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By Jame Killus

Fred Hoyle was born in Yorkshire in 1914 to decidedly middle-class parents (a wool merchant and a teacher). He was probably the most prominent scientist to ever have a significant career as a science fiction writer, having written such books as The Black Cloud and A for Andromeda. In the latter novel, some scientists genetically engineer an alien woman based on DNA coding sequences they receive from a stellar transmission. The book was made into a 7 episode series for the BBC, then the idea was pinched for the movie Species.

Hoyle is popularly known for his coinage of the term “Big Bang” and for his opposition to the Big Bang Hypothesis; he believed in “Continuous Creation” and held to it long after the discovery of cosmic background radiation and the more-or-less complete adoption of the BBH by the entire astronomical community. Not content to be something of a crank on the Big Bang, he also put forth the theory of panspermia as an alternative to terrestrial evolution. Panspermia essentially holds that life first occurred in space, and then came to planets; its strong form holds that evolutionary changes rain down from space as viruses or something similar. It is held in high regard in some Creationist circles, though I have no idea why genetic changes from space viruses are more in keeping with Creationist logic (or lack of it) than terrestrial mutations.

It’s possible that Hoyle’s anti-establishmentarian mind-set cost him the Nobel Prize. Hoyle’s co-worker, William Fowler, won the Nobel in 1963, essentially for confirming Hoyle’s prediction of a resonance level in the carbon nucleus, a prediction that Hoyle made as a result of a problem in nucleosynthesis of heavy elements in stars. (It may be noted that Hoyle made the prediction as part of his program to explain heavy elements as being a natural result of stellar nucleosynthesis, something that was absolutely essential if continuous creation was to be viable).

The problem that Hoyle was working on involved the nuclear fusion of elements past helium. The difficulty is that, if you try to fuse helium, you get beryllium-8, which almost immediately fissions back into two helium nuclei. So helium looks like a dead end. The only way out seemed to be if another helium nucleus hit the Be-8 during its very short lifetime. Unfortunately, calculations showed that the resultant highly energetic carbon-12 nucleus would also break apart. Indeed, the nuclear formation of Be-8 (from a Li-7 plus a proton, say), or C-12 (boron-11 plus a proton) form the basis of proposals for “light fission” nuclear power, because the created nuclei fly apart to He-4, liberating considerable energy.

Hoyle decided that there had to be a “nuclear resonance” in carbon-12 nuclei, that sometimes allowed the stable formation of C-12 from the Be-8 + He-4 reaction. Fowler later measured that resonance and found it to be only a few percent off Hoyle’s calculations.

It was about as daring a prediction as has ever been made in science, combining nuclear physics, astronomy, and the anthropic principle (Hoyle reasoned that he was made of carbon, therefore there must be a way for carbon to be formed), along with the simple bloody-mindedness of trying to support a doomed theory, continuous creation.

Hoyle was eventually knighted, and is doubtless much more famous than his co-workers, or, for that matter, Alpher, Bethe, and Gamov, who formulated the Big Bang hypothesis, but didn’t name it as such. Hoyle also championed Jocelyn Bell, as the real discoverer of pulsars (her Ph.D. advisor was awarded the Nobel), again showing perhaps the effects of not being from quite the right social class for British science.

Of Hoyle’s novels, only The Black Cloud seems to be in print, but many of his others can be found used; I was always fond of October the First Is Too Late. I’d also recommend Element 79, a collection of short stories, for often providing just loopy good fun.

By Seattle

I spent Memorial Day weekend at the International Space Development Conference in the Dallas area held by the National Space Society. I’ve never been to one of these space exploration advocate conferences before, but I get notifications of them - a hold over I think from subscribing to something or other in the dim past. I’ve contemplated attending before, but that’s spendy. So why did I go this year? Why clean out the savings account, accost the parents for funds and go to the flattest spot on the continent? My 15 year old son wants to be a space rocket/vehicle engineer, and recent events dictated that it was time to ease him into the realities of conferences and dressing up for dinner and all that grown up stuff. Not to mention opening his eyes to all the options out there in the field so that if he doesn’t end up as an engineer in the end, he won’t feel he’s failed so much as changed directions.

But never mind about him for now. Here’s what I learned:

1. The demographics of the National Space Society as represented at this conference was rather eye opening and could be summed up in the statement, “It’s been a rough 30 years for the hard space enthusiasts.” I counted 4 African Americans - one of whom, Edward McCullough, actually did a presentation I attended which was probably the most impressive of those I witnessed. Otherwise, looking around the huge main presentation room, I eyeballed the crowd as 99.9 percent Caucasian, with men outnumbering women by about 20 to 1. Grey and white hair by far predominated, and one younger member that I’d put in his 20’s actually came up to the mic and put the whole demographics issue on the table - in terms of ethnicity if not concerning the age issue. He said he’d been coming to the conferences for several years and they were always attended by a bunch of middle class white people and what was the NSS doing to attract a wider demographic? The answer was interesting in it’s phrasing. “We’ve seen when we do outreach that a certain demographic grabs their kids and drags them over to our table/display while members of other demographic groups walk by without a glance. We’re working on that.” He didn’t sound too convincing. It might be appropriate at this point to mention that the convention was in a large hotel in the rich suburb of Addison, TX north of Dallas….

2. There are a lot of people in the National Space Society irritated by NASA policy.

3. One of the best ways to get NASA’s attention is to get one of their very expensive Mars rovers stuck in a sand dune…on Mars.
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By jimmyraybob

My humblest apologies for not getting this posted sooner. We here at the Ministry of Geology and Glitter (MOGG) have had a rather busy last few weeks (not that everyone else hasn’t). On top of that there were three deaths rather close to home, and the Virginia Tech shootings, and the death a Cardinal’s pitcher, and the on-going death and destruction in Iraq. Every time our travelogue subcommittee got together for a production meeting there seemed to be a smothering glum and a sense that what we were doing seemed too irrelevant in the face of issues of such magnitude – and nothing happened. However, after reviewing the report of the last closed door emergency strategy meeting of the MOGG General Commission for Figuring Things Out we seem to be feeling mo better. The report, entitled Sure Things Seem Sucky but How Do You Make Things Un-Sucky by Sitting on Your Lazy Can? Now Get Back to It and Show the Members of the Glorious WAAGNFNP Some More Pictures of the Great Fact Finding Mission to the Southwest Before We Come Down the Hall and Kick Some Major MOGG Butt!, was very well received by the travelogue subcommittee. So, without further ado……

Dateline STL (April 28 May 11, 2007): Continuing the report from the field, the MOGG entourage was able to find a very satisfactory camp on the east side of the Santa Catalina Mountainswithin the Coronado National Forest. It was a tad after dark when we rolled in so we just threw out the sleeping bag – on top of our extra thick wimpo model Thermarest pad.

The road that we were on is the Mount Lemmon Road out of Oracle, Arizona, and a nice trek that winds from desert grassland through dry woodlands and chaparral to boreal forest at over 9,000 feet above sea level. Later in the summer, when the road is open to the top, you might see wild horses & rattlesnakes along the way to a beer or a slice of homemade pie at the village of Summerhaven.

The next morning was a bit special for having painted clouds to the east across the San Pedro River valley:

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By James Killus

There are reasons to suspect that science and engineering took a very different path over there: their limited understanding of nuclear weapons—they seem to think that nukes are roughly as easy to build as bottle rockets—suggests that nuclear fission may never have been developed on their timeline. – Twilight Zone by Gregory Cochran, on evidence that members of the Bush Administration are from a parallel universe.

Just how hard is it to build a nuke? And what is the smallest amount of plutonium needed to build one?

The smallest nuclear weapon ever designed was the Davy Crockett, aka the W54 warhead, weighing 51 pounds with a variable yield supposedly from 10 to 250 tons of TNT equivalent. It was the last weapon ever atmospheric-tested by the U.S. and in its two tests, (Little Feller I and II) it yielded 22 and 18 tons of explosive power. At those yields, however, the explosive power was pretty much unimportant compared to the radiation the blast produced, lethal to 50% of unshielded personnel at 400 meters, 100% lethal at 300 meters.

There’s not a lot of unclassified information about the actual design of the W54, but some conjectures can be made about it just from the nature of the nuclear chemistry involved. A “bare critical” mass of plutonium, for example, weighs roughly 10 kg, but a neutron reflector reduces this by maybe a factor of two. A uranium reflector/tamper can also increase yield because some fast fission will take place in the reflector itself (at the cost of a time delay in the return of the neutrons to the explosive core). Beryllium also multiplies neutrons, undergoing “light fission” on exposure to high-energy particles of any kind, including neutrons, to produce, well, more neutrons. This is also at the expense of slowing the neutrons and thus retarding the rapid increase in neutron population that make a bomb go ka-boom.

But slowing neutrons is called “moderation” and slower neutrons tend to react more easily with nuclei (have a higher capture cross section) than fast neutrons. This is a consequence of quantum mechanics, where fast particles have a more certain position than do slow ones. Think of the slow neutrons as being more “fuzzy,” virtually bigger, if you will. So if there is a nearby nucleus that is “sticky” for neutrons, a slow neutron is more likely to glom onto it.

That is pretty much the principle of nuclear reactors, where neutrons are slowed down to better react with the fissile elements in the reactor. A mass that is sub-critical for fast neutrons can be more than critical for slow neutrons.

The result is that, with a thick beryllium reflector, the critical mass of normal plutonium can be reduced to less than 20% of its “bare” critical number. The thickness of the reflector in the Davy Crockett was probably dictated by the limit that is reached when adding more reflector increases the overall mass of the design rather than reducing it.

The variable yield of the W54 looks like a signature of a variable fusion boost, but I’ve seen statements to the effect that D-T fusion doesn’t get going until you reach the 100 ton range, so the W54 may have had multiple fission core compositions. Still, the upper limit of the W54 is within the fusion boosting range, so a design modification could possibly have boosted its potential yield to a full kiloton.

A reasonable question arises, is the implied 2 kg core the minimum amount of plutonium (or U233, which has a bare critical mass of about 16 kg) that can be used to make a nuclear weapon, even one of such a low yield as the W54?
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By James Killus

A buddy of mine from the air biz used to work at Lawrence Livermore Labs, and he was once at a luncheon where Edward Teller was holding forth. Since there were several atmospheric scientists at that particular lunch, at one point Teller speculated on whether it would be possible to set up a series of nuclear explosions that would cause atmospheric particulates to precipitate out of the air.

My friend was a little nonplussed, because this was a truly loony idea. But after thinking about it for a while, he chalked it up to Teller having a little fun with his own reputation. He had, after all, basically invented the thermonuclear bomb, and had then spent much of his remaining career overseeing its refinement, and looking for some place to use it. From proposed massive canal building projects to attempts to get more natural gas out of geological formations, Teller always had that single tool that he was trying to use: the H-bomb.

Later, when we all heard about the Teller’s backing of the Strategic Defense Initiative (called “Star Wars” in the popular press), some of us immediately wondered, “Where’s the bomb?”

We learned soon enough about the proposed X-ray (or gamma ray) laser, which was supposed to be pumped by a thermonuclear explosion, so there you are and bob’s your uncle. I didn’t expect that to work, for technical reasons, and it didn’t.

SDI did not die with the gamma laser failure, however. We’ve had various debates about the feasibility of “hitting a bullet with a bullet” vs “smart rocks” or “brilliant pebbles,” (or “sentient sand” for all I know). In any case, there’s really no idea so lame that a DOD bureaucracy won’t champion it, but there are some things that generally don’t get said, so I’m going to say them here.

The fact is that there are certain paths of least resistance in engineering. Some ideas, no matter their soundness or unsoundness, will never happen, because something else that is technically easier will happen first. It’s important to know what it is that will happen first.
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By Dr. Free-Ride

Before I have a go at addressing some of the comments from the original post, I need to express my gratitude (and frankly, my amazement) at the quantity and quality of those comments. Long live civilized discourse in cyberspace!

Questions and comments that can be answered briefly, answered briefly.

1. In comment 69, Janus said:
“I have never read anything by a theistic scientist who understands the scientific method so well.”

I never said I was theistic. And, while I was trained as a physical chemist, I am not a working scientist. I am currently working as a philosopher of science — which is to say, understanding the scientific method is part of my job.

2. I am not claiming that atheists don’t take a lot of crap in the U.S. at this moment in history. They do. Nor am I claiming that “believers” are persecuted in the halls of science. To the best of my knowledge, they are not.

My initial post wasn’t trying to establish a point about current power relations in American society at large, nor in the community of science in the U.S. Rather, it sought to establish that proper use of scientific methodology to answer scientific questions need not keep a scientist from holding certain beliefs that aren’t certified as knowledge by the scientific method.

3. Hank Fox, in comment 8:
“The generosity you allow religious, faith-based, subjective believers is not shared by the other team. AND … all of this takes place against a political backdrop — a statistical field in which, no matter the eventual real-world benefits and results of the two mindsets, NUMBERS of believers on both sides matter.”

I agree that, in the current political landscape in the U.S., religion has an unfair advantage and appealing to folks on the basis of reasoned arguments is generally not a winning strategy. This depresses me like you would not believe. (Lately, I have this hunch that the real reason Socrates drank the hemlock was that he was fed up with folks who should have been susceptible to reasoned arguments but stubbornly resisted them.) However, I think it would be unfair to cast all the “faithful” as enemies of reason. (The Jesuits who trained my dad, for example, were huge fans of reasoned arguments.)
Even if the “faithful” fight dirty, I personally am not ready to say that scientists and science fans should sink into the mud as well. To my mind, intellectual honesty and fighting a clean fight go hand in hand. Then again, there’s probably a reason that the whole “philosopher kings” idea never caught on, so don’t let me stop you from formulating your own political strategy.

4. Several commenters raise the issue that various flavors of religious belief involve a deity who intervenes upon the material world from time to time. Religious beliefs of this sort would seem to have an empirical content that might render them testable using scientific methodology, thus making them eligible to be supported or undermined as “knowledge”.

I purposely avoided using any beliefs of this sort as examples in the original post because I agree that there’s a serious challenge in maintaining these kinds of beliefs while still embracing scientific methodology. But this is not the only sort of belief to which the hard core scientific-method camp objects. (And, there are people who identify themselves as believing in a deity who don’t believe in an intervening deity.)

5. In response to the fine points raised by Aloysius (comment 42ff.), I won’t make any further claims about David Bowie’s best album. While I have strong opinions on this matter, it’s really not my area of expertise.

The issues that require longer responses:

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By jimmyraybob

The Grand Canyon of the Colorado is recognized as one of the greatest wonders of the natural world, breathtaking in its incredible splendor as seen from the rim, and at river level. It is not just an icon of beauty, however, it is a solemn witness to the mighty power of God … the beautiful rock strata of the Canyon, with their evidence of deposition under widespread waters, speak of His world-convulsing judgment at the time of the great Flood. Similarly, the mile-deep canyon itself, which could never have been carved out by the waters of the present river, tells of a time when a great damned up lake full of water from the flood suddenly broke and a mighty hydraulic monster roared down toward the sea, digging deeply path it had chosen along the way.

Tom Vail in Grand Canyon, a Different Story (2003)

Thus begins a book about a new myth about an old myth; a book that lays claim to one of the greatest geological marvels and open air textbooks in the world. It’s a book of creative and fanciful musings - at best a hypothesis - presented to fit a creation myth as old as mankind (e.g., Epic of Gilgamesh, Genesis). But it’s more; it’s become a textbook in the science curriculum of the fundamentalist Christian universities and colleges. It’s science – devoid of the encumbrance of the methodology of science – for a new Theocracy.

A view of the Canyon from Guano Point, East Grand Canyon, Hualapai Nation, AZ.

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Dateline STL (March 28, 2007): I have returned from my Ministry of Geology and Glitter (MOGG) junket to the wilds of the American Southwest and would like to thank our glorious Minister of Justice for extending a gracious invitation to share the results of my fact-finding mission with the Party. First of all, I have to post a disclaimer: In no way shape or form has Jack Abramoff influenced or subsidized any MOGG activities. Second of all, I am pleased to report to the membership that the state of the Southwest is good.

The MOGG entourage first encampment was an abandoned ranch near St. Johns, AZ., complete with Mesozoic Era, late Triassic Period Chinle Formation outcrop décor…

laundry room,

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By Dr. Free Ride

[Update to the Update: 4/11/07 - On the off chance that anyone comes back by here. Dr. Free Ride’s response to the comments can be found here.

Update 3/25/07 - Good news! Dr. Free Ride will be making a follow-up post to address “a bunch of the points raised here”. Look for it sometime during the week of April 9th. Would be sooner, but a dealine on a paper has to be met by next week. Thanks for your patience. - Oaktown Girl, MOJ.]

There’s a rumor afoot that serious scientists must abandon what, in the common parlance, is referred to as “faith”, that “rational” habits of mind and “magical thinking” cannot coexist in the same skull without leading to a violent collision.

We are not talking about worries that one cannot sensibly reconcile one’s activities in a science which relies on isotopic dating of fossils with one’s belief, based on a literal reading of one’s sacred texts, that the world and everything on it is orders of magnitude younger than isotopic dating would lead us to conclude. We are talking about the view that any intellectually honest scientist who is not an atheist is living a lie.

I have no interest in convincing anyone to abandon his or her atheism. However, I would like to make the case that there is not a forced choice between being an intellectually honest scientist and being a person of faith.
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