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Nobel Prize

I've been regularly reading Frank Wilczek's articles in Physics Today without ever realizing his important contributions to physics, that is until today: he won 1/3 of this year's Nobel Prize in Physics!

He was one of the main contributors in the 70s to quantum chromodynamics, the theory that explains the strong force, that is interactions amongst the nucleons, or the particles that constitute the nucleus of atoms. QCD explains how quarks and gluons interact to keep matter together, without which, we would certainly not exist. Unfortunately, that's almost as much as I know about the theory, since it's high energy particle physics, which is very different from nanoscale low temperature physics...the stuff I do. Perhaps I'll take a distribution course in particle physics, so I can get a deeper physical understanding and mathematical framework for all this.

I found his article in October's Physics Today to be quite profound, and in some sense, appropriate (almost prophetical) for this month's news. For more information on him and the other laureates, check the official Nobel Prize site, www.nobel.se.

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