And the Nobel goes to Albert Fert of the University of Paris-Sud and Peter Grünberg of the Jülich Research Centre for the discovery of giant magnetoresistance (announcement). It’s their second big prize of the year — they took a share of the Japan Prize this spring (press release)
For updates see the full post.
For coverage of yesterday’s Nobel for Physiology or Medicine, awarded to Mario Capecchi, Martin Evans and Oliver Smithies, see this post
GMR involves very weak magnetic changes having quite major effects on electrical current. “GMR is one of those wonderful phenomena from the weird world of quantum physics that has been put to use very quickly,” said Professor Jim Al-Khalili, University of Surrey, via the Science Media Centre. “It involves very thin layers of different magnetic materials and the way they allow tiny electric currents to pass through them.”
German speakers can see a video on GMR on Grünberg’s webpage. Non-speakers may find they can follow it anyway.
This discovery – made separately by the two winners – has allowed computer hard drives to be made smaller, “one of the breakthroughs of modern information technology” (AFP). “I am really pleased that it has gone for something very practically based and rooted in research relevant to industry,” said Matin Durrani, editor of Physics World (AFP and BBC). “It shows that physics has a real relevance not just to understanding natural phenomena but to real products in everyday life.”
Notable among those products is everything containing a modern disk drive. Predicted headline for tomorrow’s Sun: “iPod wins the Nobel Prize”
Wired explains:
On traditional hard drives, information is stored in the form of tiny areas magnetized in different directions. A read-out head scans the disc, registers the differences, and converts them into electrical current. However, the smaller the disc, the weaker the differences, and thus the more sensitive the readout head must be. … The GMR effect discovered by Fert and Grünberg has made today’s tiny hard drives, such as those in iPods and even smaller devices, possible.
Those looking for a detailed explanation of the complexities of GMR should head over to Grunberg’s webpage or IBM.