July 04, 2012
The biggest question of the Post-Higgsian era: Who will get the Nobel?
Via viXra log:
With the discovery of the “Massive Scalar Boson” (a.k.a The Higgs) now seeming imminent, physicists are jostling for position to take the credit. There are at least seven living physicists who played key roles in the prediction of its existence fifty years ago and many more experimentalists and phenomenologists who worked more recently on its likely discovery at the LHC with supporting evidence from the Tevatron. It seems that at least one Nobel must be up for grabs for the theoretical work in the 1960s and possibly another for the experimental side, but the rules only allow for three laureates to share a prize, so who will the Nobel committee choose?
Posted by Zujaja Tauqeer at 09:18 AM | Permalink
Comments
The Nobel Committee should not waste one minute contemplating a Nobel Prize to anyone for this work. It is totally premature since the results have not been adequately explained and confirmed in numerous other laboratories as demanded by the scientific method.
What should physicists be working on?
The number one world problem in physics and chemistry is energy. How do we wean ourselves off of energy from fossil fuels to something else? What is that “something else”? How can our civilization be sustained into the next century and beyond without a return to the uncomfortable buggy and stench of horse manure everywhere?
Why has the group plasma physics fusion energy project, going on now for some half century or more, been such a dismal failure?
This is the main problem physicists should and must be focusing on, not esoteric academic questions like “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” or “which came first the chicken or the egg” or worthless non “proofs” of self righteous pet theories of so called “elementary” “particles” which “exist” for less than 10 (-23) seconds and can only be demonstrated to “exist” with multi billion dollar machines requiring upwards of ten thousand employees to operate, and if they exist at all in reality, do so only in a virtual statistical sense. The best way to tell a lie is with statistics. These selfish pet theories of elementary particles, are likely quite wrong anyway, and add nothing to the problem of where our next energy or clean air or clean water or top soil, will come from to sustain the exploding population of the earth, which is being gang raped daily by ignorant idiots and corporations and military actions and governments all over the planet, not to mention the poisoning of the earth from pole to pole by dangerous toxins and chemicals.
Other vital issues are global warming and toxic poisons polluting the earth and water everywhere now.
What about safe disposal of all these fancy gadgets like cell phones, computers, automobiles, batteries etc., containing many dangerous toxic chemicals which pollute the earth and kill all life on it? What about the gross waste of our limited natural resources to produce these gadgets, mostly for personal gratification and entertainment? How do we reconcile the production of all this dangerous, poisonous stuff, which should have a skull and crossbones on their labels, with economic growth and development of our economy and more jobs? Do they not form a conflict and contradiction in terms?
These are a few of the problems physicists are qualified to study and should be studying, not esoteric questions which have never been answered in all of civilization and will likely never be answered in the future either. When you ask “what is something made of” you never reach a satisfactory answer or end point anyway. Even if quarks do exist in reality, which they likely do not, what are they made of? This is virtually a meaningless question since one never reaches the end point to an intelligent answer. It is like asking “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” or “which came first the chicken or the egg”. If one wants to contemplate such questions, fine; but don’t ask or expect government or the rest of the population to pay you, at the point of a gun, to do so. Do it on your own time and dime.
Physicists need to take the elevator and push the down button, to return to reality from the ivory tower they have been so self righteously occupying for so long now. They think they are better than anyone else. They have been on an ego trip at the taxpayers expense. But while they sit around and dream, the energy problem remains unsolved and gets worse daily. The earth becomes more polluted and more top soil washes into the sea. Clean water becomes more scarce. Physicists need and must return to reality. Take that elevator DOWN to earth and solve the energy problem for humanity and civilization to survive. Otherwise there will be no earth which is habitable and no physicists either. Everything on this earth will be dead forever.
One group physics project which was “successful”, if you can so describe it, was the Manhattan Project to develop the Atomic Bomb which could destroy the world. After that project in World War II, our government and many leading scientists like Glen Seaborg, Ph.D., then head of the A.E.C. and former professor at UC Berkeley, falsely claimed our energy problems were solved for eternity. But we now know they were quite wrong just as the similar claims today about the so called “Higgs” “particle” and various pet theories about it are also likely quite wrong. Experts are often wrong, even physicists, even mathematicians, even chemists, even bankers, even other with “higher” education.
But if the physicists could successfully make a bomb to destroy the earth, surely they can also develop a new energy system to save and preserve and sustain the same earth which could be destroyed in an instant with the bomb they created, no?
Physicists should and must use their talents to aid humanity and civilization, not promote pet likely wrong theories about how life began. If they choose not to do this, they, like every other living thing on this planet will very likely be destroyed. Nature will take its course. The laws of physics cannot be outlawed by legislative bodies or cancelled by the physicists either. We violate these laws at our peril.
Winfield J. Abbe, Ph.D., Physics
Posted by: WJAbbe | Jul 5, 2012 7:29:47 AM
Well, that was actually quite well said, Dr Abbe.
But since the ivory tower is so comfy it is not apt to be dismantled, the Nobel for the Higgs should go to Higgs, who deduced it in the first place.
Posted by: Carlos | Jul 5, 2012 10:41:54 AM
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