Nobel Prize 2018 Special!

So, as you probably already know by now, the Nobel Prize in
Physics 2018 was awarded to another trio: Gérard Mourou, Arthur
Ashkin and Donna Strickland, “for groundbreaking inventions in
the field of laser physics”. Specifically, Arthur Ashkin was
awarded the prize ““for the invention of optical tweezers and
their application to biological systems” and Mourou and
Strickland were awarded the prize for developing chirped pulse
amplification, a method of generating very short but very
high-intensity pulses of light with lasers.

In this episode, we'll describe how they made these
groundbreaking discoveries, and what they meant for science and
physics in the years that followed.

But as dismal as the world might seem sometimes, there’s still so
much joy to be found in the world of science, the world of
physics, and the glorious intricacies of the vast, complex,
beautiful and mysterious universe we all live in. And the human
ingenuity that has gone into allowing us to discover that, to
even make strides towards understanding it, is one of the best
parts of our species. Both of these discoveries, chirped pulse
amplification and optical tweezers, represent clever tools that
we have developed to allow us to probe and explore and understand
nature, and there can be few greater undertakings than that. So
here’s to the scientists who won the Nobel Prize in 2018, for
giving us the tools that can help in many more discoveries to
come.

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