The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics - Press Release

[RDS]

The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics - Press Release

 

[Rainman05]

Really?
For better blue LEDs?

Are you kidding me.

I mean, don't get me wrong, that's great and all, and better and more efficient powerful blue LEDs are always nice but the ones we have today are good enough. I mean, blue LEDs have been around for 20 years and they're good enough. I mean, shouldn't the Nobel prize go for like... big advances in a field instead of just improving something. There is no new massive groundbreaking technology involved in making these blue LEDs. They're just using a different coating. That's all.

Ah well, good for them anyway.

 

[AliHajiSheik]

This is great. Every time a blue light turns on, the President begins to speak about making the world a better place. If the President didn't win, then these gentlemen are the next best thing.

 

[Apocalypse]

Really?
For better blue LEDs?

Are you kidding me.

I mean, don't get me wrong, that's great and all, and better and more efficient powerful blue LEDs are always nice but the ones we have today are good enough. I mean, blue LEDs have been around for 20 years and they're good enough. I mean, shouldn't the Nobel prize go for like... big advances in a field instead of just improving something. There is no new massive groundbreaking technology involved in making these blue LEDs. They're just using a different coating. That's all.

Ah well, good for them anyway.

They more than doubled its efficiency, and considering the worldwide use of LED that's a huge saving in global power consumption.

I agree they could find someone better, but perhaps there were none?

 

[Rainman05]

They more than doubled its efficiency, and considering the worldwide use of LED that's a huge saving in global power consumption.

I agree they could find someone better, but perhaps there were none?

I'm not saying that they didn't do that, but they doubled the efficiency not with 1 single stroke, but over the course of almost 2 decades and granted, a lot of that evolution was in the past 6-8 years thanks to these people but... I don't know.
The physics area is huge. I mean, you have a lot of stuff to award this prize to. Like those guys that did quantum teleportation last month.
Physicists Achieve Quantum Teleportation of Photon Over 25 Kilometers | IFLScience

Sure it's not much, it's 1 photon. And they teleported it 25km away.
But it's a breakthrough. It's never been done before. Granted, it's not "teleportation" like star trek "beam me up scotty", but it is what we can call teleportation.

 

[RDS]

I bet they had Thomas Edison in mind when they won the prize.

 

[longview]

Really?
For better blue LEDs?

Are you kidding me.

I mean, don't get me wrong, that's great and all, and better and more efficient powerful blue LEDs are always nice but the ones we have today are good enough. I mean, blue LEDs have been around for 20 years and they're good enough. I mean, shouldn't the Nobel prize go for like... big advances in a field instead of just improving something. There is no new massive groundbreaking technology involved in making these blue LEDs. They're just using a different coating. That's all.

Ah well, good for them anyway.

I think what is missing is the prize is for a practical led light bulb.
It may not seem like much, but could be a world changer.
We take electric lights for granted, but many parts of the world still do not have electric lighting.
Incandescent lights are very inefficient for solar panels, but led lights greatly expand the amount
of 'daylight" you can move into the night hours.

 

[donsutherland1]

Really?
For better blue LEDs?

Are you kidding me.

I mean, don't get me wrong, that's great and all, and better and more efficient powerful blue LEDs are always nice but the ones we have today are good enough. I mean, blue LEDs have been around for 20 years and they're good enough. I mean, shouldn't the Nobel prize go for like... big advances in a field instead of just improving something. There is no new massive groundbreaking technology involved in making these blue LEDs. They're just using a different coating. That's all.

Ah well, good for them anyway.

I have to disagree. From the press release:

When Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura produced bright blue light beams from their semi-conductors in the early 1990s, they triggered a funda-mental transformation of lighting technology. Red and green diodes had been around for a long time but without blue light, white lamps could not be created. Despite considerable efforts, both in the scientific community and in industry, the blue LED had remained a challenge for three decades.

They succeeded where everyone else had failed. Akasaki worked together with Amano at the University of Nagoya, while Nakamura was employed at Nichia Chemicals, a small company in Tokushima. Their inventions were revolutionary. Incandescent light bulbs lit the 20th century; the 21st century will be lit by LED lamps.

 

[countryboy]

Really?
For better blue LEDs?

Are you kidding me.

I mean, don't get me wrong, that's great and all, and better and more efficient powerful blue LEDs are always nice but the ones we have today are good enough. I mean, blue LEDs have been around for 20 years and they're good enough. I mean, shouldn't the Nobel prize go for like... big advances in a field instead of just improving something. There is no new massive groundbreaking technology involved in making these blue LEDs. They're just using a different coating. That's all.

Ah well, good for them anyway.

It led the way for white light LEDs. :wink: Without blue, you cannot create white light.

 

[Rainman05]

It led the way for white light LEDs. :wink: Without blue, you cannot create white light.

Not denying any of that, and yes, I know that.
But that's not the point.
LEDs aren't new technology.
Blue LEDs, yes, even efficient ones, aren't new tech.
White LEDs aren't new technology either.

I'm just saying there may have been alternatives to the nobel prize winners like for instance, those people that teleported the photon. Something never done before in the world. It's not just an improvement of stuff we have, it's opening a whole new branch of science. Well, not opening it, after all, it's still quantum physics, but it's paving the way to the implementation of a whole new branch of science taken from quantum physics into the real world.

 

[Fenton]

I bet they had Thomas Edison in mind when they won the prize.

The Nobel Prize for Physics is for a guy who improved upon a 20 year old technology ?????

Wow ! Its a simple pn-junction diode encased in epoxy with varying width band gaps.

And Edison and Nobel Prize shouldn't be mentioned in the same sentence.

If it were up to Eddison we would still be living we would still be using 1930s technology

 

[Fenton]

I think what is missing is the prize is for a practical led light bulb.
It may not seem like much, but could be a world changer.
We take electric lights for granted, but many parts of the world still do not have electric lighting.
Incandescent lights are very inefficient for solar panels, but led lights greatly expand the amount
of 'daylight" you can move into the night hours.

Solar Panels are very inefficient.

 

[RDS]

The Nobel Prize for Physics is for a guy who improved upon a 20 year old technology ?????

Wow ! Its a simple pn-junction diode encased in epoxy with varying width band gaps.

And Edison and Nobel Prize shouldn't be mentioned in the same sentence.

If it were up to Eddison we would still be living we would still be using 1930s technology

Did you watch the "live" press release? Apparently Edison was mentioned.

 

[RDS]

No issue here compared to Obama winning the Peace prize and he is at war now.

 

[Fenton]

Did you watch the "live" press release? Apparently Edison was mentioned.

Why ?

Edison's push for a DC power grid was not only impractical and not feasible for power transmission over long distances, it was being pushed by Edison over the superior innovation of Alternating Current.


Edison used to publicly electrocute Elephants with AC power in a attempt to prove his DC power was superior over Nicola Telsa's inventions.

 

[donsutherland1]

If one is an inventor, there is arguably no better inspiration than Thomas Edison. Edison was one of history's most prolific inventors. Not everything panned out, but his electric light proved to be basic innovation that was transformational.

 

[longview]

Solar Panels are very inefficient.

The inefficiencies of solar panels are meaningless, compared to only fire light.
What a basic solar lighting system does, is capture some of the daylight,
and move it to the night. The led lights allow more actual lumen s per panel.
This can translate to ether more light over the same period, or a longer period of lighting.

 

[fmw]

The prize committee is quite political. One would assume these folks were politically acceptable to them.

 

[donsutherland1]

Wow ! Its a simple pn-junction diode encased in epoxy with varying width band gaps.

That a solution might have been relatively "simple," does not mean that the breakthrough was insignificant. As the press release noted:

They succeeded where everyone else had failed. Akasaki worked together with Amano at the University of Nagoya, while Nakamura was employed at Nichia Chemicals, a small company in Tokushima. Their inventions were revolutionary.

The more detailed explanation can be found here: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2014/advanced-physicsprize2014.pdf

If it were up to Eddison we would still be living we would still be using 1930s technology

Technology and understanding advance. Inventions can and do become obsolete. They can also become building blocks for future innovations. One cannot automatically assume that a given inventor would have preferred that progress cease. A quote attributed to Edison was, "Its obvious that we don't know one millionth of one percent about anything." That leaves much room for future discovery.

 

[jmotivator]

Really?
For better blue LEDs?

Are you kidding me.

I mean, don't get me wrong, that's great and all, and better and more efficient powerful blue LEDs are always nice but the ones we have today are good enough. I mean, blue LEDs have been around for 20 years and they're good enough. I mean, shouldn't the Nobel prize go for like... big advances in a field instead of just improving something. There is no new massive groundbreaking technology involved in making these blue LEDs. They're just using a different coating. That's all.

Ah well, good for them anyway.

I could only think of this while reading that...

 

[American]

Politicians have turned the Nobel Prize into a farce.

 

[USViking]

I bet they had Thomas Edison in mind when they won the prize.

I reads something to the effect that the reason Edison and Tesla never got the prize was that one could hardly be awarded without the other, but that the two men hated each other so much that it was feared they would disrupt the occasion by getting into a fist fight.

 

[Fenton]

If one is an inventor, there is arguably no better inspiration than Thomas Edison. Edison was one of history's most prolific inventors. Not everything panned out, but his electric light proved to be basic innovation that was transformational.

There were other people working on the same technology Edison was, including the Light bulb.

Edison just beat them to the punch.

Tesla was a far more brilliant and innovative inventor. He also had a eidetic memory.

DC power transmission ( what Edison was pushing for ) over long distances is not practical or even feasible.

In a DC Circuit the electron have to make a complete and unidirectional path, from the source, through the load and then to ground.

If we had stuck with Edison's idea of DC power distribution we would have had to run massive conductors to Sub-stations that were no more than a few miles apart.

EVERY motor would have had to be commutated. That means regular disassembly of the Commutator section for brush replacements.


Tesla's discovered the properties of Induction. Using the alternating collapsing Electro magnetic field of a primary Coil to transfer ( induce ) AC current into a secondary Coil.


Also his invention of the induction Motor was absolutely revolutionary.

Thanks to his inventions large amounts of power could be transferred over thousands of miles through Conductors that were no more than a inch in diameter.

High voltage could then be transferred into Substations, through Large transformers and then out to homes and businesses where it could be stepped down again as a useful source of energy.

The Car manufacturer Telsa used his name to build a over engineered Golf Cart thats powered by DC.

They should have named the Tesla the Eddison.

 

[USViking]

Politicians have turned the Nobel Prize into a farce.

Politicians have no influence on Nobel Prize selection, and the scientific awards are for the most part well-deserved.

It is true, however, that numerous Peace Prize laureates who have been politicians or unelected government officials were so undeserving that their selection might properly be termed a farce. Obama is a prime example. I will bet the Nobel selection committee will be kicking itself in the ass for years over that one!

 

[AliHajiSheik]

I reads something to the effect that the reason Edison and Tesla never got the prize was that one could hardly be awarded without the other, but that the two men hated each other so much that it was feared they would disrupt the occasion by getting into a fist fight.

Interesting reading that must have been. It could also be that the Nobel Prize was first awarded in 1901, after Edison and Tesla had their battle over competing currents.