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EXTRA: Read About It!
Dr. Nicolaas
Bloembergen presented an overview of the most important applications
of lasers during the past forty years in peace and war.
Dr. Riccardo Giacconi
discussed the development of an x-ray telescope which came from his
discovery of a new class of celestial objects, a thousand times more
luminous than the sun and emitting 99.9% of its energy in x-rays.
Dr. Masatoshi Koshiba
talked about the birth of neutrino astrophysics which grew from
physical observations that the ratio of muon-neutrinos and electron-neutrinos in the atmosphere is not in accord with theoretical
expectations.
In his talk, Dr.
Robert Richardson provided a number of entertaining examples of how
charlatans can take advantage of the public’s misconceptions of
scientific principles to sell them gadgets that are only loosely based
on the laws of physics.
In a talk entitled
“Fact and Fantasy in Science,” Dr. Brian Josephson discussed the
phenomenon by which scientific observations that are almost certainly
real are rejected by the scientific community for invalid reasons. He
suggests that cold fusion may be an example of this phenomenon.
After the final
morning talk, a group of American students joined the Japanese
delegation headed by Dr. Mayuko Tada for lunch at the Hotel Stift.
The two groups stayed at the same hotel and spent a little time
interacting each morning over breakfast, but the time spent during
lunch allowed for a more focused conversation. |
