Friday, February 8, 2002
1. SCIENCE BUDGET: IT'S A LONG,
LONG TIME FROM NOW TO DECEMBER.
That's when Congress usually finishes appropriations bills that were
due the first of October. But tempers grow short when you reach September.
The President's request is just the starting point for a debate that
runs most of the year. On Monday, policy wonks were running all over
Washington to budget briefings at the agencies. It's dull, but take
a No-Doz. Here's what they found: The White House puffed that the
FY '03 budget marks the first time any President has asked for more
than $100 billion for R&D. Alas, the 8%, $8.6 billion increase is
highly targeted. Strip away NIH and DOD, and the rest of R&D is 0.5%
in the hole. DOE Science did well to get a 0% increase. Research at
NSF would increase 3.5%, but there wasn't much portfolio balance:
biology would go up 3.4%, while the physical sciences would drop by
1.3%.
2. MICRO-NUKES: THE EXPLOSIVE POWER
OF THE SOUL OF A WORM.
I'm indebted to James Randi for calling my attention to an article
in the Fall 2001 issue of Frontier Perspectives. When seventy grams
of live "California worms" in a sealed test tube were killed by formaldehyde,
the weight of the worms decreased 93.6 micrograms. Since matter could
not have escaped from the sealed tube, the author says the mass must
have been lost in the form of energy. He identifies this energy as
the vital life force (in traditional Chinese medicine it's "Qi," in
Ayurvedic medicine it's "Prana.") Randi wondered if a mushroom cloud
formed. In fact, the energy equivalent is two gigacalories. In nuclear
weapons terminology, that would be two tons of TNT. So when a person
dies in a crowd, why isn't there a gruesome chain reaction of exploding
humans? Can it be that we have far smaller souls than California worms?
3. THE GREAT SPAM SCAM: A "NEW GROUNDBREAKING
SOURCE OF ENERGY."
You probably got the same SPAM this week, announcing discovery of
an "unlimited source of energy," having something to do with "ball
lightning." I don't know what the big deal is: new sources of "infinite
energy" are announced almost daily, and "ball lightning" is invoked
about as often as "zero point energy" or "cold fusion." One thing
is new; the most frequent warning sign of voodoo science is that claims
are pitched directly to the media (WN
25 Jan 02). Chukanov Quantum Energy, has taken a different road,
e-mailing their pitch to thousands of scientists.
4. NASA GOES NUCLEAR: ANNOUNCED
BY O'KEEFE AT BUDGET BRIEFING.
Just three years ago, there was intense opposition to the Cassini
mission because it used radioisotope thermoelectric generators (WN
19 Feb 99). NASA's crazy "Breakthrough Propulsion" program was
initially created to explore alternatives to nuclear energy. The revival
of the nuclear option at NASA is a measure of softening public attitudes
toward things nuclear in the wake of 9/11.
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