The Twelve Thousand Bombs seminar series on nuclear weapons will continue this fall with four eminent scholars and public figures speaking at ISU. The series, sponsored by the Office of Research and Graduate Studies, was inaugurated in 2023 and aims to raise awareness of nuclear weapons issues in the Bloomington-Normal community.
“Nuclear weapons will be on everyone’s radar this election cycle as Americans assess the fitness of the candidates to exercise the president’s nuclear authority,” according to Dr. Matt Caplan, the series organizer and professor in the Department of Physics. “With the U.S. preparing to spend $1.5 trillion modernizing its arsenal, nuclear weapons policy may be a defining feature of the next president’s administration. This is not an issue that can be overlooked this election.”
All talks will be held from 4-5 p.m. on Tuesdays in Moulton Hall 214. The scheduled events are:
- Dr. Lili Xia—Assistant Research Professor, Rutgers University
(Tuesday, September 24, 4-5 p.m., Moulton Hall 214)
Xia is a climatologist studying the impact that nuclear war would have on the global climate, and how atmospheric aerosols produced by a nuclear war can initiate a “nuclear winter.” Her 2022 Nature Food article shows how even a “small” nuclear war between nations like India and Pakistan can cool the planet enough to cause a global famine lasting years, potentially killing billions.
- Tina Cordova—President of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium
(Tuesday, October 1, 4-5 p.m., Moulton Hall 214)
Before attacking Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons in August 1945, the U.S. detonated the first nuclear weapon in New Mexico. The radioactive fallout from this test and others in the Nevada Test Site drifted east, exposing Americans to harmful levels of radioactive fallout, resulting in cancers and decades of harm. Today, some 80 years later, the Downwinders still fight for justice.
- Professor Fred Lamb—Professor of Physics, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
(Tuesday, October 8, 4-5 p.m., Moulton Hall 214)
Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are rockets launched into space that carry nuclear weapons from one side of the planet to the other in a matter of minutes. Can the U.S., or any nation, respond to such a threat? Lamb was the chair of the American Physical Society report on Ballistic Missile Defense and will tell us about the realities of missile and anti-missile technology—as well as the dangers of such “defenses.”
- Professor Stewart Prager—Professor of Physics, Princeton University, Director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab (2008–2016)
(Tuesday, October 22, 4-5 p.m., Moulton Hall 214)
Where are the borders between nuclear science, nuclear energy, and nuclear weapons? Just how much science is done invisibly in service of nuclear weapons, and how can scientists reduce the nuclear threat? Prager is a plasma physicist specializing in nuclear fusion, who has since 2018 dedicated his efforts to mobilizing scientists with the Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction.
