FEBRUARY 2012 • Vol
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Inside Top Physics News of 2011 A PUBLICATION OF THE AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY see page 3 FEBRUARY 2012 • VOl. 21, No. 2 • WWW.APS.ORG/PUBLICATIONS/APSNEWS/INDEX.CFM APS Membership Soars Above 50,000 Benchmark Four Distinguished Scientists to Give The official count of APS mem- ing. It shows the organization is APS Membership Increases Beller, Marshak Lectures bers for 2012 has been tabulated doing a great job reaching out to 2009-2012 60,000 and the Society has reached a new its members,” said Trish Lettieri, 50,055 The recipients of the 2012 at the April Meeting in Atlanta. Total Members record enrollment of 50,055 mem- APS’s Director of Membership. 50,000 Beller and Marshak lectureships Ömer Yavaş from Ankara Uni- bers. This surpassed last year’s Student and junior membership have been selected and will give versity in Turkey will deliver the 49,000 record of 48,263 by 1,792 new both grew about 10 percent over their talks at this year’s March Marshak lecture at the March and April meetings. The speakers Meeting. members, an increase of about 3.7 last year, accelerating a trend that 48,000 percent. This is also the first time started in 2006. Lettieri credits this were selected by the APS Com- “The participation of invited the membership has passed the increase in part to a refocused em- 47,000 mittee on International Scientific speakers from abroad is an op- 50,000 milestone. phasis on promoting APS benefits Affairs (CISA), from nomina- portunity, in particular for stu- 46,000 tions submitted by various APS dents and young researchers, to Membership increased in nearly to physicists at all stages of their 2009 2010 2011 2012 14,843 units. hear about research carried out all areas that APS tracked. Catego- careers as well as to retention ef- 15,000 ries that showed the biggest growth forts by APS staff. The increase in Student Members Terry Quinn from the Bu- in other countries,” said CISA are student and junior member- regular members partially stems 14,400 reau International des Poids et member Maria Allegrini of the ships. In addition, the number of from that trend, as existing junior Mesures in France and Roberta University of Pisa. regular members grew for the first members stayed on and became 13,800 Sessoli from the University of Each lectureship comes with Florence in Italy will be deliv- up to $2,000 in funding to help time in a decade. The number of full members. 13,200 members from outside of the Unit- “APS has done a better job ering the Beller lectures at the the recipients travel to the March March Meeting in Boston, while or April meeting. The meeting ed States also continued to show promoting our career activities 12,600 steady growth. and we’ve added business cards Dong-Pil Min from Seoul Na- program and other printed meet- 12,000 tional University in South Korea ing materials will highlight the “I’m really excited that all the as a benefit for junior members at 2009 2010 2011 2012 membership categories are grow- BENCHMARK continued on page 4 Graphs are on dierent scales and show totals from January 2012 will deliver his Beller lecture LECTURES continued on page 7 Community Weighs Pros and Cons of Physics by Press Conference By Michael Lucibella In an interview, he expanded on a subtlety for news media looking Particle physics made head- his concerns over the announce- for an easy headline. lines around the world in Septem- ment. He worried that internal “People are actually talking ber with the announcement that scientific debates over technical about sigmas and how things have researchers at the OPERA experi- matters would be misinterpreted to be checked and crosschecked,” ment recorded neutrinos travel- by members of the public as scien- said Katie Yurkewicz, the Director ing faster than the speed of light. tists disagreeing over fundamental of the Office of Communication at Within the scientific community it laws of nature. Fermilab. “It’s nice to see some of sparked a heated debate not only “There are things that are that being covered in the media.” about the veracity of the results, ready for prime time and there are James Gillies, CERN’s head of but also about when controver- things that aren’t,” Krauss said. communication, said that he was sial scientific results should be re- “We have to be very careful be- generally happy with the way the leased to the public. Voices from cause the public doesn’t know bet- press covered the story. across the spectrum have spoken Dario Autiero of the OPERA collaboration explains how they measured faster- ter.” “I think that by and large the up, some supporting the research than-light neutrinos. Many scientists are highly world got it right,” Gillies said, skeptical of the OPERA results, team’s decision to release the in- ture of the situation. In an article A dramatic claim from a distin- “Our analysis of the coverage af- formation to the public, and others and expect them to be explained terwards showed that as well.” penned for the Los Angeles Times, guished laboratory that turns out decrying it. away by some as yet unknown Krauss however said that he Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State to be false reinforces the notion There has been sharp disagree- systematic error. At issue was felt that the news media hyped the ment over whether or not the University wrote that “the way that somehow science is not to be whether the public at large under- story and focused on the contro- press coverage that followed left [OPERA’s result] was presented trusted, that one can dismiss theo- stood the preliminary nature of the versial implication that faster than the public with an accurate pic- to the world is cause for concern. ries one finds inconvenient.” results, or if that was too much of PRESS continued on page 3 Companies Pioneer New Nuclear Designs APS Honoree Brandon Turner Named Rhodes Scholar By Calla Cofield have its first small modular reactor By Bushraa Khatib (SMR) up and running by 2020. Two relatively new nuclear com- When Brandon Turner gradu- Close on NuScale’s heels is Bab- panies, NuScale Power and Terra- ated from high school, his stepfa- cock & Wilcox Modular Nuclear Power, are cooking up new reactor ther, Casey, used to jokingly call Energy LLC, with the mPower designs, and meeting new challeng- him a “renaissance man” because small reactor. Lorenzini says the es along the way. of his diverse interests within two major factors in turning the Modern light water reactors gen- and outside of academia. He told market around were the need to erate, on average, 1000 megawatts Turner that the Rhodes scholar- build nuclear reactors without tak- of energy. Medium reactors can dip ship was perfectly suited for such ing a major financial risk, and in down to 700 MW. Ideas for smaller a person. turn demonstrating that small reac- reactors have always been around, Now, poised to graduate from tors could be built economically. but never made it past the drawing Wake Forest University in May “And I am not bashful in saying board, as they seemed reasonable with a bachelor’s degree in bio- that our entry into the market, fol- only for small, isolated markets. physics and minors in chemistry lowed by B&W,” said Lorenzini, But in the late 2000s, the cost of and sociology, Turner is one of “were the two major events that large nuclear power plants began to 32 Americans awarded the pres- triggered that shift.” Brandon Turner grow unwieldy. Even large buyers tigious Rhodes scholarship for NuScale formed in 2007, but it were forced to make drastic finan- 2012. already had six years of R&D data of study. In a press release, Ameri- to American college graduates.” cial bets on new reactors. So around Selected from a pool of 830 to support its small reactor design. can Secretary of the Rhodes Trust “When I heard the announce- 2009, the market changed its mind candidates, scholars anticipate be- Lorenzini says the response to the Elliot Gerson called the Rhodes ment, I was lost for words,” Turn- about small reactors. ginning their studies at Oxford in design from all different branches Scholarships “arguably the most er said. “My stepdad is over the Paul Lorenzini is CEO of NuS- October 2012. The award covers famous academic award available moon about it.” cale Power, which is aiming to DESIGN continued on page 4 all expenses for two to four years SCHOLAR continued on page 4 2 • February 2012 Members This Month in Physics History in the Media February 6, 1957: MIT introduces the first cryotron “Well, there’s thousands of peo- maintain flight indefinitely.” ple involved in the program, hun- Jason Barnes, University of t is difficult to imagine today, but computers that as one read the data, the memory would be dreds of professional scientists at Idaho, on his idea to send a flying Iused to be built with bulky vacuum tubes and erased and had to be re-written back into mag- his level… killing one of them is not drone to Saturn’s moon Titan, MS- often filled entire rooms. One of the lesser-known netic storage– a time-consuming process. Buck’s going to have a big impact on the NBC.com, January, 10, 2012. devices invented to help scale them down to size nondestructive method eliminated that extra step, program… There’s a lot of Iranians was the cryotron, invented by an MIT graduate since the data could be read without erasing the “My goal is not to destroy re- student named Dudley Allen Buck.