2012 Physics Nobel Prize: Predictions

Guess the nail-biting period has already started. Just two days we need to wait to know the winner(s) of the physics Nobel prize this year? However, predictions have already started since last month. I shall mention
some of the claimed predictions in this post and we’ll match them with the final result to be announced on Tuesday.

Fine, let’s mention some names in claims.

Popular prediction:

1 Peter Higgs: for the theory of Higgs boson dicosvered in the Large Hadron Collider experiments.

[I guess this is in the most popular demand (we can take an online poll and check it). After the 4th July announcement, many media took dramatic roles reporting the discovery of the ‘God particle’ and it’s almost set in many people’s mind that the theory has been tested and now the moment has come to award Peter Higgs, who is 83 years old now. But as the CERN’s results yet to be scrutinized and also I believe that debates are still open, he may not be awarded immediately. In addition to this, there’s a Higgs boson headache in deciding nobel prize winners for predicting the Higgs boson since there are four other candidates apart from Peter Higgs (Englert, Guralnik, Hagen, and Kibble) and the Nobel prize committee’s rule allows maximum three winners.]

Thomson Reuter’s yearly prediction:

2 Stephen Harris and Lene Hau: for the experimental demonstration of electromagnetically induced transparency (Harris) and of ‘slow light’ (Harris and Hau).

3 Leigh T. Canham: for the discovery of photoluminescence in porous silicon.

4 Charles Bennett, Gilles Brassard, and William Wootters: for their pioneering description of a protocol for quantum teleportation, which has since been experimentally verified.

condensedconcept (blog)’s prediction:

5 Alan Aspect, John Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger: for the experiments for testing Bell inequalities and elucidating the role of entanglement in quantum physics.

6 Duncan Haldane and David Thouless: for showing the important role of topology in low-dimensional condensed matters.

So let’s wait and watch. Hope readers will predict a few more names.

Courtesies:
http://sciencewatch.com/nobel/2012-predictions
popsci article (for the photo)