The Nobel Prize in Physics 2007 Goes to Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg for the Discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance

Winning the Nobel Prize is one of the highest honors one can achieve. Winners bring their institutions and their countries prestige. I’d like to highlight this year’s prizewinners.

The Nobel Prize in Physics this year was awarded to French scientist Albert Fert and German scientist Peter Grünberg. They were recognized for their independent discovery of giant magnetoresistance. The concept’s a bit esoteric, but the Nobel Prize site, nobelprize.org, has some nice introductory material. In fact, it’s really put together well and you are advised to browse through it for more information about any aspect of the Nobel Prizes.

I especially like their “speed read” summaries. The Physics entry is quite easy to understand and begins as follows:

The Giant within Small Devices

Lying at the heart of the computer which you are using to read this article is a memory retrieval system based on the discoveries for which the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg. They discovered, quite independently, a new way of using magnetism to control the flow of electrical current through sandwiches of metals built at the nanotechnology scale.

(continued)

And if you have time, you should definitely read a nice 7-page PDF explaining the concept for the layperson, using illustrations and easy-to-understand concepts. I won’t bother going into detail here since the site does such a nice job. There’s no excuse not to know the basics of this discovery!

You can also see videos of the announcement, or read the press release.

Actor Wants to Return to School, Get Ph.D. in Physics

Now here’s something I’m glad to see, and it’s a shame it doesn’t happen more often.

From CNN “Oscar-nominated Actor’s Big Love: Physics”:

Terrence Howard is more than a leading man.

He cemented that status with an Academy Award nomination last year for his performance as a pimp-turned-rapper in Hustle & Flow. He takes the lead again in Pride, opening Friday.

But his big-screen work represents only one of his passions.…He’s a musician, currently at work on his debut album. He studies physics for fun…

He was destined to be an actor, he said. It was practically the family business. Howard’s great-grandmother, Minnie Gentry, was a stage star, and his grandmother, mother and uncle were actors, too.

But deep down, he really wanted to be a science teacher.

“My main love is still physics,” he said. “I want to go back to school and get my doctorate in it.”

When prompted, he effortlessly explains wave-particle theory and the law of entanglement.

But it might be awhile before he can return to school. Howard is booked up solid for the foreseeable future.

…

Dark Matter, in Three Dimensions

Comparison of the large-scale structure of normal matter and dark matter. Credit: NASA, ESA, and R. Massey (California Institute of Technology)

The American Astronomical Society is meeting in Seattle, and researchers just announced the results from an intense, international, multi-telescope survey looking deep into the universe. Using data from the survey, called COSMOS, astronomers were able to map out the distribution of dark matter and compare it to the distribution of normal matter. The data confirmed several theories we have, though we’re still quite far from understanding even the fundamentals of dark matter.

It has been theorized that dark matter became arranged in enormous filaments as the universe cooled after the big bang. And since normal matter would be gravitationally attracted to the dark matter, we would expect that galaxies would be distributed along the dark matter filaments as well. As you can see in the accompanying image, they match up remarkably well. There are some discrepancies, though they may be related simply to the limits of our ability to detect all the matter.

Artificial Sun

Cutaway schematic of ITER. Note the size of the human for scale. Published with permission of ITER.

I strongly support international collaboration, so I was excited to read on Bainite’s blog that ITER has been formally announced. ITER is a project to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion power on a large scale; it is a joint project between the European Union, Japan, the People’s Republic of China, India, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, and the United States.  The planned location is in Cadarache in southern France (approximate location 43°41’55.65″N 5°44’30.61″E). ITER will fuse deuterium and tritium, contained by magnetic fields. The resultant high-energy neutrons will produce heat. In a fusion power plant, this heat would then be used to produce electricity; however, as ITER intended for research and demonstration, the heat will be allowed to escape.

Fusion is a form of nuclear energy. In fact, it’s the way our sun and all the stars produce energy, which means that ultimately, it’s the source for almost all energy on Earth. The energy from the sun powers solar panels, heats air to produce wind currents, and evaporates water which flows back down to produce hydroelectric power. Plants capture sunlight to make their food in a process called photosynthesis; animals (including humans) eat those plants or eat animals who ate those plants to obtain food. Similarly, our fossil fuels—such as coal, oil, and natural gas—are formed from the remains of plants and animals that died millions of years ago.

The form of nuclear energy used in today’s power plants is fission, in which a large atomic nucleus is split into smaller pieces, releasing energy. While this results in millions of times at much energy as conventional chemical methods like burning coal and avoids producing greenhouse gases, it still produces radioactive waste products. On the other hand, fusion combines two small atomic nuclei: this releases even more energy than fission, and does not produce any toxic waste products. However, the trick is that it is technically much more difficult to control and harness the energy. Of course, we already possess the ability for uncontrolled fusion—the hydrogen bomb—which releases its energy all at once.

Litvinenko Apparently Poisoned with Polonium-210

Former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko has been in the international news after suddenly falling ill earlier this month, then dying on 23 November. The cause of his illness confounded his physicians, who initially postulated that might have been poisoned with thallium. However, in a surprising twist, the cause of death now appears to be poisoning with radioactive polonium-210 (²¹⁰Po). That is, the poison did not work by the usual chemical means, but instead released radiation as it decayed inside his body. Given this unusual method of toxicity, officials in the United Kingdom are now trying to determine how next to proceed. Debora MacKenzie writes in the New Scientist

“This is an unprecedented event in the UK,” said HPA [Health Protection Agency] chief executive Pat Troop. “It is the first time someone in the UK has apparently been deliberately poisoned with a radioactive agent.”

The agency is now assessing the health risks posed to members of the public who may have come into contact with Litvinenko, including family members and hospital staff who cared for him during the weeks he spent in hospital. They are also trying to decide the safest way for pathologists to conduct an autopsy of his body, and indeed whether such a procedure is safe enough to be performed at all.

Source: Wikipedia

Polonium is an extremely rare element. It has an atomic number of 84, meaning that it has 84 protons (and therefore, 84 electrons); its position in the periodic table is shown here courtesy of Wikipedia. There are 25 known isotopes of polonium; polonium-210 (with 126 neutrons) is the most common. Polonium and every element with a higher atomic number (that is, 84 and up) are radioactive; that is, they are unstable, and spontaneously decay into other elements. Ms. MacKenzie goes on to write

Polonium is a radioactive element that is used industrially as an anti-static material. It is difficult to get hold of and not used regularly by research scientists, but very small traces of it occur naturally. The metal is usually made by bombarding the element bismuth with neutrons.

“To poison someone, large amounts of polonium-210 are required and this would have to be manmade, perhaps from a particle accelerator or a nuclear reactor,” said Dudley Goodhead at the UK’s MRC Radiation and Genome Stability Unit. “Polonium has a half-life of 138 days. This means that if that was the poison it will still be in the body and in the area – which makes it relatively easy to identify.”

There are several ways for radioactive decay to occur. Polonium-210 undergoes alpha decay, emitting an alpha particle (two protons and two neutrons, essentially a helium-4 nucleus). As a result, 82 protons (and 124 neutrons) are left. This is lead-206, which is stable. Alpha particles are quite massive, so they cannot penetrate solid matter very well. Therefore, polonium-210 must be inside someone’s body to inflict much damage—so it must be ingested, inhaled, or administered through a wound, according to Roger Cox, director of the UK’s Centre for Radiation, Chemical and Environmental Hazards. Mr. Cox believes that Mr. Litvinenko would have to ingest the polonium to account for the large amount found.

According to Scotland Yard, “Traces of polonium-210 were found at the Itsu sushi restaurant in Piccadilly, the Millennium Hotel, Grosvenor Square, and at Mr. Litvinenko’s home in Muswell Hill, London.” The investigation will continue—Britain’s top-level Cabinet team has met, and the country has asked Russia to assist with the inquiry, according to CNN.

Related posts

• Further Development’s in Litvinenko’s Polonium-210 Poisoning
• Science News Update (30 Nov 2006)