Kavli Prize 2008 winners

Remember this...

Science accolades...more Nobel-like awards?

The 2008 winners...

"7 scientists share $1 million prizes for research"

by

Malcolm Ritter

May 28th, 2008

U.S.News & World Report

New York:

Three prizes worth $1 million apiece were awarded Wednesday to seven scientists for their discoveries in neuroscience, astrophysics and the study of vanishingly small structures.

They are the first recipients of the Kavli prizes, which are awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in partnership with the Kavli Foundation and the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research. The prizes are named after, and funded by, entrepreneur and philanthropist Fred Kavli.

The award for neuroscience was given for research into the development and functioning of nerve circuitry in the brain and spinal cord. It was shared by Dr. Sten Grillner of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden; Thomas Jessell of Columbia University, and Dr. Pasko Rakic of Yale University.

Grillner was honored for studies of how nerve circuits control how animals with backbones move about, Jessell for insights into development of the spinal cord, and Rakic for revealing developmental mechanisms of the brain's cerebral cortex. Ultimately, their work may lead to better ways to repair diseased or damaged circuits in the brain and spinal cord, the Norwegian academy said.

The astrophysics prize was split by Donald Lynden-Bell of Cambridge University and Maarten Schmidt of the California Institute of Technology, for their work in understanding the nature of distant objects called quasars. Schmidt revealed the first known quasar in 1963 and Lynden-Bell in 1969 shed light on what makes them so luminous.

The other prize was given for nanoscience, which is the study of extremely tiny materials and structures that are smaller than, say, a single bacterium. The prize was shared by Louis Brus of Columbia and Sumio Iijima of Meijo University in Nagoya, Japan.

Brus is a pioneer in the study of particles called "quantum dots," which scientists are now investigating for such uses as early identification of cancer and improved computer displays.

Iijima is considered the discoverer of needle-like carbon nanotubes for research he did in 1991. Stronger than steel but far lighter, carbon nanotubes are used in such products as baseball bats and car parts and are being studied for other uses.

Kavli, a Norwegian-born physicist, moved to the United States in 1956. He was the CEO of Kavlico Corp. of Moorpark, Calif., which was one of the world's largest suppliers of sensors for aeronautics, automotive and industrial uses when it was sold in 2000. Kavli then founded the California-based Kavli Foundation.


The Kavli Foundation

The Kavli Prize

Deceased--Ernst Stuhlinger

Ernst Stuhlinger
December 19th, 1913 to May 25th, 2008

Members of the von Braun team reveal their Explorer Satellite in 1957. Standing left to right: Dr. William Mrazek, Dr. Walter Haeussermann and Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger. Seated: Dr. Eberhard Rees, General Medaris and Dr.Wernher von Braun.

"Ernst Stuhlinger, One of the Last Von Braun Rocket Team Members, Dies"

by

Dennis Wingo

May 25th, 2008

Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, one of the last surviving members of the 126 German rocket scientists brought over to the United States after world war II has passed away quietly in Huntsville Alabama. Dr. Stuhlinger was 94 years old.

Partial Biography From Wikipedia:

Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger (born December 19, 1913) was an American atomic, electrical and rocket scientist born in Niederrimbach, Germany. He earned his Ph.D. in physics at age 23, and in 1939 went to work for the German Atomic Energy Program. In 1943, he joined Dr. Wernher von Braun's team at the German village of Peenemuende, where he worked in the field of guidance systems. He was one of 126 scientists who immigrated to the United States with Dr. von Braun after World War II as part of Operation Paperclip. On April 14, 1955, he became a naturalized United States citizen.

In the 1950s Stuhlinger worked at the Redstone Arsenal, where he developed designs for solar-powered spacecraft. The most popular of those designs relied on ion stream vapor emitted by either caesium or rubidium atoms to be accelerated by negatively charged electrodes which would push the ion stream through a propulsion channel. The mechanism would be powered by the one kilowatt of radiant energy that falls on each square meter of space from the sun. He referred to it as a "sunship."

Stuhlinger was director of the space science lab at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, from 1960 to 1968, and then its associate director for science from 1968 to 1975, when he retired and became an adjunct professor and senior research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

I met Dr. Stuhlinger in 1988 in Huntsville when he was working in his retirement at Teledyne Brown Engineering. At the time he was working on a drop tower which is a tower with a vacuum in the middle where a few seconds of microgravity can be generated as the experiment falls from the top to the bottom.

Dr. Stuhlinger's greatest accomplishment was to be one of the key inventors of ion propulsion, which is an ultra efficient means of generating thrust in space to move spacecraft around. The first mission to use this technology was the Space Electric Rocket Test (SERT) in the early 1970's. NASA's Deep Space 1 spacecraft, launched in 1998 depended on ion propulsion for its missions. Many Russian and American missions have used electric thrusters in the past twenty years to conserve fuel and extend the life of GEO spacecraft.

Dr. Stuhlinger designed the first manned ion propulsion system for sending humans to Mars as far back as 1958 (a scanned image is shown here) and by the 1970's he and Von Braun were convinced that ion propulsion would open up the solar system for exploration. This dream is very slowly being realized.

My own interest in ion propulsion was stimulated by Dr. Stuhlinger and today I tip my hat to him and those of his generation that helped to build the rockets that put mankind on the Moon.

"Ernst Stuhlinger, Rocket Scientist Crucial in Space Race, Is Dead at 94"

by

John Noble Wilford

May 28th, 2008

The New York Times

Ernst Stuhlinger, one of the most prominent of the Germans who brought their skills in rocket science to the United States after World War II and a close associate of Wernher von Braun, died Sunday at his home in Huntsville, Ala. He was 94.

He died after being hospitalized several times in recent months, according to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, a space museum and archive in Huntsville.

As one of the 118 engineers and scientists of the German V-2 missile program who surrendered to Americans toward the end of the war, Dr. Stuhlinger played the quiet, behind-the-scenes scientist to the more charismatic Dr. von Braun. He was director of science at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville in the early decades of the space age.

The Marshall center, established around the nucleus of the von Braun team, led the development of several generations of rockets, culminating in the most powerful of all, the Saturn 5’s that propelled astronauts to the Moon in the Apollo program. Dr. Stuhlinger’s expertise was in the guidance and navigation instruments for space flight.

In fact, friends and former colleagues recall that his ingenuity was critical to the first successful American space launching, almost four months after the Soviet Union surprised the world with Sputnik 1. In the frenzy to catch up, an Army team including the German-born engineers and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California was ordered to get the Explorer 1 satellite up, double-time.

The rocket was a combination of V-2 technology and American upper stages. The timing of the second-stage firing had to be exact if the satellite was to achieve orbit. There was no time for elaborate designs and tests. So Dr. Stuhlinger retired to his home garage and, in a few hours, emerged with a clever timing device made of ordinary wires, screws and nuts.

On the night of Jan. 31, 1958, tracking the rocket’s ascent from a control console at Cape Canaveral, Fla., Dr. Stuhlinger pressed a button at just the right moment to signal the timing device to trigger the second-stage firing, not a second too soon or too late. He became known as "the man with the golden finger."

Last year, in an interview with The New York Times for the 50th anniversary of Sputnik, Dr. Stuhlinger said he had been excited but not surprised by the news of its launching.

"And then I immediately felt a kind of thankfulness to the Russian colleagues," he said, "because it was a wonderful wake-up call for us Americans."

Like most of the von Braun team, Dr. Stuhlinger had become a naturalized American, in 1955.

Frederick I. Ordway III, a historian of the German participation in the American space program, said nine members of the original team were still living in the United States, and possibly two others in Germany. In Operation Paperclip, the roundup of V-2 engineers from Peenemünde, most of them were resettled at Fort Bliss, Tex., and in 1950 were moved to the Army's Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville.

Mr. Ordway and Dr. Stuhlinger, who retired from the Marshall center in 1975, collaborated on a biography, Wernher von Braun: Crusader for Space, published in 1993. Dr. von Braun died in 1977.

In the book, Dr. Stuhlinger defended Dr. von Braun against contentions that he had been responsible for the mistreatment of the prisoners forced to work at the factory to make the V-2 missiles. Michael J. Neufeld writes in his biography, Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War, that this and similar defenses were based on "uncorroborated, second-hand anecdotes" and were "highly dubious."

The Associated Press reported that in a 1995 article for The Huntsville Times, Dr. Stuhlinger called the Nazi era "extremely deplorable" and said he and other German rocket engineers were working with an eye toward space flight, not weapons, at the end of the war.

Survivors include his wife, Irmgard Lotze Stuhlinger of Huntsville; two sons, Tillman, of Tucson, and Christoph, of Monticello, Ark.; and a daughter, Susanne Schmidt of Heidenheim, Germany.

Ernst Stuhlinger was born on Dec. 19, 1913, in Niederrimbach, Germany, and was educated at the University of Tübingen, where he earned a doctorate in physics. His postgraduate studies in Berlin were in nuclear physics and cosmic rays. He showed an early talent for building instruments for experiments.

But in World War II, he was sent to the Russian front as a common infantry soldier, was wounded at the Battle of Moscow and was one of the few in his unit to survive the Battle of Stalingrad. In 1943, he was assigned to scientific work on the V-2 development. He was in charge of evaluating data acquired in test flights.

At Huntsville, Mr. Ordway said, the dominant work was in engineering, but Dr. Stuhlinger was "more interested in what the launch vehicles would deliver, and he was the Mr. Science on the team."

His guiding hand, colleagues said, left an imprint on Marshall center science spacecraft like Explorer 1, three High-Energy Astronomical Observatories, the Skylab space station and the shuttle's Spacelab.


Ion Thruster

NASA's Polar satellite--"The Broken Heart"/death

NASA's Polar satellite had out lived its parameters of life by a decade and provided volumes of data. Again, a few dollars spent and a wealth of information taken. It is somewhat sad to see the last photograph taken...

As far as endings go, this one’s a real heart breaker. NASA's Polar satellite concludes its successful mission at the end of April with a breathtaking visible-light image of the colorful dancing lights of the aurora. The Polar team has dubbed this final image "The Broken Heart."

Laura Layton [NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center]:

When the Polar satellite launched February 24, 1996, the plan was for a two-year science mission to study the lights that form a ring around Earth’s north and south magnetic poles, known as the Northern and Southern Lights, or auroras. Polar has exceeded expectations by a decade.

"We’ve gone well beyond our original plan and into our dreams," says John Sigwarth of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., of Polar’s amazing 12-year run.

Polar orbits from Earth's North Pole to its South Pole to study how solar wind particles and their energy enter Earth's magnetosphere, the area surrounding Earth dominated by its magnetic field. Polar also revealed how those particles and their energy end up in Earth’s atmosphere, and how the radiation belts form and dissipate.

The satellite completes an orbit every 17½ hours, passing over one pole at a maximum altitude of about 32,000 miles and diving past Earth’s equator to the opposite pole at a minimum distance of only about 3,200 miles. As Polar flies over the north and south poles, three of the satellite’s 12 instruments capture images of auroras in ultraviolet, X-ray, and visible light. The other nine instruments take measurements of charged particles and Earth's electric and magnetic fields throughout its journey around Earth.

"Polar ran out of fuel during its final maneuver in February," says Sigwarth, project scientist for the Polar spacecraft. "But even after the fuel was exhausted, we continued to maneuver on the cold helium gas that was left in the tank," he explains.

Sigwarth likens the satellite's post-fuel feat to "using the force of your breath as you breathe out to propel yourself backwards" if you happen to be traveling through space like a satellite. But now Polar has run out of breath.

The plan is to turn off the satellite April 28 slightly ahead of a likely fatal encounter with the sun. From its current orientation, Polar will drift slowly, allowing the energy from our nearest star to quickly overwhelm the satellite. If Polar were left on, first to go would be its radiators, batteries, and transmitters. These would overheat and probably fail. The satellite's planned turn off at the end of April will allow controllers to send the final commands before Polar meets its fate.

During its lifetime, Polar has had many accomplishments. Observations of energetic neutral atoms have provided the first-ever global images of substorm injections that are the sequence of events that lead to energetic auroral displays. These neutral atom images clearly show the broad extent in space of these energetic atoms and their instantaneous nature in time.

Polar observations have also revealed that solar storms deposit so much energy into Earth's ionosphere that it expands to fill the magnetosphere all the way out to its boundaries, yielded the first-ever global X-ray images of auroras, and shown how dynamic pressure pulses, or "gusts" in the solar wind, influence the magnetosphere, ionosphere, and auroral ovals, rings around Earth's magnetic poles where auroras are seen.

Hideki Yukawa and the pi-meson

Fascinating realm of the discovery of elementary particles.

Symmetry:

Michiji Konuma, Professor Emeritus, Keio University:


On November 1, 1934, Hideki Yukawa began to write the first draft of an article that would earn him the 1949 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Only 27 years old, Yukawa set out to explain the force that binds together protons and neutrons, forming atomic nuclei. Enrico Fermi, Werner Heisenberg, and other well-known physicists had tried to solve the problem, but their attempts had come up short. Yukawa, assistant professor at Osaka University, used the quantum field theory of electrons and photons as his starting point. He modified the theoretical description of the electromagnetic field to yield short-range forces, in agreement with nuclear experiments.

Yukawa proposed the existence of a new subatomic particle that weighs more than an electron but less than a proton. This particle, later named a meson (after the Greek word mesos for "middle"), mediates the nuclear force among the protons and neutrons inside a nucleus. (Physicists discovered later that protons, neutrons, and mesons are made of more fundamental building blocks named quarks, held together by gluons.)

In his paper, published in the Proceedings of the Physico-Mathematical Society of Japan, Yukawa predicted that cosmic rays with sufficient energy could produce the new particle outside a nucleus. In 1947, Cecil Frank Powell and his group at the University of Bristol found the pi meson, or pion, a particle about 270 times heavier than the electron. Two years later, Yukawa became the first Japanese person to receive the Nobel Prize. Powell received the award for his work in 1950.


Cesar Lattes...elementary particle man

Cold Fusion...it's back!

Kind of like the pesky mosquito that was thought to have been dispatched--"cold fusion" is back.

"Physicist Claims First Real Demonstration of Cold Fusion"

by

Lisa Zyga

May 27th, 2008

PhysOrg.com

To many people, cold fusion sounds too good to be true. The idea is that, by creating nuclear fusion at room temperature, researchers can generate a nearly unlimited source of power that uses water as fuel and produces almost zero waste. Essentially, cold fusion would make oil obsolete.

However, many experts debate whether money should be spent on cold fusion research or applied to more realistic alternative energy solutions. For decades, researchers around the world have been simply trying to show that cold fusion is indeed possible, but they´ve yet to take that important first step.

Now, esteemed Physics Professor Yoshiaki Arata of Osaka University in Japan claims to have made the first successful demonstration of cold fusion. Last Thursday, May 22, Arata and his colleague Yue-Chang Zhang of Shianghai Jiotong University presented the cold fusion demonstration to 60 onlookers, including other physicists, as well as reporters from six major newspapers and two TV studios. If Arata and Zhang´s demonstration is real, it could lead to a future of new, clean, and cheap energy generation.

In their experiment, the physicists forced deuterium gas into a cell containing a mixture of palladium and zirconium oxide, which absorbed the deuterium to produce a dense "pynco" deuterium. In this dense state, the deuterium nuclei from different atoms were so close together that they fused to produce helium nuclei.

Evidence for the occurrence of this fusion came from measuring the temperature inside the cell. When Arata first injected the deuterium gas, the temperature rose to about 70° C (158° F), which Arata explained was due to nuclear and chemical reactions. When he turned the gas off, the temperature inside the cell remained warmer than the cell wall for 50 hours, which Arata said was an effect of nuclear fusion.

While Arata´s demonstration looked promising to his audience, the real test is still to come: duplication. Many scientists and others are now recalling the infamous 1989 demonstration by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, who claimed to produce controlled nuclear fusion in a glass jar at room temperature. However, no one - including Fleischmann and Pons - could duplicate the experiment, leading many people to consider cold fusion a pseudoscience to this day.

But one witness at the recent demonstration, physicist Akito Takahashi of Osaka University, thought that the experiment should be able to be repeated.

"Arata and Zhang demonstrated very successfully the generation of continuous excess energy [heat] from ZrO2-nano-Pd sample powders under D2 gas charging and generation of helium-4," Takahashi told New Energy Times. "The demonstrated live data looked just like data they reported in their published papers [J. High Temp. Soc. Jpn, Feb. and March issues, 2008]. This demonstration showed that the method is highly reproducible."

In addition, researchers will have to repeat the experiment with larger amounts of the palladium and zirconium oxide mixture in order to generate larger quantities of energy.


"Hydrinos"...new energy source????

Italian semiconductor physics from 1945 to 1965

Technology is not exclusive to the United States especially in the field of semiconductors. Here is a paper regarding Italy's contribution from 1945 through 1965.

Abstract:

The activities carried out by Italian physicists in the field of semiconductor physics during the period spanning from 1945 to the foundation of the National Group of Structure of the Matter (GNSM, 1965) are reviewed within their historical context. Until the fifties, the Italian research was only marginally involved, if at all, in the main streams of advancement in solid state physics. Starting from the early fifties, an interest for technical applications of the newly introduced semiconductor devices began to grow in the electronic engineering community. In the following years, the birth of a few experimental and theoretical groups lead by highly motivated scientists (some of them with international experience) allowed to deal with the main topics related to condensed matter and semiconductor phenomena. The work developed by these "pioneers", discussed in this paper, represented an invaluable contribution for the new generations of physicists in this research field.

"The Origin of Semiconductor Physics in Italy: 1945 - 1965"

Manouchehr Saadat Noury, Ph. D.--Iranian woman physicist

"FIRST IRANIAN WOMAN WHO WAS AWARDED THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL PRIZE IN THE FIELD OF PARTICLE PHYSICS"

May 27th, 2008

Persian Journal

On May 21, 2008 the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) announced that the Iranian scientist Yasaman Farzan (YF) of the Institute for studies in Physics and Mathematics (IPM) was the winner of the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Particle Physics in 2008. This prize, which is a recently established one, will be awarded every two years in the field of particle physics, preferentially one to a theoretical and one to an experimental young particle physicist of outstanding scientific achievements. The 2008 prize is the first IUPAP prize in the field of particle physics, and YF is the winner of the theoretical prize. In this article the historical background and the agenda of IUPAP, the Young Scientist Prize of IUPAP, the life story of YF and her scientific works are studied and discussed.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND THE AGENDA OF IUPAP:

The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) is an international non-governmental organization devoted to the advancement of physics. It was established in 1922 and the first General Assembly was held in 1923 in Paris. The aims of the Union are: to stimulate and promote international cooperation in physics; to sponsor suitable international meetings and to assist organizing committees; to foster the preparation and the publication of abstracts of papers and tables of physical constants; to promote international agreements on the use of symbols, units, nomenclature and standards; to foster free circulation of scientists; to encourage research and education. The Union is governed by its General Assembly, which meets every three years. The Council is its top executive body, supervising the activities of the nineteen specialized International Commissions and the three Affiliated Commissions. The Union is composed of Members representing identified physics communities. At present 49 Members adhere to IUPAP. IUPAP is a member of the International Council for Science (ICSU).

THE YOUNG SCIENTIST PRIZE OF IUPAP:

The IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Particle Physics winner is chosen among the candidates nominated by internationally renowned particle physicists around the world. The nominations are made to the Commission on Particles and Fields of IUPAP. The prospected young nominees must not have more than 8 years experience of research work after their PhD. The IUPAP prize consists of an IUPAP medal, a certificate citing the recipient�s scientific achievements and a small honorary cash award which will be presented at the 34th International Conference on High Energy Physics to be held in Philadelphia, USA, on July 30th-August 5th, 2008.

HER LIFE STORY AND HER WORKS:

In 1991, YF entered the high school of Farzanegan (aka Tizhooshan) located in Tabriz, the capital city of East Azerbaijan Province in Northwestern Iran. In 1994, she participated and succeeded in the internal physics Olympiad. In order to participate in the courses given for students that had succeeded in the exam, she moved to Tehran, the capital of Iran. After one year and succeeding in several exams, she was chosen among the five students consisting the Iranian team to compete in the international Olympiad, held in Beijing, China. She was the first female student from Iran who had succeeded to be on the team. In China, she received a number of awards, which included honorable mention award, best girl student award, and the silver medal in theoretical physics. In 1995, she was enrolled in the Physics Department of Sharif University of Tehran, and. Professor Farhad Ardalan (PFA) was her supervisor and under his guidelines she got interested in Elementary Particle Physics. In 1999, she completed her undergraduate studies. In the same year, she participated in the entrance exam of Master of Science and successfully passed the exam as a first grade student. Her MS thesis was entitled "Axions in Large Extra Dimensions" and it was written under supervision of PFA. After finishing the MS courses, she went to Trieste, Italy and participated in the entrance exam of PhD program at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), and she was among the eight students who successfully passed the exam. In first year she passed five courses and in the second year, she started working on her thesis. She chose Neutrino Physics as her research area. She was lucky enough to be accepted as a student by Professor A. Yu. Smirnov, one of the leading neutrino physicists. In 2002, her husband got a Post-doctoral position at Stanford and she accompanied him to the USA. Before going to the USA, they had correspondence with the head of the theory group of Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), Professor Michael Peskin. He encouraged YF to complete her thesis as a long-term visitor at that institute. While in the USA, she kept in touch with her supervisor, PFA, and wrote more research papers together and at the same time she benefited the scientific atmosphere at SLAC. In 2005, she returned to Italy and defended her thesis. Although she had got post-doc position from several institutes around the world (such as UCLA, Hawaii University, and Saclay in France) she preferred to go back to Iran and work at IPM of Tehran, where she is currently an assistant professor.

HER CURRENT RESEARCH INTERESTS:

The current research interests of YF are Neutrino Physics, Rare Lepton Flavor Violating Decay Modes of Muon, CP-Violation in the Leptonic Sector.

REFERENCES:

Farzan, Y. (2004): Online Article on the Environmental Problems in Iran.

Farzan, Y. (2008): Online Autobiography, the Personal Homepage of Yasaman Farzan.

IPM Website (2008): Online News on Yasaman Farzan.

IUPAP Website (2008): Online Notes on IUPAP Mission.

Various Sources (2008): Notes and News on Yasaman Farzan.

Wikipedia Website (2008): Online Notes on IUPAP and SISSA.