The Nobel Prize is one of the biggest prizes in the world.
Dr. Strickland will share the prize with Dr. Gérard Mourou of France and Dr. Arthur Ashkin of the United States.
All three scientists won for their work creating tiny (miniature) tools using lasers.
The prize is $1.28 million. It will be divided among the three scientists. Half the money will go to Dr. Ashkin. Dr. Strickland and Dr. Mourou will share the other half.
Tag: scientist
Scientist Stephen Hawking Dead At Age 76
When we think of scientific geniuses, we may think of Albert Einstein, Marie Curie or Ada Lovelace. Stephen Hawking was right up there with the most brilliant minds of any generation. He passed away last week, at the age of 76.
It would take a book — or a movie (there are both) — to even scratch the surface of his accomplishments, his tremendous sense of humour, his influence on millions of people and the vast depths of his knowledge.
He helped the world better understand black holes and string theory. Black holes are extremely dense regions in space. We can’t see them. In fact, we can understand what they are only by how they affect things around them. Hawking furthered our understanding of them and many other areas of physics. His groundbreaking work changed science forever.
Scientists Working To Save Arctic Ice Cap
A team of scientists has come up with a plan they say could help rebuild the Arctic ice cap. The ice cap is a huge area of sea ice that covers most of the Arctic Ocean all year round.
Usually, the sea ice gets thicker and spreads further each winter, but this hasn’t happened for the past few years.
Last month, the ice cap had shrunk to its smallest size since scientists began keeping records of it 38 years ago. The weather in the Arctic has been unusually warm this winter. Some days, temperatures have been 20 degrees Celsius higher than is normal for this time of year. This month, the temperature was above 0°C at least one day.
Paper Microscopes Will Make Science More Accessible
Manu Prakash, a scientist and professor at Stanford University in California, thinks all kids should have a chance to study science.
His new invention – an inexpensive paper microscope called the Foldscope – just might make that possible.
Blue Whale Carcass Will Help Scientific Research
When the carcasses of nine blue whales were spotted in sea ice off the coast of Newfoundland in April, it was an environmental tragedy. Blue whales are endangered all over the world, and only about 240 now live in the western Atlantic Ocean near Canada.
Pipeline Worker Finds Massive Hydrosaur Skeleton
A massive dinosaur fossil has been unearthed in Alberta.
But it wasn’t an expedition of paleontologists who found it.
It was a pipeline worker.
A man was using a backhoe to move some earth for a pipeline that was being installed near Spirit River, Alberta. The worker hit something he thought was a rock.
He laid the piece of “rock” to one side, and kept digging, according to CBC News.
But it wasn’t rock at all. It was a huge fossilized skeleton—a tail, to be precise.
It was about two metres long.
The worker stopped digging and called in some experts.
Human Activity Responsible For Global Warming: UN Report
A group of scientists associated with the United Nations has just issued a report on “climate change.”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has confirmed that human habits and activity is responsible for global warming and for higher sea levels.
If this continues, according to the report, there will be more dramatic changes in plant and animal life.
Some critics believe that the current situation is more likely due to short-term factors or weather cycles. They believe that the climate situation will change on its own eventually.
But the UN report says the reality is clear and the facts are there.
Luckily, because humans cause the problem, humans can help solve the problem.
Scientists Discovers Corn Plants Make A Noise
Most people know that plants react to light.
For instance, if a houseplant is near a window it will start to grow towards the light.
But what about sound?
New research shows that plants not only react to sound, but even produce sounds themselves.
Dr. Monica Gagliano is a researcher at The University of Western Australia. One day she was working in her herb garden and she started to wonder if plants were sensitive to sounds. Since she’s a scientist, she decided to find out.
She and some other researchers discovered something amazing. They found out that the roots of corn seedlings (very young corn plants) make clicking sounds.
Nomadic Gnome Puts Gravity To The Test
A plastic garden gnome is travelling around the world to help demonstrate how the pull of gravity changes in different locations.
Gravity is the force that attracts a person or an object to the centre of the Earth. It keeps us on the ground, and it also determines how much we weigh.
Gravity may be slightly stronger or weaker depending on where you are, which means things weigh different amounts in different places on Earth.
The difference is so small – 0.5 per cent or less – that most people using ordinary scales wouldn’t even notice it.
For example, if you weigh 40 kilograms, the difference would be no more than 200 grams higher or lower, depending on where you were.
But even such a small difference would matter to scientists who need to be very accurate when measuring amounts of chemicals for an experiment or comparing weights of different objects.
Canadian Awards Predict Nobel Prize Winners
The Gairdner Foundation recently announced the winners of its 2012 awards.
The Canada Gairdner Awards are given to people who have made a new scientific discovery to combat disease or ease human suffering. It is one of the most important medical awards in the world.
As the Gairdner website puts it, “we’re dedicated to recognizing the world’s most creative and accomplished biomedical scientists.” Biomedical scientists work in medicine and biology (the study of living organisms).
The late James A. Gairdner established the Gairdner Foundation in 1957. Since then, 300 awards have been given. Seventy-three of those award winners have gone on to win a Nobel Prize in either medicine or chemistry.
The awards are selected by Canadians, but they are given to scientists throughout the world.
This year’s seven award winners include three people who broke through mysteries of the human circadian clock, the internal mechanism that controls our sleep and wakefulness, body temperature, and many other functions.
