The liveblog
Greeting from Brussels! This is my liveblog of the Nobel Prize Announcement Ceremony, bringing you the facts and the retweets as they happen.
14:14: Press Conference ongoing. “This is a great day for young people.”
13:56: A moving statement from Kibble (source):
I am glad to see that the Swedish Academy has recognized the importance of the mass-generating mechanism for gauge theories and the prediction of the Higgs boson, recently verified at CERN. My two collaborators, Gerald Guralnik and Carl Richard Hagen, and I contributed to that discovery, but our paper was unquestionably the last of the three to be published in Physical Review Letters in 1964 (though we naturally regard our treatment as the most thorough and complete) and it is therefore no surprise that the Swedish Academy felt unable to include us, constrained as they are by a self-imposed rule that the Prize cannot be shared by more than three people. My sincere congratulations go to the two Prize winners, François Englert and Peter Higgs. A sad omission from the list was Englert’s collaborator Robert Brout, now deceased.
13:37: CERN are holding a press conference at 14:00 (CET) link
13:22: Commentary continues at the Nobel Prize page. Currently discussing why the boson was so hard to find. “This particle has been looked for at every accelerator that has existed.”
13:20: As expected, so many news sites have been created: CMS, ATLAS, ULB, Edinburgh
13:14: I think my twitter account has exploded with tweets. Also, some Belgian news pages are down, probably due to high traffic. Wow!
13:11: Wow, what a great announcement. Too short though!
13:08: Find out more about the physics at Brussels, where the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism was born! The IIHE and the Nobel Prize
13:01: Englert is on the phone. Good to hear from him 🙂
12:59: Animation of the boson appearing, cool!
12:57: We just opened the champagne here at ULB!
12:52: Text for the announcement:
“For the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider”
12:48: The award goes to Englert and Higgs!
12:44: One minute to go!
12:39: We all know what the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism is and what the boson discovery means, so let’s instead take a look at the other likely awards. The prize could go to the discovery of extra solar planets. 51 Pegasi b was an extra solar planet discovered in 1995, orbiting a sun-like star. This discovery could have far reaching implications. What would happen if we saw spectral lines suggesting the presence amino acids coming from the planet? (I’m not sure such a phenomenon is even possible, but if it is it would be a very strong indicator of RNA-like life from another planet.) That discovery took place 18 years ago, and the Brout-Englert-Higgs boson was discovered only one year ago. Either discovery would certainly be worthy of the prize.
12:33: A quantum approach to the delay problem:
Someone go observe the academy and make them leave this terrible superposition. (@lievenscheire)
12:32: Another possible reason for the delay:
There’ll be a new hunt for the #Higgs. He’s gone to the Highlands to avoid the fuss if he wins #nobelprize. Maybe reason for delay. (@BBCPallab)
12:31: The Nobel Prize committee are stalling by suggesting we look at previous awards. At least they are trying to keep up amused while we wait 🙂
12:29: Around the world people are patiently waiting. People from the US have been awake since 5:00am. In Marakech the ATLAS Collaboration looks on. Here are ULB/IIHE the cafeteria seem deserted. (I’m glad there’s a coffee machine on the desk next time mine.) I’m starting to think this is a plot to get some more media attention for what is bound to be a controversial year for physics. There are many good choices of topic this year, and even some of the topics have controversial choices of Laureates.
12:21: Some humourous speculation about the delay:
The Academy only has 3 #sigma evidence of more votes for than against, waiting for more data (@SethZenz)
They can’t get Comic Sans installed on the Academy’s computer (@orzelc)
The committee were mobbed trying to get across a cocktail party. (@AstroKatie)
12:07: The announcement is delayed until 12:45 CET. People are complaining about the background music!
11:58: The announcement is delayed until 12:30 CET.
11:44: According to the Guardian (source) there will be a delay of 30 minutes.
11:42: Just over two minutes to go. This could be a very exciting year for Belgium.
11:33: See the livecast.
Other info
On Tuesday October 8th the recipient(s) of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics will be announced. There has already been a lot of speculation about who might be the Nobel Laureates this year, and there is a lot of interest in the likely contenders! Each year Thomson Reuters publishes predictions of who might receive the Nobel Prizes, and this year they have narrowed the scope down to three likely awards in physics:
- ‣ Francois Englert and Peter Higgs, for their prediction of the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism. (Brout is deceased and the Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously.)
- ‣ Hideo Hosono, for his discovery of iron-based superconductors.
- ‣ Geoffrey Marcy, Michel Mayor, and Didier Queloz, for their discoveries of extrasolar planets.
The 2012 Nobel Prize Award Ceremony (Copyright © Nobel Media AB 2012 Photo: Alexander Mahmoud)
There has also been speculation that either Anderson or Nambu may receive a second Nobel Prize for their work related to spontaneous symmetry breaking.
With so many different predictions and so many opinions it can be hard to keep up with all the latest news and blogs! I know that a lot of people plan to share their views and experiences of the day, so I’ll be keep a list of bloggers and tweeters that you can follow.
Seth Zenz:
See Seth’s excellent post about the Nobel Prize, Englert and Higgs, and CERN. You can also follow his twitter account: @SethZenz
James Doherty:
See James’s great post about the Nobel Prize, He’s on twitter too: @JimmyDocco
Guardian liveblog
Other twitter accounts to follow:
@CERN
@aidanatcern
@kylecranmer
@kenbloomunl
