STOCKHOLM, 3 Oct: Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for studying how electrons zip around the atom in the tiniest fractions of seconds, a field that could one day lead to better electronics or disease diagnoses.
\nThe award went to French-Swedish physicist Anne L\u2019Huillier, French scientist Pierre Agostini and Hungarian-born Ferenc Krausz for their work with the tiny part of each atom that races around the center and that is fundamental to virtually everything: chemistry, physics, our bodies and our gadgets.
\nElectrons move so fast that they have been out of reach of human efforts to isolate them, but by looking at the tiniest fraction of a second possible, scientists now have a \u201cblurry\u201d glimpse of them and that opens up whole new sciences, experts said.
\n\u201cThe electrons are very fast, and the electrons are really the workforce in everywhere,\u201d Nobel Committee member Mats Larsson said. \u201cOnce you can control and understand electrons, you have taken a very big step forward.\u201d
\nL\u2019Huillier, of Lund University in Sweden, is the fifth woman to receive a Nobel in physics.
\n\u201cFor all the women, I say if you are interested, if you have a little bit of passion for this type of challenges, so just go for it,\u201d L\u2019Huillier said in an interview with The Associated Press.<\/p>\n
What Discovery Won The Nobel Prize In Physics?
\nTo understand how an electron travels, the scientists had to look at an extremely short time period \u2014 one quintillionth of a second known as an attosecond \u2014 just like a photographer uses a quick shutter speed when photographing a hummin-gbird.
\nHow small is it?
\n\u201cLet\u2019s take one second, which is the time of a heartbeat,\u201d Nobel Committee chair Eva Olsson said. To get the realm of the attosecond, that would have to be divided by 1,000 six times.
\nPhysicist Mark Pearce, a Nobel Committee member, said \u201cthere are as many attoseconds in a second as there are seconds which have passed since the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago.\u201d
\nBut even when scientists \u201csee\u201d the electron, there\u2019s only so much they can view.
\n\u201cYou can see whether it\u2019s on the one side of a molecule or on the other,\u201d L\u2019Huillier, 65, said. \u201cIt\u2019s still very blurry.\u201d
\n\u201cThe electrons are much more like waves, like water waves, than particles and what we try to measure with our technique is the position of the crest of the waves,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Why Do Electrons Matter?
\nElectrons are key because that\u2019s \u201chow the atoms bind together,\u201d L\u2019Huillier said. It\u2019s where chemical reactions occur.
\nAt the moment, this science is about understanding our universe, but the hope is that it will eventually have many practical applications in electronics, diagnosing diseases and basic chemistry.
\nBut L\u2019Huillier said her work shows how important it is to work on fundamental science regardless of future applications because she spent 30 years on it before possible real world uses became more apparent.<\/p>\n
How Did L\u2019huillier, Krausz And Agostini React?
\nL\u2019Huillier was teaching basic engineering physics to about 100 undergraduates at Lund when she got the call that she had won, but her phone was on silent and she didn\u2019t pick up. She checked it during a break and called the Nobel Committee.
\nThen she went back to teaching.
\n\u201cI was very concentrated, forgot about the Nobel Prize and tried to finish my lecture,\u201d L\u2019Huillier told the AP. She finished the class a little early so she could speak to the new conference announcing the prize at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.
\n\u201cThis is the most prestigious and I am so happy to get this prize. It\u2019s incredible,\u201d she told the news conference. \u201cAs you know there are not so many women who got this prize so it\u2019s very special.\u201d
\nThe Nobel organization posted a photo of L\u2019Huillier on social media holding a mobile phone to her ear.
\n\u201cDedicated teacher alert!\u201d the post on X, formerly Twitter, said. \u201cNot even the 2023 #NobelPrize in Physics could tear Anne L\u2019Huillier from her students.\u201d
\nAnd L\u2019Huillier said because the prize was a secret at the time, she wasn\u2019t allowed to tell them what happened, but she said they guessed.
\nAgostini, an emeritus professor at Ohio State University in the U.S., was in Paris and could not be reached by the Nobel Comm-ittee before it announced his win to the world.
\n\u201cI haven\u2019t had a telephone call from the committee. Perhaps it\u2019s not true. I don\u2019t know,\u201d he told the AP, laughing. \u201cI think the committee is looking for me in Columbus.\u201d
\n\u201cThere are certainly younger people who would have appreciated it far more than me,\u201d the 82-year-old joked. \u201cIt\u2019s good but it is a bit late for me.\u201d
\nBut he added: \u201cI don\u2019t think I would have deserved it more earlier!\u201d
\nKrausz, of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, told reporters that he was bewildered.
\n\u201cI have been trying to figure out since 11 a.m. \u2026 whether I\u2019m in reality or it\u2019s just a long dream,\u201d said the 61-year-old.
\nThe Nobel Prizes carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by the prize\u2019s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel.
\nThe physics prize comes a day after two scientists won the Nobel Prize in medicine for discoveries that enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
STOCKHOLM, 3 Oct: Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for studying how electrons zip around the atom in the tiniest fractions of seconds, a field that could one day lead to better electronics or disease diagnoses. The award went to French-Swedish physicist Anne L\u2019Huillier, French scientist Pierre Agostini and Hungarian-born Ferenc […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-225334","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}