Uploads from Dr. Becky

Currently Playing: The longest wait to win a Nobel Prize in Physics... #shorts

It used to be around a 10 year gap on average between the science getting done and the Nobel Prize in Physics being being awarded, but as time has marched us on into the 21st century, that gap has gotten steadily bigger with people now waiting 30 years before winning a Nobel Prize. Who waited the longest though? Thanks for asking I’ll tell you, because it is nail bitingly close at the top. So winning the bronze medal, in third place is Yoichiro Nambu, who waited 48 years before winning his Nobel Prize in 2008 "for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics" - an idea he first published in 1960. It’s the reason why atomic particles like protons and neutrons are heavy, whereas electrons are really light. In the early Universe the nice ordered symmetry gets broken, and then it allows atoms to form. Then winning the silver medal in second place, is Peter Higgs, who waited 49 years before winning his Nobel Prize in 2013, for his prediction of the existence of the Higgs field and Higgs boson, he didn’t call it that, it was eventually named after him by others. Matter moves around in the Higgs field, and by coming into contact with it that matter particles then has mass. The Boson is the the thing that communicates between the field and the other particles, and it was eventually found and proven in 2012 in data from experiments run at CERN in the large hadron collider. But winning the gold medal in first place is Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar who waited 52 years before winning his nobel prize in 1983 for predicting the maximum mass of a white dwarf star. Work that he first published back in 1931. A white dwarf is what the Sun will become when it runs out of nuclear fuel, it will swell into a red giant star, before shedding its outer layers and leaving behind its inert glowing core, known as a white dwarf star. Any bigger than the maximum mass though and it collapses under its own gravity to become a neutron star. It was work that led to the first tentative mathematical theories about black holes, so it's one that’s especially close to my heart. As for who wins this year's Nobel Prize in Physics, we’ll just have to wait until October to find out. But maybe I can make it 2 for 2 and once again predict this year’s winner? My previous video correctly predicting the 2023 Nobel Prize - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jijtCK3qJnc Video filmed on a Sony ⍺7 IV Video produced and edited by Dr Becky Smethurst --- 📚 My book, "A Brief History of Black Holes", out NOW in hardback, paperback, e-book and audiobook (which I narrated myself!): http://lnk.to/DrBecky --- 👕 My merch, including JWST designs, are available here (with worldwide shipping!): https://dr-becky.teemill.com/ --- 🎧 Royal Astronomical Society Podcast that I co-host: podfollow.com/supermassive --- 🔔 Don't forget to subscribe and click the little bell icon to be notified when I post a new video! --- 👩🏽‍💻 I'm Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford. I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars. http://drbecky.uk.com