There is something I definitely don't understand here. This article:
LA Times article on Iran potentially stalling with the uranium enrichment deal
states that Iran is further stalling the agreement to ship its low-enriched uranium to other countries for enrichment to highly enriched uranium.
Here is what I don't get. What Iran seems to be asking for is that they basically should be allowed to trade their low-enriched uranium for highly-enriched uranium fuel rods that are ready to go in their research reactor immediately. This doesn't seem too crazy to me. They seem to be saying they just want to be really sure they get what was promised to them up front, rather than allowing the international community to take forever in delivering the highly enriched uranium fuel rods (or perhaps never deliver them).
However, here is a quote from the article:
"Western officials have hinted that they would reject such a stipulation, worried it would allow Iran to quickly replenish its stockpile of enriched uranium to maintain the quantity that could allow it to fuel a nuclear bomb"
Does anyone see how this works? Why would arranging an exchange of low-enriched uranium for fuel rods somehow accelerate the time frame for Iran to get a nuclear bomb? Are they worried about a plutonium path to the bomb?
Curious whether anyone is able to follow what is going on here...
Friday, October 30, 2009
Links for this week's assignment
The suggested references for this week's assignment (on pros and cons of nuclear power) are at the top of the assignment, but the links are also below. If you do your own research and find interesting articles or websites, please post them!
Pro nuclear power:
World Nuclear Association pro-nuclear essay
Interview with Greenpeace founder
Anti nuclear power:
Greenpeace position on nuclear power
Union of Concerned Scientists on nuclear power
Both sides summarized:
Wall Street Journal article giving the arguments on both sides.
Pro nuclear power:
World Nuclear Association pro-nuclear essay
Interview with Greenpeace founder
Anti nuclear power:
Greenpeace position on nuclear power
Union of Concerned Scientists on nuclear power
Both sides summarized:
Wall Street Journal article giving the arguments on both sides.
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Rise of Nuclear Alarmism
BY JOHN MUELLER | OCTOBER 23, 2009
At the dawn of what came to be dubbed our "nuclear era," strategist Bernard Brodie, in a book dramatically titled The Absolute Weapon, laid out two facts about the new bomb: "It exists" and "its destructive power is fantastically great." Brodie certainly got his facts right. But his implication -- that the bomb would prove to be fantastically important -- has scarcely been borne out over the ensuing decades.
In fact, the bomb's impact on substantive historical developments has been minimal: Things would likely have turned out much the same if it had never been developed. The only real effect of nuclear weapons is humanity's unhealthy obsession with them, a preoccupation that has inspired some seriously bad policy decisions. With a declarative certainty he never would have used in discussing physics, Albert Einstein once proclaimed that nuclear weapons "have changed everything except our way of thinking." But instead it seems that the weapons actually changed little except our way of thinking -- as well as of declaiming, gesticulating, deploying military forces, and spending lots of money.
Nuclear weapons are, of course, routinely given credit for preventing or deterring a major war, especially during the Cold War. However, it is increasingly clear that the Soviet Union never had the slightest interest in engaging in any kind of conflict that would remotely resemble World War II, whether nuclear or not. Its agenda mainly stressed revolution, class rebellion, and civil war, conflict areas in which nuclear weapons are irrelevant.
Nor have possessors of the weapons ever really been able to find much military use for them in actual armed conflicts. They were of no help to the United States in Korea, Vietnam, or Iraq; to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan; to France in Algeria; to Britain in the Falklands; to Israel in Lebanon and Gaza; or to China in dealing with its once-impudent neighbor Vietnam.
In fact, a major reason so few technologically capable countries have actually sought to build the weapons, contrary to decades of hand-wringing prognostication, is that most have found them, on examination, to be a substantial and even ridiculous misdirection of funds, effort, and scientific talent.
But though they may have failed to alter substantive history, nuclear weapons have had a great impact on our collective subconscious. As historian Spencer Weart notes, "You say 'nuclear bomb' and everybody immediately thinks of the end of the world." In service of that perspective, Earth has been routinely depopulated by nuclear bombs on film and videotape, twice in 1959 alone.Because of this anxiety, legions of strategists have spent entire careers agonizing over "nuclear metaphysics," as the late Robert H. Johnson labeled it in his brilliant but neglected book, Improbable Dangers. However, while the metaphysicians were calculating how many MIRVs could dance on the head of an ICBM, few bothered to consider that the threat of military aggression they were attempting to deter essentially didn't exist.
The result was a colossal and absurd waste of funds. During the Cold War alone, it has been calculated, the United States spent enough money on these useless weapons and their increasingly fancy delivery systems to have purchased somewhere between 55 and 100 percent of everything in the country except the land.
We have also endured decades of hysteria over the potential for nuclear proliferation, even though the proliferation that has actually taken place has been both modest and substantially inconsequential. When the quintessential rogue state, communist China, obtained them in 1964, CIA Director John McCone sternly proclaimed that nuclear war was "almost inevitable." But far from engaging in the "nuclear blackmail" expected at the time by almost everyone (except Johnson, then working at the State Department), China built its weapons quietly and has never made a nuclear threat.
Still, the proliferation fixation continues to flourish. For more than a decade, U.S. policy obsessed over the possibility that Saddam Hussein's pathetic and technologically dysfunctional regime in Iraq could in time obtain nuclear weapons (it took the more advanced Pakistan 28 years), which it might then suicidally lob, or threaten to lob, at somebody. To prevent this imagined and highly unlikely calamity, a war has been waged that has probably resulted in more deaths than were suffered at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
Today, alarm is focused on the even more pathetic regime in North Korea, which has now tested devices that if detonated in the middle of New York's Central Park would be unable to destroy buildings on its periphery. There is even more hysteria about Iran, which has repeatedly insisted that it has no intention of developing the weapons. If that regime changes its mind or is lying, it is likely to find that, except for stoking the national ego for a while, the bombs are substantially valueless, a very considerable waste of money and effort, and "absolute" primarily in their irrelevance.
As for the rest of the world, the nuclear age is clearly on the wane. Although it may not be entirely fair to characterize disarmament as an effort to cure a fever by destroying the thermometer, the analogy is instructive when it is reversed: When a fever subsides, the instrument designed to measure it loses its usefulness and is often soon misplaced. Thus far the former contestants in the Cold War have reduced their nuclear warheads by more than 50,000 to around 18,000. Other countries, like France, have also substantially cut their nuclear arsenals, while China and others have maintained them in far lower numbers than expected.
Total nuclear disarmament hardly seems to be in the offing -- nuclear metaphysicians still have their skill sets in order. But a continued decline seems likely, and experience suggests that formal disarmament agreements are scarcely necessary in all this -- though they may help the signatories obtain Nobel Peace Prizes. With the demise of fears of another major war, many of the fantastically impressive, if useless, arms that struck such deep anxiety into so many for so long are quietly being allowed to rust in peace.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/23/the_rise_of_nuclear_alarmism?page=0,0&%24Version=0&%24Path=/&%24Domain=.foreignpolicy.com,%20%24Version%3D0
-Saraswati Rowe & Marissa Plasko
At the dawn of what came to be dubbed our "nuclear era," strategist Bernard Brodie, in a book dramatically titled The Absolute Weapon, laid out two facts about the new bomb: "It exists" and "its destructive power is fantastically great." Brodie certainly got his facts right. But his implication -- that the bomb would prove to be fantastically important -- has scarcely been borne out over the ensuing decades.
In fact, the bomb's impact on substantive historical developments has been minimal: Things would likely have turned out much the same if it had never been developed. The only real effect of nuclear weapons is humanity's unhealthy obsession with them, a preoccupation that has inspired some seriously bad policy decisions. With a declarative certainty he never would have used in discussing physics, Albert Einstein once proclaimed that nuclear weapons "have changed everything except our way of thinking." But instead it seems that the weapons actually changed little except our way of thinking -- as well as of declaiming, gesticulating, deploying military forces, and spending lots of money.
Nuclear weapons are, of course, routinely given credit for preventing or deterring a major war, especially during the Cold War. However, it is increasingly clear that the Soviet Union never had the slightest interest in engaging in any kind of conflict that would remotely resemble World War II, whether nuclear or not. Its agenda mainly stressed revolution, class rebellion, and civil war, conflict areas in which nuclear weapons are irrelevant.
Nor have possessors of the weapons ever really been able to find much military use for them in actual armed conflicts. They were of no help to the United States in Korea, Vietnam, or Iraq; to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan; to France in Algeria; to Britain in the Falklands; to Israel in Lebanon and Gaza; or to China in dealing with its once-impudent neighbor Vietnam.
In fact, a major reason so few technologically capable countries have actually sought to build the weapons, contrary to decades of hand-wringing prognostication, is that most have found them, on examination, to be a substantial and even ridiculous misdirection of funds, effort, and scientific talent.
But though they may have failed to alter substantive history, nuclear weapons have had a great impact on our collective subconscious. As historian Spencer Weart notes, "You say 'nuclear bomb' and everybody immediately thinks of the end of the world." In service of that perspective, Earth has been routinely depopulated by nuclear bombs on film and videotape, twice in 1959 alone.Because of this anxiety, legions of strategists have spent entire careers agonizing over "nuclear metaphysics," as the late Robert H. Johnson labeled it in his brilliant but neglected book, Improbable Dangers. However, while the metaphysicians were calculating how many MIRVs could dance on the head of an ICBM, few bothered to consider that the threat of military aggression they were attempting to deter essentially didn't exist.
The result was a colossal and absurd waste of funds. During the Cold War alone, it has been calculated, the United States spent enough money on these useless weapons and their increasingly fancy delivery systems to have purchased somewhere between 55 and 100 percent of everything in the country except the land.
We have also endured decades of hysteria over the potential for nuclear proliferation, even though the proliferation that has actually taken place has been both modest and substantially inconsequential. When the quintessential rogue state, communist China, obtained them in 1964, CIA Director John McCone sternly proclaimed that nuclear war was "almost inevitable." But far from engaging in the "nuclear blackmail" expected at the time by almost everyone (except Johnson, then working at the State Department), China built its weapons quietly and has never made a nuclear threat.
Still, the proliferation fixation continues to flourish. For more than a decade, U.S. policy obsessed over the possibility that Saddam Hussein's pathetic and technologically dysfunctional regime in Iraq could in time obtain nuclear weapons (it took the more advanced Pakistan 28 years), which it might then suicidally lob, or threaten to lob, at somebody. To prevent this imagined and highly unlikely calamity, a war has been waged that has probably resulted in more deaths than were suffered at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
Today, alarm is focused on the even more pathetic regime in North Korea, which has now tested devices that if detonated in the middle of New York's Central Park would be unable to destroy buildings on its periphery. There is even more hysteria about Iran, which has repeatedly insisted that it has no intention of developing the weapons. If that regime changes its mind or is lying, it is likely to find that, except for stoking the national ego for a while, the bombs are substantially valueless, a very considerable waste of money and effort, and "absolute" primarily in their irrelevance.
As for the rest of the world, the nuclear age is clearly on the wane. Although it may not be entirely fair to characterize disarmament as an effort to cure a fever by destroying the thermometer, the analogy is instructive when it is reversed: When a fever subsides, the instrument designed to measure it loses its usefulness and is often soon misplaced. Thus far the former contestants in the Cold War have reduced their nuclear warheads by more than 50,000 to around 18,000. Other countries, like France, have also substantially cut their nuclear arsenals, while China and others have maintained them in far lower numbers than expected.
Total nuclear disarmament hardly seems to be in the offing -- nuclear metaphysicians still have their skill sets in order. But a continued decline seems likely, and experience suggests that formal disarmament agreements are scarcely necessary in all this -- though they may help the signatories obtain Nobel Peace Prizes. With the demise of fears of another major war, many of the fantastically impressive, if useless, arms that struck such deep anxiety into so many for so long are quietly being allowed to rust in peace.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/23/the_rise_of_nuclear_alarmism?page=0,0&%24Version=0&%24Path=/&%24Domain=.foreignpolicy.com,%20%24Version%3D0
-Saraswati Rowe & Marissa Plasko
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Iran missed the Friday deadline
The United States has basically decided that their position on Iran hangs on whether or not Iran goes through with the proposed deal to ship their uranium out of the country for enrichment, and here they seem to be stalling. It's quite interesting... what's going to happen next?
New York Times article on Iran's delayed decisions
New York Times article on Iran's delayed decisions
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Readings for next week
There's no written assignment, but please read these documents and be prepared to talk about them. In particular, I want everyone to be pretty familiar with what happened at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. If you do some additional research to understand these events, please post any interesting links! One of the readings is also just a basic review of nuclear power, for context (and to reinforce some of what we discussed today).
How Stuff Works page giving the basic details of nuclear power (think you know it all already? Try their little quiz and see!)
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission backgrounder on Three Mile Island (this is the basic, bare-bones factual information given from the perspective of the main nuclear power regulatory agency. You may want to do a little snooping to find out information from other points of view.)
World Nuclear Association backgrounder on Chernobyl. (This is coming from the perspective of a nuclear industry organization, so it definitely has a propaganda aspect. You should have no trouble at all finding contrasting viewpoints if you do a little research).
How Stuff Works page giving the basic details of nuclear power (think you know it all already? Try their little quiz and see!)
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission backgrounder on Three Mile Island (this is the basic, bare-bones factual information given from the perspective of the main nuclear power regulatory agency. You may want to do a little snooping to find out information from other points of view.)
World Nuclear Association backgrounder on Chernobyl. (This is coming from the perspective of a nuclear industry organization, so it definitely has a propaganda aspect. You should have no trouble at all finding contrasting viewpoints if you do a little research).
The Higgs Boson is a particle God doesn't want us to find!
xplosions, scientists arrested for alleged terrorism, mysterious breakdowns — recently Cern’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has begun to look like the world’s most ill-fated experiment.
Is it really nothing more than bad luck or is there something weirder at work? Such speculation generally belongs to the lunatic fringe, but serious scientists have begun to suggest that the frequency of Cern’s accidents and problems is far more than a coincidence.
The LHC, they suggest, may be sabotaging itself from the future — twisting time to generate a series of scientific setbacks that will prevent the machine fulfilling its destiny.
At first sight, this theory fits comfortably into the crackpot tradition linking the start-up of the LHC with terrible disasters. The best known is that the £3 billion particle accelerator might trigger a black hole capable of swallowing the Earth when it gets going. Scientists enjoy laughing at this one.
This time, however, their ridicule has been rather muted — because the time travel idea has come from two distinguished physicists who have backed it with rigorous mathematics.
What Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, are suggesting is that the Higgs boson, the particle that physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be “abhorrent to nature”.
What does that mean? According to Nielsen, it means that the creation of the boson at some point in the future would then ripple backwards through time to put a stop to whatever it was that had created it in the first place.
This, says Nielsen, could explain why the LHC has been hit by mishaps ranging from an explosion during construction to a second big bang that followed its start-up. Whether the recent arrest of a leading physicist for alleged links with Al-Qaeda also counts is uncertain.
Nielsen’s idea has been likened to that of a man travelling back through time and killing his own grandfather. “Our theory suggests that any machine trying to make the Higgs shall have bad luck,” he said.
“It is based on mathematics, but you could explain it by saying that God rather hates Higgs particles and attempts to avoid them.”
His warnings come at a sensitive time for Cern, which is about to make its second attempt to fire up the LHC. The idea is to accelerate protons to almost the speed of light around the machine’s 17-mile underground circular racetrack and then smash them together.
In theory the machine will create tiny replicas of the primordial “big bang” fireball thought to have marked the creation of the universe. But if Nielsen and Ninomiya are right, this latest build-up will inevitably get nowhere, as will those that come after — until eventually Cern abandons the idea altogether.
This is, of course, far from being the first science scare linked to the LHC. Over the years it has been the target of protests, wild speculation and court injunctions.
Fiction writers have naturally seized on the subject. In Angels and Demons, Dan Brown sets out a diabolical plot in which the Vatican City is threatened with annihilation from a bomb based on antimatter stolen from Cern.
Blasphemy, a novel from Douglas Preston, the bestselling science-fiction author, draws on similar themes, with a story about a mad physicist who wants to use a particle accelerator to communicate with God. The physicist may be American and the machine located in America, rather than Switzerland, but the links are clear.
Even Five, the TV channel, has got in on the act by screening FlashForward, an American series based on Robert Sawyer’s novel of the same name in which the start-up of the LHC causes the Earth’s population to black out for two minutes when they experience visions of their personal futures 21 years hence. This gives them a chance to change that future.
Scientists normally hate to see their ideas perverted and twisted by the ignorant, but in recent years many physicists have learnt to welcome the way the LHC has become a part of popular culture. Cern even encourages film-makers to use the machine as a backdrop for their productions, often without charging them.
Nielsen presents them with a dilemma. Should they treat his suggestions as fact or fiction? Most would like to dismiss him, but his status means they have to offer some kind of science-based rebuttal.
James Gillies, a trained physicist who heads Cern’s communications department, said Nielsen’s idea was an interesting theory “but we know it doesn’t happen in reality”.
He explained that if Nielsen’s predictions were correct then whatever was stopping the LHC would also be stopping high-energy rays hitting the atmosphere. Since scientists can directly detect many such rays, “Nielsen must be wrong”, said Gillies.
He and others also believe that although such ideas have an element of fun, they risk distracting attention from the far more amazing ideas that the LHC will tackle once it gets going.
The Higgs boson, for example, is thought to give all other matter its mass, without which gravity could not work. If the LHC found the Higgs, it would open the door to solving all kinds of other mysteries about the origins and nature of matter. Another line of research aims to detect dark matter, which is thought to comprise about a quarter of the universe’s mass, but made out of a kind of particle that has so far proven impossible to detect.
However, perhaps the weirdest of all Cern’s aspirations for the LHC is to investigate extra dimensions of space. This idea, known as string theory, suggests there are many more dimensions to space than the four we can perceive.
At present these other dimensions are hidden, but smashing protons together in the LHC could produce gravitational anomalies, effectively tiny black holes, that would reveal their existence.
Some physicists suggest that when billions of pounds have been spent on the kit to probe such ideas, there is little need to invent new ones about time travel and self-sabotage.
History shows, however, it is unwise to dismiss too quickly ideas that are initially seen as science fiction. Peter Smith, a science historian and author of Doomsday Men, which looks at the links between science and popular culture, points out that what started as science fiction has often become the inspiration for big discoveries.
“Even the original idea of the ‘atomic bomb’ actually came not from scientists but from H G Wells in his 1914 novel The World Set Free,” he said.
“A scientist named Leo Szilard read it in 1932 and it gave him the inspiration to work out how to start the nuclear chain reaction needed to build a bomb. So the atom bomb has some of its origins in literature, as well as research.”
Some of Cern’s leading researchers also take Nielsen at least a little seriously. Brian Cox, professor of particle physics at Manchester University, said: “His ideas are theoretically valid. What he is doing is playing around at the edge of our knowledge, which is a good thing.
“He is pointing out that we don’t yet have a quantum theory of gravity, so we haven’t yet proved rigorously that sending information into the past isn’t possible.
“However, if time travellers do break into the LHC control room and pull the plug out of the wall, then I’ll refer you to my article supporting Nielsen’s theory that I wrote in 2025.”
This weekend, as the interest in his theories continued to grow, Nielsen was sounding more cautious. “We are seriously proposing the idea, but it is an ambitious theory, that’s all,” he said. “We already know it is not very likely to be true. If the LHC actually succeeds in discovering the Higgs boson, I guess we will have to think again.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/biology_evolution/article6879293.ece
Is it really nothing more than bad luck or is there something weirder at work? Such speculation generally belongs to the lunatic fringe, but serious scientists have begun to suggest that the frequency of Cern’s accidents and problems is far more than a coincidence.
The LHC, they suggest, may be sabotaging itself from the future — twisting time to generate a series of scientific setbacks that will prevent the machine fulfilling its destiny.
At first sight, this theory fits comfortably into the crackpot tradition linking the start-up of the LHC with terrible disasters. The best known is that the £3 billion particle accelerator might trigger a black hole capable of swallowing the Earth when it gets going. Scientists enjoy laughing at this one.
This time, however, their ridicule has been rather muted — because the time travel idea has come from two distinguished physicists who have backed it with rigorous mathematics.
What Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, are suggesting is that the Higgs boson, the particle that physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be “abhorrent to nature”.
What does that mean? According to Nielsen, it means that the creation of the boson at some point in the future would then ripple backwards through time to put a stop to whatever it was that had created it in the first place.
This, says Nielsen, could explain why the LHC has been hit by mishaps ranging from an explosion during construction to a second big bang that followed its start-up. Whether the recent arrest of a leading physicist for alleged links with Al-Qaeda also counts is uncertain.
Nielsen’s idea has been likened to that of a man travelling back through time and killing his own grandfather. “Our theory suggests that any machine trying to make the Higgs shall have bad luck,” he said.
“It is based on mathematics, but you could explain it by saying that God rather hates Higgs particles and attempts to avoid them.”
His warnings come at a sensitive time for Cern, which is about to make its second attempt to fire up the LHC. The idea is to accelerate protons to almost the speed of light around the machine’s 17-mile underground circular racetrack and then smash them together.
In theory the machine will create tiny replicas of the primordial “big bang” fireball thought to have marked the creation of the universe. But if Nielsen and Ninomiya are right, this latest build-up will inevitably get nowhere, as will those that come after — until eventually Cern abandons the idea altogether.
This is, of course, far from being the first science scare linked to the LHC. Over the years it has been the target of protests, wild speculation and court injunctions.
Fiction writers have naturally seized on the subject. In Angels and Demons, Dan Brown sets out a diabolical plot in which the Vatican City is threatened with annihilation from a bomb based on antimatter stolen from Cern.
Blasphemy, a novel from Douglas Preston, the bestselling science-fiction author, draws on similar themes, with a story about a mad physicist who wants to use a particle accelerator to communicate with God. The physicist may be American and the machine located in America, rather than Switzerland, but the links are clear.
Even Five, the TV channel, has got in on the act by screening FlashForward, an American series based on Robert Sawyer’s novel of the same name in which the start-up of the LHC causes the Earth’s population to black out for two minutes when they experience visions of their personal futures 21 years hence. This gives them a chance to change that future.
Scientists normally hate to see their ideas perverted and twisted by the ignorant, but in recent years many physicists have learnt to welcome the way the LHC has become a part of popular culture. Cern even encourages film-makers to use the machine as a backdrop for their productions, often without charging them.
Nielsen presents them with a dilemma. Should they treat his suggestions as fact or fiction? Most would like to dismiss him, but his status means they have to offer some kind of science-based rebuttal.
James Gillies, a trained physicist who heads Cern’s communications department, said Nielsen’s idea was an interesting theory “but we know it doesn’t happen in reality”.
He explained that if Nielsen’s predictions were correct then whatever was stopping the LHC would also be stopping high-energy rays hitting the atmosphere. Since scientists can directly detect many such rays, “Nielsen must be wrong”, said Gillies.
He and others also believe that although such ideas have an element of fun, they risk distracting attention from the far more amazing ideas that the LHC will tackle once it gets going.
The Higgs boson, for example, is thought to give all other matter its mass, without which gravity could not work. If the LHC found the Higgs, it would open the door to solving all kinds of other mysteries about the origins and nature of matter. Another line of research aims to detect dark matter, which is thought to comprise about a quarter of the universe’s mass, but made out of a kind of particle that has so far proven impossible to detect.
However, perhaps the weirdest of all Cern’s aspirations for the LHC is to investigate extra dimensions of space. This idea, known as string theory, suggests there are many more dimensions to space than the four we can perceive.
At present these other dimensions are hidden, but smashing protons together in the LHC could produce gravitational anomalies, effectively tiny black holes, that would reveal their existence.
Some physicists suggest that when billions of pounds have been spent on the kit to probe such ideas, there is little need to invent new ones about time travel and self-sabotage.
History shows, however, it is unwise to dismiss too quickly ideas that are initially seen as science fiction. Peter Smith, a science historian and author of Doomsday Men, which looks at the links between science and popular culture, points out that what started as science fiction has often become the inspiration for big discoveries.
“Even the original idea of the ‘atomic bomb’ actually came not from scientists but from H G Wells in his 1914 novel The World Set Free,” he said.
“A scientist named Leo Szilard read it in 1932 and it gave him the inspiration to work out how to start the nuclear chain reaction needed to build a bomb. So the atom bomb has some of its origins in literature, as well as research.”
Some of Cern’s leading researchers also take Nielsen at least a little seriously. Brian Cox, professor of particle physics at Manchester University, said: “His ideas are theoretically valid. What he is doing is playing around at the edge of our knowledge, which is a good thing.
“He is pointing out that we don’t yet have a quantum theory of gravity, so we haven’t yet proved rigorously that sending information into the past isn’t possible.
“However, if time travellers do break into the LHC control room and pull the plug out of the wall, then I’ll refer you to my article supporting Nielsen’s theory that I wrote in 2025.”
This weekend, as the interest in his theories continued to grow, Nielsen was sounding more cautious. “We are seriously proposing the idea, but it is an ambitious theory, that’s all,” he said. “We already know it is not very likely to be true. If the LHC actually succeeds in discovering the Higgs boson, I guess we will have to think again.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/biology_evolution/article6879293.ece
Monday, October 19, 2009
Updates on Iran, North Korea, and other Nuclear News
There seems to be much more going on in the nuclear world than any single person can possibly follow. Here are a few updates on Iran and North Korea:
Iran:
Newsweek Interview with Hillary Clinton on her recent negotiations with Russia
New York Times article on the start of talks between Iran, the U.S., Russia, and France
A Christian Science Monitor article summarizing the current status of the situation
North Korea:
Reuters article on U.S. stance: North Korea must re-engage in six-party talks over its nukes
AP article: South Korea's top diplomat urges North Korea to disarm
Iran:
Newsweek Interview with Hillary Clinton on her recent negotiations with Russia
New York Times article on the start of talks between Iran, the U.S., Russia, and France
A Christian Science Monitor article summarizing the current status of the situation
North Korea:
Reuters article on U.S. stance: North Korea must re-engage in six-party talks over its nukes
AP article: South Korea's top diplomat urges North Korea to disarm
Friday, October 16, 2009
radioactive rabbit droppings in the New York Times
Remember how we talked a little bit in class last week about certain cold-war nuclear sites that have an enormous amount of radioactive pollution? One of the worst is the Hanford nuclear site in eastern Washington. Here is an article about tracking radioactivity dispersed in rabbit droppings, from rabbits grazing on the Hanford grounds and then traveling outside those grounds.
New York Times article on radioactive cleanup at Hanford
New York Times article on radioactive cleanup at Hanford
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Obama and nuclear disarmament
Hi folks,
This is a little "last week", but here's one (of many) little articles out there on the importance of Obama's anti-nuke agenda to why he received the Nobel Peace Prize:
Scientific American article on Obama's Peace Prize
I'm interested to look back over what Obama has done in the last year and to put together a better picture of what he has actually done on the issue of nuclear weapons. Would love to have your help in this - let me know what you find! In April, he gave a big foreign policy speech in Prague calling for the U.S. to lead the world in phasing out nuclear weapons. But I am not sure how much actual policy has changed since he took office.
Also, I found this interesting opinion piece from Slate.com that criticized that speech and called the very idea of U.S. nuclear disarmament laughable and pointless:
Slate.com critique of Obama's April Foreign Policy Speech
This is a little "last week", but here's one (of many) little articles out there on the importance of Obama's anti-nuke agenda to why he received the Nobel Peace Prize:
Scientific American article on Obama's Peace Prize
I'm interested to look back over what Obama has done in the last year and to put together a better picture of what he has actually done on the issue of nuclear weapons. Would love to have your help in this - let me know what you find! In April, he gave a big foreign policy speech in Prague calling for the U.S. to lead the world in phasing out nuclear weapons. But I am not sure how much actual policy has changed since he took office.
Also, I found this interesting opinion piece from Slate.com that criticized that speech and called the very idea of U.S. nuclear disarmament laughable and pointless:
Slate.com critique of Obama's April Foreign Policy Speech
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Grave of the Fireflies
The trailer for a full length animated film following a family directly after the bombing of Hiroshima. It has won all sorts of awards.
post by eli skipp
post by eli skipp
Bunker: A Post-Apocalyptic Short
"Bunker, a short film by Paul Doucet, is about a woman alone in a bunker beneath Paris after a nuclear war. Marie pleads over her radio for someone to respond to her. Finally, a voice answers."
Not quite on topic, but short, interesting, and great.
post by eli skipp
Not quite on topic, but short, interesting, and great.
post by eli skipp
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Fusion-Fission Hybrid
The article is a little old and doesn't sufficiently explain how it will work, but it is still interesting. 
Julie Brower
Julie Brower
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Readings for this week's Homework, and more followup
For the homework this week, I've asked you to read a couple of online documents (plus one that I posted to the portal page - check under week 5). The online documents are:
the EPA website overview of common radionuclides (radioactive isotopes) - an overview of the radioactive isotopes that the EPA most commonly deals with, both when it is concerned with cleanup of sites with large amounts of radioactive contamination, and also when it is concerned with regulating usage of radioactive isotopes in medicine and technology.
A training module from Princeton University on health effects of ionizing radiation
I'd like to point out that both of these sites are worth exploring for more information. The EPA website has a pretty decent general introduction to radiation physics - you could almost use it as a backup "textbook" for this class. Also, there are a couple of brochures you can get in their public information section that give you the current-day flavor of government communications about radiation (interesting to contrast with cold-war era documents).
The Princeton training module is part of the radiation safety classes you have to take if you work with radioactive isotopes in your laboratory or workplace. The rest of the training manual is also online, and you might find it interesting to browse other sections.
Finally, as a follow-up link, some interesting government studies on fallout:
CDC website on global fallout from nuclear weapons testing
the EPA website overview of common radionuclides (radioactive isotopes) - an overview of the radioactive isotopes that the EPA most commonly deals with, both when it is concerned with cleanup of sites with large amounts of radioactive contamination, and also when it is concerned with regulating usage of radioactive isotopes in medicine and technology.
A training module from Princeton University on health effects of ionizing radiation
I'd like to point out that both of these sites are worth exploring for more information. The EPA website has a pretty decent general introduction to radiation physics - you could almost use it as a backup "textbook" for this class. Also, there are a couple of brochures you can get in their public information section that give you the current-day flavor of government communications about radiation (interesting to contrast with cold-war era documents).
The Princeton training module is part of the radiation safety classes you have to take if you work with radioactive isotopes in your laboratory or workplace. The rest of the training manual is also online, and you might find it interesting to browse other sections.
Finally, as a follow-up link, some interesting government studies on fallout:
CDC website on global fallout from nuclear weapons testing
More interesting readings on Iran
As we discussed this morning, things have taken an interesting turn with Iran. Iran appears to be cooperating, and last week's international talks appear to have been somewhat productive. Although, depending on who you ask, the emphasis on "appear" may be especially apt. In particular, Iran has agreed to allow inspectors into its previously secret Qom enrichment plant on October 25. They have also agreed to begin talks with Russia on October 16, to arrange for Russia to perform additional enrichment on Iran's Uranium stockpile, so that it can be used in Iranian research reactors. This latter development is particularly intriguing and we should keep our eyes on it. Will that actually happen? Does such a concession by Iran mean that they will be making further demands of the international community in the future?
There is a very broad range of opinions out there on how to interpret Iran's statements and actions on the nuclear issue. I found the following opinion round-up interesting:
New York Times "opinionator" blog, with excerpts from many different opinion pieces
Is Iran ahead? Are we ahead? What's going on exactly?
I also took a quick peek at your homeworks for this week, and I think it's worth posting links to a handful of opinion pieces that you all discovered. The articles that you found (and your reactions to them) show a huge range of possible opinions on this issue - many more than we really explored in class today. Wish we'd heard from more of you! It's tough to get discussion going at 9a.m.
"Pinches of Nuclear Salt" from the Daily Times, in Pakistan - compares the current situation to the WMD situation before we invaded Iraq.
"The Subject was Nuclear Weapons" a New York Times Editorial - discusses a recent U.N. Security Council resolution and why it should have been stronger. Interesting thing to me - the article claims we should, in particular, place limits on the use of highly enriched Uranium for medical research. I guess that's Iran's claim - that that's why they need highly enriched Uranium?
"Negotiating with Tehran" another New York Times Editorial - argues that Iran is just playing along in order to buy more time, and we shouldn't trust them.
"Obama's Iran Talks will Fail" a Washington Times Editorial - written before the talks started, claiming that they would fail. Paints Iran as definite bad guys.
"Lifting Iran's Nuclear Veil" yet another New York Times Opinion Piece - argues that the Qom enrichment plant doesn't make sense unless it's a part of a bigger enrichment program.
Blogger Juan Cole's site - here is a completely different perspective, claiming that Iran really isn't out for nuclear weapons and we should believe them in their claims. This is the set of opinions Jesus described in class - offers a very interesting counter-point to most of the stuff we are finding in the New York Times and our usual news sources.
There is a very broad range of opinions out there on how to interpret Iran's statements and actions on the nuclear issue. I found the following opinion round-up interesting:
New York Times "opinionator" blog, with excerpts from many different opinion pieces
Is Iran ahead? Are we ahead? What's going on exactly?
I also took a quick peek at your homeworks for this week, and I think it's worth posting links to a handful of opinion pieces that you all discovered. The articles that you found (and your reactions to them) show a huge range of possible opinions on this issue - many more than we really explored in class today. Wish we'd heard from more of you! It's tough to get discussion going at 9a.m.
"Pinches of Nuclear Salt" from the Daily Times, in Pakistan - compares the current situation to the WMD situation before we invaded Iraq.
"The Subject was Nuclear Weapons" a New York Times Editorial - discusses a recent U.N. Security Council resolution and why it should have been stronger. Interesting thing to me - the article claims we should, in particular, place limits on the use of highly enriched Uranium for medical research. I guess that's Iran's claim - that that's why they need highly enriched Uranium?
"Negotiating with Tehran" another New York Times Editorial - argues that Iran is just playing along in order to buy more time, and we shouldn't trust them.
"Obama's Iran Talks will Fail" a Washington Times Editorial - written before the talks started, claiming that they would fail. Paints Iran as definite bad guys.
"Lifting Iran's Nuclear Veil" yet another New York Times Opinion Piece - argues that the Qom enrichment plant doesn't make sense unless it's a part of a bigger enrichment program.
Blogger Juan Cole's site - here is a completely different perspective, claiming that Iran really isn't out for nuclear weapons and we should believe them in their claims. This is the set of opinions Jesus described in class - offers a very interesting counter-point to most of the stuff we are finding in the New York Times and our usual news sources.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Space radiation hits record high
Like a wounded Starship Enterprise, our solar system's natural shields are faltering, letting in a flood of cosmic rays. The sun's recent listlessness is resulting in record-high radiation levels that pose a hazard to both human and robotic space missions.Galactic cosmic rays are speeding charged particles that include protons and heavier atomic nuclei. They come from outside the solar system, though their exact sources are still being debated.
Earth dwellers are protected from cosmic rays by the planet's magnetic field and atmosphere. But outside Earth's protective influence, cosmic rays can play havoc with spacecraft electronics – they may be responsible for some recent computer glitches on NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which temporarily halted its planet-hunting observations. They can also damage astronaut DNA, which can lead to cancer.
Now, the influx of galactic cosmic rays into our solar system has reached a record high. Measurements by NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft indicate that cosmic rays are 19 per cent more abundant than any previous level seen since space flight began a half century ago.
Read the rest, you know you want to after the Starship Enterprise reference.
--Sooah Yoo
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