Domain: nobelprize.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to nobelprize.org.
Comments · 337
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Check yourself
http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1956/for
s smann-lecture.html
Stuff like this really makes the internet shine. Just imagine having to go to an university library to look it up... -
Re:Good
Norman Bourlag won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for fathering the "Green Revolution". Some estimate that his work may have saved over a billion lives.
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Re:A crutch?
The parent is definately correct. This is cutting edge
.. many doctors still refuse to acknowledge this.
There are times that any profession, physicians included, undergoes the throes of a Khunian revolution. Consider the recent Nobel awarded to the great researchers responsible for correctly characterizing peptic ulcers as a bacterial infection. They had to fight the established dogma that ulcers were stress-related and thereby mystic and incurable.
Both the old myths of ulcers and the new urban legend of eyeglasses causing poor eyesight lacked one big thing: rigorous scientific proof. Are there *any* well-conducted, statistically valid, peer-reviewed studies that show (e.g.) that glasses worsen myopia? That reading glasses prevent or reverse the progress of myopia in children? This keeps coming up as an urban legend, and if there's no science backing it, doctors are right to "refuse to acknowledge it" -- because it's a load of bollocks! -
Re:Conservation of energy revoked?
Sure because there's a big difference between the cures.
Bzzzt wrong answer. The stressed excutive with an ulcer can be cured.
See: http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/2005/pres s.html
You see, those guys proved that the prevailing 'wisdom' about ulcers related to stress and lifestyle were FALSE. That in most ulcer cases, there was a bacteria causing the ulcers to arize. Getting rid of the bacteria actually cured the ulcers. The Type A with an ulcer needs nothing more than medicine to cure their condition - A career change is not necessary.
But you provided a great example of how hard society holds onto its stereotypes for certain conditions.
Nowhere in my posts did I insuate that obesity was purely a disease, that has a cure and that better diet and exercise aren't good things. But in light of what was learned about ulcers, shouldn't scientists sometimes challenge the conventional wisdom? Who knows, someday maybe the people studying links between obesity and viruses might earn a nobel prize! -
Re:Open and Shut
From your article, Harold E. Varmus is among the foremost of Nobel Laureates cited as supporting oppostion to Bush era science policy. If you read the bio of Dr Varmus here you'll observe that he's quite a liberal and would be more inclined to support any sort of anti-Bush sentiment.
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Re:Tokawha?
TOKAMAK is in Russian: "" (toroidal chamber in magnetic coils).
Fission is what powers nuclear power plants and atomic bombs. It works by splitting the atom (lot's of energy is released on splitting the atom's nucleus.)
Fusion is what powers the Sun by combining atoms into bigger attoms (even more energy is released.)
To combine two atoms together, it is necessary to overcome nuclear forces that are very strong. In the Sun, it happens because the gravity that pulls the Sun together heats up the atoms so much. The atoms become very fast and slum into each-other at huge speeds (above 10,000,000K to do this) and overcome the nuclear forces and join into bigger atoms. This releases more energy than fission (splitting atoms.)
If we can find out a way to use Fusion to actually generate power, we will have virtually endless supplies of power (just use hydrogen from water to combine it into Helium for example.)
TOKAMAK is a machine that generates large thoroidal electromagnetic fields ( a donut type of a field), and inside the donut's tunnel, it is possible to hold superfluid material - plasma in a suspended state.
The plasma is created by speeding up the atoms within the thorus. Fast atoms then will hit into each other at higher speeds, and once the speeds are high enough to merge them, you get a thermonuclear reaction. Until recently it was impractical to use TOKAMAKs for energy generation, because the amount of energy spent on heating up the atoms was greater than the energy retrieved from the reaction.
1-2 years ago I heard the news that there was a break even somewhere in the world, but I can't confirm it.
(Some history: Work of Lev Davidovich Landau (a Soviet physicist,) on superfluidity of Helium and plasmas allowed further work on TOKAMAKs which were invented in the 1950 by another Soviet - Andrei Saharov) -
Re:Not Cold FusionLet's not scare the living bejeezus out of everone with what The Terrorists might do with some invention that doesn't even exist yet. That sounds like a great way to make sure that it never actually exists at all -- "cutting off your nose to spite your face," as my mother probably would have said.
First, this thread is a discussion of a report on possible sonoluminescent fusion. It should work, based on the math. If it doesn't now, it will at some point in the future. Possible applications for such technology are fair game for a Slashdot discussion. Powerful technology can always be weaponized. That's what makes it powerful.
Anything's open for discussion. That's the way it should be. Ideas were made to be played with!
Discussing something doesn't ensure it doesn't happen -- it ensures that you're ready for it. A perfect example is Paul Berg's first recombinant DNA experiments. Practical recombinant DNA was 50 years away, according to my 1975 copy of Lenninger. People hadn't thought out the implications. Berg started getting phone calls from respected researchers in the field (not crackpots). Several asked him if SV40 (a virus known to cause cancer in humans) genes could be inserted in E. coli. He asked them why. The answer was "To see if it could be done." There was absolutely no consideration for the consequences of seeing if it could be done. Having intestinal flora that churn out cancer-causing viruses is something that needed a bit more thought than a late night phone call.
The Asilomar conference was hastily called. They extended biosafety protocols to recombinant DNA and set guidelines to prevent recombinant "oopsies" from occurring.
Think about the consequences before you can actually do something and you'll be better equipped to handle the situations that come up. for it.
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Re:sad news :(
Sad, yes, but to correct the submission:
My original statement is correct because of the words I have emphasized in bold face. Gabor only made holograms of two-dimensional objects (specifically of a transparency of the words "Hugyens", "Young", and "Fresnel" and of a transparent protractor). Admittedly part of the reason for this was because of the lack of a light source with the coherence length available from a laser, but part of the reason is because his method of recording holograms had a serious problem known as the "twin-image" problem. As a result, the development of holography stagnated until Prof. Leith invented a method for solving this problem. If you want to play semantic games regarding the exact meaning of the word "inventor", go ahead, but it is an indisputable fact that Leith and Upatnieks demonstrated the first three-dimensional hologram.inventor of three-dimensional holography
No, as the article says, Dennis Gabor invented holography and coined the term "hologram", in 1948.There's a reason Gabor won a Nobel prize.
I don't dispute this, but there is a less fortunate reason why Prof. Leith did not receive a share of the prize. A professor at Michigan who had a personal dislike for Prof. Leith (and who in fact tried repeatedly to steal credit for work that had actually been done by Prof. Leith) actively campaigned against giving Prof. Leith a share of the Nobel Prize. Despite this, Prof. Leith is actually mentioned by name in the speech awarding the Nobel Prize to Gabor, a highly-unusual (if not unique) occurrence in the history of the Nobel Prize. -
Re:You're confusing two aspects of evolution...
There are no 'two aspects' of evolution. The evolutionary processes that act on microbes over short period of times are the exact same ones that act on larger organisms over long or short periods of time. There is plenty of evidence for evolution over long time periods: (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/)
and plenty of examples of radiation experiments that simulate the long-term action of evolutionary processes on complex organisms (ie. not just bacteria or single-celled organisms):
The work of Herman Muller who was a pioneer in radation bombardment experiments:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/muller.html [talkorigins.org]
http://www.aboutnuclear.org/view.cgi?fC=History,Ha ll_of_Fame,Hermann_Joseph_Muller [aboutnuclear.org]
http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1946/ [nobelprize.org] (he received the Nobel prize for inducing mutations through radiation bombardment)
Another example of mutation inducing experiments:
http://www.ansinet.org/fulltext/jbs/jbs14269-271.p df [ansinet.org] (http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:762TTjEpLBAJ: www.ansinet.org/fulltext/jbs/jbs14269-271.pdf+mull er+%2B+flies+%2B+radiation&hl=en [72.14.203.104])
There has been a lot of debate in the scientific community about exact mechanisms and processes by which evolution happens, and their 'speed'. However its a bit much to think that creationists are right about evolution over long periods, especially since the whole micro vs macro evolution thing that they have invented is a false dichotomy. -
Encyclopedia Britannica is much worse.
I compared the information about Barbara McClintock, the Nobel Prize winner, in the Encyclopedia Britannica with that found elsewhere on the Internet.
The Encyclopedia Britannica article was not inaccurate. It was, however, extremely misleading. It was worse than worthless, since it gave the idea that Barbara McClintock's achievements were much less valuable and extensive than they actually are. After many years and much progress in Biology, her work is still valuable. A copy of her papers requires 80 feet of shelf space!
The Wikipedia article is far, far better than the one in the full Encyclopedia Britannica.
No space-limited, profit-oriented publication can compare to internet research, for most topics. I don't think that Encyclopedia Britannica has anything against Barbara McClintock, but the company must decide how much paper they want to buy. -
Re:Legal limitations
> George W. can/will step unilaterally outside these treaties, as he already did with other
> treaties.
And not just George W. Bush:
http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pi nter-lecture-e.html -
Re:Who is Otto Z. Stern?
He's an experimental scientist, no? Won a Nobel Prize. Unfortunately, he died in 1969...
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Re:The black government and real aliens
Hi there,
It's really nice to see that you appear to be very willing to question your views - always a healthy thing.
Regarding the age of the earth, you can find a good explanation of why it is known to be considerably older than 6000 years at the Talk Origins Age Of The Earth FAQ and a collection of more in depth FAQs on relevant subjects here. Of particular interest should be the Solar FAQ which will address your concerns about the age/lifespan of our sun, and this article on 'How the Sun Shines'.
These are by no means exhaustive, or even highly detailed articles on the subjects - indeed, they touch barely the tip of the iceberg in terms of evidence avaliable for the age of our planet, but it should certainly give you a good introduction to the material.
Furthermore, I also have to take you up on your claim that "in anything provable, the bible has so far been correct". For starters, there's a fairly extensive list of conflicts between the bible and known science and history here - and while some of them may seem pedantic, of concern only to the ultra-literalist, there are plenty of others which are problematic at any level of interpretation. Also, there's a rather long list of promises and prophecies which have failed here, and some 360-odd instances of the bible contradicting itself here - and just to assure you no foul play is afoot, while those lists are on the Skeptics Annotated Bible website, that site is merely a standard King James Version with additional sidenotes - by all means, use your own copy of the KJV if you don't trust it.
Anyways, I may not agree with your views or opinions, but I must say I have the highest respect for the fact that you are willing to question them. All too often I see people with religious believes cover their ears and start going "lalalala! I can't hear you!" when their beliefs are challenged, so kudos for actually inviting a challenge :) -
Re:This paper = economics sucks
Why the hell is this flamebait? I disagree with him heartily, but it ain't flamebait. This response is better measured than any of the predecssor replies. Weird
Thank you.Onto the topic, I think that everything that you've mentioned actually is addressed by economics. What you call a "seperation from a real world factor" economics calls an "externality". One of the best theories in economics on how to deal with externalities was put forth by Ronald Coase. He identified that transaction costs, not externalities, are the real culprit. And that the appropriate response is the proper assignment of property rights, at which point the market resolves the problem. He won the nobel prize for it. A really good description is here.
I've got news for you: YOUR "SCIENCE" IS FLAWED. Please try again.
In much the same way that Einstein advanced the ball down the field of physics with relativity, and the quantum mechanics have advanced it again, Coase has advanced economics with his work on transaction costs. Does that mean that economics was fundamentally flawed before Coase? Yes, in exactly the same way that Newtonian physics was fundamentally flawed before Einstein. And I'm sure that there is some theory in economics that will find limitations in our current view of economics. But it's currently a useful view to have, even if we don't know it's limitations. If you want a perfect answer once and for all, then all science (not just economics) is flawed.On the other hand, "please try again" is exactly the correct response for physics and economics and biology and chemestry and
... It seems very likely that will be the correct response long after both of us are dead. -
Re:Theory needs work
My question is, have there been any experiments done with induced mutation, combined with natural selection, to establish benchmarks for the end-to-end evolutionary process under controlled conditions?
For example, has anyone bombarded bacteria with cosmic rays in a laboratory, and made a note of how long it takes for speciation to occur? (For that matter, has anybody been able to trigger speciation in a lab at all?)
The work of Herman Muller who was a pioneer in these radation bombardment experiments:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/muller.html
http://www.aboutnuclear.org/view.cgi?fC=History,Ha ll_of_Fame,Hermann_Joseph_Muller
http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1946/ (he received the Nobel prize for inducing mutations through radiation bombardment)
Another example of mutation inducing experiments:
http://www.ansinet.org/fulltext/jbs/jbs14269-271.p df (http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:762TTjEpLBAJ: www.ansinet.org/fulltext/jbs/jbs14269-271.pdf+mull er+%2B+flies+%2B+radiation&hl=en)
Some more general links:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/evolution5.htm
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.htm l (recorded examples of speciations)
Google and ye shall find :) -
not so fastLet me note that QM is a non local theory, so in the view of many people, including myself, MUST be wrong.
Due to the small scales, this has no influence on the devices you mention. The devices you mention make mostly use of the discrete energy levels of the electron in the atom. This can be just as well explained with classical radiation theory. It is just more complex, but people have attempted this and succeeded partially.
Furthermore, present day QM is not what many people learn in school, but is based on certain paradigms. Most common is the de Broglie interpretation (http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1929/brog lie-bio.html, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/) but just as with many other theories there are still many open questions wich leave room for improvement/change of the theory.This does not change the fact that the true theory must conform to all the correct predictions that QM does. I doubt Mills' theory is correct, but also he stands on the shoulders of giants in his search to an alternative theory. Many people write theories that are local, just to give a recent one which has a lot of text that is understandable to non QM/RM people: http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0508104
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Re:Helium-3 is great and all...
It may not be able to directly Bose-Condense, but it *does* form a superfluid. (see the Nobel Prize given to Lee, Richardson, and Osheroff). It was, I believe, the first experiment to observe fermions forming a condensate like structure. They're believed to condense via in a cooper-pair like method.
Fermi condensates have now been made. Debbie Jin and her collaborators at JILA in Boulder made them a couple of years ago.
Relevant links are here: http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1996/press .html
and here: http://jilawww.colorado.edu/~jin/introduction.html -
Re:Ack!
While I'm sure other countries will get in on a project of this magnitude, I think both the
/. summary and the original article in the Toronto Star are incorrect, I've never heard of a U.S. Herzberg Institute for Astrophysics, and I would be very surprised if one existed, since Gerard Herzberg was a Nobel Prize (chemistry) winning Canadian scientist. Not only there, there is already a National Research Council of Canada Herzberg Institute for Astrophysics in Victoria. A quick google search also didn't show any "U.S. Herzberg Institute".
Shame on The Star. -
Re:Cutting off nose to spite face
Einstien [sic] didn't work with scientific labs and big telescopes. He was really a theortical physicist. He proposed a theory that didn't have evidence for it until 8 years later. They are only finding direct evidence of some his work now. Yet his work was taken seriously, scientifically reviewed and is taught in science classes even though some of it has no direct evidence.
Actually, Einstein had evidence for this theory from the get-go. At the mid-19th century a discrepancy in the percession of the perhelion of Mercury was found. Astronomical data and the Newtonian prediction disagree to the tune of 43 arc-seconds per century. This was one of the phenomena analyzed in Einstein's initial paper in 1916. As I try to explain below, there is overwhelming evidence that general relativity is highly accurate theory. It is certainly not the final theory (as stated, it doesn't jive well with quantum field theory), but it's one of the best scientific theories of all time: it's amazinginly simple and yet is accurage to within our measurement ability for a wide range of phenomena.
In fact, Eddington's observation of the bending of light from distance stars, originally hailed as a confirmation of GR, later turned out to have such large measurement errors to be completely useless. In this respect it is imperative to note that if light has mass (as predicted by special relativity [E=mc^2]) then light would also bend due to Newtonian gravity. The difference between Newton and Einstein here is a factor of two in the predicted bending, which is very small in any case.
Many more predictions of GR have been verified since. For example, the fact that the rate of passage of time depends on the gravitational field. I apologize for the bad pharsing (it would be technical to give details), but the actual experiment is easy to describe: you take two atomic clocks and synchronize them. You then put one at the top of a tower. Put the other one at the bottom of a well. Wait a few months then bring them together to the same point. You will say that less time elapsed from the point of view of the clock that felt the weaker graviational effect (i.e. the one from the tower).
As to "or the vast majority of my life, Newtonian physics will be good enough" -- I hope you will never have to rely on a GPS then. A GPS unit calculates its own position by comparing timing signals sent to it by several satellites. The effect described above (that time flows differently for the sattelite compared to the unit on earth) has to be accounted for or the system will not work. The fact that the GPS system can measure locations and distances to an accuracy of 1 metre can be considered a very accurate test of general relativity (among other things -- there's also a special relativistic time-dilation effect here, coming from the velocity of the satellite in orbit).
Finally, tests of general relativity in the so-called ``non-linear'' regime (i.e. for strong gravitational fields) were recently done. The slowing-down of one double pulsar system and then another due to gravitational radiation were measured to agree with GR models to good accuracy. For more info read what the Alfred Nobel Foundation have to say.
I should also point out that GR is rarely taught at science classes, or even to undergraduate physics majors. It is simple, but it requires considerable mathematical sophistication to even understand what it says (let alone compute with it).
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Re:/. editors played video games in science class.
Only up to Iron. After that they're all made in supernovae, as iron fusion is endothermic.
I suspect you are right. But the parent said stars that quickly went supernova. So you are hardly correcting him.
However, just for interesting related reading: Composition of Solar Wind
Willie Fowler's Nobel Prize lecture -
Re:Focus on Artificial life
No they didn't. Crick and Watson got shown one of the pictures of DNA X-ray diffraction pattern Franklin had made (the best one) by one of her co-worker, Maurice Wilkins. Together with the work they had done on their own, C&W were able to deduce the structure. Without that picture it would have taken them longer, and potentially someone else would have found the structure before them, for example Linus Pauling in the USA, who was well on his way.
Now all three of Crick, Watson and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel prize in Medicine that year, when Wilkins honestly had done little more in this area than show Watson & Crick the crucial photo by Franklin. This goes to show that this particular picture was pretty damn important.
Franklin didn't get the Nobel because she was unfortunately dead by then, due to ovarian cancer she probably contracted as a result of continuous exposure to X-Rays during her work. Her name was later besmirched -
Re:Focus on Artificial life
No they didn't. Crick and Watson got shown one of the pictures of DNA X-ray diffraction pattern Franklin had made (the best one) by one of her co-worker, Maurice Wilkins. Together with the work they had done on their own, C&W were able to deduce the structure. Without that picture it would have taken them longer, and potentially someone else would have found the structure before them, for example Linus Pauling in the USA, who was well on his way.
Now all three of Crick, Watson and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel prize in Medicine that year, when Wilkins honestly had done little more in this area than show Watson & Crick the crucial photo by Franklin. This goes to show that this particular picture was pretty damn important.
Franklin didn't get the Nobel because she was unfortunately dead by then, due to ovarian cancer she probably contracted as a result of continuous exposure to X-Rays during her work. Her name was later besmirched -
Re:awesome potential
Ironic, isn't it, that so many Nobel winners are Americans?
Surely you're joking?
The USA has about 200 (give or take) laureates (counted as ones at US universities). And a population of 295 million. 0.67 per million.
Switzerland: 28 and 7.5 million population : 3.7 per million.
Sweden: 29 and 9 million. 3.2 per million.
Norway: 11 and 4.5 million. 2.4 per million.
Austria: 21 and 8 million. 2.6 per million.
Denmark: 13 and 5.5 million. 2.3 per million.
Germany: 89 and 82 million 1.1 per million.
Netherlands: 16 and 16. One in a million.
France: 49 and 60 million. 0.8 per million.
Belgium: 8 and 10.5 million. 0.76 per million.
Italy: 19 and 58 million. 0.3 per million.
Japan: 12 and 127 million. 0.1 per million.
Call it bias or whatever you want. But the US certainly isn't overrepresented.
All figures from doing a simple laureate-search, so they're all approximate, and refer to country of residence, not birth. -
Re:Who got 50% and which of them get 25% ???
from the nobel prize site:
A rule was added that in no case may the prize be divided between more than three persons (one-third to each Laureate, alternatively one-half to one of the Laureates and one-quarter to each of the other two). -
Re:Who got 50% and which of them get 25% ???Are you sure about that? The laureates for the Chemistry prize for this year are listed here; each is noted as receiving 1/3 of the prize. I think you may be confused by the fact that a single prize can be split to honor two (and no more) different achievements in the same year.
An example of that is here. Notice that one guy got half the prize, while two others split the remaining half. It was like half a prize was awarded for the soft-ionization MS work, which one person received, and half a prize for the NMR work, which was split between two people. No more than three persons total may split a prize though- you can't have a prize split 4x25% or 1x50%+3x16.7%. As science has become more of a team effort and an international enterprise, virtually every science Nobel given out recently has honored the maximum of three. The Nobel Foundation statute for shared prizes may be found here.
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Re:Who got 50% and which of them get 25% ???Are you sure about that? The laureates for the Chemistry prize for this year are listed here; each is noted as receiving 1/3 of the prize. I think you may be confused by the fact that a single prize can be split to honor two (and no more) different achievements in the same year.
An example of that is here. Notice that one guy got half the prize, while two others split the remaining half. It was like half a prize was awarded for the soft-ionization MS work, which one person received, and half a prize for the NMR work, which was split between two people. No more than three persons total may split a prize though- you can't have a prize split 4x25% or 1x50%+3x16.7%. As science has become more of a team effort and an international enterprise, virtually every science Nobel given out recently has honored the maximum of three. The Nobel Foundation statute for shared prizes may be found here.
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Re:Who got 50% and which of them get 25% ???Are you sure about that? The laureates for the Chemistry prize for this year are listed here; each is noted as receiving 1/3 of the prize. I think you may be confused by the fact that a single prize can be split to honor two (and no more) different achievements in the same year.
An example of that is here. Notice that one guy got half the prize, while two others split the remaining half. It was like half a prize was awarded for the soft-ionization MS work, which one person received, and half a prize for the NMR work, which was split between two people. No more than three persons total may split a prize though- you can't have a prize split 4x25% or 1x50%+3x16.7%. As science has become more of a team effort and an international enterprise, virtually every science Nobel given out recently has honored the maximum of three. The Nobel Foundation statute for shared prizes may be found here.
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Not meant to be a lifetime achievement award
Actually, according to Alfred Nobel's will and the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, the prizes are meant to be awarded rather promptly:
The interest... shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind.
Granted, the passage of time is often necessary for the relative importance of a work to become apparent, since bold new ideas tend to be controversial and cannot be appreciated without hindsight.
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Re:Who got 50% and which of them get 25% ???
I don't know about the rules, but according to the nobel foundation, they will indeed receive one third of the prize.
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Roy J. Glauber = Ariel Sharon?
Does anybody else think that Roy J. Glauber http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/2005/inde
x .html looks a lot like Ariel Sharon (PM of Israel). After seeing the picture, I for a moment thought that Ariel Sharon won the Nobel Peace Prize. Hmm.... -
Re:1982!Have you ever read Alfred Nobel's will that sets up the award? The Nobel Institute is kind enough to put a copy on their website -- http://nobelprize.org/nobel/alfred-nobel/biograph
i cal/will/index.html.
the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind
Now, does that sound even remotely similar to how the Nobel Prizes are actually distributed? "During the preceding year" does not mean "take 20 years to figure out whether it was really a ground-breaking discovery". It doesn't say "make Literature some kind of lifetime achievement award". -
Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded Also...The Nobel prize in Physics has been awarded also: http://nobelprize.org/
According to the schedule on the website, chemistry gets awarded tomorrow and peace on Friday.
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Re:Waste of Resources?No they weren't, they were discovered in a lab. See the 1996 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. How the hell does someone who literally makes up pure bullshit get moded informative.
Perhaps because he knows more about it than you apparently do. See, for example, the press release for the anouncement of the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Kroto was motivated to do the work in order to explain the nature of dust surrounding eveloved stars. See http://nobelprize.org/chemistry/laureates/1996/pr
e ss.html -
Re:Yes, there was
Gerry Adams was never awarded a nobel peace prize. John Hume and David Trimble were jointly awarded the prize in 1998.
See http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1998/
John Hume is the leader of the SDLP (a catholic party not affiliated with terrorisim).
David Trimble, former leader of the Ulster Unionist party lost his seat in the last general election and was forced to resign from the party.
I don't think giving the nobel prize to a man affiliated with terrorisim is a great idea. -
Re:Yes, there wasIt may turn some people's stomachs to see Gerry Adams being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
Gerry Adams wasn't awarded the Peace Prize, it was given to John Hulme, leader of the SDLP, in 1998.
England, under Sven Goran Eriksson's direction has recently exceeded themselves in their efforts to unite Belfast. Sven for PM!
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Re:Break even? Where?
I too seem to remember hearing about somewhere achieving break even, and I thought it was JET. However, the last time fusion was discussed here I googled for evidence and couldn't find any...Well, I found something in this paper, but it's just a brief statement without any support.
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in 1995, before the Arctic hole was imagined ....
http://nobelprize.org/chemistry/laureates/1995/cr
u tzen-lecture.pdf
QUOTE
" ... AND THINGS COULD HAVE BEEN MUCH WORSE
Gradually, over a period of a century or so, stratospheric ozone should recover. However, it was a close call. ..... ....
the nightmarish thought that if the chemical industry had developed organobromine compounds instead of the CFCs ... we would have been faced with a catastrophic ozone hole everywhere and at all seasons during the 1970s, probably before the atmospheric chemists had developed the necessary knowledge to identify the problem and the appropriate techniques for the necessary critical measurements. Noting that nobody had given any thought to the atmospheric consequences of the release of Cl or Br before 1974, I can only conclude that mankind has been extremely lucky ...."
END QUOTE
(This was written a decade ago, before the Arctic ozone hole opened up and it became apparent that recovery was not going to be happening soon if at all -- we may in fact not have dodged this crisis.
Kind of like when the storm misses you and then, a day later, the levee collapses. Same problem, slower. -
Re:FUD ALERT.... Junk Science.....
Hmm, the prize said "chemistry" on it, not "junk". Maybe a typo?
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Re:CFC is too heavyTime for some barrel-fishing:
Just out of curiosity, has anyone bothered to compare the atomic weight of CFC's to say, general atmoshpere of comparitive volume (espcially of the higher O3 areas?). Seems to me it would be mighty diffucult for the CFC's to traverse up that high due to their weight.
The atmosphere is turbulently mixed up to 80 km. This is fortunate, because otherwise the nitrogen would sink below the oxygen and we couldn't breathe.
see this lecture for example. The relevant part is at the end.
Oh, wait a sec! They also only collect AT THE SOUTH POLE. Must like it cold or something.
No, the atmosphere is well-mixed, remember? They only catalyze ozone breakdowns at extremely cold temperatures.
One ought to do some research on the effects of CFC with Ozone (O3).
yes, perhaps one could win a Nobel Prize or something.
[usual paranoid rants about DuPont elided. Let's stipulate that DuPont wanted to make money.]
I agree with an above post. Dissenting voices cause society to label one as a "nutcase" or "extremist" Isn't science all about finding logical explanations to the world around us? I say, follow the money trail, and you'll find who concocted the stories of global warming, global cooling, ozone holes.
Err, yes, I agree. Follow the money is right. I think it might be the case that the tiny little energy corporations are trembling under the onslaught of misinformation from the hugely financed scientific professional organizations and NGOs. But it might be the other way around.
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Re:Plagiarist?
The Nobel Prize is not awarded for a single act or document, but for a collection thereof. Books do not win Nobel Prizes, for example. Authors do.
Not really. In the Nobel prize for physics is almost always given for something specific that a person did. In Einstein's case it was awarded for "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".
Most of the other physics prizes are just given "for his discovery/demonstration/development of X" -
Re:So in short
"Einstein won a Nobel Peace Prize for solving one of them"
That's funny; I can't seem to find him anywhere on the official list of Nobel Peace Prize laureates. Maybe you should have a look: http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/index.html -
Newfoundland: Vickers, Matthew, Marconi, Oh my!The Vickers Vimy just left here (Newfoundland) a few days ago. Awfully strange to see an old biplane flying where jets normally go.
This isn't the first reproduction of a voyage that passed through here. In 1497, John Cabot landed in St. John's or Bonavista. In 1997, a reproduction of his boat, The Matthew, left Bristol, England and sailed here for the 500th anniversary of the voyage. See http://www.matthew.co.uk/voyages/index.html.
Other interesting bits from Newfoundland:- The first transatlantic wireless signal was sent in 1901 from Signal Hill (St. John's) by Marconi to England. (Wikipedia, Nobel Prize Bio)
- The oldest known establishment in North America was a viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows around 1000 AD. It is now a UNESCO world heritage site.
- Canada Day, July 1st is also Memorial Day locally, as it was the day with the heaviest losses among the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. This was at Beaumont Hamel, during the Battle of the Somme. Every Newfoundlander who advanced was either wounded or killed.
- We are home to the most Easterly point of North America, Cape Spear. That is, if you don't count Greenland.
Anyone interested in Newfoundland or St. John's should read:
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Re:Dolts...
"Electric Universe" is viewed by the scientific community with about as much credence as Creationism, magnetic health rings, the Face on Mars, and Scientology. They have a small handful of real scientists, and that's it. And no, there are no neutrino shortages. A number of crackpot theories grabbed onto the supposed "missing neutrinoes" and inserted a themselves into it; EU was one of them. The neutrinoes were detected, and and scientists were correct in why they weren't detected previously. Quit reading EU nonsense and actually read something remotely scientific.
I recommend that anyone actually considering this peruse the EU sites looking for a single testable equation, quantifiable validated prediction, or any such thing that would evidence it. You won't find it. I suggest taking this discussion, from hereon, to the "Bad Astronomy" bulletin board; they've had to deal with these cranks time and time again. -
Re:Your definition intrigues me.
Forcing someone to do something against their will was not what Jesus was about.
I think you need to educate your co-religionists on that interpretation.There a large number of people who call themselves "christians" who have repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to use the might of the Government to force everyone else to live according to the dictates of their religion.
Part of the problem is that practically no one can agree on a definition of what a "christian" really is.
From my observations, a typical member of the religious right would define a Christian as being "someone who belives that the Bible is the literal, inerrant Word of God, and has accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior." There are millions of people who would be "Christians" under this definition -- but there are many, many "Christians" who don't meet this definition.
From my (admittedly dim) recollections of Sunday School, the Roman Catholic church teaches a more inclusive definition: everyone who has been baptized is a Christian. This definition covers a lot of people who don't meet the more stringent fundimentalist protestant definiton above.
Personally, I believe the rational definition of Christian is "someone who lives their life in accordance with the actual moral philosophy taught by Jesus of Nasareth himself" (as opposed to those, for example, who follow the contridictory teachings of Paul of Tarsus). There are very, very few people on the planet who qualify as Christians under this more stringent definition. You don't see this kind of Christian very often, because they are usually out meekly serving others, instead of making themselves rich and famous by preaching hatred and intolerance on the television while scamming money from their congregations.
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Nobel PrizeJust to point out that the leader of this research group, Wulfgang Ketterle, 2nd from the right in the picture, shared the physics nobel prize in 2001 http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/2001/
"for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates"
Basically the current article is about the same type of system that landed him The Prize
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Re:sigh...
There are 51 founding memebers of the UN.
http://www.un.org/Overview/growth.htm
The reason is because of the Non-Proliferation Treaty which most UN members have signed.
http://nobelprize.org/peace/educational/nuclear_we apons/readmore.html -
Foreget Linux, Lets Hear it for Physics!
How interesting. I just saw a lecture by one of the men that won a nobel prize for this very thing, Steven Chu. What is being done here is essentially what is called Optical Tweezers.
The way this works is that the laser is fired, in timed pulses at a molecule. When the laser hits it from an opposing direction, it starts to cancel out the kinetic energy that the molecule has, and therefore cooling it. (I think it was something to the order of 2.0 × 10^-06 degrees above absolute zero).
In a nutshell, this is what is going on:
-Steve
Almost Absolute Zero == Essentially No Movement == Essentially "Frozen" Object -
Nobel Prize - 1991
A single molecule switching electrical currents on and off was demonstrated in the seventies. Neher and Sakmann were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology for recordings from single channels in muscle cell membranes.sans sig
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Re:If this is true
http://nobelprize.org/economics/laureates/1994/
That is a Nobel prize for a mathematician (The nobel prize is in economics). John Nash, for his work in game theory and its application to economy
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Re:Karma-whoring clarifier
It was also used in the Soviet era for planning manufacturing activities, transportation of goods between the Soviet states, etc.
The 1975 Nobel in Economics went actually to LP and its contribution to the understanding of these activities. Some people expressed their 'outrage' for not including Dantzig in the laureates.