Nuclear security

This earthquake expert dodged Russian surveillance to try to halt nuclear testing

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.