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IT鈥橲 too much to say that this year鈥檚 Nobel prize in physics can save the world, but it is certainly making it more efficient.
The prize was awarded to three physicists who invented the blue LED, which has transformed the way we light our streets, watch movies and store data. Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano at Nagoya University in Japan shared the prize with Shuji Nakamura at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
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Blue LEDs are at the heart of energy-efficient lighting and Blu-ray discs, which store five times as much data as DVDs. The trio solved key manufacturing problems that had limited the light from LEDs to longer wavelengths such as red and orange.
Because LED light comes from quantum processes inside semiconductors, it is more efficient than incandescent bulbs that lose energy as heat. LEDs last for 100,000 hours, 10 times longer than fluorescent lamps and 100 times longer than incandescent bulbs.
Lighting currently consumes a fifth of all electricity, says at the University of Cambridge. 鈥淪witching to LEDs could save 50 per cent, or over 拢2 billion in the UK alone.鈥�
The Nobel prize in physiology or medicine was shared by John O鈥橩eefe of University College London and May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser, both at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. They located our 鈥渋nner GPS鈥� 鈥� specific cells in the brain responsible for helping us to navigate our world.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淣obels have a blue hue鈥�