WIRED ScienceEvery year in December, a makeshift hangar at the NASA Ames Research Center pops up for one night, transforming the austere airfield into a glitzy, paparazzi’d, black velvet-roped Nerd Prom. At the Breakthrough Prizes—where on December 3, a total of $22 million was handed out to pioneers in math, physics, and the life sciences—researchers traded lab coats and latex gloves for floor-length gowns and bow-tied tuxedos.
