Nobel Prize in Physics

A new colloquium from the American Physical Society surveys the scientific legacy of Syukuro Manabe, whose pioneering climate models laid the foundation for simulating and understanding global warming. Manabe's work on atmosphere-ocean models earned him a share of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics, and the presentation revisits how his approach still shapes climate science today.

Researchers report generating quasicrystalline patterns in water waves, bringing the geometry famously seen in solid materials into fluid dynamics. Work on quasicrystals earned the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and reproducing their aperiodic order in waves rather than atomic lattices is a striking demonstration. Physicists are discussing what the finding reveals about wave interference and whether similar ordered-but-non-repeating structures could emerge in other fluid systems.