![]() ![]() ![]() “I hope this recognition of fundamental science will help raise awareness of the value of blue-sky research.” “I am overwhelmed to receive this award,” Higgs said in a brief statement released by the University of Edinburgh. ![]() Higgs remained nearly as elusive Tuesday as the famous particle that carries his name. A Nobel committee official said no one had been able to reach Higgs, despite multiple phone calls. The Nobel committee said it gave the prize to Englert and Higgs “for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.”Įnglert, sounding unsurprised, materialized by voice in a teleconference after the announcement in Stockholm, and discussed the enduring unknowns in physics (dark energy, dark matter, quantum gravity). The mass of particles is determined by how they interact with this field. The Higgs boson has surely been the most charismatic creature in the physics bestiary ever since scientist Leon Lederman dubbed it “the God particle.” According to the Standard Model of particle physics, the Higgs is associated with an invisible field that is part of the infrastructure of the cosmos. Higgs "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider." () The 2013 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded jointly to Francois Englert and Peter W. It was as if the prize would be the final validation of the Higgs discovery. ![]() Rarely has a Nobel Prize announcement arrived with so much hype. I’m really proud to have been associated with this work that has turned out to be so important.” But he added: “All in all, it’s a great day for science. Hagen’s collaborator Gerald Guralnik, a professor of physics at Brown University, discovered that he’d been bypassed when he turned on his computer Tuesday morning. “Not a graceful concession by any means, but that department has never been my strong suit.” “Faced with a choice between their rulebook and an evenhanded judgment, the Swedes chose the rulebook,” Hagen said in a blunt e-mail shortly thereafter. Or the academy could have broken its own rules and made all five laureates. For the Swedish Academy to have recognized Hagen, they would have had to honor his co-authors as well, which would have meant bypassing Higgs and Englert. Hagen was part of a collaboration with two other theorists in a key 1964 theoretical paper. The selection, though widely applauded by physicists around the world, provided a reminder that the system for awarding Nobel Prizes is not an exact science, and can deliver a painful blow to the bypassed. The new Nobel laureates in physics are 84-year-old Englishman Peter Higgs, after whom the particle is named, and Francois Englert, 80, of Belgium. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |