Members in the Media

“A stronger form of random-number generators are so-called device independent. It doesn’t matter what’s inside the box.”
Christopher Monroe, University of Maryland, National Public Radio, April 14, 2010.

“Humans have fought each other for millennia over tiny differences in race, religion or culture…Imagine how most people would react to beings that were truly alien?... My personal message to E. T. is to ‘Keep well clear and defend yourself,’ before stepping into the hornets’ nest of our militaristic society.”
Paul Davies, University of Cambridge, as quoted from his book “The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence,” The New York Times, April 20, 2010.

“A message from an extrasolar civilization could have an agenda behind it…This agenda might not necessarily be positive. Indeed, it might be malevolent.”
Richard Carrigan, Fermilab, quoted from his paper “Starry Messages: Searching for Signatures of Interstellar Archaeology,” Christian Science Monitor, April 26, 2010.

“It’s highly unusual for an experiment to be redesigned this close to launch. I would question the wisdom of flying something redesigned so close to launch.”
Gregory Tarle, University of Michigan, on the delay of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, originally slated to be launched into space on board the shuttle Endeavour in late July, New York Times, April 23, 2010.

“Makes me cringe…The terrible stereotyping of the nerd plus the dumb blond are steps backwards for science literacy.”
Bruce Margon, University of California Santa Cruz, on the CBS show “The Big Bang Theory,” The New York Times, April 26, 2010.

“Far from being a dumb blonde, Penny has demonstrated time and again that she possesses above average intelligence and practical knowledge that often far exceeds that of the guys.”
David Saltzberg, University of California Los Angeles, on one of the characters in NBC’s “The Big Bang Theory,”The New York Times, April 26, 2010.

“This is brain-like computing.”
Ranjit Pati, Michigan Technological University, describing a new, two-molecule thick organic computer that’s based on an organic compound, MSNBC.com, April 28, 2010.  

“We can determine the distance from our telescope (in New Mexico) and the moon by measuring the time it takes for the laser light to make a round trip…The distance changes all of the time due to geometry, rotation and orbit. But by having multiple reflectors, we can establish the orientation (or tilt) of the moon,”
Thomas Murphy, University of California San Diego, on lunar laser ranging, San Diego Union-Tribune, May 1, 2010.

“In the search for such a rare interaction, what counts is not how big your detector is but how good it is in sorting out the mess of interactions from all other sources,”
Elena Aprile, Columbia University, on the search for dark matter, The New York Times, May 4, 2010.

“Particle accelerators have been in the zeitgeist for a couple of years now because of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland…There are good things and bad things about the portrayals of particle accelerators in media.”
Todd Satogata, Brookhaven National Labs, on Tony Stark’s arc reactor in “Iron Man 2,” FoxNews.com, May 7, 2010.

“It’s likely that they’re timing their attacks in such a way so as to avoid capture,”
Suzanne Amador Kane, Haverford College, on the periodic timing seen when swallows defend themselves against predators, Minnesota Post, May 10, 2010.

“The sensitivity of the light source can tell us so much about the chemical composition of whatever we shine it on that we’re really excited about the future of what we can do,”
Uwe Bergmann, SLAC, on using high energy X-rays to image a fossilized Archaeopteryx, San Francisco Chronicle, May 11, 2010.

“Very high-energy gamma rays can penetrate several inches of steel.”
Steven Chu, Department of Energy, on using gamma rays to image the damaged oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, The Atlantic, May 13, 2010.