APS News

June 2002 (Volume 11, Number 6)

Members in the Media

"It's not toxic or messy. And it's cheap. Experimentally, I love the stuff."
-Ken Libbrecht, Caltech, on growing snow crystals in the lab, AP, March 31, 2002


"If you want to fracture a material with the least energy, hexagons are the way to do it."
-Alberto G. Rojo, University of Michigan, on why lava flows form regular patterns, NY Times, April 2, 2002


"The coal industry alone is a $100 billion industry, and it could be replaced by charcoal. And the university could get in on it, if it wants to."
-Michael Antal, University of Hawaii, on making charcoal from grass clippings, AP, April 1, 2002


"This is about trying to amass all the matter of the universe in a very small region. Good luck."
-Stanley Deser, Brandeis University, on using principles of general relativity to build a time machine, Boston Globe, April 5, 2002


"LIGO gives us information that we don't have access to any other way, things like black holes, things we can only infer from the light we see."
-Beverley Berger, National Science Foundation, AP, April 4, 2002


"10 or 15 years down the road, you might be able to connect a state-of-the-art electronic device to the human sensory system."
-Peter Grutter, McGill University, Montreal Gazette, April 4, 2002


"The worst-case scenario is, really, to have a bunch of dummies in charge of the nuclear weapons. We want to make sure that the people who need to maintain those weapons are technically at the forefront of the science and engineering that's involved."
-Raymond Jeanloz, University of California, Berkeley, National Public Radio's All Things Considered, April 7, 2002


"Physics is such a wonderfully logical framework that learning it benefits the other sciences."
-Richard Olenick, University of Dallas, on the advantages of teaching physics before biology or chemistry in high school, Dallas Morning News, April 8, 2002


"The bottom line is, if you are really watching the game and you have a minimum of baseball experience, there's no way you should be hit by a foul ball."
-Robert K. Adair, Yale University, on the danger to spectators at a baseball game, Calgary Herald, April 10, 2002


"A neutron star, because it is so dense, may be the only natural place in the universe where quark matter exists.We may have discovered a way of learning if the existence of free quarks is true."
-Norman Glendenning, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, on the possible discovery of quark stars, NY Times, April 11, 2002


"In fact it wasn't a stupid thing to do. There was no reason not to introduce it.
-Steven Weinberg, University of Texas, on why what Einstein called his biggest blunder really wasn't, Dallas Morning News, April 15, 2002


"On average, the journey from one Web page to any other can be made in just 19 clicks."
-Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, University of Notre Dame, on how the worldwide web is constructed, New Scientist, April 13, 2002


"In the top 20km of the Earth's crust, the conditions are right to produce a nearly inexhaustible supply of hydrogen."
-Friedemann Freund, NASA, on the possibility of using Hydrogen to solve the world's energy problems, The Sunday Telegraph, April 14, 2002


"Even one war in space will [encase] the entire planet in a shell of whizzing debris that will thereafter make space near the Earth highly hazardous for peaceful as well as military purposes."
-Joel Primack, University of California at Santa Cruz, CNN, May 3, 2002


"There's either a big rock at the center of Jupiter or there's not."
-Robert Cauble, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, on unraveling the mystery of Jupiter's hydrogen process, Dallas Morning News, May 6, 2002

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Editor: Alan Chodos
Associate Editor: Jennifer Ouellette

June 2002 (Volume 11, Number 6)

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Articles in this Issue
2002 April Meeting Features New SNO Data, CPU Study
April Meeting Attendees Visit Ground Zero
April Meeting Photos
Mikulski, Walsh receive Public Service Awards
NSF Report Tracks Science Funding Patterns
Scientific Societies Foil Potential Journal Scam
CPU Study Issues Final Report
New SNO Data Resolves Solar Neutrino Problem
OPA Fellows Learn the Ropes on the Hill
Taking Hydrogen to the Extreme
Council Passes Statement on Defense Funding
Letters
Viewpoint
The Back Page
Members in the Media
This Month in Physics History
Zero Gravity: The Lighter Side of Science
Inside the Beltway: A Washington Analysis