I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Everyone expects the Nobel Peace prize to be a joke. For one thing, the Norwegians who select it are elected officials,I mean what else would you expect from a professional politician? But the Nobel prize in Physics is awarded by the Swedes. It is supposed to be for lifetime achievement, which explains why the Medicine Nobel was given to a fellow who up and died two days before. (No, they aren’t taking it back from his widow.) So you would think the Physics prize would go to a whitehaired professor with baggy trousers and leather elbow patches on his jacket. I mean a whole pile of previous Nobel prize winners vote on it!
Oh. I see what you mean. I suppose that is a weak point too. Positive feedback can be quite devastating. Well, maybe that is what afflicted this year’s choice. But I suspect worse. Well, what was the award for?
It went to three astronomers for carefully measuring the light from distant supernovae–fifty of them–to be precise.