The 2023 Nobel Prizes: Driving Humankind Forward
World News - 12 Minute Read
An Overview
The Nobel Prize is considered to be one of the greatest individual honours that a person can receive for excellence in their field as it is awarded to “those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind,” as per the will of Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist who bequeathed all his remaining assets to establish the Nobel Prizes following his death in 1896.
In the past week, the 2023 Nobel Prizes have been announced and awarded across the five fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace. The achievements across the laureates range from the discovery of “quantum dots” to the development of Covid-19 vaccines to the advocacy of human rights in Islamic culture.
The 2023 Physics Prize
Firstly, the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to the scientific trio of Anne L’Hullier, Pierre Agostini and Feneric Krausz for their developments into methods to generate attosecond pulses of light as a means of exploring electron dynamics. Through their work, the world of science and innovation can be revolutionised, propelling the efficiency of various scientific applications forward.
Like many of the hot-topics across the world of modern science, particularly modern physics, the laureates for this year's Physics Prize made their discoveries at a microscopic scale: the scale of attoseconds.
An attosecond is defined as a billionth of a billionth of a second, or 10 raised to the -18th power. To put into perspective how minute of a time period an attosecond is, there are 436 million billion seconds in the age of the universe but 1 billion billion attoseconds in one single second; there are twice as many attoseconds in a second than there are seconds in the 13.7 billion-year-old universe.
Out of the three laureates, L’Hullier was the first to make any significant discoveries involving attoseconds. In 1987, she designed an experiment where she shone lasers through a noble gas, which caused the electrons within the lasers to become excited. These excited electrons buzzed about with excess energy, causing the frequency of the laser to increase. This frequency increase is known as an overtone and when uncontrolled, the electrons buzz into overtones in a random fashion.
However, much like an orchestra, if one could manage to synchronise, or in physics lingo, superimpose, the buzzing of the excited electrons and order the overtones into a constructive and cohesive array of high frequencies, they would form a concentrated attosecond pulse that lasted for less than a blink(about a hundred-million billionth of a blink actually). L’Hullier managed to do just that and synchronised the cacophonic frequencies of electron overtones into a controlled symphony of attosecond pulses.
The other two laureates, Agostini and Kruasz, provided modifications and improvements to L’Hullier’s method, with the first of the two designing a technique that produced 250 attosecond pulses, while the latter designed a method for harnessing 650 pulses.
With these discoveries and innovations, the scientific world can be revolutionised, from this realm of attophysics to attochemistry, where semiconductors will be able to switch from conductors to insulators within attoseconds, to molecular biology, where attosecond pulses can be used to locate any discrepancies in a patient’s blood, enabling early detection and diagnosis. Overall, the attosecond experiments are one that have opened the door for the scientific world and are more than worthy of their Nobel Prize.
The attosecond experiments designed by L’Hullier managed to control and synchronise the overtones of excited electrons into a constructive attosecond laser beam when the waves are superimposed.
The 2023 Chemistry Prize
The 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov for their discovery and synthesis of quantum dots, further stoking modern science’s interest in the realm of the very small.
A quantum dot is a nanoparticle that can have certain distinct properties due to its microscopic size. For instance, it has the ability to change colour when certain wavelengths of light are shown through it. This feature makes quantum dots an extremely crucial asset to any sensors across science and technology, increasing the accuracy and precision manyfold.
Quantum dots are composed of electrons that sit leisurely in a “valence band” before an electromagnetic wave, say UV light for example, is shown through the quantum dot, exciting the electrons into the outer “conductive band.” When this transition between bands occurs, packets of light known as quanta are emitted by the quantum dots, serving as indicators that the electrons have become excited.
In the 1980s, Alexei Ekimov, one of the three laureates for the Chemistry Prize, carried out an experiment where he placed nanoparticles within copper chloride gas and once the electrons within the nanoparticles were excited, quanta of light were emitted, causing the colour of the gas to change. Ekimov declared this to be the quantum effect of the electrons jumping into the conductive band.
Years later, Louis Brus repeated this experiment but extended it to a range of fluids, still managing to replicate the results. In 1993, Moungi Bawendi, the third of the three laureates, created a means for standardising and controlling the production of the quantum dots, with the ability to modify their size and energy levels.
With the consistent chromatic abilities of quantum dots and the little energy required to trigger the emission of quanta from excited electrons within them, this discovery opens science to the possibilities of high levels of energy efficiency as well as significantly improving the precision of sensors across technology, which is imperative for modern science.
Innovations into the production of quantum dots will enable scientists to utilise the emission of light from excited electrons as an incredibly accurate sensor.
Image Source: https://pcper.com/2014/07/quantum-dots-may-be-screening-on-your-mobile-by-2020/
The 2023 Medicine Prize
The 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their discoveries that helped develop mRNA-based vaccines that were critical in mitigating the Covid-19 pandemic.
mRNA, or messenger-RNA, is a single-stranded molecule that is responsible for protein synthesis within cells and therefore is imperative to producing all of the necessary proteins required for growth and immunity against pathogens present within the body. Karikó and Weissman’s discoveries have deepened our understanding of mRNA and proposed methods to utilise it in the production of vaccines.
The laureates discovered that by modifying the compositions of bases in transcribed mRNA, they were able to combat select pathogens present within a person’s body by assisting with the production of necessary proteins.
Although the significant discovery came in 2005, it was only 15 years later, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, where the magnitude of the scientists’ innovations were properly acknowledged. A range of medical and research institutes began to implement Karikó and Weissman’s mRNA-based approach into the production of Covid-19 vaccines.
This turned out to be highly effective, with a range of vaccines, including Pfizer and Moderna, successfully modelling, producing and distributing mRNA-oriented vaccines to combat the spread of the Covid-19 pathogen.
Hence, it is quite clear that this year’s Medicine Prize laureates thoroughly deserve their accolades but the positive implications and significance of their discoveries may continue to play a massive role in the production of vaccines in the future.
Karikó and Weissman’s work into the development of mRNA-based vaccines was critical in mitigating the Covid-19 pandemic, with Pfizer and Moderna being few amongst the many that utilised mRNA to combat the pathogen.
Image Source: https://www.bioworld.com/articles/455773-shoot-up-the-messenger-covid-19-mrna-vaccine-prospects-bearing-not-bad-news?v=preview
The 2023 Literature Prize
The 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Swedish writer Jon Olav Fosse for his plays and prose that give voice to the unsayable. The Prize was not awarded to any particular one of his works but rather a range of his creations.
Out of Fosse’s publications, his most notable is his “septology,” considered by some to be the author’s magnum opus. “Septology” denotes a collection of seven works, or in the case of Fosse, seven novels, all of which explore a range of themes and ideas. “Septology” follows an ageing man and his interaction and reckonings with concepts of God, art, identity, family and life itself.
Outside of this collection of seven works, Fosse has also written the plays “The Name” and “Dream of Autumn,” both of which explore concepts of boundaries, family and love. These plays were Fosse’s route to international recognition as an author within the genre of experimental literature, diving into psychological and philosophical fiction.
The 2023 Peace Prize
Lastly, the 2023 Nobel Prize in Peace was awarded to Narges Mohammadi for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her advocacy for human rights and freedom for all.
Despite being imprisoned almost continuously since 2010, Mohammadi has been actively protesting and spreading word against the systemic discrimination of women in Iran and denouncing the infamous death penalty present in a country with the world’s second-highest execution rate.
Mohammadi advocated by writing letters and works calling for the freedom for women in Iran by vividly depicting the obscenities committed against them, all while being confined to a jail cell in the Tehran Evin prison.
In September of 2022, following the death-in-custody of 22-year-old Mahas Amini after she allegedly violated the country’s “hijab policy,” protests swept the nation calling for major reforms. These protests were the largest that Iran had experienced since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Mohammadi, despite being incarcerated, was one of the driving forces behind the protests, as she spoke out against the ideologies marauding the nation and oppressing its people.
The Nobel Committee, along with several other international and intergovernmental bodies, called for Mohammadi’s release so that she would be able to accept her Nobel Peace Prize. However, with the Irani foreign ministry deeming the award as “biassed” and an interventionist attempt to spread anti-Irani and anti-Islamic policies, chances on her release seem nigh on none.
Mohammadi is currently being held in prison under counts of “spreading propaganda” and has been sentenced to a total of 31 years of imprisonment and 154 lashes, although it's unclear whether the latter punishment has been carried out. Mohammadi has continued to reveal information regarding the harrowing maltreatment and abuse towards women within the Evin prison.
The Nobel Committee, along with countless others, have deemed her to be a beacon of hope and an exemplary figure advocating for human rights and fairness, making her Nobel Peace Prize well deserved.
Mohammadi not only advocating for women’s rights in Iran, but also called for the abolishment of the death penalty in a nation with the second-highest execution rate in the world and the highest execution rate per capita.
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