# A Nobel Prize in Physics for science later proved WRONG?!

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Dr. Becky
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5c5ASZtgyU
- **Дата:** 19.06.2025
- **Длительность:** 10:25
- **Просмотры:** 114,408
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/15161

## Описание

AD - To try everything Brilliant has to offer for free for a full 30 days, visit https://brilliant.org/DrBecky and you'll also get 20% off an annual premium subscription. | The Nobel Prize in Physics is the biggest prize in all of physics - it’s what every scientist secretly hopes their work will lead to. To be included in the list of greats that have come before us. But has there even been a Nobel Prize in Physics where the science it was awarded for was later shown to be wrong? Because famously,  the Nobel Prize committee doesn’t remove prizes once awarded. It’s happened in medicine a few times, but what about in physics? Because there have been 118 Nobel Prizes in Physics awarded since 1901 shared by 226 different people, the majority of which have gone to nuclear and particle physics: understanding the building blocks of matter. And it’s one of those prizes that went to Enrico Fermi in 1938 that is now partly considered “wrong”, although the science was right, the interpretation wa

## Транскрипт

### Intro []

The Nobel Prize in physics is one of the biggest prizes in all of physics. It's what every physicist dreams that their work will lead to be included in that list of greats that have come before us. But the Nobel Prize is not without controversy. Most famously, it can only be shared in a given year between three people. So that has led to some occasions where people who have contributed to the science were left off the list. and questions more recently about whether that's even relevant in modern physics today where most science is done in huge collaborations at institutes like CERN with their big particle accelerators or at LIGO with their gravitational wave detectors. But has there ever been a Nobel Prize in physics where the science that the prize was awarded for was later shown to be wrong? Because quite famously the Nobel Prize committee does not resend prizes once they've been awarded and this has happened a few times in medicine. In 1926, Johannes Fibiger was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for his research on spyropeteric carcinoma, a worm parasite which he interpreted as causing stomach cancer in rats, but it actually turned out to just be a vitamin A deficiency. or in 1949 when Antonio Egas Monith was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for his discovery of a form of labbotomy to treat psychosis. Essentially chopping into your brain to treat a mental health problem, a practice that it is now outlawed around the world. But what about in physics? Because there have been 118 Nobel prizes in physics awarded since 1901, shared by 226 different people, the majority of which have gone to nuclear and particle physics. So understanding the building blocks of matter and it's one of those

### The Nobel Prize [1:49]

prizes that went to Enrio Fermy in 1938 that is now considered partially wrong. The science was right, but the interpretation was wrong. So the official citation from the Nobel committee was that Fermy was awarded the prize for his demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation and for his related discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons. So what does that mean? Well basically Fermy was playing with neutrons. These are one of the building blocks of atoms. They're found in the center, the nucleus of atoms, and they have no charge, unlike the positively charged protons and the negatively charged electrons. They were discovered in 1932 by James Chadwick, a discovery that would also win him the Nobel Prize in physics in 1935. And really, this was all happening at the height of science's golden era of understanding radioactivity and the structure of atoms. the era of Marian Pieri, Ernest Rotherford, Neil's Bore, Vera Heisenberg, and so many more. Now, after the discovery of the neutron, Fermy was especially intrigued because they were neutral like they didn't have any charge. And the reason that this is important is because if you're trying to understand atoms and what makes up matter and you want to study them, then one thing that you can try and study is what atoms are made of. And you can do that by trying to break them apart into their individual pieces. And to do that you can fire smaller things at them like protons or neutrons. The problem is if you know throw a proton at the nucleus of an atom which is positively charged and the proton is positively charged then the two are going to repel each other. So you have to fire a proton at huge incredible speeds and you need like a particle accelerator to do this to actually get it to even impact with the nucleus to see what happens when things collide together. But you don't have that same problem with a neutron because it has no charge. So he started doing experiments where he got a beam of neutrons and fired them at different elements to see what happened. He found that hitting aluminium with neutrons triggered the atom to lose two protons and two neutrons in what's called an alpha particle and he was left behind with some sodium. The same thing happened to florine. It spot out an alpha particle and it became nitrogen. He managed to show that this happened with 22 different elements that naturally were not radioactive at all. It was like induced or forced radioactivity. And in particular, what he showed was that if you slowed down the neutrons first by passing them through water or even wax, then you got more radioactivity. So the slower the neutrons were going, the more atoms they interacted with and forced into that induced radioactivity. He published his work in 1934 and it was this that won him the Nobel Prize in 1938. It's that last part of the citation there, his related discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons. But what about that first part of the citation? the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation. Well, along with bombarding elements that weren't naturally radioactive with neutrons, he also bombarded some radioactive elements as well, like uranium and thorium. But he wasn't quite sure what had been produced in the reaction. There was no alpha particle produced and the thing that he made at the end definitely wasn't like two protons and two neutrons lighter than uranium like two steps down on the periodic table. Nor was it anything between lead and uranium on the periodic table perhaps if a few alpha particles had been given off. So he concluded that what had happened is that the neutrons that had interacted like with the radioactive uranium atom had then undergone radioactive beta decay. This is when a neutron decays into a proton and an electron. That proton and electron would then become part of that atom, which then would no longer be uranium, but one step heavier on the periodic table. Element number 93 with the atomic symbol AO. And maybe that happened not just one neutron, but two neutrons in some cases, in which case you've made a whole new element, element number 94, which he dubbed hisperium with the atomic symbol E S. And it's his claimed discovery of those two new elements that forms that part of the Nobel Prize citation, the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron radiation. But that's not what happened. Ferm's interpretation of the results of the experiment was wrong, which meant that the Nobel Prize that he was awarded in 1938, the science for that was eventually proven wrong. Because the eagle-eyed among you will have noticed the elements 93 and 94 on the periodic table are actually neptunium and plutonium elements that were not discovered until they were made in a lab a few years later in 1940. So what had happened when Fermy bombarded his uranium atoms with neutrons? Well actually he made elements that were already known barerium and krypton. What actually happened when the neutron hit the uranium atom is it made the atom unstable so that it split apart in a process we now know as nuclear fishision. It was German physicist Ida Nodok that had first proposed the idea that Fermy hadn't made new elements at all. That instead he'd made lighter elements just like what happened when he shot neutrons at things that weren't naturally radioactive. You know you got the alpha particle out in that case but in this case it's probably larger fragments that had formed. It was thanks to the experiments of Otto Han, Lisa Mitner, Fritz Straussman, and Otto FR that the significance of nuclear fishision was realized in 1939, just a year after Fermy had been awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for the wrong interpretation. Now, being wrong in science is not the end of all things. If anything, it's progress. New experiments, new data, new hypothesis all help us learn something new and change our understanding of something. Being wrong is just part of the territory when it comes to science. Having said that, I don't think many scientists dream of winning the Nobel Prize and then having their science that they won the prize for proven wrong, especially so quickly after the award was announced. Now, if you too dream of being a scientist one day and maybe winning the Nobel Prize, then you got to start with the basics, just like everybody that came before you. But if

### Sponsor [8:34]

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### Bloopers [9:54]

actually check my t-shirt before I started. If that was also covered in pip hair. Yes. Calcy. Spyro. Hang on. Spy. This is rotation. Come up. Come back. Spyro carcinoma. Spyropetera. It's back to the season where I get intensely warm filming these videos as well. So, know that I just I wish I was filling them with my hair just up here and off my neck cuz it's so warm in this room.