Tom Murphy is a professor emeritus of the departments of Physics and Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of California, San Diego. An amateur astronomer in high school, physics major at Georgia Tech, and PhD student in physics at Caltech, Murphy spent decades reveling in the study of astrophysics. For most of his 20 year career as a professor, he led a project to test General Relativity by bouncing laser pulses off of the reflectors left on the Moon by the Apollo astronauts, achieving one-millimeter range precision. He is also co-inventor of an aircraft detector used by the world’s largest telescopes to avoid accidental illumination of aircraft by laser beams.
Murphy’s keen interest in energy topics began with his teaching a course on energy and the environment for non-science majors at UCSD. Motivated by the unprecedented challenges we face, he applied his instrumentation skills to exploring alternative energy and associated measurement schemes. Following his natural instincts to educate, Murphy is eager to get people thinking about the quantitatively convincing case that our pursuit of an ever-bigger scale of life faces gigantic challenges and carries significant risks.
Both Murphy and the Do the Math blog changed a lot after about 2018. Reflections on this change can be found in Confessions of a Disillusioned Scientist.
Note from Tom: To learn more about my personal perspective and whether you should dismiss some of my views as alarmist, read my Chicken Little page.
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