Nobel Prize for Physics Announced

what_the_frell writes "According to this Fox News article, two Americans and a Russian won the 2003 Nobel Prize for Physics for research in the field of quantum physics. The trio conducted research in superconductivity and superfluidity, detailed in this official Nobel article."

Comments

Re:This is weird

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought modern Americans attend college only to learn about racial diversity and take up some Women Studies courses.

Basically, you're right. The "two Americans" were not educated in the USA, nor did they do their prizewinning research in the USA, nor were they US citizens when they did it. In other words, the original posting was up to the usual standard of /. editors.

Re:What does it mean in light of this?

[Zachary Kessin]

It means that the guy who wrote that article does not have a clue. Or at least he has an agenda. The theories of 20th century physics, Special Relativity, General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Quentum Electro Dynamics etc have stood up to ever exeriment. In the case of QED the theory agrees with the exeriments to some thing like 15 significant digits.

I just finished a BA in physics doing some research, and I can say this guy is full of it. Though some of the string theory is not verifiable. But I know someone who is working on it.

Future of Science Research

[kobukson]

The winners of the Physics prize are all old men, the youngest being 65 and the oldest 87. They did their groundbreaking research during the Cold War environment, when governments invested heavily in basic science research. One wonders if the same caliber of science research is being conducted today that are worthy of future Nobels. Physics research was dealt a heavy blow when Congress decided to kill the Superconducting Supercollider Project in 1990, which still remains, unfinished and abandoned, in Texas, as a kind of a modern-day Stonehenge. Many of the famous institutions, such as Bell Labs, are a shell of their former selves. Private industry labs, such as those of IBM, which used to support basic science research without qualms, are now hesitant to fund research that does not bear any immediate commercial benefits. The federal goverment does not have any well-stated policy for insuring the scientific leadership of the nation. The young people of today do not aspire to become scientists or engineers, having been brain-damaged by an MTV culture. The current state of research itself has become ridiculous. Whereas, in the past, people were interested in lasers, superconductors, and fusion, now, serious science has been reduced to the level of how to bake a better cookie from the oven.

Re:What does it mean in light of this?

[phritz]

I agree - the author doesn't know what he's talking about, and his attitude that "if it defies common sense, it must be nonsense" is unbelievably silly. His derisive comments towards quantum theory are particularly telling; quantum mechanics is, indisputably, the most successful physical theory ever concieved (this is not hyperbole - any physicist will tell you this).

I find it ironic that the author talks about how knowledge is only gained through hard work, and today's physicists are just lazy - yet quantum mechanics represents a collosal achievement that resists all attempts at falsification.

To wit - Tony Leggett, today's nobel prize winner for superfluidity, began his research as an attempt to discredit quantum mechanics. His final results, instead, became (yet another) stunning confirmation of the quantum theory's incredible accuracy in describing the physical world.