{"id":2160,"date":"2008-12-11T10:47:30","date_gmt":"2008-12-11T17:47:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/?p=2160"},"modified":"2008-12-11T10:47:30","modified_gmt":"2008-12-11T17:47:30","slug":"laser-cooler-next-energy-secretary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/2008\/12\/11\/laser-cooler-next-energy-secretary\/","title":{"rendered":"Laser Cooler Next Energy Secretary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well I&#8217;m sure the physics blogosphere is abuzz with the news that <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Steven_Chu\">Steven Chu<\/a> is expected to be named by President-elect Obama to head the Department of Energy.  Wait let me look.  Yep: heisendad, <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2008\/12\/10\/steven-chu-nominated-to-be-secretary-of-energy\/\">varyingsean<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/infoproc.blogspot.com\/2008\/12\/steve-chu-energy-secretary.html\">chunothsu<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/angryphysics.blogspot.com\/2008\/12\/obama-will-hire-physicist.html\">angryphysicist<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/nanoscale.blogspot.com\/2008\/12\/energy.html\">nanodude<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/motls.blogspot.com\/2008\/12\/steven-chu-new-energy-secretary.html\">lubotic<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/asymptotia.com\/2008\/12\/10\/physics-nobel-prize-winner-in-the-cabinet\/\">toinfinityandbeyond<\/a> and thedeterminantsnotzero.  (OK that last comes from non-physicists, but I couldn&#8217;t resist a linear algebra joke.)<br \/>\nSince I have little to add besides the fact that laser cooling rocks, I present the first few lines of a song that was sung by a band at Berkeley concerning the person Chu shared the Nobel prize with, Cohen-Tannoudji:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Cohen-Tannoudji<br \/>\nDoes quantum mechanics<br \/>\nHis book&#8217;s in two volumes<br \/>\nI think it&#8217;s satanic<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And a question: the first cabinet member who has a paper on the <a href=\"http:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/physics\/0507187\">arXiv<\/a>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well I&#8217;m sure the physics blogosphere is abuzz with the news that Steven Chu is expected to be named by President-elect Obama to head the Department of Energy. Wait let me look. Yep: heisendad, varyingsean, chunothsu, angryphysicist, nanodude, lubotic, toinfinityandbeyond and thedeterminantsnotzero. (OK that last comes from non-physicists, but I couldn&#8217;t resist a linear algebra &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/2008\/12\/11\/laser-cooler-next-energy-secretary\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Laser Cooler Next Energy Secretary&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[53,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}