{"id":3662,"date":"2009-10-06T10:57:43","date_gmt":"2009-10-06T17:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/?p=3662"},"modified":"2009-10-06T10:57:43","modified_gmt":"2009-10-06T17:57:43","slug":"nobel-prize-in-physics-for-fiber-optics-ccds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/2009\/10\/06\/nobel-prize-in-physics-for-fiber-optics-ccds\/","title":{"rendered":"Nobel Prize in Physics for Fiber Optics, CCDs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2009 has been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nobelprize.org\/nobel_prizes\/physics\/laureates\/2009\/\">announced<\/a> and goes to Charles K. Kao for &#8220;for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication&#8221; and to Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith for the &#8220;for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit &#8211; the CCD sensor.&#8221;<br \/>\nI&#8217;m crazy busy so don&#8217;t have time to comment on the physics of these awards at the moment, but the thing that struck me about this selection will probably strike a few others and can be summarized in two words: Bell labs.  Boyle and Smith are retired from Bell labs which is also where they invented the CCD.  And today&#8230;.  Well today Bell labs does <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/2008\/08\/bell-labs-kills\/\">not do any basic physics research<\/a>.  Instead its current owner, Alcatel-Lucent has Bell labs focused on &#8220;more immediately marketable areas such as networking, high-speed electronics, wireless, nanotechnology and software.&#8221;  In other words, you can pretty much bet that when you plot Bell labs nobel prizes verses time you will see an amazing bubble, leading to a complete collapse.<br \/>\nOh, and by my count that makes two McGill grads with Nobel prizes this year so far (Boyle in physics, Szostak in medicine.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2009 has been announced and goes to Charles K. Kao for &#8220;for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication&#8221; and to Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith for the &#8220;for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit &#8211; the CCD sensor.&#8221; I&#8217;m crazy &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/2009\/10\/06\/nobel-prize-in-physics-for-fiber-optics-ccds\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Nobel Prize in Physics for Fiber Optics, CCDs&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}