{"id":762,"date":"2006-04-19T14:58:17","date_gmt":"2006-04-19T19:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2006\/04\/19\/physicists-against-the-nuclear-option\/"},"modified":"2006-04-19T14:58:17","modified_gmt":"2006-04-19T19:58:17","slug":"physicists-against-the-nuclear-option","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2006\/04\/19\/physicists-against-the-nuclear-option\/","title":{"rendered":"Physicists against the nuclear option"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Via <a href=\"http:\/\/digbysblog.blogspot.com\/2006_04_01_digbysblog_archive.html#114542554130771528\">digby<\/a>:  Jorge Hirsch at UC San Diego has <a href=\"http:\/\/informationclearinghouse.info\/article12769.htm\">gathered a few of his friends<\/a> &#8212; Nobel Laureates, Boltzmann and Fields Medalists, Medal of Science winners, and past Presidents of the American Physical Society &#8212; to write a <a href=\"http:\/\/physics.ucsd.edu\/petition\/physicistsletter.html\">letter<\/a> to President Bush, urging him not to use nuclear weapons against Iran.  The signatories are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> Philip Anderson, professor of physics at Princeton University and Nobel Laureate in Physics<\/li>\n<li> Michael Fisher, professor of physics at the Institute for Physical Science and Technology, University of Maryland and Wolf Laureate in Physics<\/li>\n<li> David Gross, professor of theoretical physics and director of the Kavli Institute of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Nobel Laureate in Physics<\/li>\n<li> Jorge Hirsch, professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego<\/li>\n<li> Leo Kadanoff, professor of physics and mathematics at the University of Chicago and recipient of the National Medal of Science<\/li>\n<li> Joel Lebowitz, professor of mathematics and physics, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and Boltzmann Medalist<\/li>\n<li> Anthony Leggett, professor of physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Nobel Laureate, Physics<\/li>\n<li> Eugen Merzbacher, professor of physics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and former president, American Physical Society<\/li>\n<li> Douglas Osheroff, professor of physics and applied physics, Stanford University and Nobel Laureate, Physics<\/li>\n<li> Andrew Sessler, former director of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and former president, American Physical Society<\/li>\n<li> George Trilling, professor of physics, University of California, Berkeley, and former president, American Physical Society<\/li>\n<li> Frank Wilczek, professor of physics, MIT and Nobel Laureate, Physics<\/li>\n<li> Edward Witten, professor of physics, Institute for Advanced Study and Fields Medalist<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In reality, winning a Nobel Prize doesn&#8217;t make you an informed judge of geopolitical affairs.  But anyone in their right mind can see it would be a bad idea to launch a nuclear first strike against Iran or anyone else, and these folks are in their right minds.  Hopefully they can lend some heft and gather some publicity for the cause.<\/p>\n<p>Part of me wonders whether the administration understands perfectly well that a nuclear strike would be madness, but they want to give the impression of being reckless cowboys so that Iran will dismantle their nuclear program &#8212; that&#8217;s a hopeless plan, of course, but at least not wildly irreponsible.  Then I remember that they have consistently acted like reckless cowboys in every previous situation, and my heart sinks a little.  Remember <a href=\"http:\/\/preposterousuniverse.blogspot.com\/2004\/06\/laws-of-nature.html\">DeLong&#8217;s Law<\/a>:  &#8220;The Bush Administration is always worse than one imagines, even when taking into account DeLong&#8217;s Law.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Via digby: Jorge Hirsch at UC San Diego has gathered a few of his friends &#8212; Nobel Laureates, Boltzmann and Fields Medalists, Medal of Science winners, and past Presidents of the American Physical Society &#8212; to write a letter to President Bush, urging him not to use nuclear weapons against Iran. The signatories are: Philip [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-and-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}