Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to US-based scientists for discoveries in quantum mechanics | DW News

The Nobel Prize in Physics has been announced, with the winners being John Clark, Michel DeVere and Jean Martinis, all three work at U.S. universities. The trio were recognized for their discoveries in quantum mechanics, the fundamental physical theory that describes the behavior of matter and light. The Nobel Committee pointed out that there is no advanced technology today that does not use either quantum mechanics or quantum physics. Joining us now in the studio is DW science reporter Sushmita Ramakrishnan. Sushmita, Nobel Prize in Physics for three laureates who have been recognized for their work in quantum mechanics, tell us more about these three scientists and their work. So these three scientists worked on experimentally proving a phenomenon called as quantum tunneling. So it's almost like magic. Quantum tunneling? Yeah. So an object's here, you're there, it transfers from me to you without passing through the gap in between. This is what is tunneling. Essentially what happens in quantum tunneling or what sort of experimental value to us is that we have a conductor like a copper wire, a layer of insulation like air, and then another copper wire. So you can transmit electrons from this wire to that when there is an active barrier in between. And this experiment has been shown to work in gadgets that you can hold in your hands. It just doesn't happen at the microscopic level, it happens at the macroscopic level. And this almost magical sounding science is what won the Physics Nobel Prize this time. It does defy our general understanding of how things work, but anyway, tell us more about who these people are and just how new and groundbreaking their achievements are. These are scientists who've been working on quantum mechanics for a while, especially since computation and quantum mechanics took form. Their work has been recognized much more in trying to create electronics related to quantum. But as far as quantum mechanics itself is concerned, it is groundbreaking, yes, but it's not new. In fact, this is the hundredth year of quantum mechanics. We're celebrating quantum physics and quantum mechanics. Hundred years ago we had the uncertainty principle and Schrodinger's wave equations. We had all of these that's been forming through the century. It's old. Spooky action at a distance is about what I remember from that. True, it's like, so quantum basically says that if I send energy into an object at a certain wavelength, it emits at very specific wavelengths. So if I put yellow light at you, you could release red or blue light too. So there's a certain quantization that happens. Okay, that's interesting. But what could these advances that these three scientists have come up with, how could they be used in practical terms? As the Nobel Committee had pointed out as well, right now there's nothing around us that doesn't really involve quantum, like from the satellites that we use to fiber optics, the internet that all of us have at our homes most of the time. This uses quantum mechanics. The devices that we have in our phone, they use quantum mechanics. And in the future, quantum encryption is going to be a big deal. The regular form of data security that we have on our computers will be completely insufficient if quantum encryption becomes the new realm of data security. Sushmita, thank you very much. Sushmita Ramakrishnan from DW Science. Thanks, Terry.