Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize:

Gore, who has reinvented himself as a climate warrior since failing in his bid to become US president in 2000, said he was “deeply honored” by the award and spoke of the “planetary emergency” brought about by climate change.

The 2007 prize was jointly awarded to Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — a UN body of about 3,000 experts which has highlighted the human role in steadily mounting global temperatures.

The Norwegian Nobel committee cited the recipients “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

The committee said it wanted to contribute to efforts “to reduce the threat to the security of mankind. Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s control.”

Gore, 59, is bound to attract most of the attention when the winners claim their 10-million-Swedish-kronor (1.5-million-dollar, 1.08-million-euro) prize on December 10.

Bill Clinton’s former vice president has helped put global warming at the top of the international agenda with his Oscar-winning 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth”, based on years of lectures on the subject.

The Nobel committee described Gore as “probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted”.

Gore said after hearing the news: “We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.”

The UK Guardian reports on the U.N. IPCC chairman’s reaction:

Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs the UN panel on climate change, today expressed disbelief at the news that the body had jointly won the Nobel peace prize with Al Gore.

“I can’t believe it, overwhelmed, stunned,” Mr Pachauri told reporters and colleagues after receiving the news on the phone at his office in Delhi, India.

“I feel privileged sharing it with someone as distinguished as [the former US vice-president].”

Earlier this year, the UN intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) made the strongest link yet between human activities and global warming.

The panel, set up in 1988, forecast that all regions of the world would change as a result of warming and that a third of the Earth’s species would vanish if global temperatures continued to rise and reached 2C (3.6F) above the average temperature in the 1980s-90s.

“I expect this will bring the subject to the fore,” Mr Pachauri said.

Reuters reports on British bookmakers’ reactions:

British bookmakers cut the odds of Al Gore becoming the next president of the United States and started to sweat as the former vice president won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

The reason is that in winning the prize Gore has now satisfied two of the three conditions the bookies set for a 100 to one bet they had offered — winning an Oscar, becoming a Nobel laureate and taking up residence in the White House.

Gore’s campaigning climate change film “An Inconvenient Truth” won an Oscar this year.

On Friday, after the Nobel award was announced, the bookies cut Gore’s odds of becoming the next U.S. president to 8/1 from 10/1 — although Hilary Clinton remains hot favorite at odd of 4/7.

“He seems to have the Midas touch and if his supporters encourage him to stand he may shake up the whole race,” Ladbrokes spokesman Robin Hutchison said.

The Wikipedia Nobel Peace Prize webpage lists all of the past recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, who have included: Theodore Roosevelt (1906); International Committee of the Red Cross (1917, 1944); Woodrow Wilson (1919); Albert Schweitzer (1952), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr (1964); Henry Kissinger (1973); Amnesty International (1977); Mother Theresa (1979); Nelson Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk (1994); and Jimmy Carter (2002).

Linking iPods, the Nobel Prize and physics in one sentence might seem unusual and is sure to spark interest from the public. Read all about it:

Two scientists whose work allowed the development of the iPod and powerful laptop computers were rewarded today with the Nobel Prize for Physics.

Albert Fert, a Frenchman, and Peter Grünberg, a German, have been jointly honoured for creating the technology used to read data on hard disks.

Their research has been critical to shrinking data storage systems, and without it modern MP3 music players and laptops with gigabyte memories would be impossible.

Borje Johansson, a member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, which awards the prize, said: “The MP3 and iPod industry would not have existed without this discovery. You would not have an iPod without this effect.”

The Soviet Union’s launch of the space satellite Sputnik 1 was the quintessential watershed moment, taking the United States by surprise.

Today marks the Sputnik 50th anniversary. As the NASA Sputnik page notes:

History changed on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world’s first artificial satellite was about the size of a beach ball (58 cm.or 22.8 in.), weighed only 83.6 kg. or 183.9 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. That launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments. While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the space age and the U.S.-U.S.S.R space race.

The story begins in 1952, when the International Council of Scientific Unions decided to establish July 1, 1957, to December 31, 1958, as the International Geophysical Year (IGY) because the scientists knew that the cycles of solar activity would be at a high point then. In October 1954, the council adopted a resolution calling for artificial satellites to be launched during the IGY to map the Earth’s surface.

In July 1955, the White House announced plans to launch an Earth-orbiting satellite for the IGY and solicited proposals from various Government research agencies to undertake development. In September 1955, the Naval Research Laboratory’s Vanguard proposal was chosen to represent the U.S. during the IGY.

The Sputnik launch changed everything. As a technical achievement, Sputnik caught the world’s attention and the American public off-guard. Its size was more impressive than Vanguard’s intended 3.5-pound payload. In addition, the public feared that the Soviets’ ability to launch satellites also translated into the capability to launch ballistic missiles that could carry nuclear weapons from Europe to the U.S. Then the Soviets struck again; on November 3, Sputnik II was launched, carrying a much heavier payload, including a dog named Laika.

As a recent New York Times article points out, the United States reacted strongly, culturally, emotionally, and even legislatively, to “catch up” with the Soviet Union:

For many, Sputnik was proof that American education, particularly in science, had fallen behind. Scientists and engineers warned Congress that the cold war was being fought with slide rules, not rifles. In response Congress passed the National Defense Education Act in 1958, providing, among other things, college scholarships and other help for aspiring scientists, engineers and mathematicians. Meanwhile, some of the nation’s eminent scientists were collaborating on new ways to teach high school physics, biology and chemistry.

“Those were heady times,” recalled Gerald F. Wheeler, who as a young high school physics teacher participated in workshops on one of these plans, the Physical Sciences Study Committee’s curriculum for physics. Its ideas were so fresh they were presented on mimeographed sheets rather than printed pages. “It was very high-energy networking,” he said. “Science teachers trying to do a much better job teaching.”

Now that we have become accustomed to space and space exploration, having witnessed, via television images, the Apollo 11 moon landing, and spectacular photography from the Mars Exploration Program and from the Voyager Interstellar Mission, it is difficult to imagine the visceral impact of Sputnik upon the culture and the frenzy to excel which it generated.

Relive or experience for the first time some memorable moments in the space race in this brief NASA documentary, NASA: Sputnik To Orion - 50 years in Space.