I mentioned it on Twitter already, but it’s probably worth a mention on the blog (not that they really need my traffic): Once again, 3 Quarks Daily is collecting nominations for its science prize:
As usual, this is the way it will work: the nominating period is now open, and will end at 11:59 pm New York City Time (EST) on May 31, 2011. There will then be a round of voting by our readers which will narrow down the entries to the top twenty semi-finalists. After this, we will take these top twenty voted-for nominees, and the four main editors of 3 Quarks Daily (Abbas Raza, Robin Varghese, Morgan Meis, and Azra Raza) will select six finalists from these, plus they may also add up to three wildcard entries of their own choosing. The three winners will be chosen from these by Professor [Lisa] Randall.
The first place award, called the “Top Quark,” will include a cash prize of one thousand dollars; the second place prize, the “Strange Quark,” will include a cash prize of three hundred dollars; and the third place winner will get the honor of winning the “Charm Quark,” along with a two hundred dollar prize.
(Is there even a name for the hypothetical top-strange-charm baryon?)
If you’ve got any favorite science blog posts from the last year (something on this list perhaps?), you can nominate it by leaving a comment at the link above. You could also just treat the list of nominees as a potential reading guide for cool science-blog content, and that works, too.
Alas, the top quark decays too quickly to hadronize.