Nobel Prize week!!

The Nobel Prize for 2016 for Physics went to three professors who, in the 1970s and 1980s laid the theoretical groundwork and topological predictions of strange phases of matter. Things like superfluids, superconductors, single-atomic layered materials, thin magnetic films, and so on, were predicted, and over the past couple decades others have developed the technologies and experimental methods for actually showing these weird states of matter can exist. Generally they only exist in the lab, and not naturally, such as superconductors and superfluids, simply because they require such low temperatures. Scientists and engineers are just learning how to apply these things to next-generation technologies, which some of you may very well be involved in!

The Nobel Prize for 2016 for Chemistry went to three professors, including Fraser Stoddart of Northwestern, They were some of teh first scientists to work on and actually develop first generation nanomachines. These are machines with moving parts and energy sources that are of molecular size scales! Many say that these are like the first electric motors of the mid-1800s, and the applications of the nanomachine era are waiting to be developed, leading to an entirely new industry and level of technology that has never existed. Your generation will develop this new sector of industry and technology!

The Nobel Prize for 2016, for Medicine and Physiology, was awarded today to the Japanese doctor Yoshinori Ohsumi. He was responsible for discovering how cell's can degrade and recycle cellular components, which is a process all cells carry out. It may have huge implications on a variety of diseases, such as cancer, that are based around cellular processes that have gone awry. This process is now called autophagy.