Chu's Final Breakthrough Before Taking Office 233
KentuckyFC writes "While preparing for the job of US Secretary of Energy in the incoming Obama administration (and being director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a Nobel Prize winner to boot), Steven Chu has somehow found time to make a major breakthrough in the world of atom interferometry. One measure of an interferometer's sensitivity is the area that its arms enclose. Chu and colleagues have found a way to increase this area by a factor of 2,500 by canceling out the noise introduced by lasers, which work as beam splitters sending atoms down different arms (abstract). One thing this makes possible is the use of different types of atoms in the same interferometer, allowing a new generation of tests of the equivalence principle. (This is the assumption that the m in F=ma and the m's in F= Gm1.m2/r^2 are the same thing). Let's hope he's got equally impressive breakthroughs planned for his encore as US Secretary of Energy."
I know, right? (Score:5, Funny)
(This is the assumption that the m in F=ma and the m's in F= Gm1.m2/r^2 are the same thing).
That's what she said.
Re:I know, right? (Score:5, Funny)
(This is the assumption that the m in F=ma and the m's in F= Gm1.m2/r^2 are the same thing)
Bah! Just another example of More-of-the-Same! Where's the change we were promised from the Obama Administration!
Just another example of an Obama appointee trying to maintain a status quo!
On a serious note... (Score:3, Insightful)
How can they *not* be the same? Aren't they sort of defined to be equal via the fudge-factor "G" in the second equation? If the m's were different, the value of G would just be adjusted to make them the same again, no?
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Not "final" (Score:3, Interesting)
The title seems to imply he wont make any more breakthroughs after taking office. Yet I hope and I think that he should continue to due science work even after taking office and there is no reason why he couldnt.
Re:Not "final" (Score:5, Funny)
I'd just love to hear him use the phrase, "Look at me, still talking while there's science to do."
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I want to hear him testify before congress and use the phrase "Science... it works, bitches."
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I would love "Oh yeah? *Fuck* your theory!" [stevefu.net]. But unfortunately that's a bit strong for a man in his position.
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Pure awesome.
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Hey, they could use more cake in the DOE. :)
Re:Not "final" (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Not "final" (Score:5, Insightful)
he should continue to due science work even after taking office and there is no reason why he couldnt.
Right, because as Secretary of Energy he'll have oodles of spare time. It's not as if the nation needs governing or anything.
Re:Not "final" (Score:5, Insightful)
Chu's Final Breakthrough Before Taking Office
Keith Dawson wrongly titles yet another article. Surprise surprise.
(I'm going to assume the title hasn't changed since you wrote that.)
Unless Chu has another breakthrough he's going to unleash before... Tuesday I would say it's a pretty accurate title. I doubt he'll make another breakthrough in 24 hours.
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Unless Chu has another breakthrough he's going to unleash before... Tuesday I would say it's a pretty accurate title. I doubt he'll make another breakthrough in 24 hours.
Oh, the way things go in the academia, I wouldn't be surprised if there's another paper in preparation with Steve Chu's name on it.
If you fudge the timing a little (you know, did the breakthrough happen when the experiment worked and data was taken, or did it happen when a public version of preprint showed up somewhere?), this may indeed not be his final breakthrough before taking office.
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Hate to close the door on him yet...
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/sig.html [umich.edu]
The future is an uncertain thing. Perhaps America will be destroyed with Russian nuclear missiles by tomorrow. Perhaps Obama will be assassinated and someone else will be chosen for the post. Perhaps he will turn down the post at the last minute. Perhaps there will be another breakthrough.
The title (possibly wrongfully, but probably not) assumes that Chu has no additional breakthroughs (or even research published) bef
Interferowhatsjiggy? (Score:5, Informative)
What, you don't remember this stuff from Physics 101? Shame on you...
Re:Interferowhatsjiggy? (Score:5, Informative)
One of the neatest applications of this is the Michaelson Morely experiment. A the time of this work, theory was going back and forth between light as a wave and light as particle, and at the time light was a classical wave, which meant it needed a medium to travel, like sound needs air or water waves. It was theorized that the universe was saturated with an aether to carry the light. IIRC, it was theorized that as the Earth moved through the aether, there would be differences in the speed of light based on direction the light is going. In this work, a light beam was split, made to travel in perpendicular direction, and the difference in speed measured.
No difference was measured. this implied that no aether existed. this implies that the waves traveled without a medium. This was quite a surprising result, and was the beginning of the end for classical mechanics. 10 years later we had quantized energy, 15 years later we had the photoelectric effect tell us light was a particle, and a few years after that we have matrix and wave mechanics.
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a few years after that we have matrix and wave mechanics.
And a few years later we have the whole thing is a hologram [slashdot.org] and the speed of light (and everything else) is subject to where you are because that alters your light cone and hence your local laws of physics.
Sometimes I think the more you know, the more aware you are of how much you don't know.
Re:Interferowhatsjiggy? (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder if the noise this breakthrough removed was the same noise observed there or a ddifferent kind?
Neither. The world-as-you-know it is imaginary. The rest of us are really not here. All of this stimulus is being fed directly into your brain by a computer. You're in a coma, and not likely to recover. Sorry, dude. We'll make it look as close to real as we can. (Roll cheerleader porn).
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If light is both a wave and a particle, does that mean that the light "wave" is actually a standing wave (vibration?) inside the light particle (aka photon)? With the particle moving the wave would appear to be travelling.
What happens if two photons collide (head-on)? Do they go straight through each other? Do they bounce? With the theory that every particle exhibits wave/particle duality, they should bounce.
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I'm used to interferometry (in the astronomical context), but a particle physicist I'm not, and this abstract left me wishing there were an abstract of the abstract.
Re:Interferowhatsjiggy? (Score:5, Funny)
People with mod points.
Re:Interferowhatsjiggy? (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is, intelligent people with a better-than-average knowledge of physics may not be familiar with atom interferometry. He didn't know what it was, researched it, and provided a definition for the benefit of others. That's being informative. Whining about how stupid it is to provide information because you're, admittedly, unfamiliar with the subject is flaming.
Re:Interferowhatsjiggy? (Score:5, Funny)
*raises hand*
Some of us don't have time to learn EVERYTHING, since we do go outside every once in a while. That's that bright place between your folks' basement and the D&D store, btw.
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Re:Interferowhatsjiggy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Thirded. Outside was a difficult concept to me too before I read the GP's explanation. Wait a minute....
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I didn't. I was going to look it up, but I figured someone would explain it in the comments. Oh, look....
Obviously... (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously this is just an attempt by the democrats to distract from the nation's problems as Obama takes office. They should be ashamed of themselves for exploiting the public's interest in atom interferometry this way.
Nice Change (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Nice Change (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a nice change from the previous high level government officials of the Bush Administration, who were appointed not based on their knowledge and experience in a given field, but their willingness to bend the truth according to the Bush administration dogma.
That was my initial reaction. But at that level of responsibility I much prefer someone being appointed for their competency to manage well rather than their ability to do technical work. I have no idea if Chu is a good manager or not, just saying that the Peter Principle is something to be avoided.
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Two things:
First, someone as generally intelligent as Chu should be able to figure his job out no matter what. We're not talking about idiot savants here, we're talking about people who are incredibly good learners.
Second, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Berkeley_National_Laboratory [wikipedia.org]
Re:Nice Change (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know a lot about Chu, but over the years I've worked at a University, I've come to the conclusion that people skills and scientific skills are largely orthoganal - some people have both, but a number of researchers are either extraordinarily shy and nonconfrontational or egomaniacs, neither of which make good leaders. I hope that Chu is of the sort that's good at both.
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"That was my initial reaction. But at that level of responsibility I much prefer someone being appointed for their competency to manage well rather than their ability to do technical work. I have no idea if Chu is a good manager or not, just saying that the Peter Principle is something to be avoided."
I can appreciate that, but I think there's also an advantage in someone like this being elevated to that position where they may serve as inspiration for others.
Hadn't heard of the Peter Principle before - chee
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What makes you think Bush appointees where good managers? Or where even close to being competent for the position they where appointed to?
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I work at LBL (as a guest, not an employee) and Steven Chu is very well-liked around here. He does have a rather disturbing laugh though.
Re:Nice Change (Score:5, Funny)
Does he have a habit of laughing while doing an experiment in the lab in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm?
Re:Nice Change (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, I'd rather have one with both but, well, is it really preferable to have a good manager with poor scientific skills at the head of what is mainly a technology department rather than a scientist with poor managerial skills (which, some clues indicate, Chu is not) ?
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Because at the highest levels it is more important to understand how to mange your technical people to get the job done that it is to know exactly what they are doing. That's not to say that some understanding to the technology involved shouldn't be a goal of a good manager. Clearly you can't make decisions about direction without know what you are directing; but at the highest level of an organization I rather see a brilliant manager with a good overview of the technology, than a brilliant technician who
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Because at the highest levels it is more important to understand how to mange your technical people to get the job done that it is to know exactly what they are doing.
Well, I disagree here. In this particular department, I feel it is important for the decision maker to know how nuclear waste decays, for example, and what are the reasonable expectation one can have in a 5 years horizon about nuclear recycling. He will have to make decisions based on this particular knowledge. Such decisions could endanger whole regions for several centuries if done badly. I'd rather have him use ten times the resources a good manager would need to make his administration work than having
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That was my initial reaction. But at that level of responsibility I much prefer someone being appointed for their competency to manage well rather than their ability to do technical work. I have no idea if Chu is a good manager or not, just saying that the Peter Principle is something to be avoided.
That's rather unfair. I'm guessing this wasn't a one man technical effort and that Steven Chu led a team. Now that doesn't immediately make him competent to lead at the national level but I don't think he could b
Re:Nice Change (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this is even truer than it sounds. A lot of people Obama's tagged have very little incentive to take the position other than if they feel they might be able to get stuff done. All the good scientists I know mostly just want to work on cool and interesting things and see administration and bureaucracy as a necessary evil, making the aspects of these jobs which can be exploited for monetary gain less attractive than getting back to a lab. Furthermore, any career politicians in their positions would be ruined by going around the administration, whereas it's not like Steven Chu will ever struggle to find a job he wants. The upshot is that these guys have little to lose by being forced to resign, whereas it'd look horrible for Obama if they go off in a huff because he won't listen to them. Obama's been accused of talking change without having any substance, but I think he just hit the point of no return on following good science. It'll certainly be nice to see Nobel Prizes having more weight than Magic 8-Balls.
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Paper shuffling is not a good job (Score:3, Interesting)
At least it should not be a national goal to take the people who are expanding the realm of human knowledge and chain them to a desk managing federal middle managers. It's cruel. It's wasteful.
Kudos to the incoming administration for being able to figure out who the thinkers in their country are. That's a refreshing change from the previous administration. Now please - for the sake of us all - when you identify them, leave them in place and appoint administrators to get stuff out of their way. For all
For the Record... (Score:5, Informative)
From http://arXiv.org/auth/show-endorsers/0901.1819 :
Holger Müller: Is registered as an author of this paper.
Sven Herrmann, Sheng-wey Chiow and Steven Chu are not registered as owners of this paper.
Sure, it doesn't nail down who did what exactly, but if I had a question about the paper, I'm asking Holger first.
Re:For the Record... (Score:5, Informative)
According to http://arxiv.org/help/not-registered.html, Steven Chu may not be a registered owner for as simple a reason as not having a user account with that website.
That said, Mueller is listed as final author of the paper and Steven Chu is listed second to last, which pretty much throws all assumptions based on position out the window. (See http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=562 for a comedic but sadly true primer).
Mueller served as a postdoc under Chu but both are professors. Based on Mueller's other publications (http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/faculty/mueller.html) and Chu's second-to-last position, I'd say the other two names are postdocs in his lab. Really, I'd ask those two if you want to know the specifics on this experiment. Blind guess at Chu's role, but probably functionally a PI - more of an adviser role.
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Chu is a big name, so its hard to tell whether he was the driving force behind this research, or tossed on the list of authors to get funding. Muller is an Assistant Professor. Chiow is a post-doc.
Herrman, I can't find a position for via a quick google search, but it looks like he's been putting out papers under Muller for 5 years, which means he's been working under him even longer. The only way you'd work under one person for that long without having a larger internet presence is as a meek and lowly gr
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From http://arxiv.org/auth/show-endorsers/0901.1819 [arxiv.org] :
Holger Müller: Is registered as an author of this paper.
This means that Holger Müller is the guy who logged onto arXiv and uploaded the paper. It has nothing to do with who actually contributed how much to the research.
So Let me get this straight (Score:5, Funny)
Our incoming president reads spiderman comics and his secretary of energy is some incredible nobel prize winning genius who ran a program called "Bio-X", can we possibly get more nerdy?
Re:So Let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
Our incoming president reads spiderman comics and his secretary of energy is some incredible nobel prize winning genius who ran a program called "Bio-X", can we possibly get more *AWESOME*?
There, fixed that for you.
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Nerdy? (Score:2)
I don't know about that, but it certainly sounds like a recipe for disaster.
When Obama turns into an evil Oba-man we'll know who to blame.
Dammit Steve Chu (Score:3, Funny)
1. Prove the Riemann Hypothesis.
2. Bring peace to the Mid-East.
3. Turn out that to have made an amazingly human AI in his free time that escaped and now calls itself Randall Munroe and writes xkcd.
Re:Dammit Steve Chu (Score:5, Funny)
No, he'll bring Linux to the desktop, cure cancer, and get Adobe to release 64-bit Photoshop for the Mac... in that order.
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I see a successor to the Chuck Norris facts...
Heck, I just saw a successor to the Chuck Norris facts [barackobamafacts.com].
After his first 100 days in office... (Score:5, Insightful)
They're the same thing, mostly. (Score:2)
(This is the assumption that the m in F=ma and the m's in F= Gm1.m2/r^2 are the same thing).
I think 350 years of experiments on Newtonian physics have shown that they are the same thing except in weird-ass quantum or near-speed-of-light situations that don't really matter anyway.
Don't go confusing the high school kiddies, please. They're already confused enough about evolution thanks to media spinelessness.
Here is the difference (Score:2, Interesting)
. . . between Obama and Bush. Bush appointed a professional politician (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham) and then someone slightly more qualified, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_W._Bodman), a venture capitalist who had attended MIT. Abraham had nothing to do with energy Bodman has done nothing but executive positions for the last thirty years. Obama chose someone who's really qualified and isn't financially tied to our current energy industries. Considering that the inauguration is tomorr
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Chu is a popular name, you insensitive clod.
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Just because it's a popular last name doesn't mean that everyone with the last name 'Chu' is sterile, you insensitie clod.
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Just because it's a popular last name doesn't mean that everyone with the last name 'Chu' is sterile, you insensitie clod.
Quite the opposite, I would think.
Re:Unfortunately... (Score:5, Informative)
...the article didn't say who did the work.
Just the politician whose name is attached to it.
unfortunately.. you don't understand whats going on.... the man being selected for the DOE position is a scientist, not a politician. And while preparing to become a politician, he still made progress as a scientist.
It says who did the work. Steven Chu. He will soon become a politician who has actually done something in life.
Re:Unfortunately... (Score:5, Insightful)
I seriously hope that this new administration will end the era where willful ignorance was a virtue.
more than that. (Score:2, Insightful)
Politics aside, Bush was a lazy President.
He fucked around and of course things went to pot. He took more vacation days than any other President.
It's that lack of work more than ideology that got us in such a mess. These mistakes had little if anything to do with liberal vs conservative. (disclaimer - I am quite liberal)
The war and occupation would have appeared a whole lot less stupid if they had actually been thoroughly planned.
Deregulation may have weakened the safeguards of the financial system, but it
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Say what you want, but the memo entitled 'Bin Laden determined to strike targets in the US' was ignored. Even if the attack could not have been prevented, the military and intelligence services could have been on high alert and emergency services on a higher alert. Lazy! Lazy! Fucking life threatening laziness.
It's easy to say that, but those memos had been streaming in for a long time, and frankly, there's damned near nothing that you can do to proactively prevent such a vague threat, apart from appeasing the people making the threats.
Similarly, disaster preparedness is always a good idea, no matter what any intelligence or weather reports say. In the case of 9/11, local responders were tremendously well-prepared (even in spite of losing their primary command post), while New Orleans' inadequate response to Kat
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How about assassinating them? Bush is a big fan of preemptive strikes, so why didn't he authorize one against Bin Laden?
I'm conservative, but I'm very glad to see that administration finally leave.
Re:more than that. (Score:4, Funny)
... more than lazzis faire.
Yeah. Damn lazy fairies.
Re:Unfortunately... (Score:5, Insightful)
I sincerely hope that too. I have no idea where "[presidential candidate] is an average person like me" suddenly became a virtue, but it's disheartening. I won't speak for anybody else, but I don't want the president or other high-ranking officials to be average or as smart as me. I want them to be brilliant. I want them to be so brilliant that no matter how smart I am, I feel like an idiot every time he speaks.
Obviously there are other qualities that are important. Being brilliant is essentially meaningless if it also means indecisive. But yes, I want politicians who hear all sides of arguments, consider all sides of arguments--UNDERSTAND all sides of arguments. Then make whatever choice they think is the best based on their intelligence and the knowledge they've just gained. I have no idea why we would settle for less, but we consistently do. There are certainly many others on both sides of the isle, but Bush would have to be the poster child for people with mediocre minds and no concern for expert opinion doing whatever they please without hearing from anybody who disagrees.
Re:Unfortunately... (Score:5, Informative)
What's more, he's replacing a typical D.C. corporate revolving-door appointment, Samuel Bodman [wikipedia.org]. The man sat on his thumbs while energy prices trebled during Bush's time. He came from Wall Street ferchrisakes, and he'll probably head back to the corporate world, where I'm sure he'll be heartily welcomed for taking up the business agenda while at DOE.
With Chu, there's a pretty good chance he'll point DOE in a new direction, towards funded research for actual energy alternatives.
Good riddance to the Bush robber barons.
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Re:Unfortunately... (Score:4, Insightful)
There, fixed that for you.
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^-- I'm with stupid
Re:practical use? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah it's a shame Joe Sixpack hasn't been able to enjoy any of the techno-elitist discoveries of the last 2,000 years (or as he used to be called Joe Sixmule).
What we need to do is elect more people without any experience or education in the area they've been tapped to administer so that government can concentrate on failing to provide any service what so ever.
Re:practical use? (Score:4, Insightful)
What we need to do is elect more people without any experience or education in the area they've been tapped to administer so that government can concentrate on failing to provide any service what so ever.
There's two schools of thought when it comes to management:
1. Managers should have experience in the field so they can make informed decisions based on their background knowledge.
2. Managers should know how to manage and can rely on advisers to provide the technical information upon which they base their decisions
And the thing is, neither school of thought is inherently right or wrong.
It is totally dependent on the position to be filled and many can go either way.
For example, Obama picked the 1st type of manager to be Sec of Energy, yet he picked the 2nd type to head the CIA.
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artor3 (1344997) - "He's the director of a research institute with over four thousand employees and a half billion dollar budget. I think he can handle the managerial stuff just fine."
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Management consultant here, e focuse
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I wouldn't preclude somebody without knowledge of a particular field from managing it, if I'm confident that they are smart and dedicated enough to quickly pick up a quantity of information.
That said, the best managers are going to be option 3: 1 & 2. If you don't know how to manage, or if you're at the senior-most levels of an agency yet bogged down in informational details and micromanaging rather than big-picture leadership, you're not going to be effective. Likewise, if you know nothing about wh
Re:great researcher not a great manager make (Score:5, Insightful)
In light of the idiots that we have had directing the science world for the last 8 years (and to be honest even in Clinton and reagans terms), this is refreshing.
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Some of the biggest idiots I have met in my life have also had the most IQ and education.
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That may be true. It is also true, however, that a very large fraction of the idiots I have met in *my* life have low IQs and little education.
Moral: Maybe you should stop hanging around in law firms?
Oh really? (Score:5, Insightful)
The highest IQ guy I've ever met (that I know about) drove a car for a living and aspired to not work any harder than he had to. His greatest aspiration was to get laid today if he could. He seldom met this goal. His IQ was measured at 165. He was interesting to talk to. Most people aren't.
His hero was Groo the Wanderer [comics-db.com].
What did this experience teach me about intelligence? Exactly nothing. Which is what I gained from your post. But at least you didn't puke in my shoes like he did.
Re:Wrong experience ? (Score:5, Informative)
He's the director of a research institute with over four thousand employees and a half billion dollar budget. I think he can handle the managerial stuff just fine.
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The last thing you want is someone so hands on in a high level position.
Worked for Monika Lewinsky.
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Worked for Monika Lewinsky.
Lewinski? Don't want to stain that good name. Might get a dressing-down.
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Lewinski?
Close, but no cigar.
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Yeah, because that's worked *SO* well for the past 38 [wikipedia.org] years.
fixed
DOH! I kno dah maths! (Score:2)
Yeah, because that's worked *SO* well for the past 38 [wikipedia.org] years.
fixed
This is what I get for quitting caffeine cold turkey.
it should read 28 years!
Re:Qualifications (Score:5, Informative)
As has been pointed out many, many, ... many times before.
He's the director, as in, head honcho, manager type, of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a Department of Energy funded facility. He's undoubtedly familiar with the rules and regulations of the DoE. In addition, he directs a staff over -over- four thousand scientists and management, and commands a budget -over- five hundred million dollars annually.
How is he not qualified, again?
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He's too highly qualified (Score:2)
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It's great and all that he's so smart, but how will his experience translate into change in our nation's energy policy? We get most of our power from coal, oil, natural gas, and hydro, so how does his research have any bearing on those sources?
well, as a physicist he would know from examination of the energy alternatives being debated whether energy lobbyists are blowing smoke or voicing genuine concerns.
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It's great and all that he's so smart, but how will his experience translate into change in our nation's energy policy? We get most of our power from coal, oil, natural gas, and hydro, so how does his research have any bearing on those sources?
Since he was appointed director of LBL in 2004, he has focused the organization on research into alternative energy. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Chu#Energy_and_global_warming [wikipedia.org].
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Lasers work as beams splitters ?
Sending atoms ?
Um, yeah, right.
I'm not familiar with the details, but at first sight, I don't see a problem with those statements.
Remember, this is an atom interferometry. The "beam" refers to a beam of atoms. It's the wavefunction of the atoms that are being used to produce the signal, not the laser (which is the more garden-variety interferometry like one used in LIGO). From the description I get in the abstract, it sounds like they first laser-cool the atoms in a trap (probably magnetic, as the atoms used are frequently paramagnetic a