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In the latest sign that US president Donald Trump is totally OK with not receiving this year’s Nobel Peace Prize (the accolade went to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who dedicated the award to the convicted felon), the Republican has suggested he’s won his first Nobel Prize using some rather ridiculous logic.
In comments he attributed to his energy secretary Chris Wright, Trump took to his Truth Social platform on Thursday and wrote: “A former Lawrence Berkeley National Lab scientist won the Nobel Prize in physics for work in Quantum physics. Quantum computing, along with AI and Fusion, are the three signature Trump science efforts.
“Trump 47 racks up his first Nobel Prize!!”
This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics went to scientists John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis for “the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit”.
In simpler terms – thanks to a summary provided by the aforementioned Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - quantum tunnelling is “the ability of microscopic particles, such as electrons, to move or tunnel through barriers that, according to classical physics, they should not be able to breach”, with the three scientists demonstrating this “at a macroscopic level” in 1984 and 1985.
The Nobel Prize press release says the scientists’ work has “provided opportunities for developing the next generation of quantum technology", such as quantum cryptography, computers and sensors.
John Clarke was the one out of the three who was once a scientist at the Department of Energy’s Berkeley Lab, joining in 1969 before retiring in 2010.
Aside from the very obvious clutching at straws from Trump on Truth Social, his attempt at trying to take some credit for something in which he played no part is undermined by the fact that the research was carried out in the 1980s, when he was obviously not sitting in the White House and determining government policy.
California governor Gavin Newsom was among those who slammed Trump’s assertion as “pathetic”:
“You cannot steal their honors and accomplishments,” wrote another:
A third claimed Trump is “out of control with lust for a Nobel Prize”:
And a fourth noted Barack Obama could claim another Nobel Prize using Trump’s logic:
While he was unsuccessful this year, Trump can hold out hope that next year might be the year he is given the accolade.
On Sunday, Cambodian prime minister Hun Manet announced she had nominated Trump to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and on just days later, Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi had done the same.
Why not read…
- Trump talks nuclear weapons amid mounting concern over capacity
- You can no longer criticise Trump for one weird reason - apparently
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