To: WSFAlist at keithlynch.net
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2003 03:12:16 -0400
Subject: [WSFA] Re: fw: one more thing to worry about
From: ronkean at juno.com
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

On Sat, 28 Jun 2003 02:19:01 -0400 Steve Smith <sgs at aginc.net> writes:

> The way I heard it, the one who calculated 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.
>

I saw or read something about how Oppenheimer thought that the Russians
should have the bomb, thinking that a nuclear standoff would better
promote peace than a nuclear monopoly.  Perhaps that was a reason for
removing his clearance.  But of course the Russians got the bomb soon
enough anyway, as did the British.

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.
>

That is a powerful argument for the extreme unlikelihood of a universe
destroying accident, be it artificial or natural.   But it leaves open
the possibility of a planet wide catastrophe, since numerous such events
might have occurred elsewhere without us knowing.

> Me?  I just worry about 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.
>

At high temperatures, nitrous oxide N2O exothermically decomposes as
follows

2N2O yields 2N2 + O2

so there would not be a self sustaining reaction of oxygen with nitrogen
yielding N2O, I would think.

http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/n2o/n2oc.htm

Ron Kean

.

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