Cancer research and world hunger be damned--what the world needs now is higher capacity iPods. I kid, I kid. After all, if it weren't for the pioneering work of physicists like Albert Fert Peter Grünberg, whose work lead to improved hard drive capacity, where would we store all of that research? That the same technology is also the reason that I can store Woody Guthrie's entire recorded output in my pocket, is just sort of an added bonus.

Fert and Grünberg have been award the 2007 Nobel Prize in physics for their discovery of nanoscale physics phenomena in 1988 that has lead to even more densely packed hard drives. They discovered giant magnetoresistance, which allows for the emission of detectable electrical resistance from changes in magnetism that grow week as disk size decreases.

"The MP3 and iPod industry would not have existed without this discovery," Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences member, Borje Johansson, , was quoted as telling the AP. "You would not have an iPod without this effect."

Gentlemen, the sciences and my portable Lee "Scratch" Perry box set salute you.