Contemporary Authors

• Silencing the Bomb: One Scientist's Quest to Halt Nuclear Testing Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2017

1. Silencing the bomb : one scientist's quest to halt nuclear testing https://lccn.loc.gov/2017010287 Sykes, L. R., author. Silencing the bomb : one scientist's quest to halt nuclear testing / Lynn R. Sykes. New York : Columbia University Press, [2017] pages cm U264 .S96 2017 ISBN: 9780231182485 (cloth : alk. paper)

• Columbia University - http://eesc.columbia.edu/faculty/prof-lynn-r-sykes

  Lynn R. Sykes
  Higgins Professor Emeritus
  Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
  Seismology Geology and Tectonophysics
  202D Seismology
  61 Route 9W - PO Box 1000
  Palisades
  NY
  10964-8000
  US
  Phone:
  (845) 365-8880
  Fax:
  (845) 365-8150
  sykes@ldeo.columbia.edu
  View Website
  Fields of interest: Earthquake Studies, Control of Nuclear Weapons, Tectonics, Natural Hazards.
  Research Statement:

  Please view my personal web site for more information about my publications list, research interests and background. On that site you will also find links to long and short vitas of me, the Pacheco-Sykes catalog of large global earthquakes, and electronic scans of many newspaper features of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. More content will be added soon.
  Education
  List of Degrees from highest to lowest
  Ph.D.
  Columbia
  1964
  Master of Science
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  1960
  Bachelor of Science
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  1960
  Hide Disciplines
  Primary Discipline:

  Geophysics

• Lamont -Doherty Earth Observatory - http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/user/sykes

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  Lynn R. Sykes
  Higgins Professor Emeritus
  Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
  Seismology Geology and Tectonophysics
  202D Seismology
  61 Route 9W - PO Box 1000
  Palisades
  NY
  10964-8000
  US
  Phone:
  (845) 365-8880
  Fax:
  (845) 365-8150
  sykes@ldeo.columbia.edu
  View Website
  Fields of interest:
  Earthquake Studies, Control of Nuclear Weapons, Tectonics, Natural Hazards.

  Please view my personal web site for more information about my publications list, research interests and background. On that site you will also find links to long and short vitas of me, the Pacheco-Sykes catalog of large global earthquakes, and electronic scans of many newspaper features of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. More content will be added soon.
  Education
  List of degrees from highest to lowest:
  Ph.D.
  Columbia
  1964
  Master of Science
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  1960
  Bachelor of Science
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  1960
  Lamont Projects:
  Calibration of Long-Period Seismographs at Thirteen Stations Throughout the World
  Earthquakes And Faulting
  Earthquakes In The Greater New York -Philadelphia Area: Catalog And Tectonic Setting
  IGY Calibration
  Pacheco-Sykes Earthquake Catalog
  Referenced in the Following News Items:
  Ear to the Ground, Listening for Nuclear Blasts
  The Plate Tectonics Revolution: It Was All About the Data
  Walter Pitman and the Smoking Gun of Plate Tectonics
  Earthquakes May Endanger New York More Than Thought, Says Study
  Featured in the Following Videos:
  Monitoring and Verifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and Prospects for its Ratification by U.S.
  Earthquake Research
  The 100th Anniversary of the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906

• Verge - https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17143702/nuclear-testing-underground-explosions-lynn-sykes-book-silencing-the-bomb

  QUOTED: "I came of age during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 as a graduate student. It was work that I thought I could do — as few others could — to develop better methods of identifying underground atomic testing, so that we could eventually have a full ban on nuclear testing. Preventing nuclear war is most the important thing that faces humanity and the United States."
  "There were many new weapons that were developed after 1968 including most of the Russian warheads for missiles that carried nuclear warheads that could be independently targeted—a very dangerous development. ... Also, many other countries like China went on to develop larger weapons after the Threshold Test Ban was negotiated. So back in 1969, if we’d had a full test ban then, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea could not have developed weapons as easily."

  1
  How a scientist studying earthquakes spent his career working to prevent nuclear explosions
  By Rachel Becker@RA_Becks Mar 20, 2018, 1:47pm EDT
  SHARE

  Operation Teapot, Turk test. March 7, 1955. Video: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
  At 5AM on a June morning in 1974, seismologist Lynn Sykes awoke to a phone call from the Department of Defense. The voice on the other end of the line asked Sykes to be ready to leave for Moscow that evening. The DoD needed his help to negotiate a treaty that would cap the size of the US and Russia’s underground nuclear explosions.

  Sykes, now a professor emeritus at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, was invited because of his unusual expertise. Sure, he was an expert on earthquakes. But he was also an expert on underground nuclear explosions, which — like earthquakes — can send vibrations ringing through the Earth. So the same devices that monitor and measure quakes can do double duty as secret nuclear test sensors.

  In his new book, Silencing the Bomb: One Scientist’s Quest to Halt Nuclear Testing, Sykes chronicles his efforts to end explosive nuclear testing. When Sykes visited Russia in 1974, nuclear testing in the atmosphere, underwater, and space had already been banned by the Limited Test Ban Treaty signed in 1963 — the result of public pushback against the perils of radioactive fallout.

  The cover of Lynn Sykes’ book, Silencing the Bomb: One Scientist’s Quest to Halt Nuclear Testing.
  The cover of Lynn Sykes’ book, Silencing the Bomb: One Scientist’s Quest to Halt Nuclear Testing. Credit: Columbia University Press
  But there was an ongoing debate about whether it was possible to tell the size of an underground nuclear explosion from the seismic wiggles picked up by monitoring stations. If there were no sure way to check if someone was cheating on the deal, then neither the US nor Russia wanted to stop underground tests altogether. That’s why Sykes was in Russia: to confirm that detecting underground tests was scientifically possible, and to help negotiate a treaty that would limit underground nuclear tests to 150 kilotons or less.

  The negotiations were a success, and President Richard Nixon and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev signed the treaty about a month later. But the quest for a complete ban on nuclear testing continues. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would ban all nuclear tests of all sizes, was finalized in 1996. But several countries including the US, China, Iran, and North Korea still need to ratify it in order for the treaty to enter into force.

  In his new book, Sykes reflects on his 50-year career working toward a test ban that is still out of reach. But, he says, he sees the glass as nearly full, since no one except North Korea has exploded a nuke since 1998: “I consider that a big accomplishment,” Sykes tells The Verge. “I’m very sad that we didn’t have a full test ban way back then. But I did as much I could, I believe, to try and open up this problem.”

  The Verge spoke with Sykes about detecting underground nuclear tests, fights over the size of explosions, and the perils of nuclear war.

  This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

  Why work for 50 years on preventing nuclear testing?

  I came of age during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 as a graduate student. It was work that I thought I could do — as few others could — to develop better methods of identifying underground atomic testing, so that we could eventually have a full ban on nuclear testing. Preventing nuclear war is most the important thing that faces humanity and the United States.

  You start the book off with talking about how in 1974, you were whisked off to Moscow to help negotiate the Threshold Test Ban with Russia that eventually capped underground nuclear tests at 150 kilotons. What do you still remember about that experience?

  There was one general who represented the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was going to go to the opera and he asked one of our handlers ‘Will I get lost?’ and in a very thick Russian accent they said, “Do not worry.”

  Does that mean that you were being followed?

  Sure. Some of us, to get exercise, walked about a mile and a half from where we normally met at the US embassy to our Russian hotel. A couple of our handlers said, “You guys walk fast.”

  It must have been eerie knowing how closely you were being watched at what was, for you, almost a scientific meeting.

  It was. I had been involved in some classified work beforehand, so I knew what to be careful about and which things were classified. We were warned ahead of time not to leave classified information in our hotels, or out on a desk at a place we were having our negotiations, because they could be seen by overhead cameras, and not to talk in the cars about any classified information.

  You say in the book that the technology has been around since 1969 to monitor, detect, and verify underground nuclear tests. So, why did it take until 1996 to negotiate a comprehensive test ban?

  Lynn Sykes Credit: Columbia University
  There were several holdups, and one was that the agency responsible for the research on this subject was the DoD and there were many people there who thought that the US needed to continue testing for a variety of reasons, and they were against having a full test ban.

  Then another was that I rather quickly discovered just after the negotiations in Moscow in 1974 that the US was overestimating the size — the yields — of Soviet explosions by about a factor of three, and that turned out to be of big political importance. So it took a long time to get that cleared up. And two of the people that had put together the US calibration of Soviet explosions got it wrong, and they were at high places — one within the Department of Defense and one with a senior advisor, and they were adamant about keeping their old method of determining yields.

  Why was it so challenging to figure out the size of the explosion — the yields — of Russia’s tests?

  What we had was the size of the wiggles produced on seismic instruments by Russian explosions. And we wanted to figure out from them what were the yields. We had information on both the size of the wiggles and the yields from the Nevada test site, where we had done virtually all of our underground atomic testing. And Nevada is a region of young geology and seismic waves are absorbed, or dampened down, as they pass beneath the Nevada test site — whereas Soviet explosions were overwhelmingly in old, strong rocks. And so those seismic waves were not as absorbed, and they were larger for a given yield than what you saw for a US test. So it took a long time to get that worked out, and into the policy arena, and accepted.

  There were claims that the Soviets were testing 350 kilotons or 450 kilotons — well above the 150 kiloton limit. Many believed that they were cheating on this treaty. And that turned out to be solely an artifact of not determining the yields from the seismic waves correctly.

  So if the DoD and experts like you had agreed that the Russians weren’t cheating back then, how do you imagine the world would be different today?

  There were many new weapons that were developed after 1968 including most of the Russian warheads for missiles that carried nuclear warheads that could be independently targeted — a very dangerous development, and many other weapons that both countries developed. Also, many other countries like China went on to develop larger weapons after the Threshold Test Ban was negotiated. So back in 1969, if we’d had a full test ban then, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea could not have developed weapons as easily. Whether they would have tested, maybe only North Korea would have.

  As you went back and refreshed your memory and did your research for the book, was there anything that surprised you?

  It surprised me how consistently I’d worked on this problem. I had not given myself the credit that I finally did, in writing the book, of ‘Yes, I really worked on this’ and I worked on it hard and consistently and resisted a lot of these people. So I pat myself on the back for that.

• Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences - https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth520/content/l2_p8.html

  Biographical Information

  Lynn Sykes was born April 16, 1937 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father worked for the United States Weather Bureau and his mother was a homemaker. Lynn was an only child. Always interested in the sciences, particularly chemistry, Lynn Sykes remembers first becoming interested in the Earth Sciences when, out on a bike ride, he found a metallic sample by the side of the road that he longed to have identified.

  Lynn Sykes attended MIT where he earned both a B.S. and M.S. in Geology and Geophysics in 1960. He then went to Columbia University where he earned a Ph.D. in Geology in 1965.

  Dr. Sykes spent his career researching seismic activity, seafloor spreading, and the affects of nuclear weapons testing on seismic activity. He earned 26 scholarships, fellowships, awards, and honors and has authored or coauthored more than 130 scientific papers. Dr. Sykes now works at Professor Emeritus of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University.

  Dr. Sykes lives in Palisades, New York with his wife Kathleen Mahoney Sykes.

  Specific contributions to plate tectonic theory:

  In 1964, Lynn Sykes, Bryan Isacks, and Jack Oliver were studying seismic data in order to determine the foci of earthquakes near the South Pacific island of Tonga. Their data indicated that there was a plane tilting down from the ocean floor at about 45 degrees. They determined that this slab was quite thick (60 miles) and was capable of producing and sustaining seismic activity as it descended into the mantle. They determined that it was not simply crust that was descending, but referred to the slab as Tuzo Wilson had, as a "plate". They then determined that this plate was rigid and moving around on a soft, flowing asthenosphere layer of the earth.

  Lynn Sykes was able to gather most of his seismic data using the Worldwide Standard Seismographic Network (WWSSN) of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. This was a seimographic network originally intended for detecting nuclear bombs. This network allowed him to gather data that offered solid proof of seafloor spreading and faulting in the South East Pacific Rise. He determined that seafloor spreading occurred at transform faults and that seismic activity is confined to the area between ridge crests, leaving the interiors of oceanic "plates" nearly free of earthquake activity. He then published his paper on the Mechanism of Earthquakes and Nature of Faulting on the Mid-Oceanic Ridge (abstract (link is external)).

  epicenter

  Image 1: Diagram from Mechanism of Earthquakes and Nature of Faulting on the Mid-Oceanic Ridge where Lynn Sykes illustrates earthquake epicenters and establishes mechanisms for the earthquakes (transform faults between ridge crests)

  Dr. Sykes is also known for his contribution to the idea of "new global tectonics". New global tectonics expands on the idea of Xavier LePichon that "plates form an integrated system where the sum of all crust generated at oceanic ridges is balanced by the cumulative amount destroyed in all subduction zones." Sykes, Isacks, and Oliver attributed the larger part of the Earth's seismic activity to this phenomenon. Their results can be found in the paper "Seismology and the New Global Tectonics" (abstract (link is external)).

  block diagram

  Image 2: Diagram from Seismology and the New Global Tectonics that illustrates the "mobile lithosphere" hypothesis, explaining that crust that is created at one point is destroyed at another.

  It is often said that Frederick Vine and Drummond Matthews developed a hypothesis, Tuzo Wilson explained the causes, and Sykes proved it.

  Other interesting scientific contributions:

  Besides his important work in the area of plate tectonics, transform faults, and seafloor spreading, Dr. Lynn Sykes was also heaviliy involved in other earthquake research and in nuclear weapons control. He worked to achieve a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty and works toward nuclear arms control. In fact, 35 of his published works are in the verification of nuclear testing.

  His continued work in the the earth sciences is in the evolution of stresses and earthquake activity in California, in general earthquake prediction, in interior plate quakes and seismic stress, and in earthquake activity in New York.

  Other cool stuff you should know:

  As a child, Lynn Sykes was an avid stamp collector, with over 20,000 stamps in his collection. He would often take the train from his home in Arlington, VA to Washington DC to buy stamps and visit the Smithsonian, helping spark his interest in the Earth Sciences.

  When Lynn Sykes attended MIT, he was on scholarship from Proctor and Gamble to cover the $900/year tuition.

  In 1974, Dr. Sykes was a member of the U.S. Delegation that negotiated the Threshold Test Ban Treaty with the U.S.S.R.

  Dr. Sykes won the Walter H Bucher medal from the American Geophysical Union for "original contribution to the basic knowledge of the Earth's crust" in 1975.

  Dr. Sykes gave a lecture (link is external) on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, a passionate subject of his, on its 100th anniversary.

QUOTED: "This account of his work and his activist role ... provides a unique historical view."

Silencing the Bomb: One Scientist's
Quest to Halt Nuclear Testing
Shervin Taheran
Arms Control Today.
48.1 (January-February 2018): p43. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 Arms Control Association http://www.armscontrol.org
Full Text:
Silencing the Bomb: One Scientist's Quest to Halt
Nuclear Testing
By Lynn R. Sykes, Columbia University Press, 2017, 284 pp.
Lynn R. Sykes, a professor emeritus of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University, was one of the scientists who adapted earthquake detection technologies for application to detection of explosive nuclear testing. This account of his work and his activist role in pushing for a ban on nuclear testing provides a unique historical view for those who wish to learn more about the intersection of science and treaty negotiation. Sykes' experience shapes this historical overview of the negotiations to end nuclear testing, which produced the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). He covers a period of time from the development of nuclear weapons in the 1940s to the advancement of nuclear test monitoring technologies, the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, and the 1999 Senate rejection of the CTBT. Sykes then looks ahead at efforts to continue to push for ways to permanently prohibit nuclear testing.--SHERVIN TAHERAN
1 of 3 3/5/18, 12:01 AM
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Taheran, Shervin. "Silencing the Bomb: One Scientist's Quest to Halt Nuclear Testing." Arms
Control Today, Jan.-Feb. 2018, p. 43. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com /apps/doc/A526732837/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=8aecdcaa. Accessed 5 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A526732837

QUOTED: "It's mainly a clear, bone-dry rehash of verification science, replete with geological maps, ... seismic graphs, and details of myriad seismic waves."

2 of 3 3/5/18, 12:01 AM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Silencing the Bomb: One Scientist's Quest to Halt Nuclear Testing
Publishers Weekly.
264.44 (Oct. 30, 2017): p73. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Silencing the Bomb: One Scientist's Quest to Halt Nuclear Testing Lynn R. Sykes. Columbia Univ., $35 (288p) ISBN 978-0-231-18248-5
The obscure art of detecting underground nuclear explosions animates tussles over nuclear- weapons treaties in this arcane memoir. Sykes, professor emeritus of Earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, recounts his decades-long work as a U.S. government adviser on nuclear agreements from the 1974 Threshold Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (abolishing underground tests with yields over 150 kilotons), which he helped negotiate in Moscow, to the latter-day campaign to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) abolishing all nuclear tests. Most of the book covers debates over seismology's ability to detect explosions, distinguish them from earthquakes, and gauge their yields. The dovish Sykes maintains that all but the smallest (less than one kiloton)--and therefore least useful--tests can be identified, while hawks claimed that the Soviets and others could use geology or evasion techniques to disguise much more powerful tests. Sykes offers occasional glints of passion in his account ("outrageously deceptive" is his verdict on one hawkish seismologist), but it's mainly a clear, bone-dry rehash of verification science, replete with geological maps, squiggly seismic graphs, and details of myriad seismic waves. Larger questions--would a CTBT have stopped North Korea?--are treated too sketchily in Sykes s narrowly technical take on a vast and vexing issue. Illus. (Dec.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Silencing the Bomb: One Scientist's Quest to Halt Nuclear Testing." Publishers Weekly, 30 Oct.
2017, p. 73. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A514357802 /GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=45202389. Accessed 5 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A514357802
3 of 3 3/5/18, 12:01 AM

Taheran, Shervin. "Silencing the Bomb: One Scientist's Quest to Halt Nuclear Testing." Arms Control Today, Jan.-Feb. 2018, p. 43. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A526732837/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=8aecdcaa. Accessed 5 Mar. 2018. "Silencing the Bomb: One Scientist's Quest to Halt Nuclear Testing." Publishers Weekly, 30 Oct. 2017, p. 73. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A514357802/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=45202389. Accessed 5 Mar. 2018.

• Arms Control Association
  https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2018-01/book-reviews/books-brief%C2%A0silencing-bomb-lynn-r-sykes%C2%A0-art-sanctions-richard-nephew
  Word count: 192

  BOOKS IN BRIEF: Silencing the Bomb, by Lynn R. Sykes; The Art of Sanctions, by Richard Nephew

  Arms Control Today

  Silencing the Bomb: One Scientist’s Quest to Halt Nuclear Testing
  By Lynn R. Sykes, Columbia University Press, 2017, 284 pp.

  Lynn R. Sykes, a professor emeritus of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University, was one of the scientists who adapted earthquake detection technologies for application to detection of explosive nuclear testing. This account of his work and his activist role in pushing for a ban on nuclear testing provides a unique historical view for those who wish to learn more about the intersection of science and treaty negotiation. Sykes’ experience shapes this historical overview of the negotiations to end nuclear testing, which produced the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). He covers a period of time from the development of nuclear weapons in the 1940s to the advancement of nuclear test monitoring technologies, the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, and the 1999 Senate rejection of the CTBT. Sykes then looks ahead at efforts to continue to push for ways to permanently prohibit nuclear testing.—SHERVIN TAHERAN

Word Count