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Francois Englert and Peter W. Higgs Awarded Nobel Prize For Boson Discovery
The 2013 Nobel season is underway. Reader rtoz writes "Francois Englert and Peter W. Higgs won the 2013 Nobel Prize For Physics. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited the two scientists for the 'theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles.'" Update: 10/08 13:18 GMT by T : More Nobel news: The New York Times reports that "Three Americans won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday for discovering the machinery that regulates how cells transport major molecules in a cargo system that delivers them to the right place at the right time." The three are James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman; and Dr. Thomas C. Südhof, of Yale, UC Berkeley, and Stanford, respectively.
I suppose since the Higgs boson has been more or less validated at this point (at least as close as we can with our feeble technology), the Nobel committee decided it was time to recognize them.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
The Goddamn Particle can now safely be renamed into The Belgium Particle :)
They gave the peace prize to that piece of shit nigger obama for christ sake.
Leaving racist rant aside, scientific Nobel pizes are serious, non-scientific prizes (peace, literature or even economy) are not in the same level of credibility, by any means.
Interestingly Englert is a Holocaust survivor who teaches in Belgium and also at Tel aviv University.
I heard on NPR this morning that the shy Peter Higgs has dropped out of view (or at least is trying to). He left without his phone. Seems he is as elusive as his epynominous particle.
Also : Economy Nobel prize.
What a f***ing joke.
Actually, I felt Obama finally earned that prize when we ended up not going to war in Syria. Had we been embroiled in another pointless war, I had hoped someone would take it away from him.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
The Economy prize is technically not a Nobel Prize. It is a prize from Sweden's national bank that is just piggybacking on the Nobel prizes, leeching on its reputation.
The official title is "Sveriges Riksbank's Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel".
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences has no relation to the Nobel Prize. They just share a name and are awarded at the same time of year. Apart from that, they are completely separate things.
I guess it'll be appropriate when they award JK Rowling the Literature prize for the Harry Potter sequel she's going to write in 2019.
Who's this Higgs boso?
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Actually, assuming two people earning $25,000 each for a household income of $50,000, this makes them 50%'ers.
and simply another political stunt by the Nobel committee. Higgs did not want the award. There were at least five researchers all with equally significant contributions to the eventual theory. Yet because the award can only go to at most three, they decided to drop the other three researchers (two alive). Some even claim the total should be six. One wonders if they had called the presumed particle "dog" whether Higgs would have been awarded the prize.
This is most definitely a case where giving no prize was more appropriate. They could even recognize the significance of the research by public statement and lament that it would be unfair to try to separate this group into winners and losers. But the committee better figure something out because this kind of problem is going to be the norm, not the exception. The age of one or two scientists making such an outsized contribution to standout from the rest of their (or other) research groups is over.
So what?
Do you know how much the nazis advanced medical research with their experiments?
And I don't see anyone saying we should scrap all the rocketry research we stole from them.
>>>>Leaving racist rant aside, scientific Nobel pizes are serious, non-scientific prizes (peace, literature or even economy) are not in the same level of credibility, by any means.
Isn't that kind of like saying, "I don't like the Nazis, but you know some of the things they did are ok"?
No, it's more like saying "I'm going to rise above your trolling ass whilst correcting you"
soylentnews.org
God, that was four years ago. This must be how conservatives felt when liberals went on and on about Mission Accomplished and The Pet Goat.
Except he was the only one pushing for war with Syria. "Trying but failing to launch a pointless unprovoked attack" is still not grounds for a peace prize.
The Nobel Prize is reserved for extraordinary people who have accomplished something extraordinary and/or highly significant. The award, if memory serves, was based on what? Intentions? I'm not clear on which intentions, but I am quite sure the long list of promises broken continues.
I am no fan of republicans. It's all crap to me. Please do not presume this is about flags and teams and "who wins or loses." Nothing either of them do benefits me.
Get a load of my Higgs Field Nullifier gun!
We have British Parliament to thank for keeping us out of Syria. Their vote against military action in Syria was what turned the tide. It had nothing to do with Obama. I think British Parliament is worthy of a peace prize for their actions.
Sorry to be picky, but bosons were 'discovered' and named a LONG time ago, maybe even before those guys were born.
/. readers are smart enough about science to figure it out without reading the article, but there have been a growing number of others of late...
The title should not say 'boson', is should specify 'HIGGS boson'. (I don't care about the capitalization.)
Just imagine if there was a title like "The theory of Gravity has been proven invalid", when you really meant "The theory of Modified Gravity has been proven invalid".
See, that one word makes a big difference, STOP SCREWING UP A SIMPLE TITLE !
By the way, as far as I know, that theory hasn't been proven, or disproven, but it still isn't popular with physicists.
Fortunately most of the
For a moment I thought it said "bacon discovery" and got really excited.
#DeleteChrome
For a second, I thought it said "Boston discovery".
My thought was "Hasn't MIT known about this all along?"
Shocked, SHOCKED that that comment was posted anonymously. Coward indeed.
Unrelated note, nice little demo of the Streisand effect. No one would have seen that post had not cribera commented on it. Logical conclusion, of course, is that cribera posted the parent anonymously in order to vent some racist spleen and then repudiated it publicly to appear insightful.
To be fair, he didn't start out wanting to launch a pointless unprovoked attack, he just stupidly blundered into it.
In this Belgian journal article (dutch), he mentions he is sorry his colleague Robert Brout can not share and celebrate with him. He died in 2011.
While technically true, how many note that distinction? You, me and a few more.
Leaving racist rant aside, scientific Nobel pizes are serious, non-scientific prizes (peace, literature or even economy) are not in the same level of credibility, by any means.
They're not even awarded by the same organization or process. At least in the case of the Peace prize, anyway - that institution is in Norway, whereas the science Nobels are in Sweden. It's all coming from the same source in the end, but even in the cases where the science prizes were controversial (usually because someone got left out, or someone didn't deserve the award) there's been no evidence of political motivations, unlike the Peace prize.
Good to know. Thanks for the info!