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New World Reader Volume 1 Issue 3
The New World Reader
An Electronic Idealetter
February 1995
Vol. 1 * No. 3
Contents-
From the Editor: The Future of Fusion Power
Communications
ÒPublic Support of ScienceÓ by Jack Lang
Scientific Currents: Biosphere 2, Comets and Chaos
Books
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From the Editor: The Future of Fusion Power
First, the News. Back issues of NWR are available via FTP from ftp.etext.org in the /pub/Zines/NewWorldReader directory. Check out our README there if you have any questions about this e-publication. The file also contains info about guidelines for submissions. In a few months we will begin maintaining a current index of NWR that will be kept at the ftp site. So keep you eyes pealed.
Those of you who have peaked in the January 13 issue of Science probably noticed the headline of an article in their News & Comment section: Future Grows Dim for Fusion. The power source of the future looks like it will probably have to wait a few more years before the long sought after commercially viable break-even reaction will be achieved. The setback is not due to some extremely difficult technical hurdle that has cropped up, but due to a more mundane cause--budget cuts. Excitement to produce a balanced budget in order to reduce the deficit has lead the current congress and the Clinton administration to look hard at some programs to see if they can be cut. The Department of Energy, the major source for Fusion funding, is anticipating significant cuts and preparing for them.
How important is it that the U. S.Õs budget deficit is reduced? Is a balanced budget more important than scientific research? We need to ask ourselves a few things about the future. What are things going to be like in fifty years? How do propose to feed, clothe, and provide electricity for over 10 billion people? Will we be worse off by trading technology like fusion power for a balanced budget?
For the optimistic futurist, fusion energy will be developed and will signal the beginning of a new age for humankind. Besides Earth based fusion power plants, fusion technology is our ticket to the stars. The Mirror Fusion Propulsion system promises to enable human exploration of our entire solar system. Transit times between Earth and other planets will be cut with this powerful engine from years to months. But why is space exploration so important? Are matters here on Earth more pressing than the colonization of space?
These are questions that will be considered in a future issue of NWR. This month, Jack Lang has provided us with an interesting argument why science should be a publicly supported enterprise.
Trevor Austin, Editor of NWR
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Communications
Please send your comments, complaints, observations, etc. to NEWORLDR@AOL.COM and they will be put here.
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Public Support of Science
By JACK LANG
Scientific research in the U. S. suffered a setback last November when the Republicans were given a majority in both branches of Congress. The financial support that science has enjoyed over the years is being threatened in the GOPÕs propaganda about cutting the budget deficit. This development raises some interesting questions about the relationship of science to the society who supports her. Should the public put every cent it can into supporting scientific research? Is science a good investment or can we do without research? What does the public get out of the research effort? If the scientific community is going to rely on the financial support of the public to underwrite research, then some convincing answers need to be given for these questions.
In the January 1994 issue of Physics Today, Roland W. Schmitt, chairman of the Governing Board of the American Institute of Physics, enumerated four reasons why the public should support science: 1) the search for truth, 2) the endless frontier, 3) general utility, and 4) special benefits. Let us consider these reasons that Schmitt has put forward.
The search for truth appeals to the long tradition of searching for explanations of why the universe is put together the way it is. Schmitt points out quite correctly that the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) was not proposed as some whimsical, frivolous project dreamed up by the scientific community as a way to provide employment for high energy physicists. The atomists of ancient Greece were the first to pose the questions physicists hoped to answer with the SSCÐ What is the underlying structure of matter? Where did the universe come from? Why do we exist? As lofty as Òthe search for truthÓ sounds, for any scientist it is the foundational reason to engage in the scientific effort.
What about the endless frontier? The defining social force of the twentieth century is nationalism, a collection of possibly conflicting ideas about our social identity (who we think we are). One aspect of our national identity is our pioneer spirit. Our expansion across the North American frontier gave birth to the modern idea that it is our responsibility to conquer yet another frontier-- nature. Who doesnÕt like a good challenge?
The products of science are useful; they posses general utility. The utility of the technology derived from scientific research is enormous. Our way of life has changed in response to the incredible amount of work that machines do for us. It has been said that the appliances that are in every home are equivalent to approximately thirteen human servants. Arguably, technology has made it possible for us to enjoy a greater degree of freedom than our ancestors.
The special benefits of science refer to specific local populations that benefit directly from the support of science (this is often called pork). Employees of technology companies benefit from the money that goes to support scientific research and development. Because employees and corporations have the largest political voice, it is the special benefits of science on which our lawmakers concentrate. A congressperson is more likely to support a bad science project that will bring money to her district over a good science project that will not directly benefit her constituency. One of the many reasons the SSC failed was not that it was bad science, but because the special benefits were not seen to be equal with the cost.
Schmitt listed these reasons for supporting science in the order that scientists rank them (or should rank them). The public, lay people and congressmen, ranks the importance of these reasons in the reverse order so that special benefits are always the most important and the search for truth is hardly a consideration.
Science is not a private enterprise that benefits only a few people. As disappointing as the loss of the SSC was to many physicists it must be recognized that organizing large private scientific ventures is not the correct solution to this problem. Big science and monetary profit do not normally go together. The cancellation of the SSC outraged many physicists who felt betrayed by a public who simply did not understand the importance of their work. Cries were heard calling for scientists to figure out a way to privately support big science projects protecting them from the fickle public and wishy-washy congressmen. I wish to avoid the debate about how big science could gain the billions of dollars necessary to sustain the SSC or a space program as a private enterprise and concentrate on the more important point: disregarding whether big science could be sustained privately, it should remain a public enterprise. Science is a group effort done for the good and embetterment of humanity. Science is not a profit making, capital generating enterprise concerned with the production and proliferation of technology. If people do not care about the top quark then perhaps this is because the scientists have stopped talking politely with the public. Maybe if the public knew something about quarks they would be more interested in paying for their discovery.
Last year, Nobel prize laureate, Samuel C. C. Ting, gave a public lecture in the LSU Physics department entitled ÒIn Search of the Building Blocks of Nature.Ó He posed the question: ÒWhy should we do high energy physics?Ó After the lecture I realized that the ÒweÓ referred to physicists and not society at large because the reasons he put forward were a laundry list of all the ÒinterestingÓ discoveries that could be or have been made. If the scientist says to the lay person, ÒWe need to do high energy physics so that we can discover the Higgs boson," then the lay person is going to answer, ÒWhat in the world is a Higgs boson, and why should I care if you discover it?Ó Physicists get excited about the Higgs because they know what it is and what it represents. (It is the particle/field that imparts mass to other particles.) The lay person will only see the necessity of doing research in high energy physics when they appreciate the intangible benefits of scientific discovery.
The questions about the origin of matter and the existence of the universe will always be with us. Eventually, an SSC will be built and future generations will have the privilege of knowing what we have decided is not important for our generation.
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Scientific Currents
BIOSPHERE 2 GETS A FRESH START
The controversial enclosed ecosystem in Arizona known as Biosphere 2 is getting a second chance to do some useful science. The old management has been replaced by a new team of scientists who plan on using the biosphere as a laboratory for studying the dynamics of an ecosystem similar to that of Earth. No longer will Biosphere 2 be the home of new age biospherians trailblazing the way into the future of human habitations. [See Science 13 January 1995 p. 169.]
Biosphere 2 is a good example of what happens to science whenever basic research is done by a profit seeking corporation. The first incarnation of the project was not run with the necessary rigor a scientific experiment requires. Because of the inadequacies of the execution of the project, it did not produce any significant addition to the body of scientific knowledge. Of course, just because a scientific project is financially supported by the public does not protect against all the problems experienced by Biosphere 2. --Trevor Austin.
COMET AND ASTEROID IMPACTS CHAOTIC BUT NOT RANDOM
Geophysicist Herbert R. Shaw has come up with a theory based on nonlinear dynamics (chaos) which reveals that when comets and asteroids collide with the Earth they do not just impact in random locations on the planetÕs surface. Variations in the gravitational attraction between these celestial wanderers and the Earth due to the EarthÕs non uniform distribution of matter give rise to chaotic interactions between the two bodies. Order arises out of chaos and certain orbits are selected for the comet or asteroid. When the body collides with the Earth it is steered to particular sites and does not just land in any old place. Shaw has identified a pattern in the crater distribution on the EarthÕs surface. He proposed his chaotic model to account for this pattern. [See Science News 28 January 1995 p. 58] --Trevor Austin.
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Books
Send along your book reviews.
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NEXT ISSUE: The Immutable World of Religion
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copyright, 1995 NWR
