Friday, November 27, 2009
We said last week that the LHC began circulating protons around its 27 km
race course. This week, ahead of schedule, protons were actually
collided. The energies were somewhat below the record held by the Tevatron
at Fermilab. By Christmas, however, if all goes well, collision energies
should reach 2.4 TeV. It still has a very long way to go to reach the 14
TeV design energy in its search for the Higgs boson. Each increase in
energy magnifes the mechanical stress on giant superconducting magnets that
bend the proton trajectories. In a radio interview on Wednesday, I was
asked how this research will benefit society. It will not put food on our
tables, provide energy for industry, cure disease or smite our enemies. It
will, however, take us a step closer to understanding the natural laws that
resulted in our existence, exposing many popular beliefs to be
superstitions.
On Wednesday in the NY Times an op-ed by Nicholas Kristof remarked on a new
crop of books dealing with the war between science and religion. He
describes this latest crop as "less combative and more thoughtful" than
those by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and the like.
He hopes this "marks an armistice in the religious wars." I hope not.
Kristof is particularly taken by Robert Wright's "The Evolution of God." I
like it too. Wright is smart, and a really good writer, but he needs to be
more like Dawkins, Hichens and Harris. In his latest book he explores how
religion has gotten "better" over time. People are no longer burned at the
stake in the name of religion. No, now they are now blown to pieces with
improvised explosive devices or flown into the side of public buildings.
Different religion -- same God.
Last week, Brendan O'Neill, innumerate editor of the online publication,
Spiked, thought his side of a debate on population to be so brilliant he
published it with the title: Too many people? No, too many Malthusians.
Could Brendan O'Neill be e related to Gerard K. O'Neill, the Princeton
physicist who in 1977 published "The High Frontier: Human Colonies in
Space?" O'Neill proposed erecting "islands" in space at the L5 point
between the Earth and the Moon to serve as colonies on which to offload
Earth's excess population. He envisioned giant cylinders, closed at the
ends, rotated about the axis to simulate gravity for people living on the
inner surface. He thought each island could support 1 million people. In
the 33 years since, Earth's population has grown by 3 billion. We would
need 3 thousand of these gigantic space colonies to offload the excess
population. Today, the hugely expensive ISS has trouble keeping 6 alive.
Born in 1776 in Surrey, Thomas Malthus was well-educated in mathematics,
but served as a gentle country parson, keeping the census in his parish.
He observed that most animals bore offspring far beyond mere replacement.
This would result in exponential growth of the population, eventually
overflowing the boundaries of productive agriculture. His simple reasoning
was dismissed by the mathematically challenged, and still is.
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