[HN Gopher] Nobel Prize in Physics 2025
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Nobel Prize in Physics 2025
Author : luisb
Score : 328 points
Date : 2025-10-07 09:50 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nobelprize.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nobelprize.org)
| Intermernet wrote:
| I remember being introduced to this research when reading a weird
| paper on the unexpected efficiency of photosynthesis, but now I
| can't find that paper. Anyone got any hints?
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| For the papers about their measurements, you can look at the
| references in the technical press release
| https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2025/10/advanced-physicsp...
|
| Can't help you with "a weird paper on the unexpected efficiency
| of photosynthesis", try asking a biologist at your local
| university, or possibly an organic chemist.
| Intermernet wrote:
| Yeah, I looked at Google Scholar to try and find cross-
| references to anything to do with photosynthesis and came up
| empty-handed. Annoying because I've been telling people about
| these guys for years, but can't find the original paper that
| introduced me to them!
| jcynix wrote:
| Maybe you can find the paper you ate looking for starting here?
| https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2025/07/08/how-plants-manage-ligh...
|
| Tip: this page links to further reading of older stuff.
| handscarlsen wrote:
| why annoy credible scientists when there is an AI underlord
| available. Unexpected Quantum Efficiency of Photosynthesis:
| cite papers -->perplexity.ai
|
| hints galore.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| >Quantum efficiency of photosynthetic energy conversion [1977]
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC431568/
|
| >Evidence for wavelike energy transfer through quantum
| coherence in photosynthetic systems [2007]
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/nature05678
|
| >Explaining the Efficiency of Photosynthesis: Quantum
| Uncertainty or Classical Vibrations? [2022]
|
| https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpclett.2c00538
|
| >Reassessing the role and lifetime of Qx in the energy transfer
| dynamics of chlorophyll a [2025]
|
| https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2025/sc/d4sc0...
|
| >Full microscopic simulations uncover persistent quantum
| effects in primary photosynthesis [2025]
|
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ady6751
| dataviz1000 wrote:
| Michel H. Devoret, Chief Scientist at Google Quantum AI, and in
| April 2020 John M. Martinis resigned from Google after being
| reassigned to an advisory role. [0]
|
| Sounds like there was some politics shenanigans between them
| where Martinis was moved into a useless role and took the hint at
| the height of covid lockdown.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Devoret
| ctenb wrote:
| You linked the wrong article
| dataviz1000 wrote:
| He left because the reorg stripped his hardware decision
| authority, and he wouldn't stay without control to drive the
| technical plan.[0]
|
| He kept working on the problem. The question now looking back
| over 6 years is did Google make a mistake. I've seen this at
| IBM and other large research divisions where people who did
| something significant 20 or 30 years in fields like AI become
| stagnant burning tens and hundreds of millions. There was a
| political battle and Martinis got pushed out. The question I
| have is did the people who pushed him out know the path
| forward in quantum computing or did they just know how to
| play office politics licking the correct behinds.
|
| [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2020/04/30/goog
| les...
| Metacelsus wrote:
| This award involved some clever engineering to set up quantum
| effects in a macroscopic system, but was there any new physics
| involved here?
|
| (Still better than last year's award which wasn't really physics
| at all!)
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| They discovered that the theory worked in a regime it hadn't
| been tested before; I'm not sure what "new physics" means in
| your sentence: it is a core assumption of physics that it's
| rules are always true, that all physics has always existed.
| averne_ wrote:
| New physics in this context means previously unknown effects
| or mechanisms, or even a new theory/framework for an already
| understood phenomenon. Using "physics" in this way is common
| amongst academics.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Do you have two aliases on HN, or are you simply presuming
| to speak for the OP?
| geremiiah wrote:
| Comments like these make me realize most people have no clue
| what science is really like.
| bananaflag wrote:
| I don't think so, I just think they expect that Nobel Prize
| level physics should feel less incremental, and everything
| that doesn't involve a revolution in physics (like
| supersymmetry) or at least an expected confirmation of an old
| revolution (like the Higgs boson or gravitational waves)
| feels incremental.
| Sharlin wrote:
| It would be pretty crazy to have enough big breakthroughs
| in physics to warrant a prize every year. I guess that's
| how it was for a brief period in the early 1900s.
| wslh wrote:
| Great experiments are an essential part of physics.
| dkural wrote:
| From that viewpoint of all of chemistry and biology is just a
| consequence of theoretical physics. A lot of the 'consequences'
| of physics are very surprising and not at all obvious from the
| fundamental equations. There's a great paper you might want to
| read:
|
| https://www.tkm.kit.edu/downloads/TKM1_2011_more_is_differen...
|
| He also won a Nobel by the way.
|
| Many great discoveries follow from new instrumentation leading
| to better and novel data, and less often some conceptual leap.
| This is why the genius of Einstein is all the more remarkable
| in coming up with relativity. Interestingly, he got his Nobel
| for something else :)
| Roark66 wrote:
| Exactly, also in it's goal to "demonstrate quantum tunneling
| macroscopically" haven't we had tunneling diodes for quite a
| while? The device uses tunneling for its basic functionality
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| In those cases doesn't the tunneling occur one electron at a
| time, and so not macroscopic?
| IAmBroom wrote:
| I thought this too, at first. Then I read the article, and
| discovered it was about more than Josephson gaps and Schottky
| diodes.
| EvgeniyZh wrote:
| It's highly non-trivial claim that macroscopic system can have
| quantized energy levels and exhibit measurable quantum effects.
| You can't just solve Shroedinger equation of 10^24 particles to
| show that.
| Romario77 wrote:
| This could be one of the building blocks of quantum computing.
| You can have a macro system behave in quantum way.
|
| This is a practical implementation of something that was only
| theoretically possible or observed on very small scale.
| cyberax wrote:
| > This award involved some clever engineering to set up quantum
| effects in a macroscopic system, but was there any new physics
| involved here?
|
| There's a tradition of Nobel Prizes awarded for clever
| experiments, even if they do not uncover new fundamental laws.
| chrysander wrote:
| More than deserved!
|
| Both Devoret and Martinis are also highly involved in pushing
| quantum engineering to new levels - Devoret at Google Quantum AI
| and Martinis (formerly at Google) with his company, Qolab.
|
| Coincidentally, I have a close friend doing his PhD with Devoret
| and know someone working with Martinis. I am curious to see if
| they will ever see their respective supervisors again, given that
| the Nobel Prize attention will likely garner them countless
| invitations for talks and keynotes...
| whizzter wrote:
| Invitations is one thing I think they can mostly pick on their
| own volition with one exception.
|
| The prize rules stipulate that they need to hold one lecture
| related to their winning topic with the institution that picked
| the winner within 6 months.
|
| Iirc the 2024 physics prize lecture (on the roots of neural
| networks) was held in the days just before the prize giving
| ceremony and can be watched on the Swedish broadcasters
| "education" channel as well as youtube.
|
| https://urplay.se/program/239905-nobelforelasningar-2024-geo...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDE9DjpcSdI
| correlator wrote:
| Definitely agree! It's just strange seeing Devoret without
| Schoelkopf!
| chrysander wrote:
| And Girvin as the third one of their Yale effort!
| uncletoxa wrote:
| Fred Ramsdell was among those honored Monday with a 2025 Nobel
| Prize in Medicine, but he's currently "living his best life" on
| an "off the grid" hiking foray https://www.france24.com/en/live-
| news/20251006-unreachable-n...
| blenderob wrote:
| Great to see the University of California, Berkeley and the
| University of Cambridge, UK continuing to add to their already
| outstanding number of Nobel laureate alumni.
|
| The Paris-Sud University was a new name to me. Apparently, this
| will be the 4th Nobel laureate associated with the university.
| numid_mobile wrote:
| French higher education institutions work in very different
| ways from the standard US model; two relevant caracteristics
| are: a) good institutions for education and for research might
| not be the same at all and b) institutions work in a much more
| networked ways, so many labs will be joint ventures between
| like 5 universities/schools and 3 national research centres,
| students might get three degrees with each of them being a
| joint program between several schools.
|
| So it's hard to have a good grasp.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| > good institutions for education and for research might not
| be the same at all
|
| I'm pretty sure this is true in the US, too. Maybe we're just
| a little more delusional about it here.
| jebarker wrote:
| For those looking for a good pop-sci introduction to these sort
| of quantum effects and why demonstrating macroscopic quantum
| effects is a big deal for the foundations of the field I
| recommend "Through Two Doors at Once" by Anil Ananthaswany.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Is this inferring to the double slit experiment?
| jebarker wrote:
| Yes
| Awesomedonut wrote:
| Thanks!
| osnium123 wrote:
| I spent time in UCSB's physics department and Prof. Martinis was
| one of those experimental physicists who knew more about
| electronics and measurements than the typical electrical
| engineer. He used to have a wiki page containing documentation,
| cad files, etc of circuits that his group developed for his
| measurements and he also had open source software for controlling
| electronics. Very cool prize and happy to see UCSB getting one
| more Nobel prize!
| zippyman55 wrote:
| Let's hear it for UCSB's physics dept!
| osnium123 wrote:
| It's arguably one of the top five physics departments in the
| US.
| chermi wrote:
| Hey guys, I learned electronics from a nobel laureate!
|
| Throughout my physics career including PhD, analog electronics
| was the most difficult but probably also the most rewarding class
| to me. I fondly remember staying until 2am in broida at ucsb
| trying to get a filter to work, getting a few hours sleep, then
| being back in the lab before sunrise. Of course, this was mostly
| the result of procrastination, but damn were those good times.
|
| One thing that really bothered me then was the idea of a current
| source. I was perfectly happy with a voltage source, perhaps
| naively(1). But a current source seemed magical. I was asking
| Martinis about this and he seemed dumbfounded that I didn't
| understand. Of course, the answer is feedback. And, of course,
| good voltage sources also require feedback. But he was so
| familiar with feedback control he didn't even consider saying
| that's whats happening, while I never even heard of controls.
|
| Long story short, sometime later I asked to join his lab as an
| undergrad researcher. He said no, and to this day I think it's
| because I didn't understand current sources. Or maybe I was too
| late, or maybe the A- (see the aforementioned procrastination).
| That led me to asking a biophysicist, and therefore I became a
| biophysicist instead of condensed matter/QI/QC. In hindsight, I
| think this was fortunate. I would've never considered biophysics,
| which has been one of the loves of my life since then. Who knows,
| maybe I would've been just as happy with quantum stuff. I'm
| working through Mike and ike now and find it fascinating.
|
| Funny enough, after my PhD, I co-founded a startup in industrial
| control & automation. Now I understand feedback quite while, and
| thus current sources, albeit many years too late.
|
| (1) Of course, good voltage sources vary their resistance just
| like good current sources vary their voltage. My best guess as to
| the reason I was more bothered by the current sources is that I
| was so familiar with voltage sources with confidently claimed
| constant voltages (batteries). Not a very good reason, I
| should've questioned it more. In practice, it's much easier to
| make a near ideal voltage source (very high resistance) than a
| near ideal current source (0 resistance).
| henearkr wrote:
| Interesting, this constant current source notion.
|
| For a design without feedback, and in an energetically
| inefficient way, maybe this can work too:
|
| 1. Determine what will be the maximum resistance of the
| "current consumer" part of your circuit throughout its
| operation.
|
| 2. Prepare a resistor several magnitudes larger than the
| resistance above.
|
| 3. Connect to the resistor above a (huge) voltage source so
| that the resulting current is the one you target for your
| current source
|
| 4. Put the "current consumer" part of your circuit in series
| with the large resistor.
| nyeah wrote:
| It works. In most applications it would be wasteful of
| electrical power (and money). You have to generate this very
| large voltage that (it turns out) you don't really need.
|
| On the other hand that circuit is very easy to understand and
| build and test.
| dgfl wrote:
| This is pretty much what we do to apply small bias currents
| to our superconducting circuits. The signals are small (<1
| uA), and the power is dissipated outside of the cryostat, so
| this method is very simple and effective. The voltage and
| resistors don't even need to be that huge, ~10 MOhm or below,
| and correspondingly, <10 V.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Ideal current sources would also be pretty terrifying. Set it
| to even a "measly" 50mA and go poke someone with the output...
| nyeah wrote:
| "Of course, good voltage sources vary their resistance just
| like good current sources vary their voltage. "
|
| Did you mean to say "good voltage sources vary their current
| just like good current sources vary their voltage"?
|
| (I know nobody really cares, and I promise I'll seek help for
| whatever neurological condition I seem to have.)
| lisper wrote:
| There are two different ways to produce a voltage source. The
| first is to put a variable resistor in series with the power
| source, which you can adjust to control the voltage. This
| works, but dissipates a lot of heat. The second is to put a
| switch in series with the power source and a capacitor in
| parallel with the load, then switch the power source on and
| off very rapidly and use the duty cycle to control the
| voltage. This is how modern switching power supplies work. In
| actual practice, there are also inductors in the circuit
| which cause resonance, and allow the switching to happen when
| there is no current flowing through the switch. This is how
| modern switching power supplies can be so efficient.
| nyeah wrote:
| Ok, thanks. But I was calling attention to a point in the
| previous comment that makes it difficult to see a kind of
| "dualism" between idealized current sources to idealized
| voltage sources. Idealized current or voltage sources don't
| necessarily have any series resistance, and it doesn't
| matter how they're realized.
| lisper wrote:
| Your point is well taken. My guess was that the OP had
| implementation in mind when they wrote "good voltage
| sources vary their resistance".
|
| Or that might have just been a mistake.
| chermi wrote:
| I'm certainly no electrical engineer, and I see how the
| nice duality was lost in my description. Yes, I was
| thinking about the ones I'd actually worked with, where
| the resistance was the control knob. I haven't done much
| electronics since, so my recollection isn't perfect. I
| have recently been doing some esp-32 control projects
| where I just used some power supply I bought. I should
| look into how it works!
|
| Edit- I just looked up switching power supplies and
| remembered that I did actually know about those!
| chermi wrote:
| Oops, meant "understand feedback quite well*", can't edit for
| some reason?
| everdrive wrote:
| Dumb question:
|
| "We know that the ball will bounce back every time it is thrown
| at a wall. A single particle, however, will sometimes pass
| straight through an equivalent barrier in its microscopic world
| and appear on the other side. This quantum mechanical phenomenon
| is called tunnelling."
|
| Is the particle just failing to collide with the wall since
| objects are mostly empty space? Or is something more spooky or
| interesting happening?
| kitchi wrote:
| In quantum mechanics, the "ball" (or in this case an ideal
| particle) has a "wave function" associated with it. This wave
| function effectively describes the probability that the
| particle can be at a certain location.
|
| It so happens that when you solve for this problem, a ball
| bouncing against a wall, in this wave function paradigm then
| you end up with a non-zero probability that the ball appears on
| the other side of the wall.
|
| I'm not sure if there is a deeper explanation at play here but
| that's how I understand it.
| bluesummers5651 wrote:
| The simplest version of this problem involves a "potential
| barrier." Another loose classical analogy here is considering a
| ball rolling towards a hill. Everyone knows from experience in
| classical systems that with sufficient speed i.e. kinetic
| energy, the ball can go over the hill i.e. there is more
| kinetic energy in the ball when it meets the bottom of the hill
| than there is potential energy the ball would have at the top
| of the hill. If it has less energy, it will not make it past
| the hill. The weird thing about the analogous situation in
| quantum mechanics is that even if the particle has less energy
| than the potential barrier (the hill), it has a non-zero
| probability of being on the other side due to the wave function
| exponentially decaying in the barrier.
| RigelKentaurus wrote:
| As far as I know, the "single particle" referred to here is not
| a "classical particle" like a ball. It's a "quantum object"
| that, depending on how you look at it, behaves like a wave or
| an object. Definitely spooky!
| sbenerofe wrote:
| Not a dumb question at all.
|
| The idea that a particle could pass through a wall by luckily
| avoiding collisions is a classical way of thinking. In that
| view, a particle is a tiny solid ball and a wall is just a
| collection of other tiny balls with space between them.
|
| Quantum tunneling is based on a completely different concept.
| In quantum mechanics, the "wall" is not a physical object but a
| high energy barrier. Classically, a particle cannot be in a
| region if it doesn't have enough energy to overcome that
| barrier (this is why people often use the idea of a high wall
| and a ball that cannot make it over the wall). However, quantum
| mechanics treats particles as having wave-like properties. This
| wave is related to the probability of finding the particle at
| any given location. While the probability of finding the
| particle inside the high-energy barrier is very low, it is not
| zero. The wave's amplitude shrinks inside the barrier, but a
| small portion of it extends to the other side. This means there
| is a small but finite probability that if you measure the
| particle's position, you will find it on the other side. When
| that happens, we say the particle has "tunneled" through.
|
| The surprising success of the experiments that led to the Nobel
| Prize today is that it wasn't just a single particle (like an
| electron) that they measured tunneling through a barrier, it
| was a macroscopic group of particles. These particles were able
| to tunnel through the barrier because they were kept in a
| coherent state that allowed them to have a wave function that
| coherently extended through the barrier. This meant that they
| had a reasonable finite amplitude on the other side of the
| barrier so that a measurement could show that they tunneled
| through the barrier.
| everdrive wrote:
| Thanks, I'm still thinking about your answer but really
| appreciate your explanation. Would this mean that there is
| some (possibly currently unknown) maximum size for a group of
| particles that could be forced to maintain the correct state
| to pass through the wall?
| qnleigh wrote:
| This is another great question. It's still a matter of
| debate how the wave-like behavior of quantum mechanics
| turns into the particle-like behavior of large objects that
| we observe. Some people believe there should be a maximum
| size, some people believe that there isn't. In fact Nature
| did a survey a few months ago and found that physicists
| disagree wildly on this topic.
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02342-y
|
| Have you heard of Schrodinger's cat, which is
| hypothetically dead and alive at the same time? Schrodinger
| described this thought experiment to argue that quantum
| mechanics led to absurdities if you took it too far.
| Ironically, many physicists now believe that such an
| experiment is possible in principle, though it would be
| extremely difficult.
| dgfl wrote:
| There is no obvious limit to how big you could scale up
| this experiment right here. In practice, these circuits are
| already big enough that you can quite literally see them
| with the naked eye (~mm in length). Nothing really stops
| you from making one meters in diameter, aside from the
| obvious impracticality of cooling such a massive structure
| to the required temperature. Nobody expects this to break
| any known physics by doing so. In fact, some of these
| experiments have also been used to estimate lower bounds
| for nonlinear versions of quantum mechanics (where collapse
| is a real thing, and the larger an object is, the faster it
| collapses).
|
| But you should not really think of a physical wall in this
| case. The experiments that have proven the macroscopic
| tunneling behave according to the same exact math, but
| nothing is really tunneling through macroscopic walls. The
| cooper pair electrons are, but that's a different Nobel
| prize (Josephson, 1973).
| sbenerofe wrote:
| This is a very good question.
|
| The real limit is not based on the size or number of
| particles, but on the coherence of the group of particles.
| Using the word coherence is probably not helpful without
| context, so let me give a quick explanation of what that
| means.
|
| As I mentioned in my answer above, particles can exhibit
| wave-like properties. A group of particles will each have
| their own wave packet. In our everyday lives, two
| particles, even those right next to each other, are
| jiggling around randomly due to temperature and
| experiencing slightly different environments. You can think
| of each of these separate random jiggles as a measurement
| that collapses the wave function of that particle. Then,
| after the particle's wave function collapses, it begins to
| evolve again until the next measurement. As a side note,
| saying a measurement collapses the wave function is quantum
| mechanics talk for the observed reality that when we
| measure where a particle is, we do not find a wave, we find
| a particle. So, the shorthand for this view of quantum
| mechanics is that a measurement collapses the wave
| function.
|
| Ok, so now we have a bunch of particles, like a chair. Why
| won't a chair tunnel through a wall? Well, all the
| particles that make up the chair are not just physically
| separated, but they are jiggling due to their temperature
| and their slightly different environments. So, all of these
| particles that make up the chair keep having their wave
| function collapsed randomly. The chance of one particle
| tunneling through the wall is small. The chance of all
| 10^27 particles in the chair independently tunneling
| through the barrier at once is not going to happen before
| the universe ends.
|
| Back to coherence. All of these particles of the chair are
| independently jiggling around, and each one has its own
| wave function collapsed very quickly. For this reason, you
| can treat each particle as an independent particle. We
| would say the wave functions of these particles are not
| coherent with each other.
|
| Now, imagine that we have two particles right next to each
| other. At room temperature, they are constantly jiggling
| and having their wave functions collapsed. If we cool them
| down to reduce the jiggling, and they are close enough to
| each other, their respective wave functions can start to
| overlap. When the jiggling of the particles is small enough
| and their wave functions overlap sufficiently, they begin
| to behave as a single quantum entity. This is a coherent
| state. In a suitably constructed experiment, these coherent
| particles can then exhibit quantum behaviors such as
| tunneling together.
|
| Back to your question: is there some maximum size for a
| group of particles that could be forced to maintain the
| correct state to pass through the wall? Since the group of
| particles must be in a coherent quantum state to tunnel,
| the real question is how big of a group can be put into
| such a state. You have to cool them to slow the jiggling,
| isolate them from anything in the environment that might
| collapse their wave functions, and get them close enough
| together for their wave functions to overlap. There is
| likely a theoretical limit that could be calculated, but as
| a practical matter, extraordinary engineering efforts are
| required to get even a very small group of particles into a
| coherent quantum state. The direct answer to your question
| is that while there may be a theoretical maximum possible
| size of a coherent state for our universe, the real limit
| is set by the immense practical challenges of creating and
| maintaining a coherent state. This is what makes the work
| of this year's Nobel Prize winners so impressive.
| cvoss wrote:
| It's more spooky and interesting. When we switch to discussing
| the single particle case, the "wall" is a metaphor. You have a
| single particle in a low energy state at position A. There is
| another low energy state at position C, but the path from A to
| C entails (ostensibly) passing through an intermediate high
| energy state at position B. Without lending energy into the
| system, you wouldn't expect the particle to be able to move
| from A to C, because the particle needs a lot of energy
| temporarily to move from A to B (which it would give up again
| as it moves from B to C). Yet the particle does move from A to
| C, in the absence of an energy source that could explain what
| happened. This raises the spooky question: Did it actually pass
| through B on its way? It seems like it did not.
| jonathan_ds wrote:
| "Quantum properties on a human scale" the news and the new age
| mystics will have a field day with this one
| nritchie wrote:
| It is worth noting that the research that Martinis is being
| awarded the Nobel prize was largely performed while at NIST
| (National Institute of Standards and Technology), part of the
| Dept of Commerce.
| fraserphysics wrote:
| I read the NY Times article about this earlier this morning. I
| thought it was not very good. I came to HN to see if it had
| something better. It did. The linked article is also at something
| like a high school level, but it gave me (retired PhD Physics) a
| good idea of the experiment and the theory. Thanks.
| giardini wrote:
| So is ball lightning a quantum phenomenon?
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