3 ms·

This failure reaffirms the most undercelebrated genius of the last century; George Phydias Mitchell — father of fracking, savior of the alpha magnetic spectrome

• privong 12y ago
  > savior of the Hubble, pioneer of the particle accelerator I am skeptical that either of those "titles" are supportable. What I could find in a quick search is that Mitchell gave Texas A&M money to be a founding partner in the Giant Magellan Telescope Consortium[0], which is building a 30m-class telescope in Chile. The particle accelerator you're presumably referencing is the Superconducting Super Collider—canceled in the 90s after massive cost overruns—which he had apparently supported in some fashion[1]. Financial support is obviously necessary, but neither of those make him a "savior" of something he didn't actually finance (Hubble), or a "pioneer" for an experimental technique that had been developed in the 1930s–1960s[2]. [0] http://www.science.tamu.edu/news/story.php?story_ID=806 http://www.science.tamu.edu/news/story.php?story_ID=806 [1] http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Mitchell-s-35-million-a-gift-to-A-M-physics-1580309.php http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Mitchell-s-3... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accelerators_in_particle_physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accelerators_in_partic... Edit: I am not saying that he Mitchell did not make significant contributions to the things listed, merely that the titles may be exaggerated.
  • deleted 12y ago
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