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Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Englert and Higgs

nobelprize.org

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Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Englert and Higgs

#81

Post by tedsanders »

auctiontheory wrote: post #76
tedsanders wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the Nobel prize is still the creme de la creme of prizes (in physics). Source: Me, a physics PhD student who has met a few Nobel laureates P.S. It's amazing how much universities and people like to affiliate with Nobel laureates just because of their award, and not their science. When I was at a university where a professor won the Nobel prize, he gave a talk identical to one held the previous year. Before the p…

At Berkeley, Nobel laureates get a parking spot on campus.

And they also often get streets named after them, at least on the hill.

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Englert and Higgs

#82

Post by naughtysriram »

dman wrote: post #55
phaus wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it took you this long? They awarded it to Al Gore for climate change awareness (has alot to do with peace i guess?) Even worse, they have awarded it to supporters of terrorism(Arafat), and other violent types of people(Mandela).

Gandhi never won the prize.

Apparently the whole nation won the independence. 'Mahatma' Gandhi would cherish it more than a prize.

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Englert and Higgs

#85

Post by r0muald »

ISL wrote: post #59
gitaarik wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the committee thought the theory was a more important achievement than the prove.

Unlikely. Attribution in this case is a very thorny issue. People have been discussing it for decades. There may yet be an experimental prize, especially once the experimental work at LHC is complete. From a physics perspective, LHC has only just begun. For the Higgs alone, its spin has not yet been conclusively measured; it's an important parameter.

Even one jury member (Anders Barany) publicly stated his own doubts on the subject: http://www.khaleejtimes.com/kt-article-display-1.asp?xfile=d...

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Englert and Higgs

#87

Post by theorique »

claudius wrote: post #75
theorique wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's funny because "böse" in German means "evil" or "nasty". I don't know if anybody has that surname, but I would suspect not.

Wikipedia mentions a couple of ‘von Bose’, and I have to admit that I don’t see any particularly tight link between ‘Bose’ and ‘böse’ – the umlaut does have a special pronunciation, after all.

Good point, I guess native German speakers are better at forming that distinction automatically, whereas umlaut-free language speakers probably have a harder time of it.

Re: Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Englert and Higgs

#88

Post by L_Rahman »

jessriedel wrote: post #56
bdg wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 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.

There'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…

The graphene one still rubs everyone in the materials science community the wrong way. I haven't had a single professor bring it up in class without snorting derisively at the fact that the guys who discovered won a Nobel.

This means they're either really smart people who saw something the rest of the community didn't or lucked into something that they might not actually deserve. I'm not sure yet which is true.

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