Contributors

After all that has been spent on missile defense, what does the United States have to show for its investment? Little more than a legacy of failure, according to the authors of this issue's special report on missile defense. The latest iteration of an old idea, a European-based missile defense system to defend against Iranian missiles, is disingenuous and technologically faulty, write George N. Lewis, a physicist and associate director of the Peace Studies Program at Cornell University, and Theodore A. Postol, a physicist and professor of science, technology, and national security policy at MIT. “[T]he goal is clearly unachievable, and … in spite of this, enormous national treasure is being squandered,” argue the longtime critics of missile defense in “The Folly of Missile Defense.”

Geoengineering sounds like science fiction, with its audacious schemes to solve global warming by launching thousands of orbiting sunshades or injecting sulfate aerosols into the atmosphere to block sunlight. But it has some serious scientific backers, which concerns Rutgers University climatologist Alan Robock, author of “20 Reasons Why Geoengineering May Be a Bad Idea.” Robock began researching how injecting aerosols into the atmosphere might affect the planet with a clear goal in mind: “If it turns out the consequences and dangers of a geoengineering solution are much worse than the warming it is designed to prevent, I hope that this will lead to a much more concerted action on the part of the United States to mitigate global warming.”

Siegfried S. Hecker (right) viewed the end of the Cold War from an exceptional vantage point. As director of Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1986 to 1997, Hecker understood the opportunities for collaboration that accompanied warming relations. Within the past several years, Hecker has directed his scientific diplomacy toward the former Soviet stalwart of North Korea. He has traveled to North Korea three times to meet with its scientists and officials to discuss a range of scientific and diplomatic issues. In “Denuclearizing North Korea,” Hecker outlines why he is convinced that the elimination of North Korea's plutonium production capacity is within reach.

Cover Artist: Dan Robbins

In the 1950s, under the specter of the Cold War, America was prosperous, and its growing middle class enjoyed something relatively new, leisure time. Artist Dan Robbins came up with something to fill that time: paint by number. The kits (sold with the tagline “Every man a Rembrandt”) grew so popular that by 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower's appointment secretary offered blank kits to administration officials and Oval Office visitors, displaying finished pieces in the West Wing, including one by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. The subject of an exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in 2001, Robbins returns to his pop-art form for the cover of the May/June 2008 Bulletin, featuring the Doomsday Clock in a seaside paint-by-number scene. Or is that ocean full of dread? When asked about the intentionally unfinished cover, the 82-year-old wondered, “What are the right colors to finish the painting?” Would bright, sunny colors best portray a warning about global warming? Or would dark, somber ones better highlight the continued threat of nuclear weapons? “Whether nuclear or environmental, the threat to our planet is real,” he concluded.

It took 10 years and billions of dollars to sequence one person's genome in 2001. But that was only the first step toward sequencing the various mutations of human DNA inside every person on the planet. Stuart Lindsay, the director of the Center for Single Molecule Biophysics at Arizona State University, analyzes several state-of-the-art sequencing methods, including his own, in this issue's In Review essay. For example, he explores the possibility of reading a long chain of DNA as it passes one base pair at a time through a nanopore. The technical challenges of such research are immense, but so is the potential payoff in terms of healthcare and our understanding of the complexity of the genome. “It's a step away from the reductionist view,” he says. “It's an acknowledgment of the enormous individuality of each organism and even a more spiritual view of biology.”

The idea that someone could patent the atomic bomb seems absurd. But back when the United States was still exploring the feasibility of the bomb, it was a real concern. Alex Wellerstein takes us deep into the bureaucracy that controlled nuclear secrets before the creation of the Atomic Energy Commission in “Inside the Atomic Patent Office.” The often-ignored effort fascinated the Harvard University history of science PhD candidate: “By showing a path not taken–in this case, atomic control through patents–it helps illuminate the contingency of the way it actually happened, the fact that the world we live in today is not the only world that could possibly have been.”

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR/PUBLISHER Kennette Benedict
EDITOR Jonas Siegel DEPUTY EDITOR and WEB EDITOR Josh Schollmeyer ASSOCIATE EDITOR Kirsten Jerch ASSOCIATE EDITOR Stuart Luman ART DIRECTOR Joy Miller	DIRECTOR OF FINANCE and ADMINISTRATION Barb Netter DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT and OUTREACH Kendal Gladish DIGITAL PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Jim Grisius ADMINISTRATIVE and DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATE Anjanette Harris	LEGAL COUNSEL Daniel 1. Schlessinger NTERNS Christina Dennaoui Jake Wertz
CONTRIBUTORS	Gordon Adams David Albright Catherine Auer Malcolm Dando Richard Garwin Hugh Gusterson Theresa Hitchens	David Hollo way John Isaacs Laura H. Kahn Hans M. Kristensen Jeffrey Lewis Gerald Marsh Priscilla Johnson McMillan	Laura Neack Robert S. Norris Pavel Podvig Dingli Shen Jessica Stern Frank von Hippel
SCIENCE and SECURITY BOARD	CHAIR Allison Macfarlane VICE CHAIR Rose Gottemoeller	Lawrence Freed man Henry Frisch Robert Gard Lawrence Korb Katherine Magraw	Thomas Pickering Pavel Podvig Thomas Rosenbaum James Steinberg
GOVERNING BOARD	CHAIR Cathryn Cronin Cranston SECRETARY and TREASURER Lowell Sachnoff	Marjorie Benton Lee Francis Seth Grae Jay Harris Robert Lipman	Harold Richman William Revelle Joan Shapiro Kate Wittenberg
BOARD OF SPONSORS The Board of Sponsors was founded in December 1948 by Albert Einstein, one of the Bulletin's earliest supporters The first chairman was J. Robert Oppenheimer. Other founding sponsors included Hans Bethe Linus Pauling, Edward Teller and Victor F. Weisskopf. (For a complete list of past sponsors visit www.thebulletin.org.)	PRESIDENT Leon Lederman David Baltimore Paul Berg Nicolaas Bloembergen Georges Charpak James Cronin Jayantha Dhanapala Carl Djerassi Paul Doty Freeman Dyson Sam Edwards Manfred Eigen Val Fitch Brian Flowers	Jerome Friedman Richard Garwin Donald Glaser Sheldon Glashow Marvin Goldberger Brian Greene Stephen Hawking Dudley Herschbach Howard Hiatt Roald Hoffmann John Holdren Pervez Hoodbhoy Masatoshi Koshiba Lawrence Krauss Reimar Lust Shirley Malcom	Marcos Moshinsky Ben Mottelson William J. Perry John Polanyi Victor Rabinowitch Lisa Randall Martin Rees Richard Roberts Roald Sagdeev Oscar Sala Frederick Seitz Toshiyuki Toyoda Kosta Tsipis Frank von Hippel Frank Wilczek
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by Eugene Rabinowitch, Hyman Goldsmith, and other Manhattan Project scientists who “could not remain aloof to the consequences of their work.” The Bulletin informs the public through a print magazine, a website www.thebulletin.org, and its Doomsday Clock; convenes expert forums; and educates the next generation through fellowships and awards. A 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, the Bulletin is supported by charitable contributions from foundations and individuals, subscription income, and advertising. Contribute or subscribe online at www.thebulletin.org. For advertising information please e-mail [e-mail].		Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (ISSN 0096-3402) is published bimonthly (every other month). Individual U.S. subscription rate: 1 year, $48. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 77 W. Washington Street, Suite 2120, Chicago, Il 60602. Preferred Periodicals postage paid at Chicago and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 77 W. Washington Street, Suite 2120, Chicago, Il 60602. Phone: [phone] Fax: [phone] Customer service: 866.584.0009 (toll-free)
Copyright © 2008 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.