ReportWire

Tag: Nobel Committee

  • Trump was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize before. Experts say he’s unlikely to win this year

    [ad_1]

    U.S. President Donald Trump’s bid to win the Nobel Peace Prize has drawn added attention to the annual guessing game over who its next laureate will be.Longtime Nobel watchers say Trump’s prospects remain remote despite a flurry of high-profile nominations and some notable foreign policy interventions for which he has taken personal credit.Experts say the Norwegian Nobel Committee typically focuses on the durability of peace, the promotion of international fraternity and the quiet work of institutions that strengthen those goals. Trump’s own record might even work against him, they said, citing his apparent disdain for multilateral institutions and his disregard for global climate change concerns.Still, the U.S. leader has repeatedly sought the Nobel spotlight since his first term, most recently telling United Nations delegates late last month “everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize.”A person cannot nominate themself.Public lobbying campaigns but a private committee decisionTrump’s boasts and previous high-profile nominations make him the blockbuster name on the list of bookmakers’ favorites. But it’s unclear whether his name comes up in conversation when the five-member Nobel committee, appointed by Norway’s parliament, meets behind closed doors.Trump has been nominated several times by people within the U.S. as well as politicians abroad since 2018. His name also was put forward in December by U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY), her office said in a statement, for his brokering of the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states in 2020.Nominations made this year from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Pakistan’s government occurred after the Feb. 1 deadline for the 2025 award.Trump has said repeatedly that he “deserves” the prize and claims to have “ended seven wars.” Last week, he teased the possibility of ending an eighth war if Israel and Hamas agree to his peace plan aimed at concluding the nearly two-year war in Gaza.“Nobody’s ever done that,” he told a gathering of military leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. “Will you get the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not. They’ll give it to some guy that didn’t do a damn thing.”Israel and Hamas have since agreed to the first phase of the peace plan for Gaza, paving the way for a pause in the fighting and the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. In the early hours of Thursday, families of hostages and their supporters started chanting “Nobel prize to Trump” as they gathered in Tel Aviv’s hostages square.Sustained peace efforts prioritized over quick winsNobel veterans say the committee prioritizes sustained, multilateral efforts over quick diplomatic wins. Theo Zenou, a historian and research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, said Trump’s efforts have not yet been proven to be long-lasting.“There’s a huge difference between getting fighting to stop in the short term and resolving the root causes of the conflict,” Zenou said.Zenou also highlighted Trump’s dismissive stance on climate change as out-of-step with what many, including the Nobel committee, see as the planet’s greatest long-term peace challenge.“I don’t think they would award the most prestigious prize in the world to someone who does not believe in climate change,” Zenou said. “When you look at previous winners who have been bridge-builders, embodied international cooperation and reconciliation: These are not words we associate with Donald Trump.”Avoiding political pressureThe Nobel committee was met with fierce criticism in 2009 for giving then-U.S. President Barack Obama the prize barely nine months into his first term. Many argued Obama had not been in office long enough to have an impact worthy of the Nobel.And Trump’s own outspokenness about possibly winning the award might work against him: The committee won’t want to be seen as caving in to political pressure, said Nina Græger, director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo.Trump’s prospects for the prize this year are “a long shot,” she said. “His rhetoric does not point in a peaceful perspective.”The Nobel announcements began with the prize in medicine on Monday, and continued with physics on Tuesday and chemistry on Wednesday. The literature prize is being awarded on Thursday. The winner of the prize in economics will be announced on Monday.

    STAVANGER, Norway —

    U.S. President Donald Trump’s bid to win the Nobel Peace Prize has drawn added attention to the annual guessing game over who its next laureate will be.

    Longtime Nobel watchers say Trump’s prospects remain remote despite a flurry of high-profile nominations and some notable foreign policy interventions for which he has taken personal credit.

    Experts say the Norwegian Nobel Committee typically focuses on the durability of peace, the promotion of international fraternity and the quiet work of institutions that strengthen those goals. Trump’s own record might even work against him, they said, citing his apparent disdain for multilateral institutions and his disregard for global climate change concerns.

    Still, the U.S. leader has repeatedly sought the Nobel spotlight since his first term, most recently telling United Nations delegates late last month “everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize.”

    A person cannot nominate themself.

    Public lobbying campaigns but a private committee decision

    Trump’s boasts and previous high-profile nominations make him the blockbuster name on the list of bookmakers’ favorites. But it’s unclear whether his name comes up in conversation when the five-member Nobel committee, appointed by Norway’s parliament, meets behind closed doors.

    Trump has been nominated several times by people within the U.S. as well as politicians abroad since 2018. His name also was put forward in December by U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY), her office said in a statement, for his brokering of the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states in 2020.

    Nominations made this year from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Pakistan’s government occurred after the Feb. 1 deadline for the 2025 award.

    Trump has said repeatedly that he “deserves” the prize and claims to have “ended seven wars.” Last week, he teased the possibility of ending an eighth war if Israel and Hamas agree to his peace plan aimed at concluding the nearly two-year war in Gaza.

    “Nobody’s ever done that,” he told a gathering of military leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. “Will you get the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not. They’ll give it to some guy that didn’t do a damn thing.”

    Israel and Hamas have since agreed to the first phase of the peace plan for Gaza, paving the way for a pause in the fighting and the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. In the early hours of Thursday, families of hostages and their supporters started chanting “Nobel prize to Trump” as they gathered in Tel Aviv’s hostages square.

    Sustained peace efforts prioritized over quick wins

    Nobel veterans say the committee prioritizes sustained, multilateral efforts over quick diplomatic wins. Theo Zenou, a historian and research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, said Trump’s efforts have not yet been proven to be long-lasting.

    “There’s a huge difference between getting fighting to stop in the short term and resolving the root causes of the conflict,” Zenou said.

    Zenou also highlighted Trump’s dismissive stance on climate change as out-of-step with what many, including the Nobel committee, see as the planet’s greatest long-term peace challenge.

    “I don’t think they would award the most prestigious prize in the world to someone who does not believe in climate change,” Zenou said. “When you look at previous winners who have been bridge-builders, embodied international cooperation and reconciliation: These are not words we associate with Donald Trump.”

    Avoiding political pressure

    The Nobel committee was met with fierce criticism in 2009 for giving then-U.S. President Barack Obama the prize barely nine months into his first term. Many argued Obama had not been in office long enough to have an impact worthy of the Nobel.

    And Trump’s own outspokenness about possibly winning the award might work against him: The committee won’t want to be seen as caving in to political pressure, said Nina Græger, director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo.

    Trump’s prospects for the prize this year are “a long shot,” she said. “His rhetoric does not point in a peaceful perspective.”

    The Nobel announcements began with the prize in medicine on Monday, and continued with physics on Tuesday and chemistry on Wednesday. The literature prize is being awarded on Thursday. The winner of the prize in economics will be announced on Monday.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Nobel Prize in physics goes to trio of researchers for discoveries in quantum mechanics

    [ad_1]

    The 2025 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to a trio of scientists – a Briton, a Frenchman and an American – for their ground-breaking discoveries in the field of quantum mechanics.John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis will share the prize “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantization in an electric circuit,” the Nobel Committee announced Tuesday at a ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden.The committee praised the laureates for demonstrating that the “bizarre properties of the quantum world can be made concrete in a system big enough to be held in the hand.”Clarke, taking questions at a news conference, said he was “completely stunned” to learn he had won the award.“We had not realized in any way that this might be the basis of a Nobel Prize,” Clarke said of their research in the 1980s at the University of California, Berkeley.Quantum mechanics, which describes how matter and energy behaves at or below the scale of an atom, allows a particle to pass straight through a barrier, in a process called “tunnelling.”But when a larger number of particles are involved, these quantum mechanical effects usually become insignificant. What is true at the microscopic level was not thought to be true at the macroscopic level. For instance, while a single atom could pass through a barrier, a tennis ball – made up of a huge amount of particles – cannot.However, the trio of researchers conducted experiments to show that quantum tunnelling can also be observed on a macroscopic scale.In 1984 and 1985, the trio developed a superconducting electrical system that could pass from one physical state to another, as if a tennis ball could move straight through a barrier and not bounce back.Anthony Leggett, who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2003, compared the laureates’ work on how quantum mechanics functions on a larger scale to the famous thought experiment of Erwin Schrödinger, another physics laureate.To show the paradoxical nature of quantum mechanics, Schrödinger imagined a cat in a sealed box with a device that releases poison when a radioactive source decays. Because there is no way to observe whether the cat is dead or alive, Schrödinger posited that the cat was both dead and alive simultaneously – just as, in quantum mechanics, a system can exist in multiple states at once until measured.Schrödinger’s thought experiment aimed to show the absurdity of this situation, because quantum mechanics doesn’t make sense on the scale of everyday objects, such as a cat.Leggett argued, however, that the experiments conducted by Clarke, Devoret and Martinis showed that there are phenomena on larger scales that behave just as quantum mechanics predicts.Clarke said their research had helped pave the way for technological advances, such as the creation of the cell phone.“There is no advanced technology used today that does not rely on quantum mechanics, including mobile phones, cameras… and fiber optic cables,” said the Nobel committee.Last year, the prize was awarded to Geoffrey Hinton – often called the “Godfather of AI” – and John Hopfield, for their fundamental discoveries in machine learning, which paved the way for how artificial intelligence is used today.In 2023, the prize went to a trio of European scientists who used lasers to understand the rapid movement of electrons, which were previously thought impossible to follow.The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million).

    STOCKHOLM —

    The 2025 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to a trio of scientists – a Briton, a Frenchman and an American – for their ground-breaking discoveries in the field of quantum mechanics.

    John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis will share the prize “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantization in an electric circuit,” the Nobel Committee announced Tuesday at a ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden.

    The committee praised the laureates for demonstrating that the “bizarre properties of the quantum world can be made concrete in a system big enough to be held in the hand.”

    Clarke, taking questions at a news conference, said he was “completely stunned” to learn he had won the award.

    “We had not realized in any way that this might be the basis of a Nobel Prize,” Clarke said of their research in the 1980s at the University of California, Berkeley.

    Quantum mechanics, which describes how matter and energy behaves at or below the scale of an atom, allows a particle to pass straight through a barrier, in a process called “tunnelling.”

    But when a larger number of particles are involved, these quantum mechanical effects usually become insignificant. What is true at the microscopic level was not thought to be true at the macroscopic level. For instance, while a single atom could pass through a barrier, a tennis ball – made up of a huge amount of particles – cannot.

    However, the trio of researchers conducted experiments to show that quantum tunnelling can also be observed on a macroscopic scale.

    In 1984 and 1985, the trio developed a superconducting electrical system that could pass from one physical state to another, as if a tennis ball could move straight through a barrier and not bounce back.

    Anthony Leggett, who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2003, compared the laureates’ work on how quantum mechanics functions on a larger scale to the famous thought experiment of Erwin Schrödinger, another physics laureate.

    To show the paradoxical nature of quantum mechanics, Schrödinger imagined a cat in a sealed box with a device that releases poison when a radioactive source decays. Because there is no way to observe whether the cat is dead or alive, Schrödinger posited that the cat was both dead and alive simultaneously – just as, in quantum mechanics, a system can exist in multiple states at once until measured.

    Schrödinger’s thought experiment aimed to show the absurdity of this situation, because quantum mechanics doesn’t make sense on the scale of everyday objects, such as a cat.

    Leggett argued, however, that the experiments conducted by Clarke, Devoret and Martinis showed that there are phenomena on larger scales that behave just as quantum mechanics predicts.

    Clarke said their research had helped pave the way for technological advances, such as the creation of the cell phone.

    “There is no advanced technology used today that does not rely on quantum mechanics, including mobile phones, cameras… and fiber optic cables,” said the Nobel committee.

    Last year, the prize was awarded to Geoffrey Hinton – often called the “Godfather of AI” – and John Hopfield, for their fundamental discoveries in machine learning, which paved the way for how artificial intelligence is used today.

    In 2023, the prize went to a trio of European scientists who used lasers to understand the rapid movement of electrons, which were previously thought impossible to follow.

    The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million).

    [ad_2]

    Source link