Internet Billionaire Creates Huge Physics Prize 192
gbrumfiel writes "Billionaire Internet entrepreneur Yuri Milner has spontaneously awarded $3 million prizes to nine prominent theoretical physicists. The new Fundamental Physics Prize dwarfs awards like the Nobel, which this year is estimated to be worth some $1.2 million (and that's before it's split by up to three winners). It's so much money that some theorists fear it could distort the field. Milner says that his only purpose for the new prize was to promote the field, which he studied in the 1980s: 'The intention was to say that science is as important as a shares rating on Wall Street,' he told Nature."
Field Distortion (Score:5, Funny)
Spoken like a true theoretical physicist.
Re:Distort the Field? (Score:5, Funny)
What the summary doesn't mention is that the prizes will be handed out in pennies. Each prize will weigh 7.5 * 10^5 kg, and have a measurable gravitational pull.
Distorting fields (Score:4, Funny)
It's so much money that some theorists fear it could distort the field.
I predict that a scientific paper with the title "The harmful distortion of the vector field of physics effected by highly concentrated monetary charge" will win the competing prize in the next year. That is, if they were talking about distorting the field of prizes for physics. I've heard these are highly competitive and violent about it, even more than the British dentists.
Re:Fusion (Score:5, Funny)
"Fully operational" doesn't mean "well-tested, safe and reliable".
Just look at the Death Star.
Fully operational? Yes. Able to be blown up by craft a fraction of 1% of it's size? Twice in a row, even.
$3,000,000? THREE MILLION DOLLARS?!!! (Score:5, Funny)
That's enough to feed me for ten thousand years !
I might just have seconds.