Tadinya saya mengira fisikawan di Tata Institute for
Fundamental Research yang mau dapat hadiah ini.
Mereka kerja serupa, yaitu unified theory of
everything. Tapi apa masih ada istilah lain kali, ya?
Salam,
RM
Three Americans Win Nobel for Particle Physics Work
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: October 6, 2004
Three Americans who helped describe the force that
binds together the atomic nucleus were named winners
of the Nobel Prize in Physics yesterday. They are Dr.
David J. Gross of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical
Physics at the University of California at Santa
Barbara; Dr. Frank Wilczek of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology; and Dr. H. David Politzer of
the California Institute of Technology.
In two papers published in 1973, one by Drd. Gross and
Wilczek and the other by Dr. Politzer, they explained
why quarks, the theoretical constituents of the
neutrons and protons that make up the nucleus, could
never be seen apart from one another. Their work paved
the way for a theory known by the fanciful-sounding
name quantum chromodynamics, part of a suite of
theories known as the Standard Model that explains all
the forces of nature except gravity. It also raised
hopes that physicists might yet find a single unified
theory of nature. They will each get a third of the
$1.3 million prize.
The award had long been anticipated by the scientific
community. Dr. Lawrence M. Krauss, an astrophysicist
at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, said
it was long overdue, adding, "How often do you get to
explain one of the four fundamental forces of nature?"
In a press conference at M.I.T., Dr. Wilczek said the
award was welcome recognition for the endeavor of
trying to understand nature. "It is one of the real
gems of our culture," he said, "that we can understand
nature in this way and that you find beautiful
things."
The award harks back to what now seems like a golden
age of particle physics that lasted from the end of
World War II to the 1980's. In a spurt of feverish
activity at particle accelerators and at the
blackboards of theorists, physics arrived at an
understanding of the three fundamental forces in
nature besides gravity: electromagnetism, which is
responsible for light and chemistry; the so-called
weak force, responsible for some kinds of radioactive
decay; and the strong force, which holds together
atomic nuclei.
According to quantum mechanics, the paradoxical lingua
franca of the atomic world, the forces between
particles are transmitted in a kind of game of catch
by little bundles of energy. For electromagnetism, the
force carriers are bits of light known as photons. For
the weak force, they are the W and Z bosons, which are
brothers, of a sort, of the photon.
By the 1970's, the situation with regard to the strong
force was considerably murkier than for the other
forces. In 1964, the theorists Dr. Murray Gell-Mann of
Caltech and Dr. George Zweig of Harvard each
independently suggested that protons and neutrons, the
constituents of atomic nuclei, were not elementary but
were themselves composites, made up of smaller
particles that Dr. Gell-Mann called quarks.
But quarks were never seen in isolation, suggesting
that the force binding them together was extremely
powerful. Meanwhile, experiments at particle
accelerators indicated that quarks inside protons
seemed to act as if there was no force on them at all.
How could that be?
"At first, it seemed like a contradiction," said Dr.
Wilczek.
Or as Dr. Robert L. Jaffe of M.I.T. put it: "It was
just viewed as absurd that nature was made of
something that was never seen. How could the quarks
not get out? It was upside down to everything we had
seen before."
The 1973 papers, Dr. Jaffe said, "translated absurdity
into order," using the theory of quantum
chromodynamics. In the modern version of this theory,
quarks come in six types - fancifully named up, down,
strange, charmed, top and bottom - and three "colors,"
named red, green and blue. The colors are like
electrical charges that interact by exchanging bundles
of energy called gluons, just as electrical charges
attract or repel by exchanging photons.
In contrast to electromagnetism, however, the gluons
themselves have a color charge - thus the name
chromodynamics - and interact with one another. In a
breakthrough calculation, Dr. Gross, then an assistant
professor at Princeton, and Dr. Wilczek, his graduate
student, found that the force between two quarks would
increase with distance and turn off as they grew
closer. It would be as if the quarks were tied
together by a rubber band that pulled tauter and
tauter as they separated, but went slack when they
came together, a notion known as asymptotic freedom.
They soon learned that Dr. Politzer, then a graduate
student at Harvard, had done the same thing.
Dr. Gross, 63, was born in Washington. Dr. Politzer,
55, and Dr. Wilczek, 53, were both born in New York
City.
Noting that several Nobel Prizes have been awarded for
work on unifying the weak and electromagnetic forces,
Dr. Gross said that he was happy and proud that work
on the strong force was being recognized.
"In many ways, I regard it as the most beautiful part
of the Standard Model, the hardest to put together and
the most exciting," he said.
Dr. Politzer was described by Caltech officials as
shy, and he declined to be interviewed yesterday or to
attend a news conference. But, he is not completely
unused to the spotlight. Caltech said he played a
physicist in the 1989 Paul Newman movie "Fat Man and
Little Boy," about the building of the atomic bomb.
Dr. Wilczek used the Nobel occasion to put in a plug
for reviving the commitment to excellence in American
schools. "I want to thank the U.S.," he said, "for
supplying the system of public education that did so
well by me."
(Download the Print Edition of The New York Times)
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