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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)
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...
"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
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!
Nobody thinks there is any point to a standard metric of 'beauty' or 'virtue', oh wait maybe they do ...
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.
I keep telling myself that slashdot Karma is better. But, I cannot quite convince myself for some reason.
Table-ized A.I.
> constructed to observe neutron collapse.
Nonsense. Neutron collapse is an everyday thing. You don't need anywhere near the size of apparatus Kamiokande was to observe it. *Proton* decay, now that's a different story altogether. Detector setups like Kamiokande can be used to try and observer it. And they are.
Anyway, this is exactly the kind of thing you fully deserve a Nobel for: to see what a lesser mind would interpret as a disturbing influence on your experimental reading, as an interesting result in its own right. That's how most of the truly spectacular results are made. Think Penicillin or the Michelson interferometer.
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.
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.
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
The Japanese neutrino detector, Kamiokande, was constructed to observe neutron collapse. It failed.
You mean proton decay. Neutron decay is easy.
Yes, it didn't see proton decay - but in that, oddly enough, it succeeded in ruling out the prevailing Grand Unified Theory of the day ("SU5"). That's one way how science works, theorists come up with a good idea, experimentalists go looking for it, and often as not it's back to the drawing board for the theorists. And, by the way, there's little doubt that if a proton had decayed, theyd've seen it (decaying protons are also hard to miss). Proton decay at some very low rate is a feature of most GUT's, and lots of people are still actively looking for it.
However, the same apparatus turned out to be useful at seeing neutrinos (the background in the proton decay search). Koshiba saw how this could be applied to the solar neutrino puzzle that Davis had found, and modified his detector to be sensitive to these low energy neutrinos. This not only confirmed the presence of these suspected solar neutrinos but pointed them back at the Sun, proving their origin. More science at work - following up on other people's odd measurements to see what really might be going on.
Lastly, Koshiba had little to do with Super-K's tube implosion accident. Which, by the way, happened after 5 years of incredibly successful data taking. Everyone should be so lucky as to make such a "mistake". And by the way, the first water started flowing back into the newly repaired Super-K last week. It will be back on the air come January.