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Anyone with more insight know if this was overdue, but finally awarded after confirmation last year at CERN, or if it was pushed forward while last year's work
by henrikschroder 13y ago
Anyone with more insight know if this was overdue, but finally awarded after confirmation last year at CERN, or if it was pushed forward while last year's work was fresh in people's minds?
- jessriedel 13y agoThe Nobel committee doesn't give out the prize for theoretical advances that aren't backed up by experiment. Since the data was not yet overwhelmingly conclusive at this time last year, this year's award was basically the earliest possible award date for a decades-old idea.
- vanattab 13y agoReally? What do you call Obama peace prize then.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- dagw 13y agoThe peace prize isn't awarded by the Nobel Committee, but by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which is an entirely separate organization.
- lucozade 13y agoWith a much deeper sense of irony
- tephra 13y agoWell first of all the peace prize is not a scientific prize. And the peace prize recipient is decided by a committee appointed by the Norwegian parliament and the physics prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish academy of Sciences (by actual scientist in the field).
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- pisarzp 13y agoBig mistake...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- yeukhon 13y agostop this stupid comment.
- vanattab 13y agoObama got the peace prize without any evidence.
- TeMPOraL 13y agoNobel Peace Prize != Nobel Physics Prize, in a similar way how Samsung != Samsung Heavy Industries.
- davrosthedalek 13y agoPeace prize is given by a different committee.
- Ma8ee 13y agoAs a Swede, it feels very important to point out that even though all the science laureates are chosen by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, we have nothing to do with the Peace Prize! That blame goes to the Norwegians.
- vanattab 13y agoI was unaware it was a separate committee. I apologize for my uninformed comment.
- VLM 13y ago"aren't backed up by experiment" Sadly, I was expecting arguments by string theorists along the lines of the longbets.org bet for $2000 that no one is going to get a Nobel for anything related to string theory, but I guarantee we'll get ten times as much "Obama" instead. Can't we please argue about that instead of making fun of our "concentration camp warmonger in chief", maybe just in one thread please?
- debacle 13y ago...what? Edit: Ah, after reading the rest of the comments, I guess I have to agree with you.
- bdg 13y agoThis is likely among the last prizes we'll see in physics for a long time that has evidence to back it up. The theory is so far ahead of the practice that things we think we understand just can't be tested in reasonable times. Look at what it took just to get the Boson data.
- rubidium 13y agoI must emphatically disagree with your statement. There are plenty of very hard theoretical problems that experiments are regularly shedding new light on. The entire field of condensed matter and most of atomic, molecular and optical physics progress by both theory and experiment figuring out problems together. Perhaps by "physics" you meant "particle physics"... but even in that field your statement would be hard to justify.
- jessriedel 13y agoThere's lots of things under the physics umbrella out there, and the Nobel committee has refrained for giving a prize for string theory or other speculative BSM physics for decades; there's no reason to think they'll change, especially given the recent downturn in the popularity of those fields. The Nobel isn't restricted to fundamental physics. You can look at the awards from the recent years to get a sense of what gets honored when there are no fundamental advances: laser spectroscopy, magnetoresistance, optical fibers, semiconductors, graphene, etc.
- jimmytidey 13y agoHawkins also holding out for recognition if anyone finds confirmation of Hawking Radiation.
- biggfoot 13y agoHawkins? You mean Hawking?