In December 2016, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved their
iconic "Doomsday Clock" thirty seconds forward to two and a half
minutes to midnight, the latest it has been set since 1952, the
year of the first United States hydrogen bomb test. But a group of
scientists-geologists, engineers, and physicists-has been fighting
to turn back the clock. Since the dawn of the Cold War, they have
advocated a halt to nuclear testing, their work culminating in the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which still awaits ratification from
China, Iran, North Korea-and the United States. The backbone of the
treaty is every nation's ability to independently monitor the
nuclear activity of the others. The noted seismologist Lynn R.
Sykes, one of the central figures in the development of the science
and technology used in monitoring, has dedicated his career to
halting nuclear testing. In Silencing the Bomb, he tells the inside
story behind scientists' quest for disarmament. Called upon time
and again to testify before Congress and to inform the public,
Sykes and his colleagues were, for much of the Cold War, among the
only people on earth able to say with certainty when and where a
bomb was tested and how large it was. Methods of measuring
earthquakes, researchers realized, could also detect underground
nuclear explosions. When politicians on both sides of the Iron
Curtain attempted to sidestep disarmament or test ban treaties,
Sykes was able to deploy the nascent science of plate tectonics to
reveal the truth. Seismologists' discoveries helped bring about
treaties limiting nuclear testing, but it was their activism that
played a key role in the quest for peace. Full of intrigue,
international politics, and hard science used for the global good,
Silencing the Bomb is a timely and necessary chronicle of one
scientist's efforts to keep the clock from striking midnight.
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