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9 Scientists Receive a New Physics Prize

nytimes.com

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Re: 9 Scientists Receive a New Physics Prize

#11

Post by lusr »

spodek wrote: post #8

It sounds like an odd award to me. I can't see how its existence would motivate anyone to behave any differently, though I like that it creates more social recognition of science and scientists. It reminds me of Richard Feynman not seeing any point in honors like the Nobel Prize. It may apply here, though many people think differently than he. Still, I suspect people don't go into physics for the money. They probably…

It rewards people who contribute to science, who in turn can use the reward as they see fit. It is logical to believe that allocating wealth to people who have demonstrated high quality results will increase the number of future high quality results, which is surely a desirable result.

I'm puzzled by Feynman's attitude in those comments - he doesn't discuss the prize money at all, which one can easily see e.g. funding a number of students who might otherwise not be able to afford the type of education he received and thereby not receive the type of pleasure he speaks of.

Re: 9 Scientists Receive a New Physics Prize

#12

Post by jessriedel »

mattheww wrote: post #7
beloch wrote: post #2

"Unlike the Nobel in physics, the Fundamental Physics Prize can be awarded to scientists whose ideas have not yet been verified by experiments, which often occurs decades later. " About half those awards went to string theorists, and they'll likely be waiting a lot longer than a few decades for experimental verification. Try centuries or never . While I'm in favor of this kind of prize, I think this crop of winners s…

Both Witten and Maldacena have made contributions that are being tested today. I'm not familiar with Sen's or Seiberg's work, but just from the summary, I can tell you that Sen's work is probably in the same boat.

> Both Witten and Maldacena have made contributions that are being tested today.

What are you referring to here? (Honest question.) Supersymmetry as a solution to the Hierarchy problem was an extremely important idea, and it is in the process of being ruled out by the LHC now (after hopes that is appear at LEP and the Tevatron also failed to materialize).

Re: 9 Scientists Receive a New Physics Prize

#13

Post by carlob »

As an ex-physicist, I think this is very good to keep young minds that would be lured away from physics by the higher salaries elsewhere.

However, having visited IAS, where 4/9 of those guys are faculty I believe they are probably the ones who least need it.

They already are at the top of their career, they've secured a position in one of the most prestigious institutions in the world and they have amazing material conditions. They don't need to take students (they are actually discouraged to do so) and they have access to the most amazing cafeteria!

I'm also pretty sure that the prestige of the institution lands them some pretty good speaking gigs and consulting jobs on top of all that.

I don't mean to sound sour-grapey, but please give this money to people for whom this might actually make a big difference.

Re: 9 Scientists Receive a New Physics Prize

#14

Post by mattheww »

jessriedel wrote: post #12
mattheww wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Witten and Maldacena have made contributions that are being tested today. I'm not familiar with Sen's or Seiberg's work, but just from the summary, I can tell you that Sen's work is probably in the same boat.

> Both Witten and Maldacena have made contributions that are being tested today. What are you referring to here? (Honest question.) Supersymmetry as a solution to the Hierarchy problem was an extremely important idea, and it is in the process of being ruled out by the LHC now (after hopes that is appear at LEP and the Tevatron also failed to materialize).

The fact that you think it's being ruled out makes it testable. I'm not sure how many people would agree with your assessment, however. There's so much SUSY parameter space that's still not accessible that it's pretty early to declare the nail in the coffin. In Witten's case, it probably wouldn't affect the case for his award anyway.

From the AdS/CFT correspondence (Maldacena), it's possible to calculate the ratio of viscosity to entropy in the quark-gluon plasma. This ratio has been measured at heavy ion colliders (well at least one heavy ion collider).

Re: 9 Scientists Receive a New Physics Prize

#15

Post by jessriedel »

mattheww wrote: post #14
jessriedel wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Both Witten and Maldacena have made contributions that are being tested today. What are you referring to here? (Honest question.) Supersymmetry as a solution to the Hierarchy problem was an extremely important idea, and it is in the process of being ruled out by the LHC now (after hopes that is appear at LEP and the Tevatron also failed to materialize).

The fact that you think it's being ruled out makes it testable. I'm not sure how many people would agree with your assessment, however. There's so much SUSY parameter space that's still not accessible that it's pretty early to declare the nail in the coffin. In Witten's case, it probably wouldn't affect the case for his award anyway. From the AdS/CFT correspondence (Maldacena), it's possible to calculate the ratio of…

I wasn't disagreeing that it was testable.

I think most people who are consistent with their Bayesian reasoning would grant that SUSY as a solution to the Hierarchy problem is ruled out at the 90% level. More precisely, if you had asked these theorist 25 years ago where they would expect to see SUSY conditional on it existing and solving the Hierarchy problem, they would have put well over 90% of their confidence weight in regions that have already been ruled out. (But obviously, if your prior for SUSY is sufficiently high, you can still claim its likely no matter how much parameter space is ruled out.) I am eager to take 10:1 bets that SUSY will not be found at the LHC.

It does seem telling to say "Well, yes, most of these guys haven't produced theories which are testable, but these two guys have! Oh, and yes, of two places where they have produced testable predictions, one (SUSY for hierarchy) is very likely ruled out and the other (AdS/CFT for QGP calculations) is a mathematical technique (rather than a new theory of physics) used to calculate something that few people care about other than because it is mathematically related to quantum gravity speculation.

(I mean, don't get me wrong, these guys are very smart and some, especially Witten, have made very important contributions to understanding the math of QFT better. And Nima has made all sorts of testable models that were eminently worth developing even if they turn out to be wrong. These are awesome physicists. It's just that $3M each is a lot of money...)

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