Live data from Hacker News

Nobel Prize in Physics 2025

nobelprize.org

91–100 of 110 posts

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics 2025

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French higher education institutions work in very different ways from the standard US model; two relevant caracteristics are: a) good institutions for education and for research might not be the same at all and b) institutions work in a much more networked ways, so many labs will be joint ventures between like 5 universities/schools and 3 national research centres, students might get three degrees with each of them b…

> good institutions for education and for research might not be the same at all I'm pretty sure this is true in the US, too. Maybe we're just a little more delusional about it here.

I went to a tier 2 state school, no real research to speak of.

Amazing professors, great students to prof ratio, professors were in their offices all the time and happy to see students. The night before final labs were due profs would be up helping students debug problems.

Only 2 courses I took there even had TAs. Work was typically hand graded by professors as soon as you passed the first intro to course, and quite a few of the intro courses were fully taught by professors as well.

Does my school have any good research coming out of it? Not really. Not the point. It has a bunch of professors who are there because they want to teach, and it has a bunch of students who are getting to benefit from those professors.

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics 2025

#93

This award involved some clever engineering to set up quantum effects in a macroscopic system, but was there any new physics involved here? (Still better than last year's award which wasn't really physics at all!)

It's highly non-trivial claim that macroscopic system can have quantized energy levels and exhibit measurable quantum effects. You can't just solve Shroedinger equation of 10^24 particles to show that.

That is what BCS theory does.

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics 2025

#94

Dumb question: "We know that the ball will bounce back every time it is thrown at a wall. A single particle, however, will sometimes pass straight through an equivalent barrier in its microscopic world and appear on the other side. This quantum mechanical phenomenon is called tunnelling." Is the particle just failing to collide with the wall since objects are mostly empty space? Or is something more spooky or interes…

Here is a one-sentence answer: Tunneling is due to incomplete reflection at a boundary mathematically akin to seeing out of your window.

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics 2025

#95
Very exciting.

Devoret was my co-authors phd advisor (and who is also my advisor now on some of my work).

We sorely need more open quantum systems built/designed with open source tooling. The IBM's, Ionq's, Quantinuum's and Googles, will be happy if we all remain serfs to their multimillion dollar machines and hardware direction.

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics 2025

#96

Fred Ramsdell was among those honored Monday with a 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine, but he's currently "living his best life" on an "off the grid" hiking foray https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20251006-unreachable-n...

Oops, that was a wrong thread. That's another nonbl prize nomination.

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics 2025

#97
John Clarke is the father of Liz, one of my close friends from college. Liz and I were physics undergrads at Berkeley and her father was a professor there. Thanks to HN I had the pleasure of being the first one to tell her that her dad had just won the Nobel Prize (I saw the news before she woke up, due to time zone differences). I wish I could post photos here, she sent me a beautiful picture of him filled with joy as he received a free parking pass from Berkeley with the expiration date "NEVER" later that afternoon :-D

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics 2025

#98
post #34

This award involved some clever engineering to set up quantum effects in a macroscopic system, but was there any new physics involved here? (Still better than last year's award which wasn't really physics at all!)

From that viewpoint of all of chemistry and biology is just a consequence of theoretical physics. A lot of the 'consequences' of physics are very surprising and not at all obvious from the fundamental equations. There's a great paper you might want to read: https://www.tkm.kit.edu/downloads/TKM1_2011_more_is_differen... He also won a Nobel by the way. Many great discoveries follow from new instrumentation leading to…

Thanks, this context helped.

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics 2025

#99

John Clarke is the father of Liz, one of my close friends from college. Liz and I were physics undergrads at Berkeley and her father was a professor there. Thanks to HN I had the pleasure of being the first one to tell her that her dad had just won the Nobel Prize (I saw the news before she woke up, due to time zone differences). I wish I could post photos here, she sent me a beautiful picture of him filled with joy…

This is a weird story. If I were the dad, I would've preferred to tell my daughter myself. And a Nobel winner being overjoyed to get a free parking pass is borderline dystopian.

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics 2025

#100

John Clarke is the father of Liz, one of my close friends from college. Liz and I were physics undergrads at Berkeley and her father was a professor there. Thanks to HN I had the pleasure of being the first one to tell her that her dad had just won the Nobel Prize (I saw the news before she woke up, due to time zone differences). I wish I could post photos here, she sent me a beautiful picture of him filled with joy…

This is a weird story. If I were the dad, I would've preferred to tell my daughter myself. And a Nobel winner being overjoyed to get a free parking pass is borderline dystopian.

It's just inner city life- it's a big deal in the real world
Post reply on HN