Members in the Media

"I don't think any time soon we're going to have jars of bacteria on our desk to surf the Web"
—James Collins, Boston University, on cellular computing, The Boston Globe, June 9, 2004

"In a quantum computer it's straightforward enough to move quantum information around by simply moving the qubits, but you might want to do things very quickly, so you could use teleportation instead."
—David Wineland, NIST, on teleporting atoms, BBC News Online, June 16, 2004

"This is a milestone. We are able to teleport in a deliberate way-that is, at the push of a button. This has been done before, but not in such a way that you can keep the information there at the end."
—Rainer Blatt, of the University of Innsbruck, on teleporting atoms, BBC News Online, June 16, 2004

"Quantum teleportation is a fascinating aspect of science, but whether we'd be talking about it on the radio right now if there wasn't 'Star Trek' is not at all clear to me. To the extent that science fiction can be used to inspire people to learn about the real universe, I think it's very important. But it's also very important to know that there's a difference."
—Lawrence Krauss, Case Western Reserve University, NPR Talk of the Nation/Science Friday, June 18, 2004

"I take this data and render it in various ways, experimenting. There is a point when I say, 'I'm stopping now in making pictures for my scientific article, and I am doing art.' "
—Eric Heller, Harvard University, on his science-inspired artwork, St. Petersburg Times (Florida), June 13, 2004

"It's not a bit of a delay. This collection, which are known as the beyond Einstein Probes, are indefinitely delayed. Indefinite to me means it's not on the agenda at all."
—Burt Richter, SLAC, on NASA projects that have been put on hold to fund President Bush's plan to send humans to Mars, NPR Morning Edition, June 8, 2004

"It's one of the few programs where universities can actually do a lot. Students get trained on them and these are the scientists and engineers who eventually will be needed by NASA for the large programs.
—Robert Lin, University of California Berkeley, on NASA's Explorer Program, which has been funding small- and mid-sized research spacecraft, and is being delayed by budget cuts, NPR Morning Edition, June 8, 2004

"I hope they're wrong, but I can't prove it. And I bet my life work on their being wrong."
—Andrew Strominger, Harvard University, on skeptics who say there's nothing to string theory, Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City), June 14, 2004

"We make two steps forward, and one back."
—Curtis Meyer, Carnegie Mellon University, on building a detector for exotic mesons, Pittsburgh Post- Gazette, June 14, 2004

"They open up a range of things you can't otherwise see because you're blinded on the surface."
—Ken Lande, University of Pennsylvania, on underground laboratories, Associated Press, June 25, 2004

"The Navy wants to make non-magnetic submarine hulls. Right now, the steels the Navy uses for submarine hulls are ferro-magnetic. You don't want to be sitting in a mine field if you're sitting in a magnetic field to begin with."
—Joseph Poon, University of Virginia in Charlottesville, on amorphous steels, United Press International, June 25, 2004

"For the past 10 years, [computer] companies have been scaring the government into thinking this era is coming to an end."
—Paul Thibado, University of Arkansas, on miniaturizing computer components, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock), June 28, 2004

"The promise of this is to totally revolutionize the way that we do business technologically in almost all aspects of life,"
—Uzi Landman, Georgia Tech, on nanoscience, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock), June 28, 2004

"We tend to invent the wheel for ourselves. We're just starting to realise that statisticians have a whole entourage of techniques that we can apply."
—Paul Padley, Rice University, on how physicists use statistical methods, New Scientist, June 26, 2004