Related papers: The Nobel Prize delay
Research in foundations of physics is stagnant, as claimed by many scientists during the last years. I suggest that one reason might be the reification of language, particularly of mathematics, which favour the search for answers to wrong…
Nuclear physics experiments give reaction rates that, via modelling and comparison with primordial abundances, constrain cosmological parameters. The error bars of a key reaction, \dpg, were tightened in 2020, bringing to light…
Gravitational time delays, observed in strong lens systems where the variable background source is multiply-imaged by a massive galaxy in the foreground, provide direct measurements of cosmological distance that are very complementary to…
Astronomy is not in the list of natural sciences aimed at by the Nobel awards. In spite of that, there were, throughout the 1930s until the early 1950s, effective moves by important scientists to distinguish Hubble with the Prize. A short…
We discuss what hampers the rate of scientific progress in our exponentially growing world. The rapid increase in technologies leaves the growth of research result metrics far behind. The reason for this lies in the education of astronomers…
Over the last decade proposal success rates in the fundamental sciences have dropped significantly. Astronomy and related fields funded by NASA and NSF are no exception. Data across agencies show that this is not principally the result of a…
US funding agencies alone distribute a yearly total of roughly $65B dollars largely through the process of proposal peer review: scientists compete for project funding by submitting grant proposals which are evaluated by selected panels of…
The ideas and results that are in the background of the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics had an immense impact on our understanding of reality. Therefore, it is crucial that these implications reach also the general public, not only the…
Throughout history, a relatively small number of individuals have made a profound and lasting impact on science and society. Despite long-standing, multi-disciplinary interests in understanding careers of elite scientists, there have been…
Scientific research funding is allocated largely through a system of soliciting and ranking competitive grant proposals. In these competitions, the proposals themselves are not the deliverables that the funder seeks, but instead are used by…
We study how delays in NIH grant funding affect the career outcomes of research personnel. Using comprehensive earnings and tax records linked to university transaction data along with a difference-in-differences design, we find that a…
Technology leads discovery in astronomy, as in all other areas of science, so growth in technology leads to the continual stream of new discoveries which makes our field so fascinating. Derek de Solla Price had analysed the discovery…
The observational evidence for the recent acceleration of the universe demonstrates that canonical theories of cosmology and particle physics are incomplete (or possibly incorrect) and that new physics is out there, waiting to be…
Physics has a bad press: it is seen by a majority of people as a boring discipline ever since their High School days. There is no glamour to it, just toil and pain, and for many who engaged in it, the end sight is often unemployment. Could…
Sir, We write as senior scientists about a problem vital to the scientific enterprise and prosperity. Nowadays, funding is a lengthy and complex business. First, universities themselves must approve all proposals for submission. Funding…
Scientific progress has long been understood as recombinant, with breakthroughs arising when existing ideas are joined in new ways. Empirical work in this tradition has focused on the inputs to discovery, asking whether a paper draws…
We analyze the Nobel prizes in physics for astrophysics and gravitation since the establishment of the prize and highlight the 2020 Nobel prize for black holes. In addition, we comment on the names that could have received the prize in…
Our world is strongly driven by technological developments that continuously create new markets and shape individual taste and choice. The scale of dissemination of the most recent technological breakthroughs and the capability of creating…
Recent years have seen dramatic progress in cosmology and particle astrophysics. So much so that anyone who dares to offer an overview would certainly risk him- or herself for being incomplete and biased at best, and even incorrect due to…
Experiments using slow neutrons address a growing range of scientific issues spanning nuclear physics, particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology. The field of fundamental physics using neutrons has experienced a significant increase in…