Members in the Media

“The award reminds us that expert advice can influence people and policy, that sometimes governments do listen to reason and that the idea that reason can guide human action is very much alive, if not yet fully realized.”
Michael Oppenheimer, Princeton University, on the Nobel peace prize, The New York Times, October 13, 2007

“It’s a sad thing to turn a satellite off, but we had a lot of great years.”  
Warren Moos, Johns Hopkins University, on the end of the FUSE mission, Baltimore Sun, October 19, 2007

“People have been working on nanoelectronics for many years, and there have been advances at the device level on switches and wires. This work takes a step towards showing nanoelectronics in systems.”
Peter Burke, UC Irvine, on a radio built from carbon nanotubes, Wired, October 17, 2007

“He has failed us in the worst possible way. It is a sad and revolting way to end a remarkable career.”
Henry Kelly, Federation of American Scientists, on racist remarks made by James Watson, Newsday, October 18, 2007

“When we get to the basics of why things happen, only then can we get to the next level. They (students) are the ones who are going to be doing that.”
Nandini Trivedi, Ohio State University, on demonstrations for children at a physics festival, Columbus Dispatch, October 21, 2007

“I tell students they’re lucky. They’re getting in at the right time—it’s right before we see something.”
Rana Adhikari, Caltech, on the LIGO gravitational wave search, Wired, October 22, 2007

“We could use it as a way to reduce our carbon emissions. This is not charity; this is self-interest.”
Ashok Gadgil, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, on a plan in which wealthy countries pay for clean energy for poor countries in exchange for carbon credits, Providence Journal, October 22, 2007

“There’s a two-thirds chance there will be a disaster, and that’s in the best scenario.”
Steve Chu, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, on global warming, The New York Times Magazine, October 21, 2007

 “We are looking at trying to change something that has been static for a long time. It would be naive to think it will happen overnight.”
Carl Wieman, University of British Columbia, on getting professors to change their teaching style from lecturing to actively engaging the students, The Globe and Mail, October 30, 2007

“We certainly have seen comets that have had a brightening period, a burst of some level, sometimes quite dramatic, but nothing a million fold. So that’s got everybody’s attention.”
John Radzilowicz, Carnegie Science Center, on comet Holmes, which recently brightened inexplicably, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, October 30, 2007

“A good fastball that drops 18 inches before crossing the plate [at Fenway] will drop 22 inches at Coors.”
Alan Nathan, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, on the effect of high altitude on the World Series games played in Denver, Boston Globe, October 27, 2007

“It literally is like tomography in the medical sense. You can image big things—like 100-meter-sized things—with a couple of months’ worth of data.”
Roy Schwitters, University of Texas, on his idea of using muon detectors to image chambers hidden under Mayan temples, Discovery News, October 31, 2007