{"id":5659,"date":"2013-03-19T10:09:39","date_gmt":"2013-03-19T14:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=5659"},"modified":"2013-03-19T15:39:42","modified_gmt":"2013-03-19T19:39:42","slug":"god-to-award-prizes-for-god-particle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=5659","title":{"rendered":"God to Award Prizes for God Particle"},"content":{"rendered":"

In more news about the Fundamental Physics Prize awards planned for tomorrow evening at CERN, it turns out that God himself (AKA Morgan Freeman<\/a>) will be giving out the awards, as well as hosting a TV show<\/a> about this the same evening.<\/p>\n

Physicists have often claimed to be upset by the “God particle” business, but it looks like CERN and the Fundamental Physics Prize people may be now embracing the idea. Leon Lederman is the one originally responsible for the terminology, supposedly because his publishers twisted his arm into using The God Particle as the title of his 1993 book about the Higgs<\/a>. Evidently they’ve twisted his arm again, with Beyond the God Particle<\/a> set to appear in October.<\/p>\n

Both Sean Carroll<\/a> and Matt Strassler<\/a> are upset about a CBS News report<\/a>, which contains some scientifically inaccurate hype that they’re blaming on Michio Kaku. It’s unclear to me why, after 20 years of over-the-top hype about string theory and extra dimensions from Kaku (going back for instance to here<\/a>), they’re all of a sudden up in arms about this now. Whatever the reason though, I very much agree with Matt’s<\/p>\n

Doesn\u2019t the taxpaying public deserve the truth? Isn\u2019t the truth already exciting enough? And what will the public think of science if, in this information era, the promulgation of falsehoods and near-falsehoods on national media is unanswered by complaints from other scientists?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and think it’s great that he and Sean are now turning their attention to this problem.<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: It’s definitely gang up on Michio Kaku day in the blogosphere, with PZ Myers<\/a> and Chad Orzel<\/a> chiming in. Still a mystery to me why this is happening today, since Kaku has been responsible for far more outrageous stuff continuously for over 20 years.<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong>: Philip Gibbs comes in on Kaku’s side here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In more news about the Fundamental Physics Prize awards planned for tomorrow evening at CERN, it turns out that God himself (AKA Morgan Freeman) will be giving out the awards, as well as hosting a TV show about this the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5659"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5672,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5659\/revisions\/5672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}