Yes, it’s that time of year again. The Ig Nobel Prize ceremony was held this evening at Harvard. My favorite is the winner of the Ig Nobel Peace Prize, which went to
Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, for demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armoured tank.
This could have plausibly gotten him an Ig Nobel in economics instead, since it’s all about incentives. The video is priceless:
As of right now, the list of winners is still not up at the home page for the Annals of Improbable Research. That link should start working shortly, but until then I found this article from the BBC which gives complete coverage of the event. Enjoy!
Of course, this means that we will know the winners of the “real” Nobels soon enough. Put your best guess for the Physics prize in the comments.
Charles Slichter and Albert Overhauser
Well, the 2011 Nobel Physics Prize winners are announced to be Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt, and Adam Riess, for observing the accelerating expansion of universe.
This is a good physics pick by the Nobel committee (IMHO and I think most folks’) … and so Charlie Slichter and Albert Overhauser will just have to wait another another year! 🙂
In the spirit of the IgNobel Prizes, and with the deliberate objective of fostering participation in the newly launched Theoretical Physics StackExchange, here are the present standings in the 2011 StackExchange Competition: Quien es mas erudito de todo? (QMET).
The QMET judging criterion is a single integer: (1) compute the product of three StackExcange reputations: Theoretical Physics, Theoretical Computer Science, and MathOverflow, (2) take the natural logarithm and (#) round to the nearest integer.
The present leading 2011 QMET medal contenders include:
QMET Gold Medal leader: Peter Shor (22)
QMET Silver Medal leader: Joe Fitzsimons (20)
QMET Bronze Medal leader: Gil Kalai (19)
Regrettably, STEM-sphere luminaries like Terry Tao, Scott Aaronson, and LuboÅ¡ Motl all score -∞ at present (due to non-participation in one-or-more forums).
Who will earn 2011’s coveted QMET Medalla De Oro?
To contend (or simply to watch), one need only participate in these three outstanding forums. 🙂 🙂 🙂
Did you see that ? “Physics Nobel Prize Winner 2011”.
My favorite science video at the moment above: “joseph stiglitz: smith s invisible hand a myth?”.