Word: sagan
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...most of my scientific work, I'm constantly worried about being wrong. But in this work, I'm always worried about being right," Cornell professor of astronomy Carl Sagan told a packed audience at the Science Center last night...
...Sagan used the findings of the 1971 "Mariner 9" space mission to Mars to illustrate the after effects of nuclear war. Particles in the Martian atmosphere stirred up by dust storms formed a cloud over the surface of the planet, he said, raising the upper atmospheric temperature while lowering surface temperatures and creating an artificial winter...
Because radioactive particles and soot from burning cities would collect in the atmosphere, after a nuclear strike, Sagan concluded that Earth's terrestrial surface temperature would also decrease...
...soot and radioactive particles created in nuclear war represent a major disaster to countries where the bombs are not even dropped," Sagan said...
...attack even one directed at just military targets, would cause enough of a nuclear winter to "wipe out all the grain growing regions of the United states, Canada and the Soviet Union." A nation launching a first strike will effectively commit suicide regardless of the adversary's response. As Sagan put it in a recent lecture at the Kennedy School, "the attacked nation need not lift a finger for retribution swift and final to fall on the aggressor...