{"id":288169,"date":"2025-10-09T03:06:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T03:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/288169\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T03:06:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T03:06:10","slug":"three-scientists-at-us-universities-win-nobel-prize-in-physics-1-company-incubated-at-uw-madison-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/288169\/","title":{"rendered":"Three scientists at US universities win Nobel Prize in physics, 1 company incubated at UW-Madison | News"},"content":{"rendered":"

STOCKHOLM (AP) \u2014 Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics<\/a> Tuesday for research on the strange behavior of subatomic particles called quantum tunneling that enabled the ultra-sensitive measurements achieved by MRI machines<\/a> and laid the groundwork for better cellphones and faster computers.<\/p>\n

The work by John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis, who work at American universities, took the seeming contradictions of the subatomic world \u2014 where light can be both a wave and a particle and parts of atoms can tunnel through seemingly impenetrable barriers \u2014 and applied them in the more traditional physics of digital devices. The results of their findings are just starting to appear in advanced technology and could pave the way for the development of supercharged computing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The prizewinning research in the mid-1980s took the subatomic \u201cweirdness of quantum mechanics\u201d and found how those tiny interactions can have real-world applications, said Jonathan Bagger, CEO of the American Physical Society. The experiments were a crucial building block in the fast-developing world of quantum mechanics.<\/p>\n

Speaking from his cellphone, Clarke, who spearheaded the research team, said: \u201cOne of the underlying reasons that cellphones work is because of all this work.”<\/p>\n

When quantum mechanics first came to light in 1926, a prominent physicist sought to illustrate its many paradoxes with the example of a cat in a box that was both alive and dead at the same time. The three Nobel winners showed that science can put such principles to work, said Physics Today Editor-in-Chief Richard Fitzgerald, who was in a competing research group in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey didn\u2019t take it that far, but they showed that it can be done,\u201d Fitzgerald said.<\/p>\n

The winning physicists took \u201cthe scale of something that we can\u2019t see, we can\u2019t touch, we can\u2019t feel” and brought it \u201cup to the scale of something recognizable\u201d and made it “something you can build upon,\u201d Fitzgerald said.<\/p>\n

Clarke, 83, conducted his research at the University of California, Berkeley. Martinis, 67, worked at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Devoret, 72, is at Yale and also at the University of California, Santa Barbara.<\/p>\n

How the winners reacted<\/p>\n

Martinis\u2019 wife, Jean, told Associated Press reporters who called at his home hours after the announcement that he was still asleep and did not yet know. In the past, she said, they stayed up on the night of the physics award, but at some point they decided that sleep was more important.<\/p>\n

When his wife woke him and told him about the journalists seeking an interview, the new Nobel laureate remembered that the prizes were being announced this week. He opened his computer, looked at the announcement and saw his picture along with the other winners.<\/p>\n

“So I was kind of in shock,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Clarke said it never occurred to him that he would win a Nobel Prize.<\/p>\n

\u201cI practically collapsed,\u201d Clarke told AP. \u201cI was completely stunned. I mean, it\u2019s something that I had never, ever dreamed of in my entire life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why the work matters<\/p>\n

Martinis \u2014 who was a senior Google scientist working toward quantum computing<\/a> before co-founding his own company, Qolab, incubated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison<\/a>, \u2014 said the big future goal<\/a> is quantum computing, which would be a giant leap in speed and sophistication<\/a> by relying on the power of the contradictory states in that subatomic world.<\/p>\n

That is still eight to 10 years away. But he said the team\u2019s experiments showed “a computer could be much, much more powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Devoret is now chief scientist for Google\u2019s quantum computing efforts.<\/p>\n

Quantum computers are \u201cone very sort of obvious use,\u201d but the research could also help develop sensors that detect and measure faint phenomena, such as magnetic fields, and advance cryptography to encode information, said Mark Pearce, a professor of astrophysics and Nobel physics committee member.<\/p>\n

And through better understanding of precision chemistry, it could develop better materials for daily living and even give an added boost to artificial intelligence, Martinis said.<\/p>\n

Before the work at Berkeley, scientists knew single electrons or pairs of tiny electrons could tunnel through an impenetrable barrier. What Clarke said his team learned was \u201cif you design the circuity properly, you could actually have tunneling” of objects larger and more useful than just a couple of electrons.<\/p>\n

That discovery \u201ccan be used to make very sophisticated things that would not otherwise be able to work out,\u201d Clarke said at a news conference, mentioning his iPhone and quantum computers.<\/p>\n

He also criticized the Trump administration for its deep cuts<\/a> to science funding<\/a>, saying they would \u201ccripple science.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this continues \u2026 it may take a decade to get back to where we were half a year ago,\u201d Clarke said.<\/p>\n

Martinis, Bagger and Fitzgerald said it\u2019s a bit of a stretch to say cellphones now use the breakthrough made by Clarke and colleagues. But ultra-sensitive measuring devices rely on the team\u2019s work, including MRI machines, which would be far less useful without their advances, Bagger said.<\/p>\n

\u201cQuantum mechanics is everywhere in everything we do, from the cellphone to the satellite communications that are connected to the cellphones, to the screens on which we watch our videos on our cellphones,\u201d Bagger said.<\/p>\n

Nobel history and other 2025 prizes<\/p>\n

Tuesday’s award was the 119th time the prize has been given. Last year, artificial intelligence pioneers John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton<\/a> won the physics prize for helping create the building blocks of machine learning.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi<\/a> won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discoveries about how the immune system knows to attack germs and not our bodies.<\/p>\n

Nobel announcements continue with the chemistry prize<\/a> on Wednesday and literature<\/a> on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize<\/a> will be announced Friday followed by the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics<\/a> on Monday.<\/p>\n

The award ceremony will be held Dec. 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of Alfred Nobel, the wealthy Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite who founded the prizes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The prizes carry priceless prestige and a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor (nearly $1.2 million).<\/p>\n

Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands, and Borenstein from Washington. Associated Press journalist Adithi Ramakrishnan in New York contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

\u200bCOPYRIGHT 2025 BY CHANNEL 3000. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STOCKHOLM (AP) \u2014 Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for research on the strange behavior…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":288170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[16720,57,51557,148103,127199,492,159,67,132,68,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-288169","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-colleges-and-universities","9":"tag-general-news","10":"tag-medical-diagnostic-technology","11":"tag-nobel-prize-physics","12":"tag-nobel-prizes","13":"tag-physics","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115342002412814492","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}