FOR conquering infinity, two Dutch physicists have won this year's Nobel Prize in Physics. Gerardus 't Hooft of the University of Utrecht and Martinus Veltman, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Michigan, won the prize for banishing meaningless infinite results from the equations of quantum mechanicsa problem that had dogged the theory for decades.
The laws of quantum mechanics dictate that the subatomic world is swimming with "virtual" particles. Everywhere in space, particles are constantly winking in and out of existence. For instance, around every electron there is a shroud of virtual particles that hide the electron's true charge.
Until the 1970s, quantum theory suggested that if physicists were somehow able to strip away the virtual particles bit by bit, they would find that the electron's measured charge gets greater and greater, eventually becoming infinite.
Such nonsense results undermined the framework of quantum theory, so physicists had to ...
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