Colliders Are Forever

M's OFFICE LONDON

What do you know about CIRC in Geneva, Commander Bond?

Not much sir. Centre International pour la Récherche Circulaire. About says it all. They've built the world's largest Dyson Ball Vac according to CIRC PR, but physicists are a canny bunch. Half the time they don't know what they're talking about. It might look like a giant Dyson Ball Vac but it might not work like one.

Good. That confirms our intelligence. Might not be a Vac at all. Find out for us in case it's anti-British. This is the beast, a hundred meters underground. (unrolling a giant schematic) 27 km around. A great deal of suction.

$10 Billion to date, sir.

Not a total waste we're finding. Picking up dust as far as London. But where are they going to put it all eventually when they shut it down for cleaning? Not our problem fortunately. Touch and go on other fronts. Accidents, some new theories on what might happen at the Doomsday Machine. But they say they've got more baffling concerns. Seems they've found a physicist in the blower, but he's not one of theirs. Looks like the spitting image of one of the Cenral Vac Café waiters, who has suddenly disappeared. Uppity sort who always wanted to be a physicist. It's probably him having a lark at their expense or he's simply lost his marbles. In any case we have a security risk. CIRC wants some answers. Problem is the waiter's spinning stories that are so fantastic they might be creditable like quantum physics theory. CIRC is bamboozled.

Surely it's rather obvious. A personnel problem. CIRC fires the waiter. He finds another job. Hardly a security issue.

In the best of all possible worlds. Not sure where CIRC fits in. Thing is there's a Russian connection. Our friend Dimitri Obolin, the waiter, has some support from the Russians working at the Dyson Ball from FermiBall the rival American Vac. The new Russian Upright Vac project has expressed interest in trading him for one of their waiters. Rather complicated. Camilla and HRH the Prince of Wales are due to visit CIRC tomorrow. Something about Hitler's New Bunker, no not the National Library this time. It could be a new chapter in the Cold Vac War we thought had blown a fuse. Where you come in 007.

GENEVA, HOOVER NOVOTEL LOBBY

Welcome to Geneva, Mr Bond and the Hoover Novotel. I see you're on Dyson business. CIRC will be covering all your expenses. There's a delegation waiting to receive you in the Poussière Dorée Bar. Your suite is ready if you'd like to shower and change. Should I say you'll be down soon?

Bit early. Don't know if I can face physicists before supper. How many?

Four I believe.

Is this standard procedure? A welcome committee?

For VIPs yes and government people.

Then the Hoover is a CIRC hotel?

No, it's a public hotel but we cater largely to a CIRC clientèle and the airport. The Dyson is just down the road.

Very convenient. Think I'll look in on the delegation now. Is the suite big enough for entertaining? Do you have a penthouse available?

Usually booked, but I can check. Yes, we have one coming up. It won't be ready for an hour or so.

Fine, I'll have it then. Rather quiet for a big hotel? Apart from the Dyson noise and dust. I suppose people in Geneva are a bit nervous? Are you?

About the Dyson? It's the press stories, you know, end of the world. We're used to that. Though the Dyson energies are going way up soon, Mach 3.5 if that's what you mean.

Sorry. (turning) Is that you Q--ing? Splendid surprise.

What on earth are you doing in Geneva, James?

Consulting, sightseeing. Time for a drink?

Yes, rather a good idea. Why not?

It will have to be a quick one in the lounge. Otherwise engaged. (to the concierge) Send over a vodka martini shaken not stirred and a Pimm's Number 1 or if that's too arcane, make it a Long Island Iced Tea.

(walking to the lounge) Sorry about barging in. Happened to be shopping at the bijouteries, clocks and watches, partly professional interest, and then I get a call. You know your car at Heathrow? Blown up. Your flat in Kensington burglarized, and you're being audited by Inland Revenue, but we think we can fix that. We don't know who's behind it.

No, but we do have (sitting) a security breach, Q. Well? You have nothing. Is that all?

Isn't that enough? There's a bit more from M if you'll stop being testy. We know now that CIRC owns this hotel. Novotel just runs it. Under the circumstances, better ask for another room. I'll have it hoovered for you later.

Hoovered? Don't forget a box of chocolates and flowers for the maid. No. Listen closely. Don't. CIRC is supposed to be on our side. In the field, things aren't just technical. What else did M say?

Your Dimitri may be from a parallel universe.

Which parallel universe Q? The one in London? Might have mentioned it earlier. I see. Some aliens, some Russians check into the Hoover? To pick him up and take him home?

Cubans, a trade delegation. You might recall the big Vac projects started in Cuba in the 1950's.

Looks like there's a lineup for CIRC's Loony Bin. There's a welcome committee of four from CIRC waiting for me at the bar. Know who they are?

From CIRC evidently, unscheduled it seems. Hadn't heard. Not on your schedule?

Exactly. Are they official or unofficial?

Splitting hairs aren't we?

What do you think field agents do while you people have your endless meetings and cucumber sandwiches?

Besides crashing cars and blowing things up? Can't say. Plenty of sweaty sex? Don't envy you Bond. It's a hard life. Not a casino girl in sight. (drinks arrive) Alright, I've finished. You're right. Looking tiresomely suspicious, this CIRC business. Did you know a CIRC helio landed on the roof here about 40 minutes ago?

Is it still there?

Was 10 minutes ago. Ingenious really, a special helio screw to avoid turbulence. Modified Sikorsky--

Why the helio? CIRC is a stone's throw away. There's the Dome out your window.

Traffic snarl. Security is very tight around the Dyson. Been here a few days. Shouldn't have bothered really. All roads closed. Some protesters packed off in Police vans. CIRC said they might try Mach 3.5 today. Rather more dust around. And that nerve-wracking woo-woo-woo. Imagine all this nonsense to save the environment? Anyway, no choice but to fly in your delegation.

Then everything makes sense. Everything's fine. Just some extra security for their Dyson and the VIP, me. I don't like it.

If that's all, I'd better be off. Bond? Maybe it's all routine, except for your Morgan.

Blast you Q, you're a big help. Is M convinced I've walked into a trap? Have my orders changed?
Don't think so?

Can I trust CIRC?

Can't say.

Think back. What did M say?

Hornet's nest, don't spare the horses, provide assistance. 005 fell off a building.

Fine. Now cover my back and tell London it's Jack. Do you have a wire with you? Any sort of transmitter? Can you track me?

No, not officially on duty. Brought my wife along. She still thinks I work in insurance.

I'm activating you Q. Now provide assistance. Think.

Think? You mean I'm Triple-0? This is a nice surprise. Or is it? You've got your mobile? Good. Call Universal Export and slip me your Bluetooth earpiece. It's only good for 10 meters, a bit dodgy, not encrypted but keep talking and London and I will know what you're doing.

Charming. I've changed rooms by the way for a penthouse suite, but I might be in the bar next. Keep in range if you can. I don't want to disappear. Hang around the gift shop. Buy a paper. Company's coming. (both stand to shake hands) Nice to see you again. Do keep in touch.

Right you are, James.

(as Q leaves the concierge brings a woman over) Mr Bond, this is Dr Ersuite from CIRC. She's with the delegation.

(shaking hands) A pleasure Mr Bond.

Just on my way. An old school friend waylaid me.

We're running late. The café is full of some noisy Cubans. Hope you don't mind. Our delegation has gone up to your penthouse. Just follow me. (walking to the elevators) We'll be changing elevators up on the last public floor. You'll like the DG's suite. It's very private.

A nice bonus. (Q comes up) Oh it's you again old boy. Feeling your oats?

You'll never guess. Forgot this bit. Manchester United is in town. Can't make out when they're playing. It's these French papers. (unfolds his newspaper for display) Imagine, calling them boozy bastards. See about tickets if you like and call me.

Manchester United en faillite. Les comptables en justice, ces «Boozy Bastards»
Alien décovert à CIRC
Nouvelle scandale Dyson, la «X Machine»

Sorry my French isn't up to yours. More meetings on tap. Call me in London when you get back.

Right you are. Thought I'd hang around for supper. Superb brasserie on the tenth floor with a view, tables outside when the Dyson's off. Think I'll call Doris and make a night of it. Drop by if you can old sport. Did I tell you I found a Rolex for 50 quid? So real it might be hot, probably a knockoff, but who can complain? Here it is. A beauty. The Swiss must be slipping. Knockoffs in Geneva, what next? Here's an idea! What about going to the island later to watch The Spout? They light the thing up, rather splendid.

Not on I'm afraid. Give Doris my regrets. If you like let's try tomorrow. Meet me here at the bar 2 PM.

Ever try the Grosvenor for high tea and croquet? Camilla and Charles might drop by. Doris would love it.

Perhaps the hippodrome. Now if you'll excuse us? Can't keep the lady waiting.

So sorry. (to her) Dreadfully sorry. Thought you wanted the elevator. (smiling, wandering backwards) Well tomorrow then. I'm off.

I can't seem to shake him. Have to keep him happy. He's on the Board of my Club. You were saying, Dr Ersuite?

(elevator arrives) Yes, I hope you're enjoying Geneva? CIRC knows how to make their guests very comfortable. After our meeting, I might have a surprise for you?

PUBLIC ELEVATOR INTERIOR

(doors close) Quite. While I freshen up, you can shave your moustache, Dr Borovda.

I don't know what you are talking about.

Who's with you? (Bond shoves his Beretta into her neck) Where is Dimitri?

Don't shoot.

I'm trying not to. What's in your shoulder bag? A Glock. Not standard CIRC issue. Talk. (karate chop, she falls heavily) Three seconds.

Oow. You hurt me!

Broken collar bone. Anything else I can do?

Please! I'm not with them. I was raised in the State Orphanage, indoctrinated. There are two of them. The CIRC people are dead by now. You're the fall guy. Shoot Gyorgi when the door opens.

(elevator door opens, Gyorgi waiting) It might be a seizure. She just fell. Take her down to the lobby and call an ambulance.

(Gyorgi leans into a kick, knocked down, Glock to his head) Ooooh.

But he's not dead.

HOTEL HALLWAY

(Bond throws her flying over the body) Move. No one is dead yet as far as I know. Fix your hair. I'm right behind you. Where's Dimitri?

(she stumbles to her feet) In the helio on the roof. CIRC wanted us to transfer him to you.

(Bond jabs the Glock into her back, shoving her across the hall) Talk!

They panicked, CIRC panicked. The alien story is all over the papers and they want deniability.

Why!

Dimitri might be genuine. He says he works for CERN Geneva, a nuclear lab, a particle accelerator, that he thinks will blow up his world.

His world?

There is no CERN Geneva. Only in his world. We have his ID, we have strange plastic cards, some phony Euro currency and diamonds, lots of diamonds, large stones, clear and uncut, but polished like ice.

From where?

We don't know. Not from the Dyson, not from CERN.

They're genuine diamonds?

Highly radioactive.

What's going on at Dyson?

I don't know. I'm with CIRC PR. They don't tell us anything. It's supposed to be about carbon capture, global warming. The Dyson collects carbon dioxide, dust, cosmic dust is what they want. That's all I know.

Is this the elevator? Who's the Russian waiting for us in the penthouse?

He's an American. Tall, strong like a football player. Wyman Follers. Big W.

Just him?

Yes, just him.

The helio pilot, is Wyman the pilot?

Yes.

The helio, what make?

Sikorski.

Tell Wyman you had to kill me. Tell Wyman I killed Gyorgi. Tell Wyman you have to take the helio and get out with Dimitri. Will it work?

Yes. Maybe.

How many real CIRC people?

Just one, a physicist.

One too few I think. You want Dimitri and me or is it just me? But I'm the fall guy? How many are there!

Two!

(bang) You're finally probably right. (pulling out his phone) Bond here. Backup requested now. Hoover penthouse, Hoover roof. Intercept Hoover helio. Are you deaf!

(phone) We don't cater parties. Strictly on our premises.

Yes you do.

(phone) Not on the Hoover Dam.

Hoover Hotel blast it, in Geneva now. Call Q, call the Geneva Police and shut up.

(phone) Geneva New York?

Geneva Geneva, Dyson Vac Geneva, Switzerland! I'm going in. I'm taking Dimitri and the CIRC helio.

PRIVATE ELEVATOR TO PENTHOUSE

(door opens to W waiting) Is there some mistake? You seem to be in my suite.

Where's Dr Ersuite?

No idea. Are you with CIRC?

You met her, you saw her?

No. (Bond shoots through his jacket pocket 3 times) I'm in a bit of a rush.

PENTHOUSE HELIO PAD NIGHT, HELIO LIT AND READY

(Bond running) We have to go now! Bond shot W! The police are coming!

Gyorgi!

Get out now! We have to run for it! (a man jumps down, Bond fires twice, kicks him over) I'm a British agent with CIRC! Dimitri! Stay inside! I'm coming in!

HELIO INTERIOR LIT NIGHT

(Bond climbs in, two bodies slumped at the back) Anyone dead?

Not dead, we are drugged, don't shoot us.

Dimitri?

Yes. Dr Dimitri Obolin, CERN. Are those CIRC people dead? They're crazy. That one said he would kill us if something went wrong.

You're safe with me.

We have to get out of here now. The Dyson Vac. CERN will blow it up.

(a hoarse whisper) It's Q. It's me Q! Bond, it's Q. Don't shoot.

Not now Q. I'm busy.

Busy!

Trouble?

Not my department. Just a mad scramble. Four penthouses, yours the blasted last.

Did you see Gyorgi? Anyone?

Georgi the one stuck in the elevator?

That's him. Dead?

Gurgling a bit. And your girlfriend, dead I think.

Any police?

Not yet.

Here, take the Glock Q. Watch the roof. (Bond aims his Beretta) Don't move a muscle Dimitri. No time to be nervous. We're British agents, not CIRC.

We must leave now! Get us out of here. The danger is real. Our Large Hadron Collider is a matter transporter. It wasn't designed for that, but that is why I am here. I'm from CERN. I'm here in your world.

That's a matter of opinion.

How else did I get here?

People believe strange stories. People tell strange stories. Especially in my line of work.

Your Dyson Vac, isn't it dangerous?

Not if it's a Vac.

Is it a Vac? Ask Dr Vander here. He's with CIRC.

Yes, Vander, Dr Vander. I'm a nuclear physicist. Who are you? Let me think.

Is the Dyson a Vac?

Not exactly. The Dyson captures dust and CO2 but there is some strange cosmic energy that CIRC claims it is capturing. It makes no sense to me.

Let me speak, I'm Dr Vander. I think we have found some new energy. We can condense it, but we can't analyze it yet. It is something physical and unknown.

Is it dangerous?

We don't know yet. In our detectors diamond becomes highly radioactive. We call it dark energy.
Dr Vander, do you believe Dimitri?

Yes and no. Well his quantum chromodynamics are interesting. They might apply to ours but it would take weeks of computing and analysis. What he says only a physicist could invent. CIRC is embarrassed. They don't want to find out if he is right or wrong. They want to get rid of him. The DG told me at the last minute we had to transfer Dr Obolin to the British. No one will take us seriously if we have an alien at CIRC.

So we can't trust CIRC?

Of course you can trust CIRC. We are scientists. Our goals are more science, more knowledge. Certainly the Vac is not perfectly safe. It might fall through the earth like a stone through water. Anything is possible in quantum physics. But is the impossible likely? Dr Obolin has to be a fake, but is he lying?

What about CERN, Dimitri? Is what they are doing safe?

Last week I would have said yes. Now I'm very worried. At never before seen energies, the LHC could surprise us. ALICE especially when we fire heavy lead nuclei beams at each other. It is an enormous particle collider, but the end is nuclear fusion. We didn't know, we still don't know about your parallel world. Our physics doesn't predict it. Our physics is obviously incomplete as is yours. If our worlds share the same matter we are mutually interdependent. It might only be clear in nuclear events, the destruction or creation of matter. When something nuclear happens at CERN, the Dyson will be affected. And vice-versa. Dr Vander, do you get unexplained nuclear events?

Listen everybody! (Dr Vander was yelling) Maybe we can prove what Dimitri says! We know about nuclear fission and fusion, but we think it's too dangerous to apply. Everyone knows there are strange events in many places. Energy vortices we cannot explain all over France. Some in Italy, in England, in Russia, China, in the United States. In 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki disintegrated and many people vanished, many were horribly sick.

In my world, we have about 2,000 nuclear reactors, fission reactors using enriched uranium. We're producing plutonium! With nuclear fission weapons in 1945 we destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Dr Obolin, this is theoretically possible. Technically possible. Many years ago we had an experimental reactor in Chicago. We made some plutonium.

Bond! Time for a reality check. Are we waiting for more trouble? CIRC is bloody well going to change their minds about dumping Dimitri when they find out how desperate the Russians are to get him. And what about the Russians? What are they doing now? They're expecting our CIRC helio and Dimitri. Let's get out of here!

(rotors start turning) Right Q. You're making sense. Hop in, we're going. Helmets on everyone. Pass them around Q. Buckle in. Radios on. Hear me?

HELIO LIFTOFF AND FLIGHT

Fine, yes, OK.

Bond, what's Jack anyway?

A bolthole in Evian. We fly south over Lake Leman. We land at the Grand Hotel. We drive away. Just don't want us shot down. Wait! I've still got Universal on the line. Bond here! Do not shoot down CIRC helio! Yell back! Heading for Evian. Take off your helmet Q. Talk to Universal!

You didn't tell them to shoot us down!

Of course I didn't. I asked for backup, for intercept. See anybody Q?

Your phone is dead, Bond. Look! Blinky light flying, port side high. Kill all your lights. Would CIRC shoot us down?

It's their helio.

Good point. Rather expensive piece of equipment. What's the radar say?

(a tense moment) Blinky light closing. We're changing course for Lausanne. Know of any Russian presence in the area?

Small jets fly into Geneva all the time, UNESCO and another half dozen UN agencies. That would be it. Occasional private yacht might have a helio, but I'm guessing.

Yes. It's the Russians. No radio contact. It's their getaway jet. They're fast, faster than us, flying loop the loop to keep behind us.

Why don't they shoot us down?

Maybe they're not sure it's us, or they don't have a missile. If we give them more time, they'll think of something. An RPG, or buzzing us into the drink. Burn us some way. I'm going to radio the airport Lausanne. Mayday! Mayday! Medical emergency. Requesting permission to land. Lausanne, do you copy?

Roger that. Identify yourself over?

UN helio B7471, Uncle Norman Bob 7471 from Geneva. United Nations flight. Request permission to land, over.

Roger that UN B7471. You are cleared to approach. Proceed to helio pad 1, main terminal roof, over.

Roger that Lausanne.

Proceed due west, via runway 40 airspace, over.

Proceeding due west via 40, four zero runway space, do you copy?

Roger.

ETA in 11 minutes, over.

Roger. Light winds 5 knots North by North West, over.

Winds North by North West 5 knots. Radio static, static building, static total, over. Can't hear you Lausanne, radio static over.

It's not the radio Bond. It's the Dyson Ball. Fire! It's bleeding orange. Over there! The sky is cracking!

Copyright (c) Alan Gillis 2009 All Rights Reserved

Someday This Crazy World Will Have To End

PD Smith writes on science and literature as cultural history. His articles and reviews have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian Review, the Independent and the essay below is from his recent column in 3QuarksDaily. His biography Einstein was published in 2003. Doomsday Men: The Real Dr Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon, Penguin and St Martin's Press, is his new book on the dawn of the Atomic Age. For links, reprints and his latest blogging, see his website Kafka's mouse.

PD Smith's "Someday This Crazy World Will Have To End" touches the same nerve in CERN's LHC megaproject that promises a new nuclear physics and a new world. The same resistance to an open enquiry or discussion of the potential dangers and merits of the LHC that Dr Edward Teller hotly dismissed about the Bomb, surfaces in CERN's disregard of outside criticism as in my article "Politics And Science At The LHC" and CERN's Dr Bob McElrath's hostile reply in his Comment on it. PD Smith also explores the relationship of Science to Science Fiction here and in Doomsday Men, as I have in my satiric essay, "The Black Hand Of Dr CERN".

The other day I had an email from an angry reader. He accused me of maligning the good name of scientists in my cultural history of superweapons. Scientists were not “doomsday men” and the phrase “an organization of dangerous lunatics” should not be applied to the secret laboratories where scientists developed superweapons. As someone who had worked in the nuclear industry, he wanted to make it plain to me that it was only thanks to such “lunatics” and their many scientific discoveries that I could enjoy a comfortable and healthy life, free from the fear of Nazism and Communism.

I must admit I was slightly taken aback by the heartfelt anger of his email. It was clear there was not going to be a meeting of minds. But in the end we did have an amicable and interesting exchange of emails.

I explained that the title of my book, Doomsday Men, was borrowed from JB Priestley’s 1938 novel of the same name, about how an atomic doomsday device is created at a secret laboratory in the Mojave Desert. My correspondent found the title provocative and even cheap. I hoped

other readers would see the irony, and, as my book is about how film and fiction prefigures our obsession with superweapons, insisted it was appropriate to use a title that wouldn’t have been out of place in the pulps.

Indeed, the whole point of the book was not to blame scientists for weapons of mass destruction, but to show how humankind’s most terrible yet ingenious inventions were inspired by a desperate dream, one that was shared by a whole culture, including writers like Jack London and HG Wells, a dream of peace and scientific utopia. In a sense, we are all doomsday men. After all, it was Wells who coined the phrase “atomic bomb” before even World War I. And it was also Wells who in 1933 described scientists developing weapons of mass destruction in a secret laboratory as “an organization of dangerous lunatics”.

The great scientific romancer HG Wells could hardly be described as hostile to science or scientists. It was his anger at the misuse of science to create weapons of mass destruction that led him to condemn such scientists. I share that anger and it prompted me to explore the cultural reasons why people from all walks of life came to think that superweapons were a solution to human problems.

Readers of Wells’s fiction were familiar with mad scientists – Griffin or Moreau, for example – as well as those who hoped to improve the world, men like Holsten and Karenin in The World Set Free (1914). In the early years of the twentieth century, popular culture turned scientists into saviours who freed the world from war with awesome superweapons. But the experience of gas warfare, then biological weapons, and finally the atomic bomb gradually changed public perceptions. As fears grew about superweapons, their creators who had transformed the laws of nature into instruments of total destruction were increasingly depicted as mad scientists. Those who had been raised up to be gods, were later cast down as devils – or at least as acolytes of that master of megadeath, Dr Strangelove.

In the atomic age, as the public learned to live with first the A-bomb, then the H-bomb, and finally the world-destroying cobalt or C-bomb, scientists were stereotyped as mad, bad and dangerous (to borrow Christopher Frayling’s phrase). “What you are doing is mad, it is diabolic,” says the scientist’s assistant in Ernest B. Schoedsack’s movie Dr Cyclops (1940): “You are tampering with powers reserved to God.” In the classic science fiction film The Thing (1951), based on John W.
Campbell’s story about alien invasion, the sinister scientist Dr Carrington is prepared to sacrifice human lives in the cause of science: “Knowledge is more important than life... We’ve only one excuse for existing: to think, to find out, to learn…It doesn’t matter what happens to us.”

Such scientists would be the end of us all, people feared. “What hope can there be for mankind…when there are such men as Felix Hoenikker to give such playthings as ice-nine to such short-sighted children as almost all men and women are?” asked Kurt Vonnegut in the brilliant Cat’s Cradle (1963). As far as film and fiction were concerned, scientists were not just Strangelovian doomsday men. Their whole outlook on life was positively warped. “If the murders of twelve innocent people can help save one human life it will have been worth it”, reasons Doctor Necessiter in The Man With Two Brains (1983).

But these are, of course, mere fictions. As physicist Sidney Perkowitz points out in his enjoyable survey of Hollywood Science (2007), although they may on occasion appear somewhat arrogant, most scientists are not megalomaniacs: “few scientists have a burning desire to rule the world; typically, they don’t even enjoy managing people and research budgets”. He does, however, concede that one stereotype may have a basis in truth – the image of scientists as being sartorially challenged: “The rumpled look is a badge of authority; to scientists, the ‘suits’, formally dressed bureaucrats, are members of a despised race.” (I’m aware this may be a controversial view. In the interest of balance, I urge readers to also consult the excellent Geek Chic, ed by Sherrie A. Inness, especially chapter 2, "Lab Coats and Lipstick", by L.
Jowett.)

But Freeman Dyson suggests truth may be every bit as strange as fiction. The physicist, who worked on weapons projects as well as the Project Orion atomic spaceship in the 1950s, thinks there’s more than a grain of truth in the Strangelove stereotype. "The mad scientist is not just a figure of speech," says Dyson, "there really are such people, and they love to play around with crazy schemes. Some of them may even be dangerous, so one is not altogether wrong in being scared of such people."

Recently, I was powerfully reminded of Dyson’s comment while reviewing the reissue of Dan O’Neill’s classic nuclear history The Firecracker Boys (1994). In 1958, physicist Edward Teller, the self-styled father of the H-bomb, turned up in Juneau, Alaska, and held an impromptu news conference. He was there to unveil Project Chariot, a plan to create a deep-water harbour at Cape Thompson in northwest Alaska using thermonuclear bombs. Seventy million cubic yards of earth would be shifted instantly using nuclear explosions equivalent to 2.4 million tons of TNT. That’s 40% of all the explosive energy expended in World War II. Some firecracker.

Locals said they didn’t need a harbour. They also raised understandable concerns about radioactivity. After all, the year before, Nevil Shute had published On the Beach, one of the best-selling of all nuclear fictions (four million copies by 1980), in which the world dies a lingering death caused by fallout from a nuclear war fought with cobalt bombs. Teller was unfazed by the criticisms. That year he had defended atmospheric nuclear tests, claiming such fallout was no more dangerous than “being an ounce overweight”. He tried to reassure the Alaskans: “We have learned to use these powers with safety”. He even promised them a harbour in the shape of a polar bear.

Teller and his fellow scientists at the Livermore Laboratory in California were on a mission to redeem the nuclear bomb. They wanted to overcome the public’s irrational “phobic” reactions to nuclear weapons. “Geographical engineering” was the answer, said Teller: “We will change the earth’s surface to suit us.” The Faustian hubris of the man appeared to know no bounds. Dubbed in the press “Mr H-Bomb”, Teller even admitted to a “temptation to shoot at the moon” with nukes. You need a new Suez Canal? Blast it out with my thermonuclear bombs. Or how about turning the Mediterranean into a freshwater lake to irrigate the Sahara? All you need to do
is to close the Straits of Gibraltar by detonating a few H-bombs (clean ones, of course, absolutely guaranteed). No problem. We can do it – trust me, I’m a physicist.

Dan O’Neill interviewed Teller. Or at least he tried to. As soon as he started asking questions, Teller “cursed loudly and with great facility” and tore up the release form he had just signed to allow O’Neill to use the interview. Despite Teller’s hissy fit, O’Neill’s remarkable book shows how government agencies lied to local people, attempted to bribe scientists with promises of research funding, and manipulated the Alaskan media, which demonstrated “more sycophancy than scrutiny”. But a grass-roots movement of local Alaskans – Eskimo whale hunters, bush pilots, church ladies, and log-cabin conservationists – joined forces with a few principled scientists to successfully oppose America’s nuclear establishment, and in so doing sowed the seeds of modern environmentalism.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Teller devotes a mere page to this episode in his 2001 Memoirs. Les Viereck, a “soft-spoken and shy” biologist, whose research helped expose the real cost of Teller’s plans, lost his university position because of his opposition to Project Chariot. In a letter, he told his employer: “A scientist’s allegiance is first to truth and personal integrity and only secondarily to an organized group such as a university, a company, or a government.” Now there’s a scientist you could be proud of. HG Wells would have turned him into a heroic character, the kind of scientist who might really save the world.

But perhaps that’s where the problem lies. As the Marquise von O tells the Russian Count at the end of Kleist’s great novella, “she would not have seen a devil in him then if she had not seen an angel in him at their first meeting”. We burden scientists with such impossibly high expectations: they’re going to discover a source of unlimited energy, invent a weapon that will make war impossible, and along the way find a cure for cancer. But when the philosopher’s stone turns into a Pandora’s box, we turn our saviours into Strangeloves. Despite their miraculous discoveries, scientists are only human. We shouldn’t forget that.

O’Neill is rightly scathing about Teller’s role in Project Chariot: it seems Teller and his colleagues were more interested in improving the public image of nuclear weapons than in the lives of Alaskans. A Los Alamos colleague of Teller accused the brilliant scientist of becoming corrupted by his "obsession for power". According to Emilio Segrè, Teller was "dominated by irresistible passions" that threatened his "rational intellect". Another colleague said simply, "Teller has a messianic complex".

Thankfully, for every Teller there is a Les Viereck. If you don’t believe me, then read Mind, Life, and Universe (2007), a wonderfully inspiring collection of interviews with scientists about their lives and work, edited by Lynn Margulis and Eduardo Punset.

But despite this, sometimes a dark suspicion creeps up on me, a nagging fear that somewhere out there a Dr Hoenikker is hard at work, intoxicated by his own genius and the desire for ultimate knowledge. Like Teller, this phantom Strangelove has forgotten Joseph Rotblat’s wise words: “a scientist is a human being first, and a scientist second”. All I can do at such moments is console myself by reciting the well-known Bokononist Calypso:

“Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end,
And our God will take things back that He to us did lend.
And if, on that sad day, you want to scold our God,
Why go right ahead and scold Him. He’ll just smile and nod.”

--Copyright (c) 2008 PD Smith /All Rights Reserved

LHC Sci-Fi And Critics Buried In The Blogosphere

The British ATLAS Team inspecting their Stargate Portal, the higher-dimensional ‘shipping container’ ready for activation, beating the American LOST Team by 2.2 years. The Russians were the first to crack the top secret potential of the LHC Time Machine, but forgot to commercialize it.

Now the American LOST Team has the Hollywood edge, with millions watching every week, and an Internet frenzy that eclipses anything on real science. Fifty million hits on one LOST fan site alone. The LHC Money Train smokes, while mighty NASA bites the Martian dust.

It gets goofier with the new Dan Brown movie, Angels and Demons, and Tom Hanks, scheduled for launch May 15, 2009. Stealing antimatter from CERN to make a bomb to blow up the Vatican. CERN did produce antiprotons with the old LEP and even a tiny bit of antihydrogen, enough to blow up a jumbo cup of movie popcorn, though they’re not planning to produce any with the LHC, unless by accident, in which case it might blow up and uh-oh fuse some helium.

So the interest in the LHC is big, sideways. Considering its real world unknown potential to blow itself up with a super bosenova, and maybe Geneva, or produce a runaway black hole that might devour the planet, or strangelets, or magnetic monopoles or wormholes, there’s, oddly, little enough real interest outside the physics community.

The problem is, that apart from a few critics with scientific credentials who have gone public, those with some international clout, either support the LHC, like Stephen Hawking, or are working directly or are collaborating with CERN, about 8,000 or half of all particle physicists. The others are teaching or working at other labs. Some have their doubts about the wisdom of going ahead with the LHC, but they’re either obliged to keep them private to protect their jobs and reputations, or they voice their concerns during coffee breaks at committee meetings. For those physicists outside the CERN loop, CERN invites them to contact Michelangelo Mangano, a CERN physicist and quantum spin doctor, who handles serious objections at the LHC. He must be good. Complaints go in and like in a black hole, they never come out again.

With the mainstream media unwilling to investigate possible dangers at the LHC, that leaves the field open for anonymous and amateur scientists to criticize the LHC, about a dozen major websites and blogs geared to monitor the LHC, and comments posted on hundreds of news sites that run articles on the LHC, even on social bookmarking sites and anonymous blogs and blogs within blogs. Comments run from the abysmally dumb, to panic-stricken, to rumor-mongering, to honest complaining or just having fun with doomsday, though there is some erudite analysis, tantalizing but not easily verifiable. Here are a few worth reading.

From Physicsworld: vbarashkov June 24, 2008 2:58 PM
I doubt that is how a black hole can be formed, considering that as we know so far it takes an entire star to form one. Not only that, but for a black hole to form exactly how much must the two atoms be compressed. Certainly a lot more than they can be in a head on collision even at near twice the speed of light. If I had 20 ton iron sphere, and I compressed it to fit on a tip of a needle, the only thing it would do is explode with enough energy to destroy the entire planet. . .

Anyone seen a black 20 ton iron sphere? It was here a second ago? Never mind, Val found the vodka.

From Geekology: VtFarmboy - February 12, 2008 11:22 AM
I think Mr. Scott needs to get back to the enterprise. He's needed the Klingons are attacking and the warp drive dilithum crystals are decaying.

And Spock. Is that new compression algorithm ready? We need to beam up the LHC before it blows up. Professor Rössler wants it on the Moon right now.

From The Great Beyond, BlogsNature: Walt 06-18-08 01:00 AM
. . .The CERN-LHC website Mainpage itself states quote: "There are many theories as to what will result from these collisions..." This stunning admission is because they truly don't know what's going to happen. They are experimenting with forces they don't understand to obtain results they can't comprehend. If you think like most people do that 'They must know what they're doing.' you could not be more wrong. The second part of the quote reads "...but what's for sure is that a brave new world of physics will emerge from the new accelerator..." A molecularly changed or Black Hole consumed Lifeless World? The end of the quote reads "as knowledge in particle physics goes on to describe the workings of the Universe." These experiments to date have so far produced infinitely more questions than answers but there isn't a particle experimentalist physicist alive who wouldn't gladly trade his life to glimpse the "God particle", and sacrifice the rest of us with him. . .

Walt has it right. Here is the actual embarrassing CERN webpage, Our understanding of the Universe is about to change...

From NatureNews: David Wenbert 06 May 2008
. . . 4. Perhaps the unqualified legacy of monumental failure and waste exhibited by the high energy and plasma physics community is instructive here. After more than 50 years of building ever larger and more powerful colliders and plasma reactors, at a cost of untold Billions of dollars, NO useful scientific breakthroughs have ever been recorded from either such device, and both a Fundamental Understanding of Matter, and Controlled Fusion Energy remain totally elusive. The abject failure of particle physicists to have achieved their objectives (i.e. discovering the Higgs Boson) with prior collider experiments - although widely predicted to have done so - indicates the low reliability of their certainty in the outcome of these experiments. Consistently wrong, over decades, in their assertions that 'the last big machine' would illuminate the structure of matter - or ignite a controlled breakeven reaction, for that matter - leaves us with no alternative but to conclude that the same physicists may be no more accurate in predicting the behavior of 'the next big machine. The math doesnt fix this, since each such project had 'good math' to contend it would meet its scientific objectives, and yet, repeatedly, failure ensued. The rich, deep, and unbroken record of failure in these "Big Physics" projects is a Red Flag that the warnings from the fringe on potential distasters should be heeded. The physicists who propound the reliability of their assumptions have yet to be proven right once, whereas, the alarmists only need to be right 'once'. The Precautiionary Principle would seem wisely applied in these collider debates.

Read the thread and Wenbert’s full comment, in response to a previous comment by Richard Dawson who wrote to CERN and got some answers he quotes from the CERN letter.

One important point on micro black holes, received no comments, but is worth another look. The unnamed CERN source wrote, “But since, in case they (mBH) really exist, there will be millions produced, this means that indeed a few of them would be stopped within earth and start accretion. This however does not mean that they will crush the earth.” This is the point most commentators have been worried about. The odd thing is that at first CERN ignored the possibility of black hole formation, then embraced it publically as the LHC Black Hole Factory, while in their latest safety report, the LSAG is busy swatting mBH as though they were CERN’s famous TeV mosquitoes. That embarrassing Safety at the LHC webpage has been deleted, replaced with a summary of the new LSAG report where Einstein has been resurrected, and therefore “. . . it is impossible for microscopic black holes to be produced at the LHC.” Mosquitoes however, linger on Are LHC Collisions Safe?

The best analysis ever was made inadvertently, by The New York Times, when they called the LHC, The Large Hardon Collider, which fits in well with Big Bang Theory, on everybody’s mind since the hit TV show.

Seriously, there is one dissenting group of physicists at CERN, forced to do retro cabaret or else get lepton, none other than those sexy control room bottoms from the biggest collider ever, Les Horribles Cernettes.

Science, Prophecy And Art At The LHC

The Mayan influence on the floor of the CERN Visitor Center, artist Serge Moro. A friend ribbed me about the previous post on Nostradamus And The LHC, you can read anything you want into those quatrains. It's Art, I should have said, that's what Art does. There are over 10,000 dissertations on Hamlet alone, and more than a 100,000 published articles. You should throw in the Mayans too while you're at it, he went on. The famous Mayan Calendar, the long count, that expires or starts over in 2012, some taking that as the end of the world. See if you can tie that in with CERN! As you can see, CERN did it themselves, unconsciously or consciously, doesn't matter which. Both are equally valid motions, conjuring up some tie with the past and the future or building on the past or stealing some glory, like the Roman Capital in Washington, DC or Fermilab's Stonehenge Computer Center in my earlier post 'The Tevatron Connection' of April 2008.

Human experience is broad and varied. Looking at the big picture has made for great civilizations. Today's narrow focus into specialities has isolated many of our most able and brilliant people into pigeon holes. Other pigeons might communicate with them, but we don't and they don't bother. So we drift into a future nobody particularly cares for.

I'd remind scientists that before modern science there was science fiction, that gave science a tremendous push, starting say with the Victorians like HG Wells and Jules Verne. In 1895 Wells wrote in 'The Time Machine', "There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves along it." He added, "Scientific people . . . know very well that Time is only a kind of Space." An impressive insight coming well before Einstein's Spacetime.

If societies took Art as seriously as Science we could avoid some trouble brewing in science, the other aspect of sci-fi. These visionary works should caution us as well as inspire, like those of Jules Verne. Besides his scientific adventures and futuristic novels, he wrote one bleak and realistic novel approximating our own time. His publisher discouraged him, saying it would damage his reputation and disappoint his public. 'Paris in the 20th Century' was forgotten, only to resurface in 1994. Written with a uncanny prophetic power in 1863, it characterizes not only a technologically modern Paris of today with glass skyscrapers and cars, worldwide communications and even a geometric centerpiece at the Louvre, the IM Pei pyramid, it reflects the modern state of big business and science as the only virtues, even the women emancipated into the workforce and necessarily masculinized. Look on the right, this odyssey might not last.

So before some physicists laugh at CERN, Nostradamus, les Maya et quoi encore? The big picture of the big collider sleeping underground could just wake up like the proverbial fire-breathing dragon.

The Future Of Science

The problem with Science is there are a lot of problems. Funny thing is nobody seems to think so. What you get in the media are a lot of geewiz science shows and stories. Of course Science is our modern magic and the revelations and accomplishments overwhelm us and our critical thinking, where fantasy becomes a reality, at least for a few spoiled scientists. Later we get the spinoffs. Space Tourism next according to Virgin (not the goddess but the record company) and the Japanese who are already planning Honeymoon Hotels (where else but on the Moon). Once the ball starts rolling it can go anywhere, from E=MC squared, to Hiroshima and Chernobyl, people being people and not very scientific.

If Science flops or goofs somewhere, the media provides an apology, like it's a regrettable mistake which won't happen again and better luck next time. Or lately the usual we're getting better at this. Safeguards are now in place. Science is after all, Experimental Science and naturally some experiments fail. Usually we pay a long term price for them, but the media are not concerned with the future. There are fires and ticking time bombs everywhere that are instigated by Science and yet no one holds scientists accountable. The nuclear industry for example. And what really is important, whether a success or failure, is not evaluated on TV and in print. We'll worry about that later, when the facts are in. By that time it's usually too late. Look at the drastic poisoning of the environment by a handful of agricultural chemical companies. What warnings there were, came from left field, not from the scientific community who are even less critical of themselves than we are. A few ordinary people protested like Rachel Carson in Silent Spring. Like farmers, but the media weren't listening. They still don't. A few groups have organized against the chemicalization but they're considered flaky or they're blackballed as Far Left or as troublesome extremists like Greenpeace. What compounds the comatose response to environmental threats is the comforting presence of government agencies like the EPA in America, who have their own scientists approving this and that, so we're safe in doing nothing. Leave the professionals to deal with the professionals. Sounds great in theory. In fact, certainly there's less degradation in the environment and our health, than without these agencies, but it goes on at an alarming pace. Statistics like a third of all Americans suffering from some respiratory illness grouped into asthma, up from 3% since 1900. Obviously there's room for ordinary people to get involved in the debate about our future.

The only other critics we have who come down hard on Science are writers of science fiction and later the movie makers who've been warning us since Victorian times like HG Wells. The gloom and doom about the future, the future of Science, is almost a daily feature of our lives. Yet we don't seem to be taking the warnings of the inevitable progress of Science seriously. But I'm sure we worry a lot while we're watching these blockbusters, squirming in our seats at the appalling things going on. But here it's more like adrenalin space junkies getting their fix. Always some wiseguy scientist quoted later, trying to bring us down, who says that this movie's based on poor science. Don't worry. That'll never happen. It can't happen if you know your Science.

Evidently there is a need for a public forum on the future, The Science of Conundrums. Nobody seems to know what to do about the present. If we look ahead and figure out what kind of future we want, we could shape the present so we get to the future. Not some wasteland.