Since I won, $2,000 goes to the Nature Conservancy. If Kaku had won, the money would have gone to National Peace Action.
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Posted on 10/09/2019 8:12:24 AM PDT by C19fan
I just won a bet I made in 2002 with physicist Michio Kaku. I bet him $1,000 that “by 2020, no one will have won a Nobel Prize for work on superstring theory, membrane theory, or some other unified theory describing all the forces of nature.” This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics, which recognized solid work in cosmology (yay Jim Peebles!) and astronomy, was Kaku’s last chance to win before 2020.
Kaku and I made the bet under the auspices of Long Bets, a “public arena for enjoyably competitive predictions, of interest to society, with philanthropic money at stake.” Long Bets is a project of the Long Now Foundation, which Stewart Brand and others created in 1996 to promote “long-term thinking.” Folks like Warren Buffet, Christof Koch, Freeman Dyson, Ray Kurzweil, Gordon Bell, Eric Schmidt, Steven Pinker and Ted Danson have made hundreds of bets on predictions involving science, politics, the environment, economics, sports, you name it. Proceeds of bets go to a charity chosen by the winner. Kaku and I each put up $1,000 for our wager. Since I won, $2,000 goes to the Nature Conservancy. If Kaku had won, the money would have gone to National Peace Action.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.scientificamerican.com ...
More of the excerpt is dedicated to how great this author is, than the science or even the topic.
I know a new Yorker when I read one.
He had already won one for the photoelectric effect.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/summary/
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 was awarded to Albert Einstein “for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.”
https://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/2012/oct/08/einstein-nobel-prize-relativity
Why Einstein never received a Nobel prize for relativity
I’m surprised Obama was not awarded a Nobel for that.
Pretty safe bet!
That kind of work almost never gets considered for a Nobel because its all mathematical not experimental physics. Nobel Prizes end to bias toward experimental-oriented fields. (oh yeah? - Explain why the Nobel prizes for Economics! - I can’t!)
There is no such thing as a Nobel for Economics. It was a prize that was added on by the Swedish Central Bank.
Ah....well then there ya go!
Didn’t Sheldon win one?
String Theory is passe’.
I am being condsidered for my “Straw Theory”.
I postulate that if straws are banned, endangered species will successfully breed in enough numbers to beat back Climate Change for all time.
Brooks should have had Dr. Ruth Westheimer there too.
If you’re going to have a lineup of crackpots...
String theory and multi universe are one in the same. Hoaxes.
Planck didn’t win his until 1918 (paper was 1900). Einstein put Planck on the map. Planck was derided at the time as a mathematical huckster.
Einsenberg straightened Einstein’s math out. Math matters, and the folks on the Nobel committee don’t have much of a sense of history I guess.
Einsenberg don’t you mean Heisenberg?
Agree math matters!
Also agree on your comments regarding the committee. I guess the “bias” toward the “experimental” the “physical” probably comes from Alfred Nobel being a chemist and being “applications” oriented. Though in those days there wasn’t much difference between a physicist & a chemist.
I found a great bumper sticker “I like Math! It Makes Other People Cry!”
Since I won, $2,000 goes to the Nature Conservancy. If Kaku had won, the money would have gone to National Peace Action.
The only people who have benefited, financially, from string theory or super-string theory are dentists...
Super silly string makers also.
You are correct, I neglected the timeline.
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