Edward Teller Passes Away At 95 618
Lord Prox writes "Edward Teller, one of the 20th Century's greats in physics, died Tuesday afternoon at his home in Stanford. He was 95." Newsforge.com also has one of the final interviews with Teller, who was "a principal architect of the hydrogen bomb, [and] passionate advocate of nuclear power and antimissile defense."
Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie (Score:2, Informative)
http://nuketesting.enviroweb.org/hew/Usa/index.ht
Plenty of pics and interesting stories about how many of the tests went awry.
Re:Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie (Score:4, Funny)
the real question is... (Score:2, Funny)
Thank you Teller. (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you Mr Teller.
Re:Thank you Teller. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Thank you Teller. (Score:5, Insightful)
>
> Thank you Mr Teller.
<AOL>Me too</AOL>
And one doesn't have to be a military guy to be thankful. I'm a civvie.
Einstein was my first childhood hero; his life taught me that science could be fun. Almost immediately, my classmates taught me that there was a downside to all this fun; being into science could also make you very unpopular.
It was a short hop from Einstein to Oppenheimer (Feynmann was still ten years beyond my comprehension; I'd just learned long division, fer chrissakes!), and from Oppie to Teller.
Teller was my second childhood hero - and possibly the one with the greatest impact on my daily life - because his life taught me that even if the pursuit of scientific knowledge made you unpopular, it was still right to pursue it. Truth comes first. No matter who it offends.
So thanks, Dr. Teller. You made mistakes, and you owned up to them. (And with the benefit of 20 years of history, perhaps you weren't as mistaken about Oppenheimer as you thought). But more importantly, when you hadn't made a mistake (and for anyone who's not perfectly clear on this, Yes, I Mean The H-Bomb), for sticking to your guns, doing the science, and for never letting the bastards get you down.
Today, in adulthood, upon reading a few choice passages from Memoirs and today's obituaries, I stood in awe of a mind still active and exploring, even at 95. And I realized I'd be a very happy guy if my mind's only half as functional as that when I'm 65, never mind 95.
So goodbye, Dr. Teller. And thanks for being an inspiration to me one more time.
Re:Thank you Teller. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Thank you Teller. (Score:3, Interesting)
being into science could also make you very unpopular.
Yes, I became a scientist despite being presented with the image of Simon Barsinister, villian of Underdog, at an early age.
Edward Teller was an extraordinary individual, both quirky and brilliant. And he kind of looked a bit like Simon Barsinister, too.
Re:Thank you Teller. (Score:5, Funny)
Likewise over here. I just hope your long time partner Penn Jillette is able to carry on with your work.
Re:Thank you Teller. (Score:5, Funny)
then we'll have to live on the beach
Re:Thank you Teller. (Score:2)
Re:Thank you Teller. (Score:4, Interesting)
Hiroshima (Score:5, Interesting)
I have no objections to a healthy debate about nuclear weapons, but you have to think that their main task is wholesale destruction.
Re:Hiroshima (Score:3, Interesting)
Whoah, that took me by surprise. Is Hiroshima as it was after the blast?
Sorry to sound ignorant, at least give me credit for asking. I haven't really thought about what Hiroshima would be today.
Re:Hiroshima (Score:5, Interesting)
Hiroshima is gorgeous. It's not a crater and not a radioactive wasteland. Unless you recognize the name, you'd have no way to tell it apart from any other gleaming Japanese city. Some people have absorbed anti-nuclear propaganda and assume that atomic weapons will render the target area uninhabitable for centuries. That's just wrong (although the propaganda is based on Cold War era weapons, which dwarf the power of the bombs dropped on Japan)
Note that 100% of Japanese cities were bombed flat in WWII, so all buildings are less than 50 years old (even without the bombing, earthquakes would keep destroying them). Thus they may all look similar to a naive visitor.
Re:Hiroshima (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hiroshima (Score:5, Insightful)
I might add that the Japanese military would have shown no similar sense of honor.
Some would question whether avoiding potentially useful targets, which prolongs the fighting and endagers your own troops, is really "honor". What does it mean to value some rotting wooden buildings over human lives?
Others might ask if commanding a single pilot to kill 100,000 helpless civilians simply to impress the USSR is honorable.
But let's not get into that.
Re:Hiroshima (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hiroshima (Score:3, Informative)
No they were not formidable. They had no Navy left at all. Japan has zero natural resources (iron, coal, oil), and had no stockpiles left. There is no way to "rebuild" a 20th century army from rice and wood. They could not have harmed any American serviceman unless he set foot on their
Re:Hiroshima (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hiroshima (Score:2)
PS. What's the rule of thumb for evaluating the veracity of any sentence starting with "100% of the
Re:Hiroshima (Score:3, Interesting)
A city here, a city there (Score:3, Informative)
Not quite true. Kyoto was never bombed. Several others. Hiroshima and Nagasaki escaped bombing until the final attacks. Why? Certain people knew the A Bomb was coming, and they wanted to see the effect on an untouched city.
Many Japanese still believe that Kyoto was never bombed out of respect for that city's cultural importance. One version of the story has it that there was that there was a tacit agreement between the U.S. and Japanese militar
Corrections (Score:3, Informative)
Unless you recognize the name, you'd have no way to tell [Hiroshima] apart from any other gleaming Japanese city.
Except for the Genbaku (Atomic Bomb) Dome [achurch.org] sitting right squat in the middle of the city. That is still as it was 58 years ago, and is probably what the original poster was referring to. Seeing that symbol of destruction really makes you think (and if not, then with all due respect you've got problems).
Note that 100% of Japanese cities were bombed flat in WWII, so all buildings are less th
Wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
That we have them to use discourages their use.
Re:Hiroshima (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hiroshima (Score:3, Insightful)
To make a good demonstration, you'd need to do it on lightly inhabited land so that nearby people can wander onto the blast area and gaze around
Re:Hiroshima (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hiroshima (Score:3, Interesting)
It's only here in the US that we have such guilt about it.
Re:Hiroshima (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hiroshima (Score:2)
One does not outrun a gamma ray.
Numerically, twice as many people died in 1 second at Hiroshima as did in one day at Dresden. Some people might say the amount of pain they suffered makes some difference; I don't.
Re:Hiroshima (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't outrun a firestorm, unless you have muscle tissue that doesn't run by oxidation.
Re:Hiroshima (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hiroshima (Score:3, Informative)
As for nuclear power stations: people like to forget how much damaging are the conventional coal power plants (and they DO emit much more radioactivity) - and nuclear ones replace mostly these, not solar cell farms.
And finally, it should be noted, that his name is Teller Ede, since he was Hungarian.
Re:Hiroshima (Score:4, Insightful)
If you count slow death by radiation poisoning, then the Hiroshima deathcount surpassed Dresden's within 10 years.
Re:Hiroshima (Score:3, Insightful)
IIRC, it was less than a cubic foot of radioactive steam that was released.
Your knee-jerk, poorly-reasoned reaction to seeing that (immediately thinking of a multi-kiloton nuclear blast) is why neither Japan, the US, and most other countries that know how to build nuclear power plants will never be able to take advantage of the clean and efficient source of power that such reactors are.
Just to put things into perspective, c
Check out "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" (Score:4, Informative)
It's a fantastic book about the creation of the Atomic Bomb -- from when scientists first realized the possibility, through the manhatten project. It's set against the backdrop of political events of the first half of the century and provides a fascinating account of the entire experience, including the actions of Edward Teller.
I'd highly recommend it.
Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie (Score:3, Informative)
It is a very moving documentary chronicling the development of atomic weaponry.
Re:Check out "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" (Score:3, Informative)
The book paints Teller as ideosyncratic and egomaniacal, but brilliant. That seems to apply to many of the atomic scientists (Oppenheimer, et al).
The book goes into a lot of great tech detail about the H-Bomb. Building it was an enormously complex engineering problem. The first H-bomb was a cylinder with hemispherical ends that was over 20 feet long and over 6 feet in diameter, and used an A-
Yes (Score:2, Funny)
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Re:Yes (Score:2, Funny)
In Memory of the man... (Score:2, Insightful)
"Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the world!?"
A great loss (Score:5, Insightful)
However, I remember myself as a geeky kid in Malaysia interested in science and technology, writing a letter to one of the 'great names'. I was quite amazed to receive a personal reply to my letter, typewritten but signed by hand. His reply was humble (he never put down any of what must have seemed to him to be naive and silly observations), encouraging (the words "I am pleased that there are children from all over the world like you who are interested in science." aren't much to an adult, but they sure meant a lot to me as a kid!) and inspiring.
That sums up the man in my mind, and I mourn the loss of that man.
Re:A great loss (Score:2, Funny)
Wow, so you actually have a Teller number of 1 ?
If you would only be so kind as to reply to my reply, then I could boast a Teller number of 2.
Hungary is EVIL I tells ya! (Score:3, Funny)
Charles Simonyi: primarily responsible for the creation of Microsoft Office and Hungarian notation. *shudder*
Coincidence or evil Hungarian conspiracy?
Re:Hungary is EVIL I tells ya! (Score:2)
Re:Hungary is EVIL I tells ya! (Score:5, Funny)
Edward Teller, via IOP (Score:4, Interesting)
Glad he was on our side (Score:2, Informative)
Here a link to an interesting interview with Teller along with some video clips: Teller Interview [achievement.org]
Re:Glad he was on our side (Score:2)
Re:Glad he was on our side (Score:2)
Re:Glad he was on our side (Score:2)
obituary writer dead too (Score:5, Interesting)
Walter Sullivan, a science writer and editor for The New York Times, died in 1996.
Spooky.
Re:obituary writer dead too (Score:3, Informative)
IIRC, there was a website slipup where obituaries for people who weren't dead yet suddenly appeared in a code glitch. I think Ronald Reagan was one of them... pretty amusing how poignant they read.
Re:obituary writer dead too (Score:2)
It was the same with Bob Hope's obituary in the NY Times; it was written by Vincent Canby, who predeceased him by several years. Ironic, in a morbid kind of way.
fairwell (Score:2, Interesting)
Friend to the Environment (Score:3, Interesting)
A few years ago, he and colleagues submitted a paper to Nature that suggested dispersing sulfur dioxide or other submicron particles in the stratosphere to block sunlight and thus halt global warming.
Easing the effects of one kind of pollutant by adding a whole bunch of other pollutants to the atmosphere. Goodbye, global warming; hello, acid rain! Between that, and the whole hydrogen bomb thing, I'm guessing he wasn't up for Greenpeace's Man of the Year award.
Re:Friend to the Environment (Score:3, Interesting)
btw, we don't care what Greenpeace thinks... Mwahahaha
It should also be said.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not exactly a nice guy, glowing obituaries asside.
Re:It should also be said.. (Score:5, Informative)
Extract from Times Obituary [timesonline.co.uk] :
"He was later to say that, unlike Oppenheimer, he was opposed to the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, and would have preferred a demonstration of the new weapon's power to Japanese scientists. Nevertheless, in his memoirs, published in 2001, Teller admitted, while continuing to believe that Oppenheimer's opposition to the H-bomb was wrong, that the hearings had been a mistake, and that he himself had been unwise to testify."Re:It should also be said.. (Score:3, Informative)
Read the Venona transcripts. Teller was right, Oppenheimer *was* a communist sympathizer at the very least.
"...we can say for certain that Oppenheimer did in fact knowingly supply classified information on the atom bomb to the Soviet Union." While he directed the Manhattan Project, it was known that J. Robert Oppenheimer's wife, brother, and sister-in-law were all members of the Communist Party. The fact that he regularly gave a large portion of his salary to
Praise? I think not. (Score:5, Interesting)
His ego drove him to push the hydrogen bomb on the world, and his ego prevented him from both admitting his mistake and from doing his best (like many of the other scientists who aided him) to make amends.
For those of who you insist the hydrogen bomb is necessary for national security, you're both ignorant and foolish. The hydrogen bomb has basically no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
A non-hydrogen based atomic bomb has more than enough bang to destroy our enemies. The ONLY use for a hydrogen bomb is planetary destruction.
I, for one, will not miss Teller in the least. He represents the worst of humanity. He was willing to put his ego ahead of, quite literally, ALL else.
you've been x'd! (Score:2)
Oh wait a sec... listen to his coffin...
*tick tick tick tick....*
This article is a travesty. (Score:2, Insightful)
If it were not for Dr. Teller, there likely wouldn't be an Internet nor a Slashdot, because we'd all be too afraid of arrest by the KGB to do anything other than quote Marxist platitudes at one another at our jobs in Red October Tractor Factory #5 or whatever. And for this callow young woman to speculate that th
I met him once... (Score:5, Interesting)
So, I met him in an pseudo-interview with about 6 other students. I asked him if it ever bothered him to be the "Father of the H-Bomb" since his "baby" could be used for such evil and/or immoral purposes.
I thought he was going to jump out of his chair at me.
He got very upset and angrily announced that a scientist's only responsibility is to science. The possible uses of a discovery should not even be considered by the researchers -- that is someone elses business. And because of this, he did not feel even the slightest bit of remorse for his work on the bomb.
And then he upbraided _me_ (since I was on my way to grad school to become a scientist at the time) for thinking that a scientist _should_ worry about the moral implications of his/her work.
Needless to say, I didn't ask any more questions.
Re:I met him once... (Score:2)
KFG
Re:I met him once... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I met him once... (Score:3, Informative)
However, hydrogen bombs are design to kill millions of people in one go. There is no obvious good utility for an atomic weapon of any kind.
Not only that. I think it was Oppenheimer, who opposed the H bomb, who pointed out that America was a better target for H-bombs than the USSR because it was much more urbanised. That was why he opposed it. Teller thought that if the US developed it the Russkies would take ages to catch up .... no prizes in hindsight to see he was wrong on that.
At least Teller gave us
Re:Sure there is... (Score:3, Insightful)
great pic of "the sausage" (Score:2, Interesting)
The Sausage [enviroweb.org]
It doesn't look too impressive until you see the guy sitting in front of it, which puts it into perspective. This was the United State's first thermonuclear device. Yield: 10.4 megatons. Made a big boom. =)
scientist or advocate? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is this accurate or not?
"Perils of Modern Living" (Score:5, Funny)
--
Perils of Modern Living - Harold P. Furth
Well up above the tropostrata
There is a region stark and stellar
Where, on a streak of anti-matter
Lived Dr. Edward Anti-Teller.
Remote from Fusion's origin,
He lived unguessed and unawares
With all his antikith and kin,
And kept macassars[1] on his chairs.
One morning, idling by the sea,
He spied a tin of monstrous girth
That bore three letters: A. E. C.[2]
Out stepped a visitor from Earth.
Then, shouting gladly o'er the sands,
Met two who in their alien ways
Were like as gentils. Their right hands
Clasped, and the rest was gamma rays.
--
[1]. Macassar oil was a popular hair dressing in the 19th century, named after the Indonesian port where the oil purportedly came from. An "antimacassar" is the decorative fabric used on chairs or sofas to protect the upholstery.
[2]. AEC=Atomic Energy Commission, now replaced by DOE=Department of Energy. The AEC (like the DOE today) funded most of the National Laboratories, including Teller's Livermore Laboratory.
No mention of Ulam? (Score:3, Informative)
From:
http://www.phy.bg.ac.yu/web_project
----
Teller and his colleagues at Los Alamos made little actual progress in designing a workable thermonuclear device until early in 1951, when the physicist Stanislaw M. Ulam proposed to use the mechanical shock of an atomic bomb to compress a second fissile core and make it explode; the resulting high density would make the burning of the second core's thermonuclear fuel much more efficient. Teller in response suggested that radiation, rather than mechanical shock, from the atomic bomb's explosion be used to compress and ignite the thermonuclear second core. Together these new ideas provided a firm basis for a fusion weapon, and a device using the Teller-Ulam configuration, as it is now known, was successfully tested at Enewetak atoll in the Pacific on Nov. 1, 1952; it yielded an explosion equivalent to 10 million tons (10 megatons) of TNT.
----
Edward the Great (Score:4, Interesting)
Oppenheimer had been closely associated with communists from his earliest relationships, had latter vigorously attempted to stop H bomb development, and the secrets of the atomic bomb were stolen from under his management. To fault Teller for bearing true witness is lunacy, nearly as crazy as it was to fault Robert for his friendships and point of view, (which he had forthrightly admitted prior to becoming admin of Los Alamos).
Moreover, Teller had a legitimate reason to fear and despise Stalin, along with any group to which he was associated, having witnessed the terror of the Red army spilling familial blood in the streets of Hungary. He had first hand knowledge of the depths of its depravity, and was prescient in his understanding that only inexplicable horror would sate the whims of communist dictators.
That he should love this country enough to devote the greater part of his life and mental energies to protecting US dominance and expanding our sphere of influence to cover the globe demonstrates an uncanny foresight coupled with what must have been a deeply held love for the whole of humanity. Admittedly he hid it well with gruff mannerisms, but any other conclusions are based on illogical, often hysterical premises.
Consider the historical context: Both the Germans AND Japanese were developing nuclear weapons. Stalin killed 25 million Russians, Poles, Jews, etc. Germans killed untold millions after working them to death, and experimented on living 'subjects'. The Japanese were guilty of the Bataan death march, and countless atrocities not limited even to hacking off prisoners penises and sewing them to their lips while still alive, and easily raping and killing millions of innocent civilians. You have to be strictly ignorant of the 20th century not to realize that our obtaining first mastery of atomic structure is the only thing that stopped terrorism on a continental scale. If any of these parties had gained an unanswerable first strike nuclear capability, the untold misery of billions would have hung in the balance.
Teller, Szilard, Oppenheimer, Rabi, Bohr, Rutherford, Einstein, and the other scientists involved in atom & H bomb development are owed a HUGE debt of gratitude by the world, by civilization itself.
The world is a shade darker with the loss of Edward's brilliance.
Kommando Chris
PS: It's sad to realize the unknowing sacrifice of
Hirohito was powerless and mute without the shock and terror delivered to the populous, and if the destruction of Tokyo by bombardment had not produced the desired surrender (civilians were ordered to stay in their homes and try to put out the fires until dead), how many more millions should we have blown up to bring the war to an end?
Simply put, it was the most horrible and humane way to bring a merciful end to the insanity of that war.
PSS: Pacifists (Einstein, Szilard & Fermi(?)) hatched the idea of atomic bombs, the liberal Democrats (FDR) in government secretly commited to and funded these 'horrible' and 'inhumane' weapons, a 'communist' (Oppie) developed them, and another Democrat (Truman) dropped them. Please explain to me why I'm more intelligent, compassionate and humane as a pacifist Democratic voter again? Oh yeah, our party blew up 250,000 innocent civilians. And we freed the slaves, er... wait a minute... and we directly increased taxes to consumers by increasing taxes on the evil corporations, who only add that cost directly to their goods and services...ummmm, shit. Harakiri anyone?
Re:Edward the Great (Score:3, Interesting)
and we directly increased taxes to consumers by increasing taxes on the evil corporations, who only add that cost directly to their goods and services
When a tax on a good is increased, it is rarely the case that the full cost of that tax is passed on to the consumer. How much is passed on depends on the elasticity of demand (ie, taxes on cigarettes come primarily out of the consumers pocket. Taxes on lit
Goodbye, Teller... (Score:3, Funny)
Rockets and Racists (Score:3, Insightful)
1. With regard to the Middle Eastern Mess; it's, well, a mess. None of the Ugly anti-semitic, anti-jewish/anti-arab arguments, slurs, conspiracy theories--ancient and modern-- and what have you are anything like necesary.
Really, save yourself the energy; borrow a page from Witgenstein and, instead of making meaningless statements, why not just say that sickening generalizations aren't worth your time? Really, they aren't and can't be when playing with a yo-yo for the time it took to think up the biggot-stuff would at least have the fact that it built motor coordination to recommend it.
2. Concerning the star wars/anti star wars arguments, it's a nasty can of worms to have opened. Now that that it's in the world, the people who like it seem to hold it in a similar light to that which is usually reserve for questions of religious faith. Star wars just won't die and that's too bad, considering how short life is. I obviously fall on the 'anti' side when it comes to the issue and I think my reasons are good.
Long thoughtful books have been written on just what crap the whole notion of missle defense is. Missile screens are vastly expensive and, like the Maginot Line, limited by their specialization. Worse still, If nothing else, the September 11 attacks clearly and unequivocally demonstrate that the traditional 'nuclear deterrent' enjoyed by the great powers is itself ineffective and is rapidly becoming less so because every small nation that gets nuclear arms and aims them at anything important get to thumb its nose at the great powers that have them. Current affairs in North Korea, suggest that if Saddam Hussein had had them, he'd be smoking a cigar in Baghdad right now.
Real, effective, missile defense is decades and tens, if not hundreds of billions away and even if it had been up and running, running perfectly, from some spotless control center two years ago, it would have been meaningless against 20 guys in the right place armed with ten bucks worth of boxcutters.
In the world of fantasy and need, a simple, single solution like star wars is a magic bullet. Magic bullets aren't like the real world's compromises and partial successes; magic bullets solve all known old problems and create no new ones. When people imagine a magic bullet, hope blows away common sense, in this case, at an unimaginable cost.
Star wars is expensive. Boxcutters are cheap, but real, sustainable peace is cheaper still.
What Teller most wanted to be remembered for. (Score:3, Interesting)
On July 24 of this year, I attended one of these. I can write a lot about what he had to say, but what has come to the fore of my mind since the news of his death was one question in particular. Someone asked him what he most wanted to be remembered for. He responded that his discovery of the "Jahn-Teller effect" was the work that he was most proud of. It involes crystal symmetry arising from interactions between elecrons and nuclei, and turned out to be very important for material science.
This was work that he did to help unravel certain energy configurations of the benzene molecule. I'm not a chemist, so I only have the vaguest notion of what the Jahn-Teller effect entails. But it involves calculating the electron distribution of a molecule, coupled with its vibrational energy. If I am understanding it correctly, Jahn and Teller first demonstrated that the two energy states can be coupled, allowing for a lower, most stable energy state than if each were considered separately. It's still studied to this day.
Teller got very animated while he was talking about his work on this. I find it a shame that none of the writeups and obituaries I've read have mentioned this work. This is my small contribution.
Books that put Teller's role in perspective (Score:3, Informative)
The making of the atomic bomb and Dark Sun - The making of the hydrogen bomb, by Richard Rhodes.
Rhodes won a Pulitzer for the first volume and I daresay it is the better. Both are not without fault (in particular the second was not universally acclaimed in the physics community), but I found them intriguing.
Re:Missiles are necessary (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope.
Eventually every nation, even the ones in Africa, will have nukes.
Yep.
"Nukes" are nuclear explosives, sometimes called "warheads". They do not need missiles to deliver them. Kamikaze terrorists are sufficient. A good ICBM shield does nothing against nukes.
An African nation that fired an ICBM at the US would have 80 missiles targeted to melt it into a puddle before their single shot even reached the Atlantic. Any non-suicidal African dictator who wishes to nuke America will transport the bomb by SUV, not ICBM.
Re:Missiles are necessary (Score:5, Interesting)
You just rent that abandoned warehouse on the edge of town. Every big town has many to choose from.
No need to be a kamikaze either since you don't need to worry about getting close enough to the target like you do with a conventional bomb.
Either set a timer a week or so down the road, set it off with a radio,, or maybe a phone call, or. .
KFG
Re:Missiles are necessary (Score:3, Interesting)
The word "crude" has no place around atomic weapons. You've got to line up the atoms exactly, or almost nothing happens.
However, it would be quite reasonable to ship a bomb as little parts, each 40kg or less, which can be assembled near the target site. I'd personally recommend concealing them inside the air-gaps within wide-screen TVs being shipped from China, but there are lots of ways to hide these things.
gasp, use the intern
Re:Missiles are necessary (Score:2)
though suvs are mighty capable these days...
Re:Missiles are necessary (Score:4, Insightful)
No one would accept the army following the logic, "The enemy has guns, so we could buy bulletproof vests for our soldiers, but if we did that the enemy would just sneak up on them and use knives or bombs instead, so let's not bother with the bulletproof vests and let our soldiers get shot to pieces."
Who's to say that there won't be a suicidal/insane dictator in Africa? Or more likely, what happens if the US decides to invade N. Korea? (Perhaps on a mistaken belief that they don't really have long range missiles, or perhaps for other reasons) In that situation the leader of N. Korea might decide that he's fucked anyways, and decide to launch against the US.
If the US has no antimissile defense, it's going to be in a tough spot. The fact that we can turn N. Korea into a parking lot afterwards won't make those of us on the west coast feel much better about the situation. There's even a slight chance the US won't feel that launching a counterstrike is politically viable. Our friends in S. Korea wouldn't be too happy about all the radiation right next door, and although i would expect internation opinion to be on our side, the way the US has been treating it's allies lately, who knows?
If the US had an antimissile shield on the other hand, N. Korea's nukes get blown up in flight, and the ground invasion grinds on.
Re:Missiles are necessary (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Missiles are necessary (Score:2, Troll)
Oh, a CIA investigation! Oh that's really reliable. Especially considering that all direct evidence of the perpetrators was atomized at ground zero. As was Langley itself.
The only evidence firm enough for a reflexive venegance-strike is a radar-track from Lesotho to Pennsylvania Avenue.
Re:Missiles are necessary (Score:2, Insightful)
It was the best non-deployed weapons program ever conceived.
And it should stay that way.
Re:Wow he was old (Score:4, Funny)
Leni Riefenstahl died the same (previous?) day aged 101! Maybe making Nazi propaganda movies is the secret to longevity?
Hans Bethe (Score:4, Interesting)
Probably just a coincidence, maybe...
Re:Wow he was old (Score:2)
Re:Wow he was old (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A great? (Score:5, Interesting)
His contributions to the field of physics are nil, unlike Oppenheimer et al.
He also brought the most destructive power in the universe and allowed humans to not only destruct themselves but the whole planet. That is just too rotten... thank you Mr. Teller!
Re:Surprised that he lived so long... (Score:2)
Doubt he spend more than a couple of hours in his whole life near anything radioactive.
Re:95? (Score:2)
Re:relax... (Score:2)
Re:He was the Osama Bin Laden of Science (Score:2, Interesting)
He scared the Congress and President so much as both the head of SAC and as a loon that they instituted the Civilian Control of Nuclear Weapons so that he couldn't use them as much as he wanted to.