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Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony Tonight
Ellen Spertus writes "The Eleventh First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony will be held in Cambridge, MA, on Thursday, Oct. 4, to honor scientific achievements that cannot, or should not, be reproduced. The ceremony, which will be webcast live and broadcast later on Science Friday, is sponsored by The Annals of Improbable Research. The accompanying Ig Informal Lectures will be held Saturday, Oct. 6, at MIT."
Rubber CHIckEN!!
who cares?
I think Colon Powell should get the Nobel Piss Prize after we nuke the fucking Taliban back to the Stone Age, and then nuke their corpses all the way down unto their base components.
Fuck creationists.
i searched the website, though i do not know: is this just a copy or is this the original nobel prize awardness?
isn't that swedish thing. novel price
I think that initiatives like the Darwin award and the Ig Nobel prize are great. Maybe it would be a good idea to introduce such a prize for software that is too faulty or insanely difficult to use, or code that is too unreadable. Ermz, I am preaching for the wrong choir here, since some people actually like making unreadable code :)
I intend to live forever, so far so good.
The worst terrorist attack in recorded history occurred just over three weeks ago, and you people are discussing the fact that the The Eleventh First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony will be held in Cambridge, MA, on Thursday, Oct. 4, to honor scientific achievements that cannot, or should not, be reproduced???? My *god*, people, GET SOME PRIORITIES!
The bodies of 20,000+ dead people could give a good god damn about your scientific achievments, your childish Lego models, your nerf toys and lack of a "fun" workplace, your Everquest/Diablo/D&D addiction, or any of the other ways you are "getting on with your life".
Looks a lot like it...
I think to remember their motto was "For those who helped humanity to advance by removing themselves from it".
But then, the site doens give that many clues on what experiences those guys are awarded for...
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Synonyms of ignoble include disgraceful, shameful, and degenerate.
I'm pretty sure this is not related to the more widely recognized Nobel Prize awards.
Loved those winners of 2000:
CHEMISTRY
"Romantic love may be indistinguishable from having severe obsessive-compulsive disorder."
COMPUTER SCIENCE
"Detecting when a cat is walking across your computer keyboard."
Of course I always knew the first one, so it's quite useful to tell people who are "in love", dunno about the later.
But thats not fair!
How can anyone compete with Microsoft???
:)
reminds me of someone's sig I've seen....
'I hope when I'm gone, people will remember me and say: "I wonder where Kinko got the plutonium from?"'
--
Last Years Awards Kicked Ass
By Far any away the coolest thing is the levitating frog,
Check out the MPegs and Science behind it, fsuking amazing and something I never thouhgt id see
---Any sufficiently advanced motorbike is indistingasble from magic--
Here is an article the Slashdot staff might fight interesting.
It is entitled, "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments".
All of you dot-bomb flunkies and management types should take a look at this too.
"People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets."
- Gov. Jesse Ventura
I nominate:
jews
jews
jews
jews
Your comment violated the postercomment compression filter. Comment aborted
Indications are that 600,000 people were left homeless, with 348,000 houses destroyed and an additional 844,000 damaged.[...] Government estimates place direct economic losses at $1.3 billion. Other estimates indicate losses may be as high as $5 billion.
If you want to talk about perspective, we have whole areas of India struck by this earthquake, 348k houses damaged, and it costed them almost 5 billion.
On New York, according to this story: "Attacks expected to cost New York at least £40bn", 2 buildings are destroyed and the cost rises at least eightfold.
Nothing to do with the Ig Noble Awards, I know, but it makes you think about the economical difference between both countries.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
... for most versatile hybrid polymorphic y-chromosome based genome string :
Once again: Cowboy Neal!
The good thing about the internet is that anyone could build up a site with this kind of contest. And the bad side of the internet is that anyone can build up a site with this kind of contest.
Or in other words. I would otherwise greatly encourage, for example you to put ut such a contest, but the fact seems to be (at least to me) that the web is filled with such contests of small communities and groups.
Then again, should you (or anyone) somehow gain a larger community behind such endeavour, and get some outside funding from advertisers or sponsors, then your idea might be worthwhile, or even good. So if you can get these two, and create some working nomination/moderation system for nominees it would sound a great project, but without them you will be having hard time and need lots of will to build such contest. You can note that these fellows have been doing this for a decade now, and had a community at the beginning to start with.
In dream society, people could be given the ability to mod replies. In real life, it would be disaster.
I need to stop my damn cat from making all these "first post" posts! Yes, now you know where they come from.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Oh yeh, and the Darwin Awards can fuck off too.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Ahahaha hahahaahah hahaahhaa hahaahahah.
Oh, my you truly are the dear Oscar reincarnated.
Have you considered treading the boards?
Someone has to sweep up at night.
"A Wedding in 60 Seconds."
I don't think they'll be signing, it takes too long. I think they'll just finger print the wedding certificates.
Desides, where is the science in the wedding?
Based on excerpts from Section 2 of Nuclear Weapons Frequently Asked Qustions by Carey Sublette. "Teller-Ulam" Summary
All thermonuclear weapons existing in the world today appear to be based on a scheme usually called the "Teller-Ulam" design (after its inventors Stanislaw Ulan and Edward Teller), or "staged radiation implosion" for a physically descriptive designation. Other designs have been devised that use thermonuclear reactions to enhance weapon yield in various ways, but the term "hydrogen bomb" can be taken to be virtually synonymous with this scheme. Basic Principles of Staged Radiation Implosion
Using the easy to ignite, but very costly, tritium-deuterium fuel it is possible to ignite a reasonably efficient fusion burn in fuel at normal densities using the heat from a fission explosion (50-100 million degrees K). However, it is militarily desirable to use fuels that are cheaper, and more stable than tritium. Deuterium, the sole fuel in reactions 2 and 3 (see Fusion Principles), is relatively cheap (especially considering its enormous energy content) and is completely stable. Pure deuterium has been used in at least one fusion weapon test - Ivy Mike, the first true fusion weapon explosion in history (1 November 1952). Unfortunately since deuterium is hydrogen it is difficult to store. It must either be highly compressed, or liquified at extremely low temperatures. This problem can be overcome by combining the deuterium chemically with lithium to form lithium deuteride, a stable solid. An additional benefit is that through reactions 5 and 6, the lithium can itself participate in the fusion reaction.
To make use of these fuels, the slower reaction rates must be offset by compressing them to densities hundreds or thousands of times greater than those of normal conditions. At any given temperature the reaction rate goes up with the square of the density, a thousand-fold compression gives a million-fold reaction rate increase.
The work required to compress a gas is proportional to its temperature (at these pressures the physical strength of materials is negligible, and everything can be considered a gas). To minimize the work required for compression, or alternatively to achieve maximum compression for a given amount of work, it is important to keep the fusion fuel from getting hot until after the desired density is reached.
The key to making large fusion bombs is finding a way for using the energy of an atomic bomb trigger to compress a mass of deuterium sufficiently for the D-D reactions to become practical, followed by heating of the mass to ignition temperatures after the proper density has been achieved. The technique for doing this is staged radiation implosion, also called the Teller-Ulam configuration after its original joint inventors, Stanislaw Ulam and Edward Teller (also reinvented independently by Andrei Sakharov and his associates, and by others in Britain, France, and China).
The Teller-Ulam configuration makes use of the fact that at the high temperatures of a fission bomb 80% or more of the energy exists as soft X-rays, not kinetic energy. The transport of energy by radiation from the fission core greatly exceeds the core's expansion rate (a mere 1000 km/sec or so). It is possible then to use this energy to compress, and ignite a physically separate mass of fusion fuel (the seond stage) through radiation implosion before the expanding trigger disrupts it.
The principles of the Teller-Ulam configuration are more easily explained with the help of the diagram below. The bomb casing is roughly cylindrical, with the fission Primary (or "trigger") at one end. The fusion fuel (lithium deuteride in the diagram) is a cylinder or ellipsoid wrapped in a pusher/tamper - a layer of very dense material (uranium or tungsten). Running down the axis of the fuel cylinder is a Pu-239 or U-235 rod, 2-3 cm or so in diameter. Lining the casing is a layer of plastic or plastic foam. Separating the trigger from the fuel package is a thick plug of dense material (again U or W).
When the primary explodes, the X-rays escaping from the fission trigger fill the radiation channel, the space between the bomb casing and the fusion capsule, with a photon gas. This space is filled with plastic foam, essentially just carbon and hydrogen, which becomes completely ionized and transparent as the x-rays penetrate. The inner casing and outer capsule surfaces are heated to very high temperatures. The uranium shield between the trigger and the fusion capsule, and capsule pusher/tamper, prevents the fusion fuel from becoming heated prematurely.
Thermal equilibrium is established extremely rapidly, so that the temperature and energy density is uniform throughout the radiation channel. As the surface of the tamper becomes heated, it expands and ablates (blows off the fuel capsule surface). This ablation process, essentially a rocket turned inside out, generates tremendous pressure on the fuel capsule and causes an accelerating implosion. Thermal equilibrium assures that the implosion pressure is very uniformly distributed. The transparent carbon-hydrogen plasma retards the early expansion of the tamper and casing plasmas, keeping the radiation channel from being blocked by these opaque high-Z materials until equilibrium is fully established.
The force that compresses and accelerates the fusion fuel inward is provided solely by the ablation pressure. The other two possible sources of pressure - plasma pressure (pressure generated by the thermal motion of the plasma confined between the casing and the fuel capsule) and radiation pressure (pressure generated by thermal X-ray photons) do not directly influence the process.
The pressure exerted by the plasma causes cylindrical (or spherical) implosion of the fusion capsule, consisting of the pusher/tamper, fuel, and the axial fissionable rod. The capsule is compressed to perhaps 1/30 of its original diameter for cylindrical compression (1/10 for spherical compression), and thus reaches or exceeds 1000 times its original density. It is noteworthy that at this point the explosive force released by the trigger, an amount of energy sufficient to destroy a small city, is being used simply to squeeze several kilograms of fuel!
It is unlikely that the fissionable rod reaches such extreme compression however. Located at the center, it will experience an extremely violent shock wave that will heat it to high temperatures but compress it only modestly, increasing its density by a factor of 4 or so. This is sufficient to make the rod super-critical. Depending on the degree of symmetry, and the physics of the particular capsule collapse process higher densities are possible. Thermalized neutrons trapped in the fusion fuel, which are left over from the intense fission neutron flux, initiate a chain reaction as sson as the rod becomes critical. The rod fissions at an accelerating rate as it, and the rest of the fuel capsule continue to implode and acts as the fusion "spark plug". Combined with the high temperatures generated by the convergent shock wave, this raises the temperature of the fusion fuel around the rod high enough to initiate the fusion reaction. Self-supporting fusion burning then spreads outward. The fusion tamper prevents the escape of thermal radiation from the fuel, enhancing the burn efficiency considerably. The temperatures generated by fusion burning can considerably exceed that produced by fission (up to 300 million K). As the temperature rises, the fusion reactions accelerate.
The fuel in the fission capsule consists of lithium deuteride that may be enriched in the Li-6 isotope (which makes up 7.5% of natural lithium). There is some tritium generated by the fission neutrons, but as noted above the contribution to bomb yield is insignificant. Far more tritium is produced by the D+D reactions, either directly by reaction 3, or by reaction 5 via the neutrons produced in reaction 2.
Since the D+T reaction rate is so high, and there is large excess of deuterium, the tritium is consumed almost as fast it is produced. The 14.1 MeV neutrons also produce large amounts of tritium from Li-7 through reaction 6.
A large part of the fusion fuel can be burned before expansion quenches the reaction by reducing the density, which takes some 20-40 nanoseconds. The power output of a fusion capsule is noteworthy. The largest bomb ever exploded had a yield of 50 Mt, almost all produced by its final fusion stage. Since 50 Mt is 2.1x10^17 joules, the power produced during the burn was around 5.3x10^24 watts. This is more than one percent of the entire power output of the Sun (4.3x10^26 watts)!! The peak output was possibly even greater.
The 2.45 MeV and 14.1 MeV neutrons that escape from the fusion fuel can also contribute greatly to bomb yield by inducing fission in the highly compressed fusion tamper. This extra boost can release most of the explosion energy, and commonly accounts for half of the yield of large fission-fusion-fission bombs and can reach at least 85% of the total yield.
The Teller-Ulam fusion bomb described so far is called a "two stage bomb". The fission trigger (the first stage) compresses the fusion capsule (the second stage). As powerful as the trigger is, there is a limit to how large a capsule it can compress in the brief time available. If a still bigger bomb is desired, then the explosion of the fusion secondary can be used to compress and explode a larger third stage. Each stage can be 10-100 times the size of the previous stage. The 50 Mt bomb mentioned above was a three stage weapon.
When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
Did any one see the Win a date with a Nobel Laureate? Wish there was still time to enter, I would finaly be able to relize my dream of Romancing Sheldon Glashow. Oh to have a night with that sexy, sexy man
Sleep is for the weak!
True. But this is not a board to talk about earthquake aid or other humanitarian help, it about what ever fancies the editors. If you want to start a board on humanitarian aid, please do, and more power to you in doing so.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
How about a choice event for the /.ers where the most rediculous moderation gets an award.
Nominations start NOW! event in a month!
Boy if the wedding is that short I'd sure hate to go on that honeymoon...
~ now you know
I don't understand why that sort of research should be considered 'ignoble'. IMHO, it's pretty damned interesting, and could provide insight into, oh, Terrorism, and how sustained ideation about a particular topic can 'lock up' the brain. Perhaps a simple drug therapy, deliverable in an aerosol form and sprayed over a wide area, could unknot the neural systems of obsessed nutcases like the Taliban, and restore them to some degree of sanity.
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
Moderator: read the damn article before you go modding people down. One of the ceremonies is a 60 second genuine wedding. If you don't agree with my sense of humor then I could understand flamebait or troll although I wouldn't think they would be deserved. Funny would be appreciated, but I'm DEFINITELY not offtopic, asshole.
~ now you know
Nature has a way of doing these things...
Soon, the Ig Nobel prizes won't be needed. That is, once some more Darwin awards are handed out.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
The awards are funny. I especially like the Medicine, Physics and Peace awards. MEDICINE Willibrord Weijmar Schultz, Pek van Andel, and Eduard Mooyaart of Groningen, The Netherlands, and Ida Sabelis of Amsterdam, for their illuminating report, "Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Male and Female Genitals During Coitus and Female Sexual Arousal." [Published in British Medical Journal, vol. 319, 1999, pp 1596-1600.] PEACE The British Royal Navy, for ordering its sailors to stop using live cannon shells, and to instead just shout "Bang!" PHYSICS Andre Geim of the University of Nijmegen (the Netherlands) and Sir Michael Berry of Bristol University (UK), for using magnets to levitate a frog and a sumo wrestler. [REFERENCE: "Of Flying Frogs and Levitrons" by M.V. Berry and A.K. Geim,European Journal of Physics, v. 18, 1997, p. 307-13.]
Perhaps that's where all this 'grit' is coming from...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I managed to sit through almost 37 minutes of this "ceremony," watching the streaming web-cast. I enjoy intelligent people making fools of themselves on stage as much as the next guy, but this was just too much... or maybe too little. I had to turn it off... didn't even get to any of the actual awards, just to the beginning of the first act of the mini-opera, "Marriage Complex."
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I'm sick and tired of being responsible for the preservation of the universe and its outlying suburbs.
Just got done watching. Not bad. My biggest complaint were the less-than-stellar technicians operating the equipment. The non-functioning (or just misplaced?) microphones, and the camera operator stubbornly focussing on the podium while the activity takes place elsewhere (e.g. the slideshow...)
Did I hear that right? "Stalinworld"???? (the IgNobel Peace Prize winner...)
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