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what an interesting personality ... very symathetic Peter Higgs, the British physicist who gave his name to the Higgs boson, believes no university would employ him in today's academic system because he would not be considered "productive" enough.

The emeritus professor at Edinburgh University, who says he has never sent an email, browsed the internet or even made a mobile phone call, published fewer than 10 papers after his groundbreaking work, which identified the mechanism by which subatomic material acquires mass, was published in 1964.

He doubts a similar breakthrough could be achieved in today's academic culture, because of the expectations on academics to collaborate and keep churning out papers. He said: "It's difficult to imagine how I would ever have enough peace and quiet in the present sort of climate to do what I did in 1964."

Speaking to the Guardian en route to Stockholm to receive the 2013 Nobel prize for science, Higgs, 84, said he would almost certainly have been sacked had he not been nominated for the Nobel in 1980.

Edinburgh University's authorities then took the view, he later learned, that he "might get a Nobel prize - and if he doesn't we can always get rid of him".

Higgs said he became "an embarrassment to the department when they did research assessment exercises". A message would go around the department saying: "Please give a list of your recent publications." Higgs said: "I would send back a statement: 'None.' "

By the time he retired in 1996, he was uncomfortable with the new academic culture. "After I retired it was quite a long time before I went back to my department. I thought I was well out of it. It wasn't my way of doing things any more. Today I wouldn't get an academic job. It's as simple as that. I don't think I would be regarded as productive enough."

Higgs revealed that his career had also been jeopardised by his disagreements in the 1960s and 7

And the follow up by Nobel prize winner Randy Schekman http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/09/nobel-winner-boycott-science-journals

interesting one - Luzi will like it :-)

The $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE will be awarded to the first privately funded teams to build robots that successfully land on the lunar surface, explore the Moon by moving at least 500 meters (~1/3 of a mile), and return high definition video and imagery. The Google Lunar X PRIZE expires whenever all prizes are claimed, or at the end of 2015. As of midnight on December 31st, 2010, the team registration for the Google Lunar X PRIZE is closed. No additional applicants will be accepted to join the competition. ...too late

please see the act report on this from a few years ago - its on the wiki - should we maybe make an update analysis? any volunteers? Giusi?

I'll have a look

the team that won the 900.000$ second prize for the space elevator competition (Noone won the 2mil.$ first prize..) for "laser power beaming" a platform at 1km altitude

interesting prize idea

The Loebner Prize for artificial intelligence is the first formal instantiation of a Turing Test.

good news for the theoretical physicists ...

Get cracking, ACT AI team ;) A new X prize designed to advance artificial intelligence has been announced at the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference. The X Prize was set up to push the boundaries of technology to solve issues such as climate change. The winner, which will be announced at TED in 2020, will win $5m (£3.4m).

a bunch of ideas, iinitiatives, and good points about upcoming changes in space ...

nice! are they studying our website?

Armadillo Aerospace have officially completed the 2009 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge Level 2, on a rainy day at Caddo Mills, Texas. Reports came in

I am wondering what they would say to some of the IDEASTORM ideas ;)

This years winners of the fields medal. Some about mathematical physics but NOT string theory. Hey, I didn't even know that this still exists... :-)

This is an interesting report from a student in sociology, who worked with a group of scientists on a synthetic biology project for the competition IGEM (http://2009.igem.org/Main_Page). This is what happen when you mix hard and soft sciences. For this project they won the special prize for "Best Human Practices Advance". You can read the part on self or exploded governance (p.34). When reading parts of this reports, I thought that it could be good to have a stagiaire or a YGT in human science to see if we can raise interesting question about ethics for the space sector. There are many questions I'm sure, about the governance, the legitimacy of spending millions to go in space, etc...

some ideas for movie Fridays A "must" see on my opinion (never heard about it in the past!) : Primer Sounds ideal: "Primer is a 2004 American science fiction film about the accidental discovery of time travel. The film was written, directed and produced by Shane Carruth, a mathematician and a former engineer, and was completed on a budget of $7,000.[1] Primer is of note for its extremely low budget, experimental plot structure and complex technical dialogue, which Carruth chose not to 'dumb down' for the sake of his audience. One reviewer said that "anybody who claims [to] fully understand what's going on in Primer after seeing it just once is either a savant or a liar."[2] The film collected the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2004 before securing a limited release in US cinemas, and has since gained a cult following."

I watched it a while ago during my studies in Belgium... The plot is quite well summarized on this diagram: http://xkcd.com/657/large/ According to the text above I'm either savant or a liar (you choose). But I watched the movie under significant exposure to Belgian beer, so this may have helped...

like the profiles ... "The clearest evidence for the pulsar's existence was provided by computers operated by two volunteers: Vitaly Shiryaev, a Russian researcher who has a Ph.D. in radio physics; and Stacey Eastham, who does vehicle testing for the British government in Darwen. In his profile, Eastham says he's studying astronomy and physics on the side. He got involved in the Einstein @ Home project because he's interested in "anything space-like, and being able to be part of something like this is right up my street."

who is interested in following this a bit closer?

Good ol' Swarmanoid.

ARCA is the romanian google X prize competitor.

I like the 4 stage system. But how did they solve the plume issue ?

The plume issue is not that difficult. I think they used something similar on Apollo LES. The problem is stabilizing the entire system, which is extremely difficult. The entire system will most likely plummet down after the solar balloon phase (which is the only phase they tested before). At least they are not using government money :).