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Americans Win 2006 Nobel Physics Prize
Davemania writes "CNN reports that the Nobel Prize in Physics has been award to John C. Mather and George F. Smoot for their contribution to the big-bang Theory." From the article: "Their work was based on measurements done with the help of the NASA-launched COBE satellite in 1989. They were able to observe the universe in its early stages about 380,000 years after it was born. Ripples in the light they detected also helped demonstrate how galaxies came together over time. 'The very detailed observations that the laureates have carried out from the COBE satellite have played a major role in the development of modern cosmology into a precise science,' the academy said in its citation." If you're interested, you can read a rundown on the prize-winning work (pdf) provided by the prize organization.
So all 4 Nobel winners this year so far have been Americans. Brain drain?! Bah!
Of course, the true test will be to see if we can keep it up in a few years.
Zndrew Fire and Craig Mello won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering a way to turn off the effect of very specific genes by using RNA to interfere with cell function, a technique they expect to be able to use to fight cancer.
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I can just see the list of this year's Nobel Prize winners, if the Nobel Prize was based in US.
Nobel Prize in Physics - Henry Morris and John Whitcomb on their ground breaking work The Genesis Flood which proved that earth is only 6000 years old.
Nobel Prize in Physiology - Michael Behe, who, using irreducible complexity, proved beyond doubt that evolution is just a "theory".
Nobel Prize in Literature - Ann Coulter Treason, who exposed the greatest perils that free societies face today - Gutless Lying Liberals who will sell your daughters and sisters to Kim Jong Il.
Nobel Prize in Peace - George Bush, who freed millions of Iraqis from a brutal dictator.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry - Discontinued.
I know you're probably in the camp that things the US is what's wrong with the world, but I wonder if you've ever looked beyond the end of your upturned nose to see the things the US (and its citizens) do right in the world?
Sometimes, it's not what's right that we do but what's wrong that we do or don't do that matters. Right now, there are a lot of good people in the US working to bring about a more peaceful world. Then again, there are also a lot of cynical people that promote war as peace with the attitude that if you're going to make an omelette, you have to breaks some eggs.
Right now, our government is fighting for its rights to start preemptive wars and to indefintely hold people and "mildly" torture them. None of these things have earned us the right to call ourselves a nation of peacemakers.
Maybe people just remembers when the US used to do more right in the world. I miss those times, and fighting against people like you that refuse to admit that this country is doing wrong and you try to justify our sins with our intentions is going to be necessary to bring those times back.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Uh, actually, you need to adjust for relativity. In the frame of reference of the observers giving out this award, we're a couple of decades back. That is, they don't give out nobel prizes for something that happened this year, they give them out for things that have stood for a while and had impact etc.
Consequently, I think you meant to say: Of course, the true test will be to see if we kept it up for a few years subsequent to 1989. We should already know the answer to that. I'm sure we're still doing good work. But are we keeping pace with the tremendous degree of investment in math and science abroad? I bet the Nobels that are given a decade or two from now will be clear on that. It's a matter of national pride for many countries. But here, we have "No Child Left Behind", which sounds good on paper but often plays out as "No Child Gets Ahead" -- lest it be "unfair" to someone. It's politically unsafe here to suggest that it's worth investing in our high end at the expense of our low end, and that's going to trend badly toward the middle. Other countries are not thus hampered.
MIT recently opened a research center in Singapore. I suspect the next thing we'll hear is that it's headquarters has moved--for convenience. And then finally, that the largely unused Cambridge center is being mothballed as a quaint relic, perhaps turned into a science museum. And perhaps after that protests may ensue, more over lost jobs or unfair treatment than the question of how our nation's leaders sold us out. No one worries about that.
The problem is that US politics sees everything as one-place predicates. Politicians like education. They like the environment. They like kids. It's easy to like things when you don't have to make hard choices, and all our public dialog is framed about people voting for X or not voting for X. Politicians don't talk about choices, about comparisons, about 2-place predicates that put one thing up against another. No one says "When it came to X vs Y, I chose Y." That alienates voters. Voters want the fictionalized choice that you can have it all, that all choices/votes are independent of one another, and that no choice or policy robs another. They don't want honesty, so politicians don't sell it. And then the policies the voters have elected don't work. We'll spend a billion dollars to keep a few from getting attacked when the same billion would save many more lives if spent on food, health care, jobs, or education.
I'm not against less intelligent kids. I don't want to hold them back. BUT the more intelligent kids will be making the money that will pay for the welfare, the head start, etc. that the less intelligent ones need. And if push comes to shove, I know where I'd put money to make sure we still have money in the future. Any business person knows it. You invest in the "low-hanging fruit", the "easy mark", the people who are poised to succeed. And no, that doesn't mean the rich kids--this isn't about class. There are smart kids and dumb kids in the same family. There are smart poor kids and dumb rich kids. We need to figure out which ones are going to succeed and invest in them. And if we don't start investing in science, instead of kidding ourselves that investing in Creationism is the same thing, we'll be rightly pushed aside by other countries, who know that our kind of nonsense/nonscience is not what business is hiring. If it hasn't happened already.
I'm not trying to troll this forum. I think this is on topic since the headline says "Americans win...", so it's clear that some of this story is about who won, about American national pride and implicitly about American national investment in doing it again. And I have strong opinions on this.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer