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Nobel Prizes for Physics Awarded to Smart People
bobol6 writes "The 2002 Nobel Prize for Physics is out. The $1 Million is split two ways: Riccardo Giacconi gets half for building the first X-Ray telescopes, and Raymond Davis, Jr and Masatoshi Koshiba split the other half. Davis invented the water tank neutrino detector, and Koshiba used a more sophisticated one to discover neutrino oscillation. The original press release is available . News articles can be found at Science Daily and The New York Times. (Free Blah di Blah)"
Thank God. Wouldn't want any dumb people getting a Nobel prize, now would we? :)
With these methods researcher can now quickly reveal what proteins are present in a sample.
It's also possible to visualise proteins in 3D with these methods.
The methods have revolutionised the development of new drugs and show promise in areas as food qualit control and diagnosing breast cancer and prostate cancer.
(all according to a Swedish on-line article)
If you're talking about the atom that would definitely win the Nobel Prize.
In related news, the Golden Globes continue to be awarded to the opposite end of the academic spectrum, according to industry analysts. "Just look at Jennifer Connelly," said an unnamed source, pointing to this year's winner for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role. "Sure, she's easy on the eyes, but she couldn't tell a neutrino from her elbow. And don't even get me started on Sissy Spacek - the woman keeps trying to reserve the periodic table at restaurants."
Ron Howard has repeatedly gone on record that his work on 'A Beautiful Mind' puts him in the appropriate Smart People category, but that is still in dispute. Judges point to his work in Happy Days as proof.
What's your damage, Heather?
Googlefied NYT article for your enjoyment
Who run Barter Town?
Not possible. Paragraph four of the statutes of the Nobel foundation clearly states that a maximum of three people can share a prize.
It's even been mentioned in the television series (where the laureates of the year are interviewed) by some US physicists that they did indeed have that in mind when applying for grants etc. I.e. not to be more than tree eligible researchers not to spoilt their chanses.
Check out the statues of the Nobel Foundation.
Stefan Axelsson
I believe the Japanese guy that received the prize worked at the Super-Kamiokande detector that damaged half of its photo-multiplyer tubes in a big implosion.
Famous quote at the time of the incident: Thank goodness we got our Nobel already cooking
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
People in the entire U.S., but especially the editors at Slashdot, were astounded and amazed by this announcement.
"I never even suspected" said chrisd, an editor at Slashdot.
The Dow rose 78 points today, largely in response to this announcement.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
The prizes are awarded in various categories, including physics and chemistry:
2 00 2
PHYSICS
Arnd Leike of the University of Munich, for demonstrating that beer froth obeys the mathematical Law of Exponential Decay. [REFERENCE: "Demonstration of the Exponential Decay Law Using Beer Froth," Arnd Leike, European Journal of Physics, vol. 23, January 2002, pp. 21-26.]
http://www.improb.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html#ig
Ask again after the Peace prize is announced Thursday...
Davis built the Homestake experiment, which was a radiochemical experiment to look for solar neutrinos. NOT a water-Cerenkov experiment.
Kamiokande (Koshiba's experiment)was a water-Cerenkov experiment, however the IMB experiment (another water-Cerenkov experiment, near Cleveland) also saw the neutrinos from supernova 1987A *and* IMB had an atomic clock, so they could get accurate arrival times, which the japanese experiment couldn't.
Kamiokande confirmed Davis' results, but so did gallium experiments in what was then the USSR and in Italy.
"Nobel Peace prize awarded to ... er ... peaceful people".
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Peaceful? I bet it's not hard to find people who wouldn't describe Theodore Roosevelt ("No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumph of war"), Henry Kissinger or Yasser Arafat as peaceful...
Come on? Is there no bitchiness? Can't we at least hear if these guys deserved their Nobels, or did their grad students deserve it instead?
I would like to hear physicists comment if Physics nominees at least were deserving. From a layman's viewpoint it seems so.
"Lots of people have won the Nobel Prize, but to win it with an IQ of only 124, now *that's* an accomplishment!"
He always took great pride in being a "dumb" winner.
Of course there are many who would consider 124 pretty damned smart, but Feynman hung out with people like Hans Bethe, Neils Bohr, Albert Einstien and those other "dummies."
KFG
The leaders of a country that's occupying another get a peace prize... ridiculous.
Reality or nothing.
Now let me disgress: how does it feel winning a part of a Nobel prize ? I see it coming: "Our next speaker, Prof. Inodoro Pereyra, 1/8th of the Nobel Prize 2004"
(One wants to encourage the positive, of course, but if you're going to fete old enemies who've shaken hands and decided to tolerate each other, at least wait a decent period of time to confirm that the outbreak of sweet reason will persist.)
For a very long time, Ray Davis stood alone in saying there was a deficit of electron type neutrinos coming from the sun, despite criticisms that his experiment must be wrong.
Koshiba started Kamiokande which begat Super-Kamiokande, which (along with IMB) confirmed Ray's results but also showed oscillations in atmospheric neutrinos and pushed proton decay lifetime limits further than any other experiment.
These experiments fundamentally changed our view of neutrinos. So, yes, I think their originators each deserve a Nobel of their own, let alone 1/4 of one.
I would like to see, in the context of this excerpt from the Last Will and Testament of Alfred Nobel, a justification for the Nobel Prize for "Economic Sciences", first awarded in 1969.
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
Congrats to Mr. Giacconi for winning the Nobel Prize in Physics for his research into X-ray emissions in outer space.
It was his research with sounding rockets, the UHURU satellite and the Einstein satellite that made it possible to study unusual astronomical objects such as black holes and pulsars and allow us to peer much more closely at nebulas and other astronomical objects that have befuddled astronomers before Giacconi's pioneering work. It was his work that made it possible for the development of the NASA Chandra and ESA XMM-Newton X-ray observatory satellites.
From this site comes this gem.
Note: Not the stage fright, but the daily handling of radium (considering she was probably the most informed person in the world on the safety or otherwise of radium!)
Of course, I could be applying my early 21st century knowledge to her early 20th century situation.
Highly intelligent? Yeah, sure!
Dumb? Absolutely!
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
The Japanese neutrino detector, Kamiokande, was constructed to observe neutron collapse. It failed. It has proved, to a certain extent, that neutron collapse is impossible, or that Koshiba's scientific apparatus is flawed. As a side affect, Koshiba found that neutrinos from space were interfering with his experiment. When the supernova of 1987A lit Koshiba's apparatus up like a Christmas tree, Koshiba found that his mistake even provided an early warning system for supernovae. Through this "oops", "neutrino astronomy" was born. All scientists should be so lucky as to have made a mistake of this magnitude and grandeur. It is truly worthy of the Nobel.
Sadly, Koshiba made another mistake which destroyed his billion dollar apparatus. Another "oops", which so far has not yielded a Nobel.
Yet!
Dr. Joseph Hairston
Superintendent, CCBC
Nobody thinks there is any point to a standard metric of 'beauty' or 'virtue', oh wait maybe they do ...
... the story submitter could just gank the NYTimes link from Google News. That way it'd have the affiliate code in there and wouldn't require in blah di blah, free or otherwise.
Really. And my ethical IQ must be ok because Slashdot says my karma is excellent!
KFG
This is not funny. It's lame.
Davis's detector was a tank of perchloroethylene. Neutrinos occassionally transmuted chlorine atoms into radioactive argon atoms, which could be swept out by helium sparging and their individual decays detected separately.
It's hard to grouch overly that somebody else deserved the prize when the runners up aren't listed. One thing that sucks, it seems that for one to become a brilliant Nobel winning scientist, it generally takes a lifetime of research (they all look fairly old).
What's the youngest age of somebody to win a Nobel? It would somewhat suck if you won a million bucks but were too old to fully enjoy it.
I keep telling myself that slashdot Karma is better. But, I cannot quite convince myself for some reason.
Table-ized A.I.
and Sammy Davis Jr.? Wow! Never saw that coming, but my hat's off to the committee.
And I was rooting for Sherilyn Fenn for Chemistry and David Brenner for Medicine too.
What a great year!
Believe me, I'm as surprised by my comment as you are.
Nobel Prizes for Physics Awarded to Smart People
Its about time the dumb people of the world stood up and faught against this discrimination. Its 2002, are we are still just giving Nobel Prizes to smart people. We need to send a message that we will no longer stand for this inequality.
They should have a price for engineering.
I'm surprised by the "physics" prize for the X-ray telescope. While it was a great technical achievement, it seems more like an engineering project than a "physics" discovery. A lot of theories were (dis)proved by the data it got, but unlike many chemistry/biology inventions, no real new knowledge came out of the actual invention itself.
was afraid when confronted by the necessity of appearing before the public....Not the stage fright, but the daily handling of radium
"But we love having her speak at our university. Her essence and charm add such a glow to her presence."
Table-ized A.I.
not a bad dude? learn some history, kid.
.... This must be the most advanced, stylish, packed with info fan site I've ever seen....thanks for the bookmark, WillyElectrix
Is this an article from The Onion ?
Come on. What kind of headline is that ?
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Maybe we can look forward to Usama winning the peace prize next year, if he can be a great philanthropic guy and refrain from massacres and destruction of property for a year or so.
- El riesgo siempre vive - Private J. Vasquez
wish there was some such category. may be i would qualify or who knows, i might get more competition there than in "nobel prize for smart".
Finally, people will think there is more in South Dakota than just 3 people, 500 miles of interstate and a 75 mph speed limit!
In my best redneck impression...
Nobel prize my ass. Fur smart people, they sure is dum... The reel deal is the Darwin Award. It stands for the best of thee best, cream o' the crop, britest one on da porch... Ya know what I mean?
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
You are absolutely correct. However, the Nobel Foundation corruptly obscures this fact and treats the "Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel" just like a real Nobel Prize on its web site. The award is totally politicized, disproportionately awarded to the U of Chicago school, and frequently goes to fringe cranks like Ronald Coase.
The great economist Gunnar Myrdal, who sat on the board of the Bank of Sweden, argued for the prize's abolition. In 1974 Myrdal shared the award with Freidrich Hayek. Basically, Myrdal felt that if ideologue hacks like Freidman and Hayek won the prize it was meaningless.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
What the heck does the "Blah di blah" refer to? Yes, NYTimes is free. They do ask for some information about a user when a new account is created, but you can make it all up and then you're set to read the news for free! You can even let a cookie save your info and you can read it anytime you're free.
This is just beautiful. I was starting to run out of ammunition in my "college is for suckers" argument, and now this. Thank you, jeebus.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/20021010wo33.htm
Masatoshi Koshiba, one of the three winners of this year's Nobel Prize in Physics, on Wednesday provided evidence of his earlier claim he was the worst student in his university class by making public a copy of a transcript issued by his alma mater, Tokyo University.
"I graduated from Tokyo University's science department at the bottom of the class," the 76-year-old professor emeritus of the university said at a press conference at the university Tuesday evening, responding to the news he had won the prize.
Is the Blah di Blah free as in Beer or free as in Speech?
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
so if neutrions turned out to have been just a mathematical invention to make up for theories that were not fully cooked, will they take the prizes back? Or will they go down in history as the people who observed something that doesn't exist? :)
do give us an example sometime of nobel prizes being awarded to dumb people.
Ask again after the Peace prize is announced Thursday...
----
If anyone doesn't get it, it's because President Bush was nominated.
Of course, the issue of whether or not he's stupid or whether his speech impediment is used to lampoon the policies his opponents disagree with is entirely another matter...
Other rumours say that Mittag-Leffler was competing for a similar prize with his own wealth. Because Nobel was afraid that Mittag-Leffler would win a Nobel prize in Maths he never introduce a Maths prize.
The solution to the mystery can be found here
Marcos
Aren't her laboratory logbooks still to radioactive to be handled today?
duh!
^to^too^
One of the prize winners has Alzheimer's. Some day,
hopefully he'll realize that he won the Nobel prize.
No TiVo and no caffeine make me something something...
In the exchange that followed four men were killed and a dozen were wounded
Zvi Ankori, the commander of the Haganah forces sent back to occupy the village said:
"I went into 6-7 houses," said Ankori. "I saw cut off genitalia and women's crushed stomachs. According to the shooting signs on the bodies, it was direct murder." (Nahum Barnes, Dir Yassin: We have returned to you, Davar, 9 April 1982.)
As commander of Irgun Begin ordered the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jurusalem, killing over 100 British, Arabs and Jews.
In September 1948 the Stern Gang Assassinated the UN special mediator for the partition, Count Folke Bernadotte. Facing arrest, Shamir fled the country.
Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt and several other prominant Zionists had this to say about Menachim Begin in an open letter to the New York Times in December 1948,
"Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our time is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the 'Freedom Party' (Tnuat HaHerut), a political party closely akin to its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine