Tuesday, July 31, 2012

A new big prize

So there's another big scientific prize around now, the Milner Prize for Fundamental Physics.  Interesting.  Clearly wealthy Russian multimillionaires can do what they like with their money, whether that means physics prizes or miniature giraffes.  However, I am not terribly thrilled with the idea that "fundamental physics" includes (to a significant degree so far) theoretical ideas that simply have not been tested experimentally.  It would be very unfortunate if this ends up as a high profile media splash that boosts the erroneous public perceptions of fundamental physics as (1) virtually entirely high energy theory; and (2) exotic ideas unconnected to experiment (e.g., the string multiverse).

2 comments:

  1. Good to see Kitaev get some love though....

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Peter - He already had a MacArthur; he must be feeling very loved :-)

    ReplyDelete