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What Nobel Prizes Have Been Proven Wrong? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:07
Speaker 1: So you know, the gold standard in science, the absolute
0:10
Speaker 1: pinnacle you can reach in your career, of course, is
0:12
Speaker 1: the Nobel Prize. Once you get one, people think that
0:16
Speaker 1: you can't make a mistake, that you're a genius, that
0:19
Speaker 1: everything you do is fantastic. It's like a stamp it
0:21
Speaker 1: just on your forehead that says genius. That's right. But
0:24
Speaker 1: here's a question. Okay, so can the Nobel Prize be wrong?
0:30
Speaker 1: I'm gasping at even the idea their or hey, that
0:33
Speaker 1: the highest prize in science could ever ever have a
0:37
Speaker 1: flaw in it, But apparently it has happened a couple
0:40
Speaker 1: of times in history. Even this very top level prize
0:43
Speaker 1: in science is sometimes awarded erroneously. Can you get the
0:47
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize Nobel Prize errors? Can you get a Nobel
0:52
Speaker 1: Prize for podcasting? Podbill Prize? Him? And I'm Daniel, and
1:16
Speaker 1: I'm a cartoonist, and I do not have a Nobel Prize.
1:19
Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist, and I also do not have
1:22
Speaker 1: a Nobel Prize. I have fewer than one Nobel prizes.
1:26
Speaker 1: So Nobel Prize is this amazing cultural icon now right,
1:30
Speaker 1: Like it's kind of the the name that means your genius.
1:34
Speaker 1: That's right. It's covered in the news. You know, whoever
1:36
Speaker 1: wins it is a breathlessly described in the New York Times,
1:40
Speaker 1: and it's announced on television. You know, there's really no
1:43
Speaker 1: other prize like it. Like, if you made a list
1:45
Speaker 1: of the most important prizes in science, would be like
1:47
Speaker 1: number one. Nobel Prize, number fifty would be the next thing. Right,
1:51
Speaker 1: there's just like nothing else even comes close to y
1:54
Speaker 1: has good brand recognition across the board. Sorry, whoever is
1:58
Speaker 1: running that pr campaign has really earned their money. I
2:00
Speaker 1: don't even know how that's happened. They should get a
2:02
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize for the marketing efforts. It's the gold standard
2:09
Speaker 1: in science. But today on the program, we're going to
2:11
Speaker 1: ask a pretty controversial question. Can the Nobel Prize be wrong?
2:19
Speaker 1: Has anybody ever won the Nobel Prize for something which
2:22
Speaker 1: turned out to not be good science? Yeah? Nobel oops,
2:26
Speaker 1: Nobel oops. And I think this is a really important question.
2:29
Speaker 1: We're not here to run down science. Obviously, we're both
2:32
Speaker 1: scientists and we love science, and science is a fantastic
2:34
Speaker 1: way to explore the universe. But we also don't want
2:37
Speaker 1: to pretend that science is always definitive right, you do
2:40
Speaker 1: some experiments, you make a claim, even if it's backed up,
2:43
Speaker 1: and then later you win the biggest prize in all
2:45
Speaker 1: of human intellectual achievement. It could still be that your
2:49
Speaker 1: results are wrong. Yeah, it's amazing to think that the
2:52
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize could be wrong, right, Like you think that
2:56
Speaker 1: it's done very carefully, right, But like everything else, it's
3:00
Speaker 1: a human endeavor, right, And anything that's done by humans
3:02
Speaker 1: is most likely sometimes going to be wrong, you know.
3:05
Speaker 1: And it's important as scientists that we don't just enshrine
3:08
Speaker 1: results that are know about prize winning as definite fact. Right.
3:12
Speaker 1: We should always keep an open mind because anything we
3:15
Speaker 1: think is true could turn out later to be wrong,
3:17
Speaker 1: or could turn out to have been you know, just
3:19
Speaker 1: seeing the wrong way, or true in some circumstances, but
3:22
Speaker 1: not generally true. And so I think it's very important
3:25
Speaker 1: that we that we question these things, that we always
3:27
Speaker 1: look back on what our predecessors have discovered and think
3:31
Speaker 1: could that be wrong? Yeah? And so to kind of
3:34
Speaker 1: show you how crazy this idea is, we went out
3:38
Speaker 1: there and ask people do you think the Nobel Prize
3:41
Speaker 1: can be wrong? Here's what they had to say. I
3:44
Speaker 1: have no clue of that. Yes, I haven't heard of
3:49
Speaker 1: any discoveries like that. No, okay, personally, no, I don't. Okay, awesome,
3:54
Speaker 1: I know that it's happened before. I don't have any
3:56
Speaker 1: specific examples, but I know what's happened. Yeah, I don't.
4:01
Speaker 1: Are there many? Not many, but a few. That's all right?
4:08
Speaker 1: So overall, still pretty good branding, right, Like, nobody thought
4:11
Speaker 1: the Nobel Prize could be wrong like that? That just
4:13
Speaker 1: seemed unthinkable to some people. Yeah, it's shocking. I remember that.
4:17
Speaker 1: You should have seen these people's faces when I asked
4:18
Speaker 1: them that. Um yeah, they're like, what, No, come on,
4:22
Speaker 1: the Nobel Prize wrong? Did they look at you? They
4:25
Speaker 1: think maybe you're one of these science deniers. Yeah, and
4:30
Speaker 1: then there's no evolution, and climate change the hoax, and
4:33
Speaker 1: the Earth is flat. It's the right. I was kind
4:36
Speaker 1: of worried about this episode. It's like, are we gonna
4:38
Speaker 1: be bashing on science and the Nobel Prize. No. But
4:41
Speaker 1: there's a huge difference between saying some of the conclusions
4:44
Speaker 1: of some scientists could be wrong and saying, like the
4:47
Speaker 1: very foundations of science are flawed. Right, It's it's in fact,
4:51
Speaker 1: it's the process of science to disprove old results. That
4:54
Speaker 1: shows you that science is robust. If no discoveries from
4:58
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize winners had ever improven to be wrong, then
5:00
Speaker 1: you might be suspicious. Right, It's like, m do you
5:03
Speaker 1: expect them occasionally to make a mistake or for something
5:05
Speaker 1: later to come out? Right? I think my favorite reaction
5:09
Speaker 1: was the woman who said, I've never heard of that,
5:11
Speaker 1: but I bet if there were there, there would be
5:12
Speaker 1: in physics. Why do you go straight to physics? If
5:18
Speaker 1: anyone's going to make a mistake, it's not the literature people.
5:21
Speaker 1: It is not the economics people who are out wrong
5:24
Speaker 1: like all the time. It's medicine, you know, I know
5:27
Speaker 1: it's got to be the physicists. What do you think
5:30
Speaker 1: she went there? Did she? Did she know you were
5:31
Speaker 1: a physicist? Like? Did she look? Were you dressed like
5:34
Speaker 1: a physicist? I think I look well, I mean that's
5:37
Speaker 1: a question for you, maybe not for me. Do you
5:39
Speaker 1: think I look like a physicist? Like if you have
5:41
Speaker 1: to pick a physicist out of a crowd, would you
5:43
Speaker 1: say that guy over there, he looks like a physicist.
5:46
Speaker 1: I would probably guess poetry or physics. You know, you
5:50
Speaker 1: got you got the hair, that's insightfuled because you maybe
5:54
Speaker 1: you didn't realize, but I actually do write poetry. All right, yeah, yeah,
5:58
Speaker 1: you should have recite some of you. Yeah, let's let's
6:01
Speaker 1: just do that for the rest of the episode. Okay,
6:04
Speaker 1: folks were switching gears. We're trashing the whole concept of
6:07
Speaker 1: the podcast. We're going into pure poetry. Daniel is in
6:11
Speaker 1: trouble with this pouse. He needs to make up some
6:14
Speaker 1: romantic points here. That's right. I don't know why you're laughing.
6:17
Speaker 1: I'm very serious about my poetry. No, um I am.
6:20
Speaker 1: I am not a poet, and this woman certainly didn't
6:22
Speaker 1: know that I'm a physicist, so that's probably why she
6:25
Speaker 1: gets I don't think she was trying to impu in
6:26
Speaker 1: the entire edifice of modern physics. I think she was
6:29
Speaker 1: just thought I was leading her on. Oh all right, yea,
6:36
Speaker 1: let's start with this question then, um, if it, if
6:39
Speaker 1: it's possible that it can be wrong. Let's talk about
6:41
Speaker 1: how Nobel Prizes are awarded, Like, do you know what
6:44
Speaker 1: the process is for who gets one, who gets nominated,
6:47
Speaker 1: who decides who gets a Nobel Prize? M yeah, I
6:50
Speaker 1: think the gates of heaven open and the angels sing
6:53
Speaker 1: and it just sort of descends on this glowing cloud.
6:57
Speaker 1: It says you you have won themselves. Flies down, that's right,
7:02
Speaker 1: little golden wings, you know, just little lands. Um right,
7:06
Speaker 1: I mean I think people would like to believe that, right,
7:08
Speaker 1: if you would like to think that there's something greater,
7:10
Speaker 1: something superhuman, something above us. That's like you know, anointing
7:14
Speaker 1: these geniuses. But in the end, it's just people, right,
7:17
Speaker 1: It's got to be people, obviously, there's no other way
7:18
Speaker 1: to do it. Not just so it's sweets, right, I
7:23
Speaker 1: mean they are a kind of I don't know how
7:24
Speaker 1: to take that, not just people. It's sweet. They're kind
7:28
Speaker 1: of superhuman, It's what I mean. The same they are.
7:31
Speaker 1: They are angelic. Oh, I see you're you're saying swedes
7:34
Speaker 1: are basically the best of us. Um No, it's it's
7:38
Speaker 1: um it's not just sweets. Okay, So it's it's concentrated
7:41
Speaker 1: in Scandinavia. But so this is a two step process, right.
7:43
Speaker 1: So the first step is you gotta get nominated, okay,
7:46
Speaker 1: And to be nominated you have to be either nominated
7:49
Speaker 1: by somebody on the Nobel Prize Committee or a member
7:53
Speaker 1: of the Swedish Academy of sciences, or you have to
7:56
Speaker 1: have a Nobel Prize, right, or there's a select group
8:01
Speaker 1: of other people who they will take nominations from, basically
8:04
Speaker 1: like you know, internationally famous physicists from around the world. Right,
8:08
Speaker 1: So all those Nobel Prize winning listeners we have out there,
8:13
Speaker 1: you should tell him your name and your address, right,
8:16
Speaker 1: that's right, that's right. It's a very select group. And
8:18
Speaker 1: you know they've done these studies where they say, like,
8:20
Speaker 1: what's the best way to get a Nobel Prize. Well,
8:23
Speaker 1: it's to have your advisor win the Nobel Prize. You know,
8:26
Speaker 1: to work for somebody who has the Nobel Prize, because
8:28
Speaker 1: then they can nominate you. Right. Yeah, it's like the
8:31
Speaker 1: oldest boy of the oldest boy clubs in the world. Right,
8:34
Speaker 1: it's the only group of of of self reinforcing um accolades.
8:40
Speaker 1: So you have to be you have to get nominated.
8:42
Speaker 1: Some people have to know your work, and you have
8:44
Speaker 1: to sort of know somebody in the note Yeah, exactly.
8:47
Speaker 1: You have to be nominated. So then you're on the list, right,
8:49
Speaker 1: and you're in the list of people they consider. And
8:51
Speaker 1: then you know the Nobel Prize committee, which is a
8:54
Speaker 1: bunch of Swedes and you know, maybe some other folks
8:56
Speaker 1: from from Scandinavia. They get together and they just us
9:00
Speaker 1: it and they argue about it, and you know, they
9:02
Speaker 1: solicit input from the people they know. But in the end,
9:05
Speaker 1: it's subjective, you know, like how do you compare discovery
9:08
Speaker 1: A versus discovery B. Every piece of research is totally different.
9:11
Speaker 1: It's not like there's some metric you can use to
9:15
Speaker 1: to give them points where it's really fair to to establish.
9:19
Speaker 1: And even if it were, it's still subjective. It's still
9:21
Speaker 1: like how important is this, how groundbreaking is it, how
9:24
Speaker 1: innovative is it? Right? Well, what's the standard? What's supposed
9:27
Speaker 1: to be the standard? The standard is the greatest contribution
9:30
Speaker 1: to humankind, right, yeah, exactly, And I think that those
9:34
Speaker 1: are the words originally in the will, right, But I
9:38
Speaker 1: think more recently the committee is focused on things that
9:41
Speaker 1: are like deep innovations or or things that would change
9:44
Speaker 1: the direction of the field, right truly, like ground shaking
9:47
Speaker 1: discoveries um and in physics at least, it's sort of
9:51
Speaker 1: alternated between like crazy theoretical ideas that turned out to
9:55
Speaker 1: be correct, even if they haven't really had any impact
9:58
Speaker 1: on humanity, like they this boson, right, If you don't
10:01
Speaker 1: know what the Higgs boson is, you can listen to
10:03
Speaker 1: our whole podcast episode about that. But recently people won
10:06
Speaker 1: the Nobel Prize for the Higgs boson because it was
10:08
Speaker 1: discovered at the large age On collider. I hadn't really
10:10
Speaker 1: had any impact on humanity other than you know, people
10:13
Speaker 1: hearing about it. Um, But it's it's a big breakthrough
10:16
Speaker 1: in theoretical physics. Yeah, it's a big deal. It's a
10:19
Speaker 1: big deal. And then sometimes it's something very practical, you know,
10:22
Speaker 1: like inventing a new technology like blue l e eds.
10:25
Speaker 1: That one the Nobel prize years ago. Blue l d s. Yeah,
10:30
Speaker 1: that's a Nipple prize. No, not the yellow, not the green,
10:33
Speaker 1: not the cyan, No, not the turcoise, the blue LEDs.
10:36
Speaker 1: Imagine me in the discover of the red l D
10:38
Speaker 1: and be like, what the it spent all my time
10:43
Speaker 1: on the purple l e d s. What a mistake?
10:45
Speaker 1: Oh my god? Big blue. No, blue was particularly difficult
10:51
Speaker 1: because of that wavelength, and so there was a lot
10:53
Speaker 1: of you know, interesting innovation along the way. It's not
10:56
Speaker 1: just like hey, we really needed this technology and they
10:58
Speaker 1: figured it out. There was some interesting physics going on
11:01
Speaker 1: inside the blue LEDs um. But in the end it's
11:04
Speaker 1: it's political. It's chosen by a committee of people, chosen
11:06
Speaker 1: by committee people and people campaign. You know, there are yeah,
11:11
Speaker 1: you know, this is a group of This is just
11:13
Speaker 1: a community people and they talk and they chat, and
11:16
Speaker 1: when the prizes are coming up and the decisions are
11:18
Speaker 1: being made, you hear people. If you're in the physics community,
11:21
Speaker 1: you hear people talking maybe blah should get me, but
11:23
Speaker 1: blah blah should get it, and they and people go
11:25
Speaker 1: around and give presentations. And I remember when everybody knew
11:29
Speaker 1: that the Higgs Boson discovery was going to yield a
11:32
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize the following year, and people were jostling for
11:36
Speaker 1: a position because we knew also that you could only
11:39
Speaker 1: get give it to three people. So everybody knew Higgs
11:41
Speaker 1: was going to get it, that was for sure. And
11:43
Speaker 1: the question was who were the other two theorists that
11:46
Speaker 1: we're going to win it? Yeah, because there are rules
11:48
Speaker 1: to the Nobel price, right, like they you can only
11:51
Speaker 1: pick at most three people for a discovery, and they
11:55
Speaker 1: all have to be alive. They all have to be
11:57
Speaker 1: alive exactly. And um, there were you know, there was
12:00
Speaker 1: Higgs of course, and then there was a couple of others.
12:03
Speaker 1: There were two other people who everybody agrees made contributions
12:07
Speaker 1: sort of at the same level of Higgs. But then
12:08
Speaker 1: one of them died, so there was sort of like
12:11
Speaker 1: an empty slot, and a lot of folks, a lot
12:13
Speaker 1: of the folks in the theoretical physics community started going
12:15
Speaker 1: around giving seminars about how important their work was in
12:18
Speaker 1: that era and the contributions they made to the Higgs
12:21
Speaker 1: boson discovery. And because it can be kind of fuzzy, right,
12:24
Speaker 1: like this idea that discoveries are made by one scientist
12:28
Speaker 1: in a lab yelling eureka, I mean that's sort of
12:31
Speaker 1: been going away for a while. Discoveries are kind of
12:34
Speaker 1: made in groups, and people contribute little things and little
12:37
Speaker 1: bits here, some ideas, and then the ideas get shaped,
12:40
Speaker 1: and so like who actually gets credit for something is
12:43
Speaker 1: getting harder and harder, exactly, And sometimes it's somebody with
12:47
Speaker 1: a really genius idea comes along just like shatters the field,
12:51
Speaker 1: like Einstein. Right, there's a crazy new idea. Other times
12:54
Speaker 1: it's a bit incremental, and you could say, well, you know,
12:56
Speaker 1: if Bob hadn't done it, then Sally would have done
12:58
Speaker 1: it two weeks later, and if I only hadn't done it,
13:00
Speaker 1: then you know, Samantha would have figured it out or something.
13:03
Speaker 1: Sometimes an idea has its time and it's sort of
13:06
Speaker 1: like the field is slowly rolling down the hill towards
13:09
Speaker 1: it and eventually somebody's going to figure it out. In
13:11
Speaker 1: that case, it's hard to know, Like you can't give
13:13
Speaker 1: the credit to everybody, so they just sort of pick
13:16
Speaker 1: somebody or three. They picked three people to win it
13:19
Speaker 1: for a discovery. So why do you think they need
13:21
Speaker 1: to be alive and they can't be dead, you know
13:24
Speaker 1: what I mean, because then they need to go to
13:26
Speaker 1: that fancy ceremony in Sweden and you know, we're a
13:29
Speaker 1: tuxedo and give a speech and uh and all that
13:32
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. It's just one of the things in
13:34
Speaker 1: the will. But you know, they need to be alive
13:36
Speaker 1: when the prize is is um determined, not when the
13:39
Speaker 1: prize is awarded. And it was a case of a
13:42
Speaker 1: guy who was given the award of the Nobel Prize
13:45
Speaker 1: and then two days later he died right um, and
13:49
Speaker 1: so before they could award it to him, he was dead,
13:51
Speaker 1: and it was like a big controversy, but they decided
13:53
Speaker 1: he was alive and we made the decision. He gets
13:57
Speaker 1: to keep it. But he knew he knew he had won. Yeah,
14:00
Speaker 1: you knew you so maybe that maybe maybe holding out
14:04
Speaker 1: for it. He's like, all right, I'm done. Oh. There's
14:06
Speaker 1: definitely cases of that, you know that, like people survive
14:09
Speaker 1: um to like to see birthdays and like grandchildren's graduations
14:15
Speaker 1: and stuff, to people like who are about to die.
14:16
Speaker 1: I can hold out for like one last event. Wow.
14:19
Speaker 1: So if I convinced myself that I'm going to win one,
14:21
Speaker 1: I just have to hold out for it. I might
14:23
Speaker 1: live forever. Yeah was the last time? Who won the
14:27
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize for Cartooning last week? And I don't remember.
14:30
Speaker 1: I'll be the Bill Watson. I'll just convinced to myself
14:33
Speaker 1: I'll be the first one, and then you know, I'll
14:36
Speaker 1: live forever. Right, and then you can nominate yourself for
14:38
Speaker 1: every subsequent one, right, because you'll be the only winner.
14:42
Speaker 1: I'll just start my own committee of Swedish people. Exactly.
14:47
Speaker 1: I think the point people should come away with is
14:50
Speaker 1: that this is a committee people and their humans, and
14:52
Speaker 1: they're influenced by fads and politics, and you know they're
14:55
Speaker 1: doing their best to try to find something which is pure,
14:59
Speaker 1: something which will last. Right. But in the end, you know,
15:02
Speaker 1: they're making human decisions, right, But they do take it
15:05
Speaker 1: very carefully. You know, they take like a whole year
15:07
Speaker 1: or two to make this decision, right. Yeah, I think that.
15:10
Speaker 1: You know, they wrote all the names on the wall,
15:11
Speaker 1: and they passed out the darts and they throw them
15:13
Speaker 1: very carefully. You know, they very precise measurements. Yeah. Um, no,
15:18
Speaker 1: I would love to be in the room and here, like,
15:20
Speaker 1: what kind of arguments are made? Are they like, you know,
15:22
Speaker 1: appealing to you know, this is more fundamental than that,
15:25
Speaker 1: or they're just like, hey, you know, Bob really deserves
15:27
Speaker 1: it because he got you know, his wife left him,
15:30
Speaker 1: or like, what kind of arguments are being made? I
15:32
Speaker 1: have no idea. Look how cool this blue led looks.
15:35
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, stop shining that blue led in
15:38
Speaker 1: my eyes. We'll give him the prize if you can
15:41
Speaker 1: stop shining that my eyes. Yeah, I've actually been in
15:44
Speaker 1: the room. Did I tell you this story? I was.
15:46
Speaker 1: I was in the room for the noble where they
15:47
Speaker 1: decide Nobel Prize in medicine. Not while they were deciding,
15:51
Speaker 1: I just toured towards the Carolans get Institute. They showed
15:54
Speaker 1: me the room. Oh wow, yeah, it's just the room
15:57
Speaker 1: that's that makes me feel like I'm one step close
16:00
Speaker 1: to the Nobel Prize because I know you and right,
16:03
Speaker 1: and I've been in the room. So yeah, And hasn't
16:07
Speaker 1: your work actually been mentioned specifically by the Nobel Prize Committee?
16:10
Speaker 1: This is not a joke. Yeah, that's right. The video
16:13
Speaker 1: and the comics that you and I made about the
16:15
Speaker 1: Higgs Boson, the Higgs Boson Explained, which is on YouTube
16:18
Speaker 1: you can watch and if you want, that video was
16:20
Speaker 1: quoted in the Nobel prod the official Nobel Prize poster.
16:24
Speaker 1: So the Nobel Prize folks make a poster every year
16:29
Speaker 1: of the discovery, and so we were mentioned in that poster.
16:32
Speaker 1: Pretty cool, that's right. It's probably the only time the
16:34
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize Committee will ever cite any of my work,
16:36
Speaker 1: But hey, I'll take it. Or a cartoon, right, a
16:40
Speaker 1: cartoon exactly. You definitely broke ground there. You probably the
16:43
Speaker 1: only cartoon ever cited by the Nobel Prize Committee. Yeah,
16:46
Speaker 1: but that's another association. So they know who you are, Daniel,
16:49
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Yeah. So I'll just you know, I'm
16:51
Speaker 1: gonna stay up every every night I'm waiting for that
16:53
Speaker 1: phone call from Sweden. Yeah, don't don't die. Don't die.
16:58
Speaker 1: That's now my number one reason to keep living because
17:01
Speaker 1: it's potentially Nobel Prize. Okay, so that's kind of how
17:04
Speaker 1: they decide to get the Nobel Prize. And so can
17:07
Speaker 1: this process somehow be awarded to somebody or for a
17:11
Speaker 1: discovery that turned out to be wrong? And so we
17:13
Speaker 1: have two stories to tell you today of a Nobel
17:16
Speaker 1: Prize gone wrong. But first let's take a quick break. Okay,
17:33
Speaker 1: so what's the first instance of a Nobel Prize being wrong.
17:36
Speaker 1: One of my favorites is a Nobel Prize which went
17:39
Speaker 1: to somebody who was definitely a certified genius and made
17:41
Speaker 1: lots of contributions to physics, but won the prize for
17:44
Speaker 1: something which later turned out to not be accurate. And
17:47
Speaker 1: that's Neil's Bore. And you know this strikes close to
17:50
Speaker 1: home for Scandinavians because bores Danish and he's like the
17:53
Speaker 1: grandfather of Danish science. And you know, the Nobel Prize
17:56
Speaker 1: is a Scandinavian cherished Scandinavian um tredy, and but Bore
18:01
Speaker 1: is famous for coming up with what's known as the
18:03
Speaker 1: Bore model of the atom, right, not the Boring model,
18:07
Speaker 1: but the Boring company, right exactly. He's not the Elon
18:11
Speaker 1: Musk hundred years ago. Um, No, Neil's Bore b o Hr. Yeah.
18:15
Speaker 1: This was in the early part of the twentieth century,
18:18
Speaker 1: right when we didn't really know what atoms were made
18:22
Speaker 1: out of or what they were structured. Like, right, that's right.
18:26
Speaker 1: We had recently discovered that electrons exist, right, there are
18:30
Speaker 1: particles had negative charge. Um. That was just like twenty
18:34
Speaker 1: years earlier. And then Rutherford discovered that there's a positively
18:37
Speaker 1: charged particle also in the atom, and so um, we
18:41
Speaker 1: had this concept like, okay, there's some positive charges, there's
18:44
Speaker 1: some negative charges. How does it all work? We need
18:46
Speaker 1: a different kinds of atoms. Did we know that they
18:49
Speaker 1: were all the same atom with just with different numbers
18:52
Speaker 1: of protons and electrons and stuff. No, No, not at all.
18:55
Speaker 1: We just had this table of different kinds of stuff, right,
18:58
Speaker 1: like you know, these metals and those metals and the
19:00
Speaker 1: other metals. We know all we knew they all weigh
19:03
Speaker 1: different amounts um and so that was a clue and
19:06
Speaker 1: we knew that somehow electrons were involved and somehow these
19:10
Speaker 1: positive particles were involved, but we didn't know what the
19:13
Speaker 1: structure was inside that. We didn't know how an atom worked,
19:16
Speaker 1: like what did it look like if you zoomed in
19:19
Speaker 1: and back? Then the technology to see inside these atoms
19:22
Speaker 1: was really rudimentary, and so it was it was a
19:24
Speaker 1: big puzzle like how does the what is it inside
19:26
Speaker 1: the atom? And how does that explain all the different elements?
19:29
Speaker 1: That was basically the question that was at the top
19:31
Speaker 1: of the list of physics wish list at the time,
19:34
Speaker 1: and so Boar came up with an answer to that question. Yeah,
19:36
Speaker 1: Boor took inspiration from planets, you know. He said, well,
19:40
Speaker 1: the Sun and the Earth, right, that's a system, and
19:43
Speaker 1: the Earth moves around the Sun and they're attracted to
19:46
Speaker 1: each other, um. But the Earth doesn't fall into the Sun, right,
19:49
Speaker 1: because it moves in an orbit. It has enough energy
19:52
Speaker 1: that it's whizzing around the Sun. It doesn't fall in.
19:54
Speaker 1: And so he said, well, that's cool. Maybe that explains
19:57
Speaker 1: how you can have a positive charge and a negative
20:00
Speaker 1: a charge inside the atom, right, and have the whole
20:03
Speaker 1: atom b neutral but not have the positive negative charge
20:05
Speaker 1: just you know, collapse and annihilate each other. So he
20:08
Speaker 1: had this idea that the electron is orbiting the positive charge,
20:12
Speaker 1: that the positive charge would be the Sun and the
20:14
Speaker 1: electron would be the Earth. That's right, because Earth doesn't
20:18
Speaker 1: fall into the Sun. We just keep spinning around it. Yeah.
20:21
Speaker 1: I haven't looked outside recently, but last I checked, we
20:23
Speaker 1: did not fall into the Sun as as of the
20:25
Speaker 1: data this recording. Oh man, you should get a noble
20:27
Speaker 1: price for that, as long as we don't fall into
20:31
Speaker 1: the Sun before I can collect it yet. Um. And
20:34
Speaker 1: this is a cool idea. And it's always nice, you know,
20:37
Speaker 1: when you get inspired by one area of physics to say, well, look,
20:40
Speaker 1: this is the way it works over here. Maybe something
20:42
Speaker 1: similar works over there. And when it when it clicked
20:44
Speaker 1: together like that, it's a wonderful moment in science when
20:47
Speaker 1: you're like, look, there's something universal, something general that's like,
20:51
Speaker 1: this is a structure the universe likes. We can apply
20:54
Speaker 1: these ideas in multiple places. That's always a nice feeling.
20:57
Speaker 1: And it was a super powerful idea, right like it
20:59
Speaker 1: explains in the periodic table of elements. Yeah, and even
21:03
Speaker 1: more so, it explains something that people have been puzzling over,
21:05
Speaker 1: which is why atoms give light only in certain wavelengths.
21:10
Speaker 1: If you get atoms hot, you know, they will give
21:13
Speaker 1: off light, they will glow. But if you look at
21:15
Speaker 1: the glow, if you look at the at the wavelengths
21:17
Speaker 1: of light that come out, they don't glow in every
21:20
Speaker 1: single color, right, It's not like the glow totally white
21:23
Speaker 1: um where every single color and the spectrum is represented.
21:26
Speaker 1: Different kinds of stuff glow with different colors. So you
21:29
Speaker 1: get these lines where you like, hydrogen has you know,
21:33
Speaker 1: a few different colors it will shine with, and helium
21:35
Speaker 1: has a different set of colors. And that was a puzzle.
21:38
Speaker 1: People are like, why is that? What is it about
21:40
Speaker 1: hydrogen that makes it only glow with these colors and
21:43
Speaker 1: helium glow only with those colors. The cool thing about
21:46
Speaker 1: bars model was that it explained it and he kind
21:49
Speaker 1: of gave the Basically, he kind of invented the icon
21:52
Speaker 1: for science, right like the whenever you see anyone talking
21:55
Speaker 1: about science or you know, branding science, they always used
21:58
Speaker 1: this little model of the atom where it's like a
22:00
Speaker 1: little thought in the middle and these hula hoops with
22:03
Speaker 1: little electrons in each one. That's right the way to
22:06
Speaker 1: go straight for the cartooning implications or is discovered. Right,
22:09
Speaker 1: that's no, you're but you're absolutely right. That is like
22:12
Speaker 1: the icon of science, especially in movies, especially when you
22:16
Speaker 1: have mad scientists bent understooing the world, they always have
22:19
Speaker 1: a company whose icon is like that Bore model of
22:23
Speaker 1: the atom, right, because that's somehow like powerful and dangerous.
22:26
Speaker 1: And the cool thing about this model is that explains
22:29
Speaker 1: why those atoms give off different color light. And that's
22:33
Speaker 1: that the electron has these orbitals, right, the electronic and
22:37
Speaker 1: orbit hydrogen, and it can and it can only do
22:39
Speaker 1: it in complete wavelengths, right. So the electron wiggles as
22:42
Speaker 1: it goes around and um, so it has various energy
22:46
Speaker 1: levels because it needs to wiggle either five times or
22:48
Speaker 1: it needs to wiggle six times or seven times. It
22:50
Speaker 1: can't wiggle like five and a half times. And so
22:53
Speaker 1: it has these specific orbitals that can it can go
22:56
Speaker 1: around um the atom in, and then it can jump
22:59
Speaker 1: between one and then the other one. The color of
23:02
Speaker 1: the light that it gives off reflects the energy of
23:04
Speaker 1: the light that's sent out, which comes from the energy
23:07
Speaker 1: difference of those electron orbitals. If the gas gets hot,
23:11
Speaker 1: the electrons move up in those orbitals, and then when
23:13
Speaker 1: it cools down, they jumped down, and they give off
23:16
Speaker 1: a certain frequency of light. And so people had measured
23:19
Speaker 1: the spectra, and they had all these equations to describe
23:21
Speaker 1: the spectra, and there were these patterns that nobody could explain.
23:24
Speaker 1: And so then Bore come up with this model, and
23:27
Speaker 1: with just a few lines of mathematics, he was able
23:29
Speaker 1: to predict those equations and and and his model perfectly
23:33
Speaker 1: described um a lot of the spectra that we saw,
23:36
Speaker 1: which was amazing, right, It was like a big open
23:38
Speaker 1: puzzle in physics. And he came along with his cool
23:40
Speaker 1: idea that was beautiful because it reflected what the planets
23:43
Speaker 1: were doing and also explained the experiments we were seeing,
23:47
Speaker 1: and it made a lot of sense. And so it
23:48
Speaker 1: was just very quickly very popular. Like for all practical purposes,
23:53
Speaker 1: it was true, like this model describe what was going
23:56
Speaker 1: on inside of the atom as far as they need exactly.
23:58
Speaker 1: And you know, as far as people had tested at
24:00
Speaker 1: the time and as far as it had probed at
24:02
Speaker 1: the time, it was true, Like it worked, it made sense,
24:06
Speaker 1: it predicted experiments. What else could you ask for from
24:09
Speaker 1: a theory, right, And so of course he won the
24:11
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize for right, but it turned out to be wrong.
24:15
Speaker 1: That's right. It turned out to not be what's actually happening.
24:22
Speaker 1: So there's a couple of problems with bores theory. One
24:25
Speaker 1: is it's not what's actually happening, right, Um, that's a
24:29
Speaker 1: problem um. Problem number two is that it violates quantum
24:33
Speaker 1: mechanics because you know, electrons don't actually have these orbitals um.
24:38
Speaker 1: And problem number three is that it didn't work for
24:40
Speaker 1: more complicated atoms. You know, it worked really well for hydrogen,
24:44
Speaker 1: but once you get into multi electron atoms it didn't
24:47
Speaker 1: really work. So it seemed really promising, but then as
24:51
Speaker 1: we dug deeper, it turned out it didn't work. Okay,
24:53
Speaker 1: so let's think. Let's dig a little bit into that
24:55
Speaker 1: first one. So it violates quantum mechanics. What does that mean? Yeah, well,
25:00
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics tells you that electrons don't have classical trajectories.
25:04
Speaker 1: I mean you, a classical trajectory is something where you
25:06
Speaker 1: know the position and the velocity of a particle, right
25:09
Speaker 1: like you throw a baseball up in the air. You
25:11
Speaker 1: know where it is and you know it's velocity, and
25:13
Speaker 1: that allows to you to predict where it's going to go.
25:15
Speaker 1: And we naturally think of everything is having a location
25:18
Speaker 1: in a velocity, right, like everything is somewhere at a
25:21
Speaker 1: certain time. That's the way you like to think about stuff.
25:23
Speaker 1: But electrons don't act that way, right. They don't have
25:27
Speaker 1: a path where they say I'm here and then I'm here,
25:29
Speaker 1: and then I'm here and then I'm here. Insteads as
25:32
Speaker 1: you can learn about if you listen to our podcast
25:34
Speaker 1: about the universe being random. They just have a probability
25:37
Speaker 1: distribution right there, like I might be here and I
25:40
Speaker 1: might be there, and when you ask them where are you,
25:43
Speaker 1: then they say, okay, I was here, I was there,
25:45
Speaker 1: I was over here. But they don't travel in between
25:48
Speaker 1: those locations, right, They just have these probability distributions. So
25:52
Speaker 1: the idea that it's going around in a like a
25:54
Speaker 1: clean orbit is just wrong because nothing really at that
25:58
Speaker 1: level at the small this goes in at such a
26:01
Speaker 1: perfect little loop, I know. And that's a shame because
26:04
Speaker 1: that was one of the beautiful things about his theories,
26:06
Speaker 1: that it mirrored the planetary dynamics, right, But it turns
26:08
Speaker 1: out that parts pretty much the most wrong part, right,
26:11
Speaker 1: that electrons don't move in these circular orbitals, and um
26:15
Speaker 1: and it's not even just that their their motion is
26:17
Speaker 1: a little fuzzy, right, their motion is not circular. Now
26:20
Speaker 1: that we know more about how electrons move, there all
26:23
Speaker 1: these weird shapes that they move in, you know, as
26:25
Speaker 1: the atoms get more and more complicated, to have all
26:27
Speaker 1: these pedals and s and d M and P waves.
26:30
Speaker 1: And for those of you who know chemistry, you know
26:32
Speaker 1: that electron orbitals can get very complicated. They look more
26:34
Speaker 1: like clouds, right, like little balloon cloud. So you can't
26:38
Speaker 1: say an electron is moving in an orbit and the
26:41
Speaker 1: way planets moving in orbit, because electrons are fundamentally just
26:44
Speaker 1: really different kinds of things than planets or even rocks. Right,
26:49
Speaker 1: But could you say that kind of his model was
26:52
Speaker 1: conceptually generally right, you know, like maybe they're not traveling
26:55
Speaker 1: in a perfect circle, but it's like the it's a
26:58
Speaker 1: good analogy for what's actually happening. Yeah, And that's a
27:01
Speaker 1: fair defense of him, right, Like it's like saying, well
27:03
Speaker 1: it was Newton wrong. No, I mean, newton theory didn't generalize,
27:08
Speaker 1: but it predicts the way apples fall from trees, and
27:11
Speaker 1: it predicts the way things moved through the air. And
27:13
Speaker 1: so Einstein came along and generalized and showed where it
27:17
Speaker 1: would break down. But you know, to a reasonable approximation,
27:19
Speaker 1: it was correct. And everything we do in physics is
27:22
Speaker 1: only correct up to some point. Will always be something
27:24
Speaker 1: we discovered which shows us that it's wrong. In some regime,
27:27
Speaker 1: were very high energy, you're very high mass or something,
27:31
Speaker 1: and so it's a fair point to say, like, look,
27:33
Speaker 1: given the data at the time and our understand of
27:35
Speaker 1: the time, it worked and it explained the what we observed,
27:38
Speaker 1: and so there's nothing wrong about it is just improved later.
27:42
Speaker 1: But my problem with with Boars models that it fundamentally
27:44
Speaker 1: misses the mark because it imagines that electrons are moving
27:47
Speaker 1: in these classical orbitals and they just really don't. The
27:51
Speaker 1: real problem with Boars models that it just doesn't work.
27:53
Speaker 1: As the atoms get more complicated, you have multi elector
27:56
Speaker 1: you have more than one electron in there, it just
27:57
Speaker 1: doesn't work. It doesn't describe the data. It's amazing for
28:01
Speaker 1: a model which is conceptually and fundamentally wrong that it
28:03
Speaker 1: worked so well. It's like, it's incredible that it predicted
28:07
Speaker 1: the results of experiments perfectly even though it was wrong.
28:10
Speaker 1: To me, It's like an amazing coincidence. But the funny
28:13
Speaker 1: thing to me is that that's what most people think
28:15
Speaker 1: of when they think of an atom, is the bore model. Yeah,
28:18
Speaker 1: and I think that's what most physics cartoonists keep drawing
28:21
Speaker 1: and perpetuating this incorrect idea. Yes, that's right. Before we
28:29
Speaker 1: keep going, let's take a short break. Al right. So
28:44
Speaker 1: that's the first story of how someone got the Nobel
28:47
Speaker 1: Prize wrong. Tell us about the second story. So the
28:50
Speaker 1: second one is Enrico Fermi. Rico Feremi also a staggering
28:53
Speaker 1: genius of science, and the last thing I want to
28:55
Speaker 1: do is besmirch his legacy because he's made so many
28:58
Speaker 1: important discoveries and contributions to physics. Um. But he played
29:02
Speaker 1: an important role in the discovery of nuclear fission, but
29:05
Speaker 1: he didn't realize it. So this is in the thirties
29:08
Speaker 1: when people are understanding radiation and trying to figure out
29:10
Speaker 1: like can you break the atom? Or what happens if
29:13
Speaker 1: you hit this atom with this particle, And you know,
29:16
Speaker 1: this is just a few years before in the Manhattan
29:18
Speaker 1: Project and the atomic bomb and nuclear energy, and he
29:22
Speaker 1: was trying to understand, like what happens when you shoot
29:25
Speaker 1: a slow neutron at uranium. He was trying to get
29:29
Speaker 1: uranium to capture another neutron. He was trying to make
29:32
Speaker 1: something heavier than uranium, like to absorb it. Yeah, to
29:35
Speaker 1: absorb it, maybe have it turned into a proton. He
29:37
Speaker 1: didn't really understand how it worked. And so they had
29:40
Speaker 1: this beam of neutrons and they would slow them down
29:42
Speaker 1: by passing them through a lot of wax. The ideas
29:44
Speaker 1: that like, if you slow it down, then maybe as
29:46
Speaker 1: it passes the nucleus is a better chance of sort
29:49
Speaker 1: of getting grabbed and held in there. He's trying to
29:51
Speaker 1: build a bigger atom. Yeah. Yeah. They call them trans
29:54
Speaker 1: uranium elements, which is a pretty awesome name for a band.
29:57
Speaker 1: Like just throw stuff at it so it stakes a
30:00
Speaker 1: gets bigger. Yeah, And he's like trying to gently toss
30:03
Speaker 1: neutrons at the uranium atom so they stick rather than
30:05
Speaker 1: flying by really fast. And um, you know, he got
30:09
Speaker 1: something to work. He slow, He shot these slow neutrons
30:12
Speaker 1: at uranium, and he got something out which was definitely
30:15
Speaker 1: not uranium. And so he thought, oh, look I've created
30:18
Speaker 1: trans uranium elements. I've I've done it. Um and he
30:21
Speaker 1: won the Nobel Prize for that. Uh, it turns out
30:24
Speaker 1: he had not created trans uranium elements. I mean he
30:27
Speaker 1: even like named this new element which he had not
30:30
Speaker 1: did not created um. Too much fanfare. But it turns
30:33
Speaker 1: out what he had done was he had discovered fission.
30:35
Speaker 1: He had broken the uranium atom into two. Oh. So
30:40
Speaker 1: he shot these things at it and it started behaving differently.
30:43
Speaker 1: So he thought, hey, I did what I was what
30:44
Speaker 1: I thought I was doing. But actually he broke uranium. Yeah,
30:48
Speaker 1: instead of making something heavier, he made things lighter. Right,
30:50
Speaker 1: So he just turned uranium into barium and crypton. Right,
30:54
Speaker 1: uranium breaks up into two smaller, lighter elements, and that's fission,
30:58
Speaker 1: and that's hugely important and it's like really consequential, and
31:01
Speaker 1: that triggered like the nuclear age. And you know, people
31:04
Speaker 1: who came later who won the Nobel Prize for discovering
31:07
Speaker 1: fission were definitely worked on the on the shoulders of fami. So,
31:10
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's really important work. But it's like
31:13
Speaker 1: he just thought he discovered A. Turns out he discovered B.
31:16
Speaker 1: But he took credit for A and he got Nobel
31:18
Speaker 1: Prize for A, when in fact he had discovered something
31:21
Speaker 1: else totally different but but the Nobel Prize committee at
31:24
Speaker 1: the time thought that he had done it. That's right, Like,
31:26
Speaker 1: they looked at his data, they looked at what he
31:27
Speaker 1: had done, and he said, yeah, yeah, he made a
31:29
Speaker 1: bigger uran uranium. He should win the prize. Yeah, that's right.
31:33
Speaker 1: They gave him the Nobel Prize for discovering trains uranium
31:36
Speaker 1: trans uranic elements. But he hadn't. Um. He had of
31:40
Speaker 1: course done something really important. But so how did they
31:42
Speaker 1: figure out that he had not done it? Well, people
31:44
Speaker 1: came along later, um and um, you know, Lisa Mightner
31:48
Speaker 1: and Otto Hahn, and they actually figured out they're like
31:50
Speaker 1: trying to reproduce it, and they had more details, and
31:52
Speaker 1: they studied what came out of the experiments and they realized, oh,
31:55
Speaker 1: this is not something heavi or this is something lighter.
31:57
Speaker 1: And so the follow up work revealed that what had
32:00
Speaker 1: happened with something totally different and even more interesting, even
32:03
Speaker 1: more consequential. Right. So that's the thing about this discovery
32:07
Speaker 1: is that he was wrong, but he was also wrong
32:09
Speaker 1: about how important it was. He underestimated how important it was.
32:13
Speaker 1: He understood it and still got a Nobel Prize. But
32:16
Speaker 1: even though he basically did it first, he didn't get
32:19
Speaker 1: the Nobel Prize for fission for the thing he accidentally did. Like,
32:23
Speaker 1: you have to do it on purpose, right to win
32:25
Speaker 1: the prize. The secret rule secret you have to do
32:29
Speaker 1: it on purpose. You don't have to do it on purpose,
32:31
Speaker 1: but you have to recognize that you've done it. A
32:33
Speaker 1: lot of Nobel Prizes um or rewarded for things people
32:36
Speaker 1: did accidentally and discovered, like oops, you know, but the
32:40
Speaker 1: discovery the cosmic marcrowave background radiation totally an accident, but
32:43
Speaker 1: then they recognized what they had done and read a
32:45
Speaker 1: paper about it, and then they were given the Nobel prices.
32:47
Speaker 1: You have to pretend you did it on purpose. There
32:50
Speaker 1: you go, that's the rule. I'm sure that's somewhere in
32:52
Speaker 1: Alfred Nobel's will. Yeah, I'm sure there's a Swedish translation
32:55
Speaker 1: to what I just said exactly. Okay, Google translate RhE
33:00
Speaker 1: into Swedish in real time. Okay, So can you imagine
33:04
Speaker 1: being the scientists who basically are just trying to like
33:08
Speaker 1: replicate with this Nobel Prize project and then you figure
33:12
Speaker 1: out that it's wrong. Yeah, I know. And Feremi was
33:15
Speaker 1: he was you know, he's staggering he was a huge
33:17
Speaker 1: figure in physics at the time. He was well, he
33:20
Speaker 1: was famous and internationally respected, and so you know, disagreeing
33:23
Speaker 1: with Faremie or going up against Faremer claiming that Fremie
33:26
Speaker 1: was wrong is uh, it's a pretty big deal. That
33:28
Speaker 1: took some guts. They must have been pretty confident in
33:31
Speaker 1: their data. So yeah, that's a pretty um kind of
33:34
Speaker 1: a big error in the Nobel Prize committee. Yeah. Yeah,
33:38
Speaker 1: I think looking back, they probably wish they had waited
33:40
Speaker 1: a couple of years to give that Nobel prize. Yeah, exactly,
33:43
Speaker 1: although you know, for me certainly should have won a
33:45
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize for something or something. Okay, So it's not
33:48
Speaker 1: like it's unjust that he wins a Nobel Prize. It's
33:50
Speaker 1: not like he's undeserving. It's just not really for what
33:52
Speaker 1: they actually gave it to him for. They don't feel
33:55
Speaker 1: bad bad, No, I don't think they feel too bad
33:57
Speaker 1: having for me be one of the Nobel Prize winners.
33:59
Speaker 1: And though I think it feels pretty good. It's sort
34:01
Speaker 1: of like Einstein, right, he won the Nobel Prize for
34:03
Speaker 1: the photo electric effect explaining this tiny, weird little thing.
34:07
Speaker 1: He never won the Nobel Prize for relativity. He didn't
34:09
Speaker 1: write general relativity or special relativity. Now Nobel Prize for that,
34:14
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's just like it's the idiosyncrasies of
34:17
Speaker 1: the Nobel Prize committee. You know, they didn't think that
34:20
Speaker 1: was worth it, and then later they gave it to
34:22
Speaker 1: him for the photo electric effect, which is like sort
34:24
Speaker 1: of like making it up to him. You know. It's
34:26
Speaker 1: sort of like al Pacino getting the Lifetime Oscar even
34:29
Speaker 1: you know, like, well, we should have given you the
34:31
Speaker 1: Oscar for this one, and we didn't, and so here
34:33
Speaker 1: you're gonna have this other one. That's why the Oscars
34:35
Speaker 1: have that Lifetime Achievement award, right, Yeah, that's the oops.
34:39
Speaker 1: Oscar Award should be a lifetime Achievement Nobel Prize. Okay,
34:51
Speaker 1: So those are two examples of a wayne you can
34:54
Speaker 1: get the Nobel Prize wrong, meaning that you make a
34:56
Speaker 1: discovery but then later it turns out to be not
34:59
Speaker 1: quite right. But we were talking earlier that there's other
35:02
Speaker 1: ways in which you can get the Nobel Prize wrong, right, Yeah.
35:06
Speaker 1: The other direction, which is you can fail to give
35:08
Speaker 1: it to people who are clearly deserving of it, right,
35:11
Speaker 1: And that's you know, almost as big a mistake in
35:14
Speaker 1: my view. Yeah, there's lots of examples of people who
35:17
Speaker 1: were kind of who are known to be crucial part
35:21
Speaker 1: of the team and the discovery, but they for some
35:24
Speaker 1: reason didn't get it. Yeah. And I think one of
35:26
Speaker 1: the biggest examples is Vera Rubin. She's an astronomer who
35:30
Speaker 1: everybody credits with making huge contributions and establishing the dark
35:34
Speaker 1: matter is a thing. Right, She's the one who went
35:37
Speaker 1: out and made careful measurements of how galaxies are rotating
35:40
Speaker 1: and really proved that there's huge blobs of invisible matter
35:43
Speaker 1: in these galaxies. Um. And so she's a huge figure
35:47
Speaker 1: in astronomy and in in dark matter is one of
35:50
Speaker 1: the biggest discoveries ever. But she never won the Nobel
35:53
Speaker 1: Prize for it, right, And she's passed away now, so
35:56
Speaker 1: she can't. And um, it's pretty widely acknowledged that that
35:59
Speaker 1: was because as of you know, gender bias on the
36:02
Speaker 1: committee and in the field in general. You know, this
36:04
Speaker 1: is a field of men, and it's the committee's mostly men,
36:08
Speaker 1: and in the history of the Physics Nobel Prize only
36:11
Speaker 1: a few have ever been given to women. It's terrible,
36:14
Speaker 1: it's shameful, it's shameful. A lot of these things you
36:17
Speaker 1: sent me of people who should have gotten the Nobel
36:20
Speaker 1: Prize are were female. Their women, right, Roslyn Franklin, And yeah, exactly,
36:24
Speaker 1: Rosin Franklin. You know, she's the one who made that
36:26
Speaker 1: amazing X ray pictures of d N A and which
36:29
Speaker 1: Watson and Crick basically stole and then used to claim
36:33
Speaker 1: the discovery of DNA for which they won the Nobel Prize.
36:36
Speaker 1: And then she died of due to radiation disffuse a
36:39
Speaker 1: few years later. Um, so they really stood on the
36:42
Speaker 1: backs of her hard work. They stole her data and
36:44
Speaker 1: won a Nobel Prize. Um. That's really embarrassing. And there's
36:48
Speaker 1: other examples, you know, there's some Jocelyn Bell she um
36:52
Speaker 1: was a graduate student and she discovered pulsars. The problem
36:55
Speaker 1: is that her advisor got the Nobel Prize for and
36:59
Speaker 1: she was out. They're doing all the work. I know,
37:01
Speaker 1: how did how did they justify that? You know, at
37:04
Speaker 1: the time, I think they just thought it would be
37:06
Speaker 1: demeaning to the Nobel Prize to give it to a
37:08
Speaker 1: graduate student or something. It makes no sense. It's to me,
37:12
Speaker 1: it's really embarrassing. And but but in in some karmic justice.
37:17
Speaker 1: She won the Breakthrough Prize last year, UM, which is
37:20
Speaker 1: which is great, and she donated, like there's more than
37:23
Speaker 1: two million dollars in prize money, she donated all that
37:26
Speaker 1: money to UM supporting women and underrepresented minorities in science.
37:31
Speaker 1: So like she's really a stand up kind of person.
37:33
Speaker 1: That's awesome, and that's bigger than the money you get
37:36
Speaker 1: from the Nobel Prize. Yeah, exactly. I think the Breakthrough
37:39
Speaker 1: tries the prize is trying to buy its way into
37:41
Speaker 1: cultural relevance by having more money than the Nobel Prize.
37:45
Speaker 1: Al Right, well again, UM, we don't want to badge
37:48
Speaker 1: the Nobel Prize or science. It's still the most awesome
37:51
Speaker 1: thing to learn about the universe and to know what's
37:54
Speaker 1: true and not. And we know that the committee out
37:57
Speaker 1: there is doing its level best and they've made a
37:59
Speaker 1: lot of X choices, and the folks that they have
38:01
Speaker 1: elevated Nobel Prize winners are almost all entirely deserving, even
38:05
Speaker 1: those for whom the prize was incorrectly awarded, they're still deserving, um,
38:10
Speaker 1: And so we commend them for doing their best. But
38:12
Speaker 1: of course it's a human endeavor and science is a
38:15
Speaker 1: human endeavor and sometimes we make mistakes. And one of
38:17
Speaker 1: the best things about science is that it's self correcting.
38:19
Speaker 1: We will go back and we look at these things,
38:21
Speaker 1: we understand them better, and we make improvements. Just like
38:23
Speaker 1: this podcast, we hope to get better and better every time.
38:27
Speaker 1: All right, well, thanks everyone for listening, See you next time,
38:29
Speaker 1: See you next time. If you still have a question
38:39
Speaker 1: after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line.
38:43
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us
38:45
Speaker 1: at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's
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Speaker 1: one word, or email us at Feedback at Daniel and
38:52
Speaker 1: Jorge dot com tw