Physics Nobel 2016
October 4, 2016 at 7:07 am
(This post was last modified: October 4, 2016 at 7:14 am by Alex K.)
As expected, the Royal Academy delayed the Nobel Prize for gravitational waves by a year and gave this year's to one of those groups of people who have done innovative work decades ago but hadn't so far been recognized.
This year it goes to Kosterlitz, Thouless and Haldane for work on the role of topological effects in certain materials. I admit that I didn't have them on my radar because, while I had heard of the KT-Transition (the physics effect, not the Dinosaur killing meteorite), I wasn't aware that it has enough impact to warrant a Nobel.
So, what are topological effects? Topology is the mathematical study of those aspects of shapes of things which do not change when they are bent and deformed. For example, if you bend or twist a donut shaped rubber ring, it has still one hole and two distict ways to walk in a loop on it, the long way encircling the hole, and the short way going in a circle round the solid part. These properties are still the same if you deform the donut a bit. So, the topology of an object is described by discrete numbers, not continuous measures such as size or angles - this makes it very powerful because it means that topological properties of materials will not depend on the messy details of how they are made up and shaped, leading to very universal laws which hold with great precision independent of the details of the setup (unlike e.g. the electrical resistance of a piece of metal, whose precise value depends on many unknowns such as the exact shape, purity and temperature.)
The topological effects in this year's nobel concern not how to walk on a donut, but how the electromagnetic fields are oriented in certain materials. K and T discovered that above a certain temperature, the fields form closed loops called vortices, which spontaneously pop up in the material and change the electrical properties of the material in unusual ways.
So share your testimony: how did the Kosterlitz-Thouless-Transition change your life?
This year it goes to Kosterlitz, Thouless and Haldane for work on the role of topological effects in certain materials. I admit that I didn't have them on my radar because, while I had heard of the KT-Transition (the physics effect, not the Dinosaur killing meteorite), I wasn't aware that it has enough impact to warrant a Nobel.
So, what are topological effects? Topology is the mathematical study of those aspects of shapes of things which do not change when they are bent and deformed. For example, if you bend or twist a donut shaped rubber ring, it has still one hole and two distict ways to walk in a loop on it, the long way encircling the hole, and the short way going in a circle round the solid part. These properties are still the same if you deform the donut a bit. So, the topology of an object is described by discrete numbers, not continuous measures such as size or angles - this makes it very powerful because it means that topological properties of materials will not depend on the messy details of how they are made up and shaped, leading to very universal laws which hold with great precision independent of the details of the setup (unlike e.g. the electrical resistance of a piece of metal, whose precise value depends on many unknowns such as the exact shape, purity and temperature.)
The topological effects in this year's nobel concern not how to walk on a donut, but how the electromagnetic fields are oriented in certain materials. K and T discovered that above a certain temperature, the fields form closed loops called vortices, which spontaneously pop up in the material and change the electrical properties of the material in unusual ways.
So share your testimony: how did the Kosterlitz-Thouless-Transition change your life?
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition
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