I am starting this thread in anticipation of tonight’s episode.
I think this episode is going to be a ridiculous disaster, based on the snippets shown in the teaser. An episode where they toss reality into a dumpster and set it on fire. There’s an out, though, and I hope they take it.
I laughed a lot.
Also, Penny in that blue dress.
I’m sure wiser souls will weigh in to tell us about the actual Nobel Prize nomination process. I liked how Amy and Sheldon handled it. Is it true the other two physicists could grab the prize themselves for accidentally proving it?
I wonder how many RL physicists are working on super asymetry.
Josh Malina again. Very nice.
Would a microbiologist work on developing a drug? I thought that was more the realm of biochemists.
I’ve liked Josh Malina in several different roles. I’m always kinda surprised at how much his talent is wasted in TBBT.
The Nobel process resembles that plot about as much as a pencil resembles an elephant.
The rules for the Nobel Prize in Physics require that the significance of achievements being recognized has been “tested by time”. In practice, it means that the lag between the discovery and the award is typically on the order of 20 years and can be much longer. For example, half of the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar for his work on stellar structure and evolution that was done during the 1930s.
Their paper has been out what, maybe a couple of months? That won’t even get the attention of the Wolf Medal committee, much less the Nobel. Total fail.
There have been awards given pretty quickly though. The 1987 award was given for work done in from 1983 to 1986 for example, and the 1984 award was for a discovery in 1983. It’s not completely unreasonable that people would be talking about Nobel prospects for 2018 paper that got confirmatory evidence in early 2019.
This was my thinking as well. It takes decades to get noticed by the Nobel Committee, not weeks.
I also think Penny should have stuck to her guns and not gone to work for Bernadette. And she shouldn’t have lied to get out of it; I saw it coming a mile away that Bernadette would call Penny’s manager to try to muck things up. Bernadette would be a terrible manager to work for under the best of circumstances; the fact that they’re friends outside of work just adds another layer of complication.
So are Raj and his girlfriend done for good now?
I think they are dating, but not planning marriage at the moment.
So are you saying that sitcoms aren’t the same as real life? gasps and clutches at pearls
Sorry to be snarky, but I enjoyed the episode. There were some good laughs and good character development. I’m not surprised that Nobel Prizes don’t work that way, but the point was Sheldon’s reaction to the situation. Not so long ago he would have leapt at the chance for a Nobel without a second thought for anyone else’s feelings. It was nice that he was so adament about including Amy.
And Penny’s speech to the sales team would never fly in the real corporate world, but it illustrated her growth as a confident working woman.
Though, as an aside, I still kind of wish they’d have let Penny find some success as an actress rather than giving it up. She wouldn’t have to become a big star; actors can make a decent living with commercial and extra work, and it could have made for some good comedic fodder.
It seems that you got this from the Wikipedia article Nobel Prize in Physics. There’s no citation in the article that corroborates “tested by time” and I couldn’t find a reference to it in Nobel Prize Nomination and Selection of Physics Laureates or The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
I’m not disputing the “tested by time” criterion (which is consistent with the way that the prize has been awarded) but I haven’t found an authoritative source that confirms it.
FWIW, when I watched the episode my reaction was similar to yours.
Also, if you read Alfred Nobel’s will where he set up the prizes, he didn’t mention anything about needing to be “tested by time.” Instead, he actually said, “prizes to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.”
Which Sheldon and Amy’s paper most certainly did not.
There’s actually an interesting case where a husband insisted that his wife also get a Nobel Prize if he did. In 1903 the Nobel committee was going to give the prize to Henri Becquerel and Pierre Curie and weren’t going to include Marie Curie. Someone who found out about this and told Pierre sometime before the committee decided who to give the prize to. Pierre made it clear to the committee that it was ridiculous to not also give the prize to Marie. So the two Curies and Becquerel got the prize that year:
Their research was only a few years before this:
Perhaps a writer for The Big Bang Theory heard about this and decided to fit something like it into the show.