New York Times on the Web Forums Science

Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

lchic - 10:01pm Jun 23, 2003 EST (# 12645 of 12690)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

'Einy a dolt?' --- quite gave me a jolt --- I spoke of 'dot' --- you noticed NOT!

'Move over Rupert, Kerry and Singo' --- DownUnder no 'hounds' more go get 'em DINGO

When 'Gella' bends forks he also bends truth --- yet some fork it in - have the minds ... no ... more whim

-----

If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day. --John A. Wheeler, physicist

[Richard Feynnman was his most famous pupil]

He had the best grades in physics and mathematics that anyone had seen, but on the other hand he was close to the bottom in history, literature and fine arts

http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Feynman.html

His doctoral work at Princeton was supervised by John Wheeler, and after finding the first problem that Wheeler gave him rather intractable, he went back to ideas he had thought about while at MIT. The first seminar that he gave at Princeton was to an audience which included Einstein, Pauli and von Neumann. Pauli said at the end [4]:-

I do not think this theory can be right ...

This was Richard Feynman nearing the crest of his powers. At twenty-three ... there was no physicist on earth who could match his exuberant command over the native materials of theoretical science. It was not just a facility at mathematics (though it had become clear ... that the mathematical machinery emerging from the Wheeler-Feynman collaboration was beyond Wheeler's own ability). Feynman seemed to possess a frightening ease with the substance behind the equations, like Einstein at the same age, like the Soviet physicist Lev Landau - but few others.

Feynman worked on the atomic bomb project at Princeton University (1941-42) and then at Los Alamos (1943-45). When he was approached during his final year of research to take part in the project his first reaction had been a very definite no since he was entering the final stages of work for his thesis at the time [4]:-

... I went back to my thesis - for about three minutes. Then I began to pace the floor and think about the thing. The Germans had Hitler and the possibility of developing an atomic bomb was obvious, and the possibility that they would develop it before we did was very much of a fright.

lchic - 10:08pm Jun 23, 2003 EST (# 12646 of 12690)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

UK --- Truth --- a Commons committee still searching

Alastair Campbell will now appear before a Commons committee investigating claims that the public was misled in the run-up to the war on Iraq, Downing Street announced today. The appearance of Whitehall's chief spin doctor - Tony Blair's director of communications and strategy - at the foreign affairs select committee inquiry marks a u-turn by Downing Street.

It rejected an initial approach, saying such a move would break with precedent, and turned down a second request from the committee only on Friday. ....

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,983361,00.html

lchic - 10:31pm Jun 23, 2003 EST (# 12647 of 12690)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

His vocation - teaching physics at Beloit College, in Wisconsin

Nth Country Project (1964)

could a couple of non-experts, with brains but no access to classified research, crack the "nuclear secret"?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,983880,00.html

lchic - 10:33pm Jun 23, 2003 EST (# 12648 of 12690)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

"It's a very strange story," says Selden, then a lowly 28-year-old soldier drafted into the army and wondering how to put his talents to use, when he received a message that Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb and the grumpy commanding figure in the US atomic programme, wanted to see him. "I went to DC and we spent an evening together. But he began to question me in great detail about the physics of making a nuclear weapon, and I didn't know anything. As the evening wore on, I knew less and less. I went away very, very discouraged. Two days later a call comes through: they want you to come to Livermore." (GU - above)

(42 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense