15 minutes… October 7, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in physics life.trackback
I’m up preparing for class… and watching the clock. The physics Nobel is due to be announced in about 15 minutes! Looks like I’m not the only one watching – Salon has all the recent winners.
Ops! Looks like my time calc is off by an hour! Shoot. I won’t be able to stay up at this point!
Ok, back awake again. Wow – Nambu for discovery of the general mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking, and Kobayashi and Maskawa for the origin of the broken symmetry that predicts the third quark generation. Fantastic!
So – what can I say in my class about this today!? Time to write up some material!
Just read the Nobel winning paper for Kobayashi and Maskawa. The footnotes are interesting.
Yeah? Do you have a link? I was looking for it online earlier today and couldn’t find it.
Cabibbo not getting it is horrible
Yeah — I k now what you mean. I think it was because he didn’t do the phase, and they were trying to talk about the phase (and symmetry breaking). Cabibbo “only” came up with the mixing, which is “only” one angle. Still, seems like he should have been included. Still — want to know where you got that paper!
Guralnik sent it to me
I gave a talk on a search for the third generation decay, top -> tau nu_tau b on October 7, which touches on the history of the third generation. Ran straight to my laptop to add one slide about the prize. It is not like everyday someone is scheduled to give a talk at the same day the Nobel Prize is annouced, and the talk is related to the prize !
Haryo – that is great!
You should post it!
If you still looking for the paper from Kobayashi and Maskawa. I will send to you. Let me know your email.