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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.
The Goddamn Particle can now safely be renamed into The Belgium Particle :)
Anyone who thinks the God particle is not worthy of a Nobel Prize is an idiot. Of course it won right away after validation. There are not many fundamental scientific discoveries that give us a glimpse right into the mind of the Creator of our universe.
Please leave the religious stuff elsewhere, slashdot is not a fertile place for fairy tales.
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.
slashdot is not a fertile place for fairy tales.
Unless the fairy tale contains Bill Gates, RMS or John McAfee. Slashdot loves these.
From my engineering and therefore amateur physicist POV, their works look very well written, have a HUGE impact and is the experiments confirm their hypothesis giving birth to a very solid theory. They deserve their recognition. Plus Peter Higgs is already 84 years old and he doesn't look in shape either, who knows how many years he will be with us. Better give his Nobel prize now than never. Even if there are some holes left, he deserves the Nobel prize more than certain politicians.
"fun fact"?
If you can win the Peace Prize without having done anything whatsoever (and then being a warmongering fascist), then you should be able to win any of the other prizes pre-emptively.
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.
I like that you got marked down as "flamebait" for pointing out that this has nothing to do with the bullshit hyperbolic idiocy of "glimpsing right into the mind of the Creator of our universe". As so many have already said over the years, it was a completely mistake to apply that name to this and if they'd considered how it might be interpreted by the average moron who believes in alien abductions and angels, they would have named it more wisely.
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
Who's this Higgs boso?
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
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.
>>>>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
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.
Well...I almost hate to say it, but the franchise is actually ripe for prequel stories: The Founding of Hogwarts (four books right there - one for each of the founding members); Tales of James and Lilly Potter, Dumbledore, Lucius, Snape, etc, when they were in school. Beauxbatons, and Durmstrang and how they got started.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Please don't get confuse by a nickname that a particle happens to have. In this context, the "God Particle" is a pleasant PG-rated version of the original nickname "the Goddamn Particle." Your claim makes about as much sense as for example someone claiming that general relativity somehow supports moral relativism. Similar sounding words aren't automatically connected.
I'm pretty sure their ages (Higgs is 84 and Englert is 80) also factored in to the decision to recognize them this year. Since the Nobel prize comes with money attached, it's better to award them now, while they are able to appreciate it.
(four books right there - one for each of the founding members)
Be careful you don't start a new religion that way, it's happened before...
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.
Money aside, a Nobel *cannot* be award posthumously. It's one of the rules.
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.
You talking about the Books of John, Paul, George and Ringo? :P
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
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
Unless the fairy tale contains Bill Gates, RMS or John McAfee.
I'd get Bill and John, nut how is RMS a fairy by any definition?
Ezekiel 23:20
You do know that the reason it is called the 'God Particle' is that the publisher wouldn't print 'God-damned Particle' which is what they were calling it because of how hard it was to find.
For a moment I thought it said "bacon discovery" and got really excited.
#DeleteChrome
To be fair, he didn't start out wanting to launch a pointless unprovoked attack, he just stupidly blundered into it.
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.
This'd only be comparable to Obama if Rowling, after receiving the award in advance, would quickly ditch Harry Potter in favour of writing erotic Star Trek fan fiction set on fucking DS9 while all the time claiming this is in fact Harry Potter! Fuck you, Obama and all your little government goblins.
Sod it. Give Clapper the peace prize, and crown Obana as Miss World. That would only slightly less sense than Obama receiving the award for future services to peace.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
The Gospel according to Ringo: Groovy!
Ever notice that Cobra Commander sounds an awful lot like Star scream?
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.
Money aside, a Nobel *cannot* be award posthumously. It's one of the rules.
Good to know :)
Unless the fairy tale contains Bill Gates, RMS or John McAfee. Slashdot loves these.
You forgot bitcoin.
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.
Anything that could create the Universe as we know it must be Awesome in both sophistication and power - so could not have come about by blind chance, so would have had to be created, and such a thing would need a creator...
So postulating a Creator of the Universe does not solve anything, it 'merely' defers the question.
Hence, the notion of God the Creator conflicts with Reality.
Good to know. Thanks for the info!
Funny thing both, both my atheist and religious friends were cheering on the higgs boson to win the award.
Anything that could create the Universe as we know it must be Awesome in both sophistication and power - so could not have come about by blind chance, so would have had to be created, and such a thing would need a creator...
So postulating a Creator of the Universe does not solve anything, it 'merely' defers the question.
Hence, the notion of God the Creator conflicts with Reality.
Let's use your same logic, if complexity needs to be created, ask yourself, how complex would such 'creator' be?
How come such complex creature, could come into existance, without a creator itself?
Then again, how complex would be the creator's creator? And we could go on into an infinite loop of creators? Do you get it?
Please leave the religious stuff elsewhere, slashdot is not a fertile place for fairy tales.
I'd say 'Please don't feed the trolls' but these discussions are why we come to /.
Please read my comment more carefully, you're the one that doesn't get it!
You seem to have just read my first paragraph without understanding it, and ignored the last two. :-)
Note that my first paragraph implies an infinite lop of creators are required, if you buy into the Creationist Mindset.