31–40 of 88 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really? What do you call Obama peace prize then.
Well 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).
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The award is for the theory that is confirmed. The people of CERN didn't get awarded because they didn't come up with the theory, they just tested it.
Well... no. Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer were awarded the Nobel prize in 1984 for the discovery of the W and Z particles (January 1983). Glashow, Salam and Weinberg were awarded with it in 1979, before the Electroweak Theory was fully confirmed, although there were solid hints at that time, it was a bit premature. I'm really not too happy about this because the Nobel prize has shunned deserving scientists agai…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well... no. Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer were awarded the Nobel prize in 1984 for the discovery of the W and Z particles (January 1983). Glashow, Salam and Weinberg were awarded with it in 1979, before the Electroweak Theory was fully confirmed, although there were solid hints at that time, it was a bit premature. I'm really not too happy about this because the Nobel prize has shunned deserving scientists agai…
Civilized behavior would imply private splitting of the cash, at least. I can't remember an example of that ever happening with any Nobel award in any field, although its probably happened. One of those things I'm not sure how to google for without getting 99% unrelated. If done completely privately there may be no public record of any sort...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The award is for the theory that is confirmed. The people of CERN didn't get awarded because they didn't come up with the theory, they just tested it.
They often award the physics prize for experimentally verifying a theoretical prediction. For example, they awarded the prize to Paul Dirac for predicting the existence of the positron, and to Carl Anderson for confirming it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyendra_Nath_Bose
He was an interesting chap!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 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.
"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?
Edit: Ah, after reading the rest of the comments, I guess I have to agree with you.
I'd like to take this opportunity to remind people of the (sometimes a little forgotten) other person name-checked in the Higgs Boson: Satyendra Nath Bose. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyendra_Nath_Bose He was an interesting chap!
sorry to be so snarky, but i am genuinely interested, having long lost any trust in the peace prize comittee[0]. not to speak of the economics prize (which is not really a nobel prize [1])
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_Peace_Prize_laure...
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economi...
edit: formatting