• Question: What in your opinion has been the greatest development/ invention in physics over the last 5 years?

    Asked by Physicser to Jackie, Michele, Oliver, Vicky, Yelong on 11 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Oliver Brown

      Oliver Brown answered on 11 Mar 2015:

      Five years is actually a very short time-frame in Physics!

      I think the best physics invention that reached the stage of being available to buy within the last five years would be quantum cryptography (Quantum Key Distribution). QKD devices allow perfectly secure communication by making sure that no-one could possibly have stolen your encryption key — but the theoretical work that underpins them was done in 1984!

      As to the greatest development from a purely scientific perspective, I think it has to be confirming the Higgs boson — it’s not often we get to see something so fundamental! Again of course, the work on that began in 1964.

    • Photo: Michele Faucci Giannelli

      Michele Faucci Giannelli answered on 11 Mar 2015:

      The Higgs boson without doubt. The Nobel prize awarded only a year after its discovery (usually people wait years to be recognised) is the prove of its importance for the understanding of the laws of Nature.

    • Photo: Jaclyn Bell

      Jaclyn Bell answered on 11 Mar 2015:

      5 years isn’t very long at all… I think if you were to base the discoveries by the year in which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics then the last 5 years looks really exciting, but in reality many of these were discovered or theorised many years ago but it takes a long time for the scientists to be recognised for their contribution. You can check out the latest Nobel Prize winners in physics here http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/
      🙂

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