Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2003 02:19:01 -0400
From: Steve Smith <sgs at aginc.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: fw: one more thing to worry about
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

ronkean at juno.com wrote:

> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.07/doomsday_pr.html
>
> Chain reactions
>
> The fear that scientists tinkering with the elementary components of
> matter might unleash disaster has a rich and distinguished history.
> Before the detonation of the first atomic bomb at Trinity Site in 1945,
> Robert Oppenheimer worried that the unprecedented heat might spark a
> fusion chain reaction in the atmosphere. Physicist Hans Bethe performed
> calculations proving the planet wouldn't ignite, and the test went
> ahead.

The way I heard it, the one who calculatd that the hydrogen in
atmospheric water vapor might fuse was Edward Teller, and the one who
pointed out the error (Teller had dropped a factor of c^2, or in CGS
units, about 10^21) was Oppenheimer.  This may be the reason that,
later, Teller was one of the people who testified in favor of yanking
Oppenheimer's security clearance.  This ended Oppenheimer's career.
McCarthy era.  'Nuff said.

Perhaps he shouldn't have prefixed his analysis "While I appreciate the
value of a qualitative calculation ...".

> Martin Rees, who has taken part in panels evaluating the safety of
> particle accelerators, has revived the idea that high-energy physics
> could accidentally destroy the world. In his new book, Our Final Hour,
> Rees worries that power improvements in atom smashers like Brookhaven's
> new Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider might make these machines capable of
> creating a black hole that would scarf up the globe. Ever more powerful
> accelerators, he fears, might create a "strangelet" of ultracompressed
> quarks - the smallest known units of matter - that would serve as an
> ice-nine for the entire universe, causing all matter to bind to the
> strangelet and disappear. Since, fundamentally, matter seems to be made
> of very rapidly spinning nothingness, there may be no reason why it
> couldn't spontaneously return to nothing.

Rees seems to be making a career out of doomsday scenarios.  I find it
difficult to believe that we're the first in the Cosmos to develop
particle accelerators, or that we can create conditions that don't occur
naturally, even in things like colliding black holes.

Me?  I just worry abut the fact that oxygen + nitrogen is an unstable
combination.  I'm not really sure why the atmosphere hasn't turned to
diesel exhaust, but I'm rather glad it hasn't.

--
Steve Smith                                           sgs at aginc.net
Agincourt Computing                            http://www.aginc.net
"Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense."