Shahriar Afshar

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Shahriar S. Afshar
Born Shahriar Sadigh Afshar
1971
Tehran, Iran
Residence USA
Citizenship Iran & American
Fields Physicist, Inventor[1] and Entrepreneur[2]
Institutions Harvard University, Rowan University, IRIMS, Perimeter Institute, NASA
Known for Afshar experiment, KOR-fx, SoundKix, acousto-haptics
Notable awards Khwarizmi International Award 1989,[3]

Popular Science Invention of the Year 2010,
CES Innovations Award 2013 ,[4]

Digital Trends Best of CES Award 2014,[5][6]

Shahriar Sadigh Afshar (Persian: شهريار صديق افشار ‎‎) (born 1971[7]) is an Iranian-American physicist and multiple award-winning inventor.[8] He is known for devising and carrying out the Afshar experiment at Harvard University in 2004.[9]

Since July 2004, Afshar has been a Visiting Research Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rowan University.[10] His highest academic degree is B.S.[11] He has numerous patents to his name in high-tech [12] and in 2014 was ranked as the 8th smartest person alive by Super Scholar.[13]

Afshar Experiment

The Afshar experiment is an optical experiment, which he claims demonstrates a contradiction of the principle of complementarity in quantum mechanics.[14] As a result of the controversy surrounding claims made about the experiment, Afshar complained that he has been attacked over his religion and ethnicity.[15] These personal attacks drew a rebuke in an editorial in the New Scientist, which called them "extreme" and an "entirely wrong kind of conflict".[16]

Business Career

More recently Afshar is President, CEO and CTO of Immerz Inc, a startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts,[2] that makes the immersive media KOR-fx product. In his interviews with CNN and Bloomberg TV, it has been called "4D technology", as a follow on to the recent success of 3D entertainment.[17][18]

Higgs Boson Publicity

On November 18, 2009, on the eve of Large Hadron Collider's launch, Afshar announced a wager in which he bet against LHC's finding the Higgs boson, also known as "the God particle," in a commentary in the New Scientist[19] and in an award-winning article in Popular Science. [8] He offered his own theory on the origin of inertia instead.[20] With the announcement on July 4, 2012 by scientists at CERN that they had detected the Higgs boson[21] Afshar appeared to have lost the bet. The evidence at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) suggests the existence of the Higgs, but few reputable physicists have called it completely dispositive as of January 2013. Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the director general of CERN, is among those withholding affirmation of this research.[22] Dr. Heuer called the discovery "a historic milestone." However he and others said that it was too soon to know for sure, whether the new particle is the one predicted by the Standard Model, the theory that has ruled physics for the last half-century, and it will take further work to determine the accuracy.[23]

References and notes

  1. Patentscope
  2. 2.0 2.1 From A Physics Rebel Shakes Up the Video Game World, Literally, Oct 27, 2009; Immerz puts game vibration on chest device Oct 19, 2009; Professional Profile at LinkedIn
  3. List of Khwarizmi International Award Winners (in Persian) stating that Shahriar Sadiq Afshar is awarded for "Construction of 65-mm telescope"
  4. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. Digital Trends Best of CES 2014 award finalists. Digital Trends. January 7, 2014.
  6. Feel like you were shot in the back with KOR-FX (in a good way). By Ryan Fleming — January 10, 2014. Digitaltrends.com
  7. A great leap forward. Independent, October 6, 2004
  8. 8.0 8.1 An accessory that makes you feel - literally - like you're in the videogame you're playing. By Gregory Mone . May 10, 2010.
  9. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. Is It a Particle, a Wave Or Both? Science Team Revisits Nature of Light. Newswise, March 12, 2007.
  11. Rowan University Board of Trustees Meeting, April 27, 2005.
  12. Patents, March 19, 2014
  13. 30 Smartest People Alive Today. March 19, 2014.
  14. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. Games with 'emotional surround sound'. By Doug Gross, CNN June 17, 2010.
  18. Tabitha Soren Discusses 4-D Gaming, Entertainment. Bloomberg interview.
  19. [1]
  20. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  22. AP Interview: CERN chief firmer on 'God particle'. Times Online, January 26, 2013.
  23. The Standard Model. CERN, 2015

See also

External links