LLNS may have excluded the wrong people in last VSSOP? The exclusions were based on outdated job categories and related skills. ULM are now thinking that in the future, job categories and functional areas will have to be re-defined. The next VSSOP/ISP will be based on the new categories and functional areas. The questions I have are: 1) Why didnt they think of that before the transition. It seems like their style is “change things as you go”. Planning is out the window! 2) Who will give input on the new changes? The next RIF apparently is going to be more lucrative than the VSSOP. Depending on the length of employment, a RIFed person, not only gets their 1 week pay per year of service but also from 30 to 120 days notice, essentially 30 to 120 days pay. Please feel free to comment on the rumors or add new ones you actually heard.
Comments
Sabine!!!
She is a bit of a naysayer in terms of physics. She even has a whole book "Lost in the math" about the the somewhat dreadful state of particle physics. Now she is putting a damper on the fusion work! Sigh, she needs to have a more positive attitude!!!
In fact one of here arch nemesis Lubos Motl, a super pro string theory guy is very optimistic about NIF. https://motls.blogspot.com/2021/08/nif-laser-powered-fusion-may-beat.html
The both have points. Sabine by the way has been saying that before we build yet another multi billion-dollar collider that maybe it is better to wait for something interesting happen in high energy physics or rethink our theoretical framework.
Again I think many of the points are valid. I think the NIF result are exciting but I doubt you are going to be using it to power the Bay Area anytime soon, however it revive fusion research in general and the pay off is big enough that expense could well be worth it.
Sabine says:
"Nuclear fusion power is a worthy research project. It could have a huge payoff for the future of our civilization. But we need to be smart about just what research to invest into because we have limited resources. For this, it is super important that we focus on the relevant question: Will it output energy into the grid. "
By resources I assume she means money however looking around I have to ask really finite? I always assumed it was but maybe I am wrong.
The thing is we are debating around 5 Trillion dollars in spending in Senate and Congress, we just approved 26 billion dollars for Afghan refugees on top of the trillion we already spent there. In light of this spending I simply do not see how you can claim that NIF or the LHC are some huge costly wastes of large amounts of money that could be better used elsewhere in light of the amounts we just making up out of thin air. The entire NSF budget is like 9 billion a year and all of DOE is 35 billion. this is just tiny factions of money compared to 3.5 trillion or Sanders 6 Trillion. Maybe I simply do not understand economics all that well but some of this seems a bit crazy to me. Could you just say NIF, LHC, LANL, LLNL, Tokomaks, Moon base, and Mars base are infrastructure or part of building back better.
-Doug
NIF did not win the nobel prize this year. Maybe next year the 2021 prize has to be weirdest noble prize ever given in physics. So far the reaction has not been good. Lubos a NIF proponent by the way has some rather harsh words.
https://motls.blogspot.com/2021/10/global-warming-nobel-prize-in-physics.html#more
Yesterday, Scandinavian officials announced that the Nobel Prize in Medicine went to some folks who discovered the receptors of temperature and touch which sounds like interesting biophysics (in fact, a better candidate for a physics prize than what we discuss below). However, minutes ago, a new shock awaited us, especially 1/2 of the announcement is utterly shocking.
I agree with some aspects of what Lubos is saying. I think complexity science is a legitimate and important field but any Nobel prize in should probably be limited to methods. Parisi falls into this category with replica symmetry breaking. I could imagine many others that would probably be better. The other half is for global warming is not really a method of complex systems. It also does not seem to fit in physics anyway. I am not saying the the people that won are not great scientists but the field itself is simply not physics. It is early in the game but most physicists seem to think this was a very political decision.
I have advocated that there should be a another category of Nobel prize for general science that could include, geology, earth sciences, planetary science, meteorology, computer science, even some social sciences, if such a prize was ever done than that would be the place for the two other people this year, but in terms of physics half of this years prize makes little sense.
Another odd thing is they keep saying this was a prize for complex systems. Parisi actually won it for what is called stat mech. I doubt many physicists would ever call him a researcher in complex systems. He would simply be called a stat mech person. The other two I guess could sort of be called people that work on fields that are complex. It is just an odd prize, even the economists think this prize is just bizarre.
10/12/2021 5:25 PM
Wrong. The goal of NIF was to extract taxpayers' bucks from the DOE. It has succeeded admirably.