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."
Re:Distortion smortion (Score:2, Interesting)
I would argue that the Nobel prize's value isn't in the 1M, it doesn't hurt but the real value is multi-faceted.
1. Recognition from all peers / world
2. Instant grant funding of future endeavors.
3. Pushing the boundaries on the field you studied
The money is nice, but all the recognition, and realistically something you could retire and do professorship off of, is a nice perk (including a prime parking spot in stanford!)
Re:Field Distortion (Score:5, Interesting)
Hrm. I wonder if there is such a thing as a cash singularity. So much cash in one place that it just keeps drawing in cash from around it, past an event horizon, never to be seen again. Oh wait. That totally explains a whole lot of things. Scary.
If I were a billionaire philanthropist: (Score:5, Interesting)
While one off prizes for fundemental research is nice and all, it doesn't really help the art.
Here's what I would do instead.
I would organize some private organizations around my parent country as a pilot program, with the goal of making expensive lab equipment and utilities available to the researchers, with the goal of driving down the innate costs to perform the research.
"Grant money" is the cancerous vice that kills academia. It makes professors steal the thunder of brilliant students. It makes people distort reeported findings. It stifles controversial findings being published. It kills the bread and butter of real science, which is the repeated testing of published experiments for veracity.
And without it, no research at all would get done.
As a philanthropist seeking to promote science, I wouldn't contribute to the vice of academia in the form of exclusive prizes. I would make research hardware and lab space available for cheap. 1st year chem students and dedicated researchers alike would profit, and science would be much better for it.
Research is expensive. Subsidize it smartly, and make it cheap. Researchers will research everything, instead of cherry picking for grant money. Science will improve.
I would provide equipment and lab/office space like follows:
It is important that the science being done is quality. That means the people using the equipment and lab space need to be competent. University degrees in the field of research, or concurrent university enrollment with passing grades in the field are a basic requirement for application. It won't stop degree holding crackpots getting labspace, but it should keep out most rifraff that think they can violate thermodynamics with magnets and tinfoil.
Academic dishonesty, getting scooped, and predation on academic works are very real and ever-present risks in academia, fundemental research in particular. For that reason, secure and locked offices can be rented for a small fee, comparable to renting a storage unit. They would be fully furnished with a nice desk, several file cabinets, a personal bookshelf, computer equipment, and a laser printer. Disposables like paper and toner are the researcher's responsibility. Internet access would be provided through an aggressive firewall.
The labs themselves would be tiered.
Tier 1 labs would be equipped for basic physics and chemical research. Access to calorimeters, glassware, reagents, force meters and the like are available. These are meant mostly to assist students with homework and independent research within their skill level.
Tier 2 labs would have access to mass spectroscopy equipment, provisions for experimental small scale fusion devices, nanotechnology devices, like AMFs, electron microscopes, etc.
Tier 3 labs have the really fancy toys in them. A small silicon lithograph is available to producing experimental nanotech structures and devices for fundemental research, large contained fusion devices, etc.
Tier 1 would be the bread and butter. Tier 2 would catch most advanced students. Tier 3 would take awhile to fully provide, due to the extreme costs of the equipment, and would be reserved for published researchers only.
It is not meant to replace university equipment; it is meant to suppliment it, and provide a "professor free" environment for independent research for later publication.
I think doing that on a big scale would do way more for science than cash prizes would.
Re:My immediate response was (Score:3, Interesting)
"How can I get in on this action?" as in, i want some of that money too!
It's so much money that some theorists fear it could distort the field.
I call BS. Smart young students that gravitated toward something wall street-ish might rethink and go into quantum physics instead.
It's funny how that is never quoted as a reason not to inflate a CEO's pay package. "We can't increase his salary as it may distort his running of the company".
Re:My immediate response was (Score:4, Interesting)
That being said, as university, science, education and national lab budgets keep taking it up the ass year after year (while budgets for the police state, the War on Drugs, the Pentagon and old people's entitlements remain sacrosanct), I'm not surprised that some physicists would jump ship. It must be nice being well paid from the start, and not having the teabaggers that control half of Congress trying to destroy the institute you work for.
This is something I really don't understand. Okay, so I can see how theoretical science can be a political hard sell in a populist democracy. But what about applied?
I mean, seriously, here's a country that's the single biggest consumer of energy, with all predictions showing that it'll only grow, and a hefty chunk of it comes from sources that are 1) dirty and 2) foreign. Furthermore, it is a country that has already went through the energy crisis caused by withdrawal of said foreign sources.
Now come the guys who say that they have an energy source that's clean as mountain water, uses the single most abundant element in the universe as fuel, and provides better energy output than anything that's currently running. What more, their math and physics check out - all the base theoretical work is already done! - and now it's just an issue of getting it to production, and there are already perspective approaches outlined, being investigated, and showing results closer and closer to the goal every year - even with the lackluster funding that they currently have. And the guys say that for $100B, they can probably make it work in a decade...
Okay, so say in practice it's more likely end up being $300B and two decades - but even so? Given the ultimate goal - clean, practically limitless energy - this is chump change! Who in their sane mind wouldn't invest in that? Especially when you're pissing away three times more than that within a decade on a war on the other side of the globe with no meaningful purpose, no achievable goals, and which seems to consist mostly of blowing up camels and tents with cruise missiles worth $150k a pop. And yet - does any candidate for president has even the mention of fusion in their political program? Do either of the two major political parties?
The current priorities are beyond idiotic, they are outright insane.