J. Robert Oppenheimer； 警告置若罔聞: 科學家們的聲音無人聆聽

J. Robert Oppenheimer died in Princeton, New Jersey on this day in 1967 (aged 62).

"There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry … There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors."
―from J. Robert Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer is one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war, and who later found himself confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress. In this magisterial, acclaimed biography twenty-five years in the making, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin capture Oppenheimer’s life and times, from his early career to his central role in the Cold War. This is biography and history at its finest, riveting and deeply informative. READ an excerpt here: http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/…/american-prometheus-by…/#

科學家在中國的地位和影響力呢?

科學家們的聲音無人聆聽

勞倫斯·克勞斯 2013年02月04日

亞利桑那州坦佩市
對人類而言很危險的是，近年來科學界在影響全球安全政策方面成效甚微。也許這是因為，當今最優秀的科學家不直接負責危及我們安全的那些武器，因而不再是主宰毀滅的大祭司，像二戰結束後那段時期一樣被人當成先知來請教。

按圖放大

Yarek Waszul

如今，科學家們面對的問題實際上比核時代之初要棘手得多，他們的成功也更加實至名歸。這就是為何以下現實如此令人沮喪：史蒂芬·霍金 (Stephen Hawking)也許是世界上依然健在的最著名科學家，但他在核武器問題上的觀點所引發的關注，還不如他對外星人的觀點。在涉及氣候變化、核擴散，以及潛 在製造新型致命病原體等全球挑戰的辯論中，科學家的意見至關重要。不過，和以往不同的是，他們的意見不再得到聆聽。
的確，正是阿爾伯特·愛因斯坦(Albert Einstein)1939年寫給富蘭克林·D·羅斯福(Franklin D. Roosevelt)的一封信（警告希特拉可能研發一種核武器），迅速催生了曼哈頓計劃(Manhattan Project)，這是歷史上規模最大的戰時科學項目。之後，在1945年，創造出原子彈的這批物理學家成立了《原子科學家公報》(Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)雜誌，以警告核武器的危害、推動國際合作，避免核戰爭。正如愛因斯坦在1946年5月所說，“原子釋放出的能量已經改變了一切—— 除了我們的思維方式，因此，我們在滑向前所未有的災難。”
作為那個時代最偉大的物理學家，研製原子彈的這群人擁有巨大的聲望。他們包括多名曾經以及未來的諾貝爾獎得主，比如漢斯·A·貝特(Hans A. Bethe)、理乍得·P·費曼(Richard P. Feynman)、恩里科·費米 (Enrico Fermi)、歐內斯特·O·勞倫斯(Ernest O. Lawrence)和伊西多·艾薩克·拉比(Isidor Isaac Rabi)。
舉例而言，1946年6月，曾在新墨西哥州洛斯阿拉莫斯幫着牽頭曼哈頓計劃的J·羅伯特·奧本海默(J. Robert Oppenheimer)主張，原子能應該置於文職官員（而非軍方）控制之下。不出兩個月，哈里·S·杜魯門(Harry S. Truman)總統就簽署了相關法案，使其成為法律，自1947年1月起生效。
今天，9個擁有核武的國家可能囤積了多達2萬枚核武器，其中許多武器的威力遠遠大於當年向廣島和長崎投擲的原子彈。然而，核擴散形勢仍空前令人震 驚，儘管奧巴馬(Obama)總統在2010年簽署了新的削減戰略武器條約，並得到了國會的批准。伊朗核計劃可能導致衝突。印度和巴基斯坦之間的宿怨也可 能導致衝突，這兩個國家都擁有核武。
美國也不清白，因為無論我們的領導人說什麼，我們的行動都似乎表明，我們無意認真削減核武。聯合國(United Nations)早在1996年就通過了《全面禁止核試驗條約》(Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty)，禁止各國試驗核武器。然而該條約至今仍未生效；美國參議院1999年拒絕批准該條約，而儘管奧巴馬總統承諾推動該條約獲得批准，但他在這 方面尚未顯示出足夠的緊迫感。
令人注目的是，可與當年曼哈頓計劃科學家比肩的這一代科學家的意見經常被人忽視。這些人不是最高安全級別的國家實驗室里的武器研究員，而是研究型大學和其他國家級實驗室里傑出的科學人才。
去年，國家科學院(National Academy of Sciences)發表一份報告，顯示美國已經具備批准聯合國條約所需的一切先決技術條件。然而，這個關鍵議題在大選競選期間根本沒有被提到，在華盛頓也 很少被提到。國家科學院去年進行的另一項研究，指出了美國成本高昂的彈道導彈防禦計劃的缺陷，然而，儘管國防部在考慮削減軍費，但這項研究幾乎沒有產生任 何影響。
我是《原子科學家公報》贊助人委員會的聯名主席，這家雜誌支持實現一個無核世界的呼籲，兩黨的重量級外交政策人物都支持這個願景。然而，華盛頓的意識形態偏見已經如此固化，以至於科學現實不得不屈從於頑固的政治立場。
難道科學家們需要研發新的末日工具、才能使我們的觀點再次得到傾聽嗎？氣候研究人員是否將繼續沒有話語權，除非他們提議某些可能產生險惡後果的未經驗證的地球工程技術？是不是只有當生物學家的工作帶來能夠武器化的新型生物技術時，才有人傾聽他們的意見？
因為核擴散的威脅沒有得到應對、因為導彈防禦技術依然存在缺陷、因為科學家們揭示的新威脅遭到了忽視，今年1月10日，當《原子科學家公報》對末日 時鐘(Doomsday clock)進行一年一度的更新時，依然讓它停留在距離午夜僅有5分鐘的時刻。末日時鐘意在表述我們面臨的各種威脅，不僅是核武威脅，還有來自氣候變化的 威脅、以及基因工程的潛在違反初衷的後果，此類技術可能被圖謀製造生物武器的人濫用。
在制定公共政策時，除非科學和數據被置於中心地位，否則，人類文明在面對危及自身生存的最嚴重威脅時將受到制約。

本文最初發表於2013年1月16日。

勞倫斯·克勞斯是亞利桑那州立大學的一位理論物理學家，也是《始於虛空的宇宙：為什麼那裡並非空無一物》(A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing.)一書的作者。

翻譯：張薇

 

Deafness at Doomsday

By LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS February 04, 2013

 

TEMPE, Ariz.
TO our great peril, the scientific community has had little success in recent years influencing policy on global security. Perhaps this is because the best scientists today are not directly responsible for the very weapons that threaten our safety, and are therefore no longer the high priests of destruction, to be consulted as oracles as they were after World War II.
The problems scientists confront today are actually much harder than they were at the dawn of the nuclear age, and their successes more heartily earned. This is why it is so distressing that even Stephen Hawking, perhaps the world’s most famous living scientist, gets more attention for his views on space aliens than his views on nuclear weapons. Scientists’ voices are crucial in the debates over the global challenges of climate change, nuclear proliferation and the potential creation of new and deadly pathogens. But unlike in the past, their voices aren’t being heard.
Indeed, it was Albert Einstein’s letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, warning of the possibility that Hitler might develop a nuclear weapon, that quickly prompted the start of the Manhattan Project, the largest scientific wartime project in history. Then, in 1945, the same group of physicists who had created the atomic bomb founded the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to warn of the dangers of nuclear weapons, and to promote international cooperation to avoid nuclear war. As Einstein said in May 1946, “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”
The men who built the bomb had enormous prestige as the greatest physics minds of the time. They included Nobel laureates, past and future, like Hans A. Bethe, Richard P. Feynman, Enrico Fermi, Ernest O. Lawrence and Isidor Isaac Rabi.
In June 1946, for instance, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had helped lead the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, N.M., argued that atomic energy should be placed under civilian rather than military control. Within two months President Harry S. Truman signed a law doing so, effective January 1947.
Today, nine nuclear states have stockpiled perhaps 20,000 nuclear weapons, many of which dwarf the weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet proliferation is as alarming as ever, even though President Obama signed, and Congress ratified, the new strategic arms-reduction treaty in 2010. Iran’s nuclear program could lead to conflict. So could the animosity between India and Pakistan, which both have nuclear weapons.
The United States is complicit, because whatever our leaders may say, our actions suggest that we have no real intention to disarm. The United Nations adopted the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would ban countries from testing nuclear weapons, in 1996. But it has not come into force; the Senate rejected ratification in 1999, and while President Obama has promised to obtain ratification, he has not shown enough urgency in doing so.
What’s striking is that today’s version of the Manhattan Project scientists — not the weapons researchers at our maximum-security national laboratories, but distinguished scientific minds at our research universities and other national labs — provide advice that is routinely ignored.
Last year, the National Academy of Sciences published a report demonstrating that all the technical preconditions necessary for ratifying the United Nations treaty were in place. But this vital issue did not come up in the presidential campaign and is barely mentioned in Washington. Another study by the academy last year, on flaws in America’s costly ballistic missile defense program, has had little impact even as the Pentagon considers cuts in military spending.
I am co-chairman of the board of sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which has supported the call for a world free of nuclear weapons — a vision backed by major foreign policy figures in both parties. But ideological biases have become so ingrained in Washington that scientific realities are subordinated to political intransigence.
Do scientists need to develop new doomsday tools before our views are again heard? Will climate researchers remain voiceless unless they propose untested geoengineering technologies that could have insidious consequences? Will biologists be heard only if their work spawns new biotechnologies that could be weaponized?
Because the threat of nuclear proliferation is not being addressed, because missile defense technologies remain flawed and because new threats exposed by scientists have been ignored, the Bulletin’s annual Doomsday clock — which was updated on Tuesday — still sits at five minutes to midnight. The clock is meant to convey the threats we face not only from nuclear weapons, but also from climate change and the potential unintended consequences of genetic engineering, which could be misused by those seeking to create bioweapons.
Until science and data become central to informing our public policies, our civilization will be hamstrung in confronting the gravest threats to its survival.

Lawrence M. Krauss, a theoretical physicist at Arizona State University, is the author, most recently, of “A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing.”