Slashdot Mirror
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."
(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.
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.
In case you're an idiot like me, you might appreciate to know that interferometry is about studying the properties of two or more waves by looking at the pattern of interference created by their superposition. The instrument used to interfere the waves together is called an interferometer.
What, you don't remember this stuff from Physics 101? Shame on you...
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
Chu is a popular name, you insensitive clod.
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.
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.
Web Hosting: Unlimited storage and bandwidth: $5/month
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.
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?
Just because it's a popular last name doesn't mean that everyone with the last name 'Chu' is sterile, you insensitie clod.
...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.
^-- I'm with stupid
There, fixed that for you.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
I seriously hope that this new administration will end the era where willful ignorance was a virtue.
What's more, he's replacing a typical D.C. corporate revolving-door appointment, Samuel Bodman. 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.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
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.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The last thing you want is someone so hands on in a high level position.
Worked for Monika Lewinsky.
Worked for Monika Lewinsky.
Lewinski? Don't want to stain that good name. Might get a dressing-down.
You here that? That's the noise hell makes as it flash freezes.
Lewinski?
Close, but no cigar.
... I'll bet Chu will be thinking that physics is a piece of cake compared to governing the US.
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.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
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 our sakes, don't take them from their honest work and make lobbyists out of them. I'd rather you set money on fire. Really.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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.
... more than lazzis faire.
Yeah. Damn lazy fairies.
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 and can be trapped), then release the trap letting the atoms drop.
If you have a laser in the atom's path, by appropriately tuning the laser you can produce repulsive force on the atoms (I forget whether this has to be blue-shifted or red-shifted from the transition, but either way it can be done), so much like a rod in a stream, it will force the atoms to take one path or another as it drops under gravity.
The actual scheme in the experiment is probably way more complicated than this (they do claim factor of 2500 increase in the area covered, so the atoms must travel longer somehow), but it's nothing ridiculous. Maybe a little too technical for someone who's not an atomic physicist to grasp immediately.
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.
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.
. . . 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 tomorrow and this man is still hard at working trying to provide energy solutions only confirms what an excellent choice he is.
The ineptitude of the Bush administration isn't just in the man himself, it was the slew of yes-men appointed to important positions that has made our government ineffective for the last eight years.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
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?
i have to break it to y'all ... but this isn't really steve's work. of course he's a genius, but no one (including the press) has mentioned that the last author is Holger Mueller. in the (physical and biological) sciences there's a fairly well established protocol that the first author is the one who did the actual work and the last author is the leader of the project. of course, there's exceptions to the rule and these are always stated in the footnotes.
i think this is an example of the press just trying to use someones name to get more attention.... as usual.