By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 12-13-11

Last week, rather than mounting some constructive diplomatic offensive, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton simply was undiplomatic and offensive. In the Obama Administration’s latest insult to the Jewish State, Clinton compared democratic Israel to theocratic Iran and the segregated South.  Secretary Clinton claimed the walkout of some Israeli male soldiers when some female soldiers started singing paralleled life in Iran.  She also claimed the informal, illegal, gender segregation on some Jerusalem buses evoked Rosa Parks, who refused to sit in the back of the bus. Beyond confusing individual lapses with state practices, Clinton demonstrated Middle East discourse’s broken barometer.  Somehow, when talking about Israel, too many people exaggerate wildly, caricaturing Israel crudely – and delighting the delegitimizers.

The writer is professor of history at McGill University and a Shalom Hartman Research Fellow in Jerusalem. He is the author of Why I Am A Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today and The History of American Presidential Elections.

When he made his discovery people thought he was mad. When he finally told colleagues about his discovery, he was met with dismissal and ridicule. His claims caused such embarrassment that his boss asked him to leave the research group.

His discovery was thought to be mathematically impossible.

But who’s having the last laugh? Daniel Shechtman – this year’s nobel laureatte.

What do we learn from this?

Don’t put total faith in science. Don’t be so certain that everything you know to be true is true. Don’t be scared to push boundaries.

This brings a quote from Warren Buffett to mind:

Beware of geeks bearing formulas.

I’m studying maths at university, but I agree. I have little faith in mathematicians when it comes to the real world. Not that mathematics is useless; only a fool would think that, but all too often people come up with mathematical models that are supposed to be complete models of the real world. They tell you what is “supposed to be”. They make “certain” predictions, but when it comes to reality their models fail. “Oh, I forgot to take account of that one small detail”. Read The Black Swan – The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nicolas Taleb if you’re interested in this. Sometimes mathematicians get ahead of themselves. Sometimes scientists speak with more confidence than they should. Some might call it arrogance.

As Laurence J. Peter says:

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.

Another pertinent quote from George Bernard Shaw:

You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’

This is who Avraham was. The Torah calls him “Avraham ha-Ivri” (Abraham the Hebrew). The source of the word ‘ivri’ is ‘ever, ‘meaning ‘over’ or ‘on the other side’. The Midrash interpret his name as “Avraham who stands opposite” – “the whole world stood on one side and he stood on the other.” The world goes their way – and he goes his.

And to complete today’s random quotations with one more, from the movie The Pursuit of Happyness, that will inspire you to new reach heights:

Christopher Gardner (Will Smith): Hey. Don’t ever let somebody tell you… You can’t do something. Not even me. All right?
Christopher (Will’s son): All right.
Christopher Gardner: You got a dream… You gotta protect it. People can’t do somethin’ themselves, they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want somethin’, go get it. Period.

Or as Adidas say:

Impossible is nothing.

Post-script: The more science books I read the more it seems like every scientific discovery starts with everyone saying the new discovery is ridiculous until eventually there’s enough evidence that the discovery is accepted as true. It’s seems to often that people aren’t willing to accept change. I’ve been reading The Brain That Changes Itself recently and this talks about how scientists were unwilling to accept the idea of plasticity – the idea that the brain can change itself. Discoverers of new ideas always seem to be ridiculed until eventually their ideas are accepted as true. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn is an entire book about this concept. Kuhn coined the phrase “paradigm shift” to describe this phenomenon.

Also, I would just like to point out that although I believe in a healthy skepticism of accepted “facts”, I do in general have faith in the scientific enterprise. I believe the theory of evolution to be true despite some questions about it. I wouldn’t be surprised if some details of the theory are completely revamped in the next century but the general idea seems to be true. It seems to be an elegant way for the Creator to have designed us.

A silver/aluminium quasicrystal. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Source: The Guardian :: Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011 – live blog

Addendum: More on quasicrystals from science tumbled

The “forbidden symmetry” of the quasicrystal was first spied in 1982.

‘the new crystal was made up of perfectly ordered, but never repeating, units’

‘Irregular shapes, similar to what Shechtman was seeing, are found in the medieval Islamic mosaics of the Alhambra Palace in Spain. The tiles that line the walls and floors of the palace are regular, and follow mathematical rules, but also never repeat themselves.’

Source: BBC News :: Nobel win for crystal discovery

* Dr Shechtman himself is said to have cried “Eyn chaya kazo”, which translates from the Hebrew as “there can be no such creature”.

See also: quasicrystal

In this image made from video provided by Israel Channel 10, on Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2011, Israeli scientist Daniel Shechtman is seen during a television interview.

Israeli scientist Daniel Shechtman has won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his controversial discovery of non-repeating patterns in atoms called quasicrystals.

He is the third Israeli to win the award in chemistry, and the 10th Israeli to win a prestigious Nobel Prize in the country’s 63-year history.

The Nobel Committee for Chemistry at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Shechtman, a professor at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, had discovered quasicrystals, that appeared to be like “fascinating mosaics of the Arabic world reproduced at the level of atoms” and which never repeated themselves.

Shechtman, who was born in Tel Aviv in 1941, had to fight hard for his science. He received his undergraduate and post-graduate degrees from the Technion, and joined the faculty in 1975.

It was while he was on sabbatical at John Hopkins University and working with the National Bureau of Standards in 1982 that he discovered a startling anomaly in the atom patterns of a quasicrystal, a metallic alloy.

Until this discovery, scientists believed that atom patterns inside quasicrystals had to repeat themselves symmetrically. The atoms that Shechtman saw through his electron microscope, however, were packed in a pattern that could not be repeated.

Shechtman’s findings were considered extremely controversial at the time and he was ridiculed by the scientific community for two years. During the course of defending his scientific work, the professor was asked to leave his research group.

In an interview he later said: “If you’re a scientist and believe in your results: fight for them. Fight for the truth.”

“The configuration found in quasicrystals was considered impossible, and Daniel Shechtman had to fight a fierce battle against established science,” Nobel Committee for Chemistry announced. His discovery “fundamentally altered the way chemists look at solid matter.”

Earlier today Shechtman, who won the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1999, and the Israel Prize for physics in 1998, told the Associated Press that “it feels wonderful.”

For further reading please click here

Before Shechtman’s discovery, it was believed that in all solid matter, atoms were packed inside symetrically-patterned crystals. It was believed that such an arrangement was essential. But Shechtman saw patterns that could not be repeated. His discovery was so controversial, he was at one point asked to leave his research group. But he kept pushing and eventually was shown to be correct.

The discovery of quasicrystals is an area that is still being explored. They have applications in alloys and coatings, but scientists still don’t entirely understand how they work. Scientists are currently experimenting with using quasicrystals in a wide variety of areas, including kitchenware, engines and even clothing. There’s an article in the Physical Review Focus journal titled Catch a Quasiperiodic Wave that covers the subject of quasicrystals in great details without being too complex.

Tomorrow, the Nobel prize for Literature 2011 will be announced. As well as the likes of Adunis and Haruki Murakami, Bob Dylan is a frontrunner for the award.

Richard de Mos woest over Islamisering van de Nobelprijs

Stockholm – De Nobelprijs voor Chemie gaat dit jaar naar de Israëliër Daniel Shechtman voor de ontdekking van zogenaamde “quasikristallen”. Shechtman is verbonden aan het Israëlische Technion Instituut en deed zijn geruchtmakende ontdekking in 1982. Sinds die tijd heeft hij wetenschappelijke windmolens moeten bevechten om skeptici te overtuigen van zijn ontdekking: volgens velen konden de “perfecte” structuren die Shechtman gevonden had namelijk niet in de echte wereld bestaan, alleen als wiskundige objecten.

Shechtman’s gevecht lijkt sterk op de route die de Australiers Barry Marshall en Robin Warren hebben moeten bewandelen. Deze artsen ontdekten begin jaren tachtig als eerste dat maagzweren door een bacterie werden veroorzaakt en niet door stress of pittig eten, wat de toen gangbare opvatting was. Marshall en Warren kregen uiteindelijk het gelijk aan hun zijde met de toekenning van de Nobelprijs voor Geneeskunde voor hun werk in 2005.

De quasikristallen van Shechtman vertonen ook opvallende gelijkenissen met de Penrose-betegelingen, vernoemd naar de wis- en natuurkundige Sir Roger Penrose. Hoewel deze betegelingen naar Penrose vernoemd zijn, kan men deze structuren ook al vinden in het werk van M.C. Escher en de middeleeuwse mozaieken van het Alhambra in Granada en het Darb-i Imam heiligdom in Iran. Volgens woordvoerder Wetenschap Richard de Mos van de PVV toont dit eens te meer aan dat het Nobelcomite bestaat uit “theedrinkende moefti’s die hun oren laten hangen naar Arabische pseudo-wetenschappers. Zul  je zien dat Geert Wilders vrijdag naar de Nobelprijs voor de Vrede kan fluiten!”

Kristallenboer Svarovski is verheugd met de toekenning aan quasikristallen. “Hier hopen we al jaren op! We gaan deze Nobelprijs groots vieren met speciale Shechtman-kristallen van zilver-aluminium legering. Daar zijn de vrouwtjes dol op kan ik je verzekeren. De timing is ook nog eens ideaal: vlak voor december, toch altijd de maand waarin het geld voor de rest van het jaar verdiend moet worden. Die Zweden kunnen een bloemetje verwachten, hahaha”, aldus een twinkelende pr-medewerker van Svarovski.

Physics winners: Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt, Adam G. Riess

Chemistry winners: Daniel Shechtman

Physiology or Medicine winners: Bruce A. Beutler, Jules A. Hoffmann, Ralph M. Steinman

Out of the 7 names above, at least 5 are Jewish. Brian P. Schmidt is not Jewish and Jules A. Hoffman seems to least have had a Jewish father (see here). The prize for Literature, Peace and Economic Sciences will be awarded later this week.

Daniel Shechtman and family

Daniel Shechtman is an Israeli and is a professor at the Technion in Haifa. This is Israel’s tenth Nobel Prize in it’s 63 year history. Israel, a country with a population of only 7.5 million and a country that has constantly been under attack since it’s founding, by enemies on all sides.

As for total Jewish Nobel Prize winners, here are the stats from jinfo.org:

Chemistry (31 prize winners, 20% of world total, 27% of US total)

Economics (28 prize winners, 42% of world total, 55% of US total)

Literature (13 prize winners, 12% of world total, 27% of US total)

Peace (9 prize winners, 9% of world total, 10% of US total)

Physics (47 prize winners, 25% of world total, 36% of US total)

Physiology or Medicine (53 prize winners, 27% of world total, 40% of US total)

Just to point out that there are only 13.3 million Jews on the planet and about 6.7 billion people in the world. The Jew constitutes less than 0.2% of the world’s population. That’s 1 in 500! Yet the Jews have won about 1/5 of all the Nobel Prizes ever awarded.

“And the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many peoples, as dew from the Lord, as showers upon the grass…” Michah 5:6

See here for the list of the 2011 Nobel Prize winners.

(In questo momento Schechtma non è ancora stato raggiunto al telefono, nonostante i tentativi del comitato).

I quasi-cristalli (materiali con proprietà speciali, legate proprio alla loro geometria strutturale) sono strutture ordinate ma non periodiche (un cristallo normale è formato da una struttura periodica di uno o più atomi che viene ripetuta in ogni punto della griglia. Per questo motivo il cristallo ha il medesimo aspetto quando viene osservato da qualsiasi punto della griglia). Semplificando, dire che una disposizione di elementi è non-periodica significa dire che non ha simmetria translazionale e cioè che una copia della disposizione traslata non corrisponderà mai perfettamente all’originale.

Queste strutture aperiodiche dal punto di vista matematico erano già note (un esempio è il mosaico medievale nella Moschea di Isfahan, dove i tasselli sono disposti proprio in questo modo), ma prima del lavoro di Shechtman, non erano mai stati ufficialmente osservati a livello di strutture chimiche. L’osservazione ha prodotto un importante cambio di paradigma nella cristallografia moderna.