Home | Publications | APS News | June 2006 (Volume 15, Number 6)

June 2006 (Volume 15, Number 6)

June 2006 (Volume 15, Number 6) entire issue

News

Council Statement Registers Concern Over Potential Nuclear Weapons Use
Statement calls for more public debate on the issue, as well as whether there has been any change in US policy that could undermine the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Particle Physics at a Crossroads, Academy Study Finds
NAS report calls for increased federal investment to maintain US leadership in the field.

CERN Head Says US Should Pay for Part of LHC Operation Cost
Aymar believes changing nature of accelerator physics research warrants breaking with past funding traditions for covering LHC's operating costs.

April Meeting Prize and Award Recipients.
April Meeting Prize and Award Recipients.

JLab Experiment Discovers Some Strangeness in the Proportion of Strange Quarks
New data reveals that protons are not as strange as scientists previously thought.

Crowd Packs the Hall for Lisa Randall Public Lecture
High school students, teachers, and members of the public joined physicists for an evening of string theory and cosmology.

Bringing the Universe Down to Earth
Scientists are turning to scaled-down, laboratory-based experiments to gain insights into the mechanisms of space plasmas.

"Starquakes" Reveal Clues About Magnetar Composition
X-rays arriving from magnetars yield information about seismic modes shaking the star, and give clues to the properties of its crust.

Physics Helps Bolster Homeland Security
New detection technologies could aid in monitoring nuclear reactors and freight cargo, as well as sense nuclear explosions.

Lorentz Invariance Still Stands
Highly sensitive torsion pendulum experiment shows no violation of this pillar of special relativity.

High School Teachers Day in Dallas
workshop on fractal patterns

CLEO/QELS Meeting Features Latest Photonics Research
Highlights include advances in Terahertz biochips for drug detection and orbital tomography.

UCSD Physicist Wants Nuclear Weapons Taken Off the Table
Jorge Hirsch spearheaded a petition opposing using the nuclear option against Iran, and led a small April 26 protest outside the White House.

Opinion

Letters
Religion is Not the Same as Superstition — Scientists' Arrogance Makes Matters Worse — Origin of Life Still Controversial — Occam's Razor Cuts Out Intelligent Design — Science is Trying to Silence Religion — Evolution is not Dogma — Intelligence Fellowships Go Back to 1979

Inside the Beltway: Washington Analysis and Opinion
Pain and politics at the pump.

The Back Page
US Nuclear Threat Can Enhance Stability

Departments

This Month in Physics History
June, ca. 240 B.C. Eratosthenes Measures the Earth

Members in the Media
APS members quoted in the media.

Happy Birthday, AIP!
AIP Birthday

On May 3, the American Institute of Physics celebrated 75 years of service to the physics community with an all-day symposium at the Cosmos Club in Washington. The AIP was founded on May 3, 1931 at the Cosmos Club (then at a different Washington location) by the APS, the Optical Society of America, the Acoustical Society of America, and the Society of Rheology. It now has ten member societies. Among the speakers at the symposium, entitled "Diverse Frontiers of Science", were AIP CEO Marc Brodsky, Astronomer Royal Lord Martin Rees of Cambridge University, Nobel Laureate Steven Chu of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, and APS Past President Marvin Cohen of the University of California, Berkeley. In addition, President Bush's science advisor John Marburger gave a featured address, and National Academy of Sciences President Ralph Cicerone gave the banquet speech.

In the photo, Jack Hehn and Margaret Wiley of AIP admire one of several special plaques created for the occasion.

Photo Credit: Ernie Tretkoff

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APS encourages the redistribution of the materials included in this newspaper provided that attribution to the source is noted and the materials are not truncated or changed.

Editor: Alan Chodos
Associate Editor: Jennifer Ouellette
Staff Writer: Ernie Tretkoff
Special Publications Manager: Kerry G. Johnson
Design and Production: Amera Jones