The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes of technology in the United States that are devoted to the instruction of pure and applied sciences.
Cold fusion is a hypothesized type of nuclear reaction that would occur at, or near, room temperature. It would contrast starkly with the "hot" fusion that is known to take place naturally within stars and artificially in hydrogen bombs and prototype fusion reactors under immense pressure and at temperatures of millions of degrees, and be distinguished from muon-catalyzed fusion. There is currently no accepted theoretical model that would allow cold fusion to occur.
Siegfried Fred Singer was an Austrian-born American physicist and emeritus professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia, trained as an atmospheric physicist. He was known for rejecting the scientific consensus on several issues, including climate change, the connection between UV-B exposure and melanoma rates, stratospheric ozone loss being caused by chlorofluoro compounds, often used as refrigerants, and the health risks of passive smoking.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federally funded research and development center in Livermore, California, United States. Originally established in 1952, the laboratory now is sponsored by the United States Department of Energy and administered privately by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC.
Stephen Wolfram is a British-American computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is known for his work in computer algebra, and theoretical physics. In 2012, he was named a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
David Louis Goodstein was an American physicist and educator. From 1988 to 2007 he served as Vice-provost of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he was also a professor of physics and applied physics, as well as the Frank J. Gilloon Distinguished Teaching and Service Professor.
JASON is an independent group of elite scientists that advises the United States government on matters of science and technology, mostly of a sensitive nature. The group was created in the aftermath of the Sputnik launch as a way to reinvigorate the idea of having the nation's preeminent scientists help the government with defense problems, similar to the way that scientists helped in World War II but with a new and younger generation. It was established in 1960 and has somewhere between 30 and 60 members. Its work first gained public notoriety as the source of the Vietnam War's McNamara Line electronic barrier. Although most of its research is military-focused, JASON also produced early work on the science of global warming and acid rain. Current unclassified research interests include health informatics, cyberwarfare, and renewable energy.
William Aaron Nierenberg was an American physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project and was director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography from 1965 through 1986. He was a co-founder of the George C. Marshall Institute in 1984.
Steven Earl Jones is an American physicist. Among scientists, Jones became known for his research into muon-catalyzed fusion and geo-fusion. Jones is also known for his association with 9/11 conspiracy theories. Jones has claimed that airplane crashes and fires could not have caused the fall of the World Trade Center Towers and 7 World Trade Center, suggesting controlled demolition instead. In late 2006, Brigham Young University (BYU) officials placed him on paid leave until he elected to retire in an agreement with BYU. Jones continued research and writing following his early retirement from BYU.
Maria Spiropulu is a Greek particle physicist. She is the Shang-Yi Ch'en Professor of Physics at the California Institute of Technology.
The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) is a council, chartered in each administration with a broad mandate to advise the president of the United States on science and technology. The current PCAST was established by Executive Order 13226 on September 30, 2001, by George W. Bush, was re-chartered by Barack Obama's April 21, 2010, Executive Order 13539, by Donald Trump's October 22, 2019, Executive Order 13895, and by Joe Biden's February 1, 2021, Executive Order 14007.
Raymond Lee Orbach is an American physicist and administrator. He served as Under Secretary for Science in the United States Department of Energy from 2006 until 2009, when he was replaced by Steven E. Koonin. Until his resignation in December 2012, Orbach was director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. Orbach continues to do research as a tenured professor in the Cockrell Family Dean's Chair for Engineering Excellence at the University of Texas.
Sean Michael Carroll is an American theoretical physicist and philosopher who specializes in quantum mechanics, cosmology, and the philosophy of science. He is the Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. He was formerly a research professor at the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) department of physics. He also is currently an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and he has been a contributor to the physics blog Cosmic Variance, where he has published in scientific journals such as Nature as well as other publications, including The New York Times, Sky & Telescope, and New Scientist. He is known for his atheism, his vocal critique of theism and defence of naturalism. He is considered a prolific public speaker and science popularizer. In 2007, Carroll was named NSF Distinguished Lecturer by the National Science Foundation.
Steven Chu is an American physicist and former government official. He is a Nobel laureate and was the 12th U.S. secretary of energy. He is currently the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Physics and Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology at Stanford University. He is known for his research at the University of California, Berkeley, and his research at Bell Laboratories and Stanford University regarding the cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, for which he shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William Daniel Phillips.
Evgeny Pavlovich Velikhov was a Russian physicist and scientific leader. His scientific interests included plasma physics, lasers, controlled nuclear fusion, power engineering, and magnetohydrodynamics. He was the author of over 1500 scientific publications and a number of inventions and discoveries.
Robert V. Duncan is a physicist at Texas Tech University, Texas and previously served as vice chancellor for research at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. Prior to his current posting he held various assignments while serving as a professor of physics at UNM, including associate dean for research in the college of arts and sciences there, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of New Mexico, was named as the Gordon and Betty Moore Distinguished Scholar in the division of physics, mathematics and astronomy at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and is a fellow of the American Physical Society "for pioneering advances in experimental studies of dynamic critical phenomena near the superfluid transition in 4He, and for the development of novel instrumentation and measurement techniques for use on earth and in space".
Padmanabhan Krishnagopala Iyengar, best known as P. K. Iyengar, was an Indian nuclear physicist who is widely known for his central role in the development of the nuclear program of India. Iyengar previously served as the director of BARC and former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India, he raised his voice and opposition against the nuclear agreement between India and the United States and expressed that the deal favoured the United States.
The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science is a book written by American science author Natalie Angier.
John Francis Clauser is an American theoretical and experimental physicist known for contributions to the foundations of quantum mechanics, in particular the Clauser–Horne–Shimony–Holt inequality. Clauser was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger "for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science".
