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Chu's Final Breakthrough Before Taking Office
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."
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.
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.
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.
You are right. Many researchers would not make a good manager. OTH, Dr. Chu is ALREADY director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and doing a good job. I am guessing that he will do a bang up job as nation director. Far too often politicians bring in more politicians because they LIKE the person, not because the person is qualified to lead. In this case, Chu is not likely to be BSed.
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.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
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.
I seriously hope that this new administration will end the era where willful ignorance was a virtue.
... I'll bet Chu will be thinking that physics is a piece of cake compared to governing the US.
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.
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.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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.
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.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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.