News#3Oct

Like us, find us, follow us      

Architect of the molecular scaffold

The Nobel Prize inChemistry Jean-Marie Lehn has made a brief trip to bring the public the world of chemistry. He has remembered that  living organisms and the different materials are formed from molecules and from the new units resulting from the combination of such molecules. "Chemistry allows us to build more complex molecules" said Lehn. Supramolecular chemistry, meanwhile, tries to control such molecular assembly. "It's about seeing if the molecules are adjusted to each other, like a key and a lock. We are in our attempt to understand this architecture "he added.

CONFERENCES
John Pendry, the invisibility cloak man
 

The English scientist Sir John Pendry of Imperial College London told the public about invisibility. "To study the invisibility, it is essential to get rid of the shadows", said the invisible man. "To avoid creating a shadow we must be very careful with the light -he said-. We have to get something that is not very common in the materials, and it is that light follow a curve and not a straight line in its path", he explained . "If we transform that path of light, get our invisible layer" adds Pendry. It involves studying new materials called metamaterials that have a number of amazing properties.

Arantxa Urretabizkaia started her lecture praising people who, after the war, when there was forbidden to speak publicly in Basque, decided to continue speaking and teaching it. "They planted the seed that later would become the beautiful tree that Basque is today." She considers that the unification of the language is one of the best things that have happened to Basque, although on the way there had been many clashes. "Working together and uploaded on the shoulders of giants predecessors, we came to the current situation," she says, acknowledging those who worked in favor of the language and parents who reinforced that way.

Did you know that ...

Victoria Eugenia Theatre of San Sebastian and Bohr´s atomic model are coetaneous? Opened in 1912, the Victoria Eugenia Theatre has been the venue of major cultural events of the city. A year later, in 1913, the physicist Niels Bohr, proposed the Bohr´s atomic model. One hundred years later, the Victoria Eugenia Theatre is the main venue  of Passion for Kwoledge - Quantum 13 festival, who wants to give a special role to quantum mechanics, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Bohr's atomic model, one of the fundamental milestones in the development of quantum mechanics.

ENCOUNTERS
Trying to predict the Nobel prices

Today Dudley Herschbach and John Pendry attended to the encounter top @ DIPC Zientziarekin solasean! at Bizkaia Aretoa (Bilbao), and Pedro Miguel Etxenike was the moderator. When students asked who they believe will receive the next Nobel prices, the three agreed that the Nobel Prize in physics should be given to the discoverers of the Higgs boson. Herschbach was asked for a prediction of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, but he did not dare to give any name: "many candidates are friends of mine, and I don’t want to leave out anyone”. Etxenike, meanwhile, gave a 60% chance of winning the Nobel Prize to the discoverers of the Higgs boson, and the remaining 40%, who was sitting next to him: Pendry.