad the Nobel committee did. But from the view of impact on humanity, climate science is incredibly important
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