Perhaps you’ve heard people say about the work of a scientist, “That’s Nobel worthy.” What they mean is that there is a relatively discernable level of work that is more likely to garner a Nobel prize. A question might be, “So why aren’t all scientists doing something Nobel worthy?” It’s actually a good question, because it goes to the heart of the motivation for doing science.

Science is done for a lot of reasons, a paycheck is one. To answer a difficult question is another. To discover something totally unknown is yet another. Just doing enough to get a paycheck may be a noble effort but doesn’t warrant a Nobel. Answering a difficult question might get a Nobel, if it’s something really important, but working on a well-known question is not particularly risky. Nobel committees prefer to reward scientists who stick their necks out to discover something new or better yet, surprising.

Nobel prizes are most often awarded to scientists who are or were working at the cutting edge of their field (or even beyond), yet manage to produce results that survive criticism, and that can be verified, reproduced and go on to contribute to the advancement of scientific knowledge. This is truly difficult to do.

I like to ask people, “A century or two from now, who do you think will be remembered most – athletes, politicians, generals, CEO’s, or Nobel pize winners?”

UPDATE 4:
The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences goes to Christopher Sims and Thomas Sargent for their empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy. Translated: Sims and Sargent are noted for their work in ‘rational expectations’ (RATEX) in economic behavior, a highly controversial approach that however has spawned a large number of practical techniques that are in routine use in business and economics.

UPDATE 3:
The Nobel Prize for Chemistry goes to Daniel Shechtman for the discovery of quasicrystals. The controversial discovery was a perfect example of a scientist sticking his neck out with extraordinary, surprising and almost unanticipated results. It took decades of continued work before quasicrystals gained mainstream acceptance – now, the Nobel Prize.

UPDATE 2:
The Nobel Prize for Physics goes to Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Reiss for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae. I’d add, for their even more important – or provocative – positing of dark matter (or dark energy) to explain the expansion.

UPDATE 1:
The Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine goes to Bruce Beutler and Jules Hoffmann for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity and to Ralph Steinman for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity. Dr. Steinman was awarded the prize post-morten, a first for the Nobel Prize, as he died between the time the Nobel committee made its selection and the time of the announcement.

Wrong, at least in one way.

Granted, quantum mechanics is a tough subject. So is your brain. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth knowing about. As for quantum physicists knowing about such a relationship, well they didn’t – and they certainly do care. That’s why the work of two scientists, Stephanie Wehner, an information theorist (and former hacker) from the National University of Singapore and Jonathan Oppenheim, a physicist, from the department of applied mathematics and theoretical physics at Cambridge University (UK) could be an important frame-changer. Published in the journal Science [The Uncertainty Principle Determines the Nonlocality of Quantum Mechanics] what they propose could change the way quantum physics is understood; it changes the frame of reference.

Oppenheim has published on arXiv (open access) a remarkably informal two page article explaining what he and Wehner are doing. His closing words are telling:

What I hope you find is that there are some very simple and fundamental questions about quantum theory that we don’t know the answer to, and that applying techniques from information theory to our laws of nature, allow us to make some progress in answering these questions, and more importantly, suggests basic and important questions we wouldn’t normally think of.

[Source: The uncertainty principle determines nonlocality]

I think for many people, even those who have pondered quantum mechanics for a while, the approach taken by Oppenheim and Wehner may help to frame quantum mysteries in a way that makes them less…mysterious.

Let’s dive into the deep end of the pool (using water-wings, of course, no math). Wehner and Oppenheim begin with the current understanding of the uncertainty principle and quantum nonlocality.

Two supposedly unrelated principles

Heisenberg uncertainty principle: Few concepts in physics get stretched out of shape more than this one. It’s really a statement about the limits of knowledge. There are certain pairs of physical properties, momentum and position are typically used for examples, that cannot be determined simultaneously to an arbitrary degree of precision. Think of an atom as it travels through the air: The uncertainty principle says the more precisely you try to measure its position, the less precisely you can measure its momentum. Put another way, attempting to measure one property with increasing precision makes the measurement of the other property more uncertain.

Quantum nonlocality: Usually this is described as quantum entanglement. It is a quantum effect on information shared between two objects (usually atoms or atomic particles). The ‘entangled’ relationship means that measuring a property on one object simultaneously changes the properties of the other, even if the objects are separated by an arbitrary distance.

Obviously quantum physics is not easy to understand. Even physicists tie their neurons into knots over it. More than anything there’s a natural tendency to want to think of quantum effects in terms of normal human experience (or what physicists call ‘classical physics’). When someone describes two atoms that are entangled so that they behave as if they were one and the same atom (what happens to one instantaneously happens to the other), our brains try to envision this as two separated objects with some invisible link that coordinates them. This way of thinking is rooted in our ‘real world’ physicality – action, reaction, that sort of thing. It requires a form of what physicists call action at a distance, where the change in one atom happens in the other atom without a mediator, that is, some connecting force. In classical physics, this is considered impossible.

In normal physics everything happens ‘locally.’ That is, really local: Everything is within one angstrom unit or less of each other (one tenth of a billionth the thickness of a human hair, or 0.0000000001 meter). Of course, this is incomprehensibly small. When physicists say two atoms can be ‘entangled,’ it’s not hard to believe at these tiny distances. We’d have more difficulty believing the same thing can happen when the atoms are a kilometer apart. Fortunately, according to Oppenheim and Wehner it appears there are limits to entanglement (more generally, nonlocality).

They go about explaining it like this: Consider two atoms separated but at some predictably limited distance. If the two atoms are entangled it is possible to describe the properties of one atom accurately more often by observing the properties of the other atom. That is, there is a certain amount of ‘information’ about the atoms that is shared, which helps make guesses as to their status more accurate than any other strategy for guessing.

A quantum game

Wehner explains this by means of a game with cats and boxes (shades of Schrödinger). It’s a fairly simple game, but I’m going to change the objects from cats to atoms so you don’t have to make the mental switch from animals to quantum properties:

There are two scientists, Alice and Bob. Alice has a device that can trap two entangled particles and, if desired, put them in two containers (right and left). Alice has programmed her computer to act like a referee. Her colleague Bob stands at the other end of the room where he can’t see what Alice is doing or communicate with her in any way, although he does have a computer connected to hers.

To start the game, Alice’s computer displays “odd” or “even” (like flipping a coin with heads or tails). If it displays “even,” Alice is to put either one particle in each container or no particles in any container. If it displays “odd,” she is to put one particle in either the right or the left container. Then Bob’s computer displays either “odd” or “even.” If it’s “even” Bob is to guess whether there’s a particle in the left box, and if “odd,” he must guess if there’s a particle in the right box. This is not a collaborative game, so they both get a point if Bob guesses correctly and none if he guesses wrong.

I won’t pick this game apart, but there are enough combinations so that people can strategize on how to make the guesses and improve their chances. Bob and Alice confer on strategy, but after the game starts they can’t communicate. If they can make a note in the computer about their strategy, and refine it over a series of games, the best strategy they can devise will win, on average, 75% of the games.

Now here’s the crucial part: Remember that the two particles are entangled. That means if Alice takes measurements (such as momentum, spin direction, mass) of one particle, it influences the properties of the other particle. This is called steering. If instead of recording their strategy Bob bases his guesses on measurements taken of the second particle – he improves the chances of a correct guess to 85%. The information provided by quantum theory allows Alice and Bob to make guesses better than any strategy they could record.

There is a subtle but important difference to highlight: The entangled particles share information and this relationship is based on the way quantum behavior can be measured. This does not imply some physical connection between them, no “action at a distance.” What Oppenheim and Wehner are exploring is an approach to quantum behavior based on information theory, a branch of computer science and mathematics.

The approach led them to a rich question: Why isn’t quantum behavior even weirder than it is?

Quantum weirdness

Einstein thought of quantum entanglement as ‘spooky action at a distance.’ Wehner and Oppenheim wondered why it wasn’t even spookier. In Oppenheim’s words:

Now, instead of fighting nonlocality, we ask why our description of quantum reality doesn’t require even more nonlocality. We don’t ask why quantum theory is so weird, but rather, why isn’t it weirder? Indeed, there could exist states of matter which are better than entanglement, in the sense that Alice and Bob could use them to win the game more than 85% of the time. These hypothetical objects (called PR-boxes, after Sandu Popescu and Daniel Rohrlich), allow Alice and Bob to win the game all the time, and they do not appear to be pathological, at least in the sense that they don’t allow action at a distance. Why does nature rule them out?

Here’s how Oppenheim and Wehner formulate an answer:

It starts with using computer science concepts for the atom/container game. The placement of the atoms in containers can be coded with two bits (in computer-style binary code: 0 or 1) because there are four possible ways to distribute the atoms (00, 01, 10, 11). Bob can only learn about one of the bits, either the atom is in the left container (one bit) or in the right container (one bit). He can’t learn about both bits to make a complete coding of the particle distribution into containers. This is where uncertainty meets up with entanglement. The two bits for coding are like the problem of momentum and position. The more you know about one, the less you can know about the other. Bob can only guess about one side or the other, left or right, but not both. In terms of quantum information, the more Bob tries to learn from one bit, the less he can learn about the other bit.

The conclusion is that even though two particles are in quantum entanglement, the uncertainty principle prevents deriving enough information from one particle so that the game can be won every time.

The game analogy is not perfect. Wehner and Oppenheim admit that they don’t know what restricts Bob’s ability to retrieve both bits of information. Nor can they answer how –or why– two particles can be affected by measuring one of them (by steering). Nevertheless, by putting the problem into the framework of information, instead of grappling with the weirdness like a metaphysical concept, it becomes a problem with more handles for thinking about it.

Perhaps it is at least as important that Oppenheim and Wehner have developed an equation, which not only describes the relationship between the locality principle and the uncertainty principle, but also can be used to calculate how much uncertainty affects a given amount of locality. In short the two effects can be quantified. This opens the door to experiments with measurable results, the key to validating their contribution and expanding beyond it.

Because the principles of quantum mechanics are fundamental to everything in the physical world, advances in our understanding will percolate throughout physics and eventually into the domains of electronics, medicine, and other ‘practical’ technologies. That makes the work of Oppenheim and Wehner worth knowing about, if not caring about it as much as a physicist.

Not only is graphene one atom thick, its atoms are arranged in a honeycomb pattern (hexagonal shapes). However, that’s it: Carbon atoms, arranged as hexagons on a tiny sheet one atom thick. It sounds like graphene is simple stuff, but what this simplicity does to the physics! Graphene has many unique properties, and scientists continue to find more.

One new finding, which is still a matter of mathematical theory, describes a unique property of graphene that may provide a more convenient way to study something currently approachable only with a massive atomic particle accelerator. A group of physicists led by Abdulaziz Alhaidari at the Saudi Center for Theoretical Physics (Dhahran, Saudi Arabia) have published a paper at arXiv [Dynamical mass generation via space compactification in graphene] showing mathematically that the fundamental particles in graphene (fermions), which have no mass in two dimensions, will effectively have mass if the graphene is simply rolled into a tube.

How, you may ask, does an obviously three-dimensional figure (a tube) have only one dimension for moving fermions? This is where the unique properties of graphene come in: Electrons flowing through the special structure of graphene (hexagons in a one atom thick layer) behave like electrons travelling in a vacuum close to the speed of light. This behavior is not described by the traditional mathematics (Schrodinger equation) but by the mass-less Dirac equation. How then can these electrons acquire mass?

What constitutes and creates mass is a subject of debate in physics, but a commonly held theory is that matter at the smallest scale (nanoscale or below) has compacted dimensions. Describing these compactified spaces in quantum mechanics uses equations that include mass – voila, that’s how mass arises. Alhaidari and colleagues looked at these equations and wondered how they would apply to graphene. What if the space dimensions of two dimensional graphene were compactified into one dimension? Looking at various forms for graphene, they decided that when a sheet of graphene is rolled (essentially this makes a carbon nanotube), the fermions travelling down the tube would behave as if they were in a single dimension.

Remember, this is all mathematics. The Saudi physicists are not writing about creating mass ‘out of nothing.’ They’re saying that a two-dimensional condition that can be described with a massless Dirac equation can be effectively turned into a somewhat simpler one-dimensional equation with a term for mass. They believe this is the condition of a graphene sheet rolled into a tube. Mathematically the approach could provide a somewhat easier to use framework for looking at some very difficult problems in relativistic physics.

The math and the physics are tantalizing for the specialists. For most of us, the take-away is how graphene is providing the stimulus for theorizing and experimentation on a very broad front. From electronics to quantum physics this seemingly simple substance is opening fresh pathways for enquiring minds.

While it probably won’t be easy, there is hope that graphene as a physical substance can be involved in experiments that provide verification (or not) for mathematical predictions. The hope comes from the combination of graphene’s unusual properties and the fact that anybody in any lab anywhere can acquire graphene, attach electrodes to it, and go to work. While it’s not exactly the old ‘500 monkeys typing eventually create Shakespeare,’ easy accessibility to experimental procedures increases the chance that somebody will do breakthrough work.

Of course, there’s also hope that insights gained from the mathematical and physical knowledge of graphene will have practical applications. Even physicists smile at that happy thought. Engineers are more likely to be skeptical about the leap from quantum and relativistic effects at the nanoscale to finding useful applications at the macro scale (human visible size). I suppose this means that it will be a while (if ever) before graphene becomes a household word. On the other hand, the possible applications of graphene are already real enough to attract investment. In the end it may not matter so much if graphene is truly a ‘wonder material’ but that it was the material which caused so many people in science and technology to wonder.

This year’s Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology went to Robert Edwards the founding father of in-vitro fertilization (IVF). This is the procedure that removes an egg from the mother, fertilizes it externally (in-vitro), and then places it back into the mother or another woman for gestation. In the thirty years since it was developed IVF has resulted in more than 4 million children, most of them born to parents unable to conceive on their own. This was and to a certain extent remains one of the more controversial procedures. “Test tube babies” is still a pejorative. The Catholic Church is still pronouncing IVF akin to evil. At the very least it was a harbinger for all the procedures to come that would affect how people have babies and the increasing control we can exert over the outcome.

By awarding the Nobel Prize to Robert Edwards, the committee is not so much rewarding the fundamental science as it is signaling the importance of science with practical applications that benefit humanity. It’s also rewarding taking risks. IVF was difficult to develop, not so much because the research broke new ground, but because there was so much resistance to the idea. Funding was hard to get. Professional opinion was largely negative. That Edwards persevered, successfully completed the research, and was finally vindicated – that seems to be the point of the Nobel Prize.

This year’s Nobel Prize for Physics goes to two young men from Russia. The senior partner in the work done at the University of Nijmegen (Netherlands) and the University of Manchester (UK), is Andre Geim, 51. The other partner, Konstantin Novoselov is 36, the youngest Nobelist ever. Their achievement? They made it practical to work with a material known as graphene, tiny sheets of pure carbon only 1 atom thick and their seminal papers in 2004 and 2005 opened what can now be called the floodgates of graphene research.

This is the realm of nanotechnology, and in this realm it’s beginning to look like graphene will be one of the most important discoveries. It’s a common material – carbon – with some highly unusual and largely unexpected properties. Graphene is the thinnest material in the world, yet one of the strongest. It conducts electricity better than copper. It is the best known conductor of heat. It has yielded some surprising behavior, especially in quantum physics, where its unique configuration, single atoms arranged in hexagonal pattern like a bee’s honeycomb, produces wave-like properties instead of the usual action/reaction (billiard ball bounce) of classical physics.

To their chagrin, Geim and Novoselov will probably always be remembered as the practitioners of the ‘Scotch tape technique.’ To research graphene, they needed to produce the ultra-thin layers of carbon. Graphite, also pure carbon but in another configuration, was an obvious source but the partners couldn’t find a way to shave off the layers. One day a lab technician demonstrated how graphite was cleaned before examining it under a scanning tunneling microscope by stripping off layers with Scotch tape. Geim and Novoselov realized, in what has to be a kind of Eureka! Moment, that the layers sticking to the Scotch tape were graphene.

In a quirky way, beginning with this rather mundane procedure, a surprising new world of science and technology is arising. Worthy of a Nobel? Absolutely, in the thinking of the Nobel committee. Great science need not result from mountains of mathematics or billion dollar equipment. Simple necessity can be the mother of humble inventions with powerful futures.

[SciTechStory recent coverage of advances in graphene research:
Graphene: Diverse advances (09-11-2010)
Stretch graphene, europium titante – get interesting results (08-22-2010)
Graphene oxide: Nanotechnology with an eco-friendly end (07-23-2010)
Graphene in a communications context (04-11-2010)
Progress toward graphene solar cells (04-10-2010)
Graphene transistors (02-05-2010)
Big news for nanoscale graphene (01-20-2010)
]

It required Berkelium 97 because the collision material for the accelerator would be Calcium 20. Do the math: 97 + 20. Colliding these two elements could produce the elusive 117, and it did.

One of the highlights of this discovery is its international pedigree:

- The High Flux Isotope Reactor in Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Tennessee, USA) created 22 mg of berkelium after 250 days of intense neutron flux radiation.
- The Oak Ridge team then spent 90 days purifying the berkelium.
- The Research Institute for Advanced Reactors (Dimitrovgrad, Russia) prepared the calcium and berkelium for the accelerator.
- The Joint Institute of Nuclear Research (Dubna, Russia) used its U400 cyclotron accelerator for 155 hours of calcium-berkelium collisions.
- Initial data analysis was performed at Dubna.
- The data was shipped to Lawrence Livermore Labs (California, USA) for further analysis.
- Scientists from Vanderbilt University (Tennessee, USA) and the University of Nevada (Las Vegas, USA) also participated.

The process of creating element 117 needed to fall within the 320 day half-life of berkelium, so in terms of costs, this was close to being a one-time shot.

It’s already a big deal to add an element, but this one has something extra (besides a proton). It completes the 7th row of the periodic table and it suggests that there are more elements to be found. The theoretical models say there could be many more elements. Physicists think some of those elements may be much more stable – they might even hang around long enough to perform experiments with them. Many of the elements since Uranium 92, the last naturally occurring element, are so ephemeral (lasting femtoseconds in some cases) about all that can be done is to certify they exist. However beyond 118, the addition of protons may lead to what is called an ‘island of stability’ around 120 to 124 where the extra weight helps keep the element from breaking apart.

If this is true – and at this point nobody knows for sure – then not only does the periodic table continue; there may be some very unusual elements in the offing with properties that at this point are hard to imagine. ¬¬¬

“These new elements expand our understanding of the universe and provide important tests of nuclear theories,” said Vanderbilt University Professor of physics Joe Hamilton. “The existence of the island of stability, a pure theoretical notion in the 1960s, offers the possibility of further expansion of the periodic table with accompanying scientific breakthroughs in the physics and chemistry of the heaviest elements.”

[Source: Oak Ridge National Laboratory]

This is heading into new territory, the unknown. It may have nothing except the end of the periodic table. It may have new worlds. Ladies and gentlemen, start your cyclotrons.

The research, conducted at the University of Michigan (USA), used ‘optical tweezers’ – specially constructed lasers to ‘pinch’ or ‘pull’ on the ends of DNA strands. It’s a very small pull – about 200 femtonewtons, or roughly equivalent to one-billionth of the weight of a grain of rice. The resulting tension on the strands caused the DNA to ‘tighten the loops.’ If you recall the classic picture of DNA as a ‘spiral staircase’, pulling on the ends causes the spiral to tighten. It’s known that this position with tighter loops prevents expression (creation of proteins) for many of the genes within the loops. Of course, this can have an effect on the condition of the cell.

While this experiment was performed on free DNA, the scientists say forces as much as 100 times stronger are regularly created inside cells as contents shift and buffet each other.

“If we can basically shut this process down with the tiniest force, how could all these larger forces not have an impact on gene expression?” Milstein said [University of Michigan, Department of Physics].

[Source: ]

This exercise in biophysics shows that genetics isn’t all chemistry. There are situations where mechanical stresses and other physical forces may also have a role to play in mutations, diseases, and other changes in cell biology.

Question: What if you attach a buttered piece of toast (butter side up) to a cat’s back and tossed them both off the balcony? Will the cat land on its feet, or will the butter hit the ground?

Answer: Did you know gravity is a metaphysical property…that we don’t know what gravity is? Sorry, that’s actually another question. Anyway, the answer to the question above has opened an interesting world of physical behavior in much the same vein as quantum mechanics, which is to say crazy obscure. The laws governing the fall of buttered toast dictate that it must land with the butter-side down. Equally strict laws concerning feline aerodynamics result in a cat never landing on its back. Obviously, the combined construct – a cat with buttered toast on its back – indicates that Nature would have no way to resolve the conundrum.

Therefore, the buttered-toast-cat combination simply does not fall.

This, as we have learned, is the secret of anti-gravity. A cat with buttered toast on its back, when tossed from a balcony, will quickly settle at a height where the various laws at work in its twisting effort to put paws down and the butter-earth attraction are in equilibrium.

Most civilized species of the galaxy use this principle to drive their ships within planetary systems (where gravity exists, of course). The humming noise recalled by most of those who sight UFOs is, in fact, the purring of multiple fat, happy, and buttered-toasty cats.

However, there are problems with the power of this conundrum. If the cats should become hungry and eat the toast from their back, the effect will be cancelled and the interplanetary vehicle will be marooned or crash. This outcome may be avoided by using a collar that prevents the cat’s mouth from reaching the level of its back. Then there is the problem of steering. As everyone knows, steering cats is even more difficult than the management of programmers; however the solution to the problem is similar in both cases.

Programmers can be given proper orientation with the use of freshly baked pizza. No programmer can resist the smell of pizza and will instinctively move toward the source of the aroma. Similar effects can be obtained with cats using fresh fish. The placement of the fish guides movement of the cats for directional steering. Supplying fish will also completely avoid the problem of hungry cats eating the buttered toast.

In such ways the ineluctable forces that surround us and bind us are used to their greatest effect.

Four days later, George runs into Ken in the hallway. “Ken, have you looked at the equation?” Ken sighs and looks unhappy. “Yes, George, but I’m sorry to say it’s totally uninteresting. The equation is valid, of course, but only in the most trivial case where the numbers are real and positive.”