Planetary Defense
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st SCIENCE21 CENTURY & TECHNOLOGY FALL/WINTER 2012-13 www.21stcenturysciencetech.com $20.00 Planetary Defense • Energy Flux Density • U.S. Fusion Report st SCIENCE21 CENTURY & TECHNOLOGY Vol. 25, Nos. 3&4 Fall/Winter 2012-13 Features News PLANETARY DEFENSE 4 NEWS BRIEFS Introduction 6 SPACE Jason Ross 72 Space Scientists Meet Amidst 8 Threat Assessments Uncertainty and Hope LPAC Research Team FUSION 16 Observation Systems 78 Scientists Launch A Fight to LPAC Research Team Save the U.S. Fusion Program Deflection and the Energy-Flux Density Factor ENVIRONMENT 20 79 Lessons of the L’Aquila Benjamin Deniston Earthquake Sentence CONFERENCE REPORT 26 International Global Monitoring Aerospace Systems Departments INTERVIEWS 2 EDITORIAL 38 SDE: Hypervelocity Asteroid Deflection Jason Ross Brent Barbee and Professor Bong Wie BOOKS 81 Global Aerospace Monitoring and Space Exploration and Physics Breakthroughs 42 Disaster Management General Vladimir Popovkin by V. A. Menshikov, et al . Reviewed by William Jones 44 Protecting Mankind from Extra-Terrestrial Threats Claudio Maccone, PhD 85 Confessions of an Eco-Terrorist Directed by Peter Brown KRAFFT EHRICKE AND THE FUTURE OF MANKIND Reviewed by Gregory Murphy 48 Why Mankind has an Extraterrestrial Imperative 87 A Planet of Viruses Marsha Freeman by Carl Zimmer Reviewed by Liona Fan-Chiang SPACE POWER 88 Books Received 54 The Space-Time of Increased Energy Flux Density Creighton Jones INTERVIEWS 57 An Inside Look at Russia’s Nuclear Propulsion System Academician Anatoly Koroteyev 60 With Committed Funding, We Could Develop a Nuclear Rocket Stanley Borowski, Ph.D. 69 Developing Fusion Rockets to Go to Mars On the Cover: Artist’s rendition of a Professor John Slough threat to Earth from space. Illustration by Chris Jadatz, cover design by Alan Yue. 21st CENTURY SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITORIAL EDITORIAL STAFF Editor-in-Chief Jason Ross The Fight Over Knowledge Managing Editor Marsha Freeman by Jason Ross Associate Editors Elijah C. Boyd David Cherry Christine Craig n the wake of the over $50 billion in moving out to sea—apparently these Liona Fan-Chiang damages caused by superstorm were caused by carbon dioxide Colin M. Lowry I Gregory B. Murphy Sandy, and the very lengthy recon- emissions as well? Al Gore’s state- Richard Sanders struction and rebuilding process, ment about “dirty energy” fits well Charles B. Stevens many media outlets and govern- with self-styled religious groups who Art Directors ment figures have blamed climate blame various natural catastrophes Aaron Halevy change for this damaging storm. As on God’s wrath at our national moral Alan Yue only one example, Al Gore wrote on turpitude. Advertising Manager October 30th that “Hurricane Sandy Yet, questioning the science un- Marsha Freeman is a disturbing sign of things to come. derlying the climate change fore- We must heed this warning and act casts of such groups as the IPCC, SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD Francesco Celani, Ph.D. quickly to solve the climate crisis. leads to being branded a heretic, a Hugh W. Ellsaesser, Ph.D. Dirty energy makes dirty weather.” “climate denier” (the resemblance to Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. Leaving aside the fact that the infla- “Holocaust denier” is not acciden- Wolfgang Lillge, M.D. tion-adjusted damage due to Sandy tal), and being compared to those Ramtanu Maitra was far surpassed by hurricanes who continue to insist that the Earth Thomas E. Phipps, Jr., Ph.D. in the first few decades of the last is flat. “The science is settled,” we century, we must ask: which ad- are told; but, when is science ever 1 21st Century Science & Technology vancements in our understanding of settled? (ISSN 0895-6820) is published 4 times a the global climate and weather sys- Now let’s look at another field of year by 21st Century Science Associates, tem have made it possible to deter- science, where the prevailing official 60 Sycolin Road, Suite 203, Leesburg, Va. 20175. Tel. (703) 777-6943. mine with total certainty that man- view is that knowledge is not possi- Address all correspondence to 21st made emissions of CO2, accounting ble: quantum mechanics. In the field Century, P.O. Box 16285, Washington, D.C. for a portion of one out of every of climate science, we are told, ex ca- 20041. 10,000 molecules in the atmo- thedra, that the science is settled on 21st Century is dedicated to the promotion sphere, were the reason that hurri- what causes changes in climate, of unending scientific progress, all directed to serve the proper common aims of cane Sandy struck with the force that while in the field of quantum me- mankind. it did? chanics, we are told that our standard Opinions expressed in articles are not Among all the uncertainties in life idea of causality does not exist. necessarily those of 21st Century Science and science, such as the inability to After Max Planck’s hypothesis of Associates or the scientific advisory board. reliably forecast the weather more the emission and absorption of heat We are not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts. than a week in advance or figure out energy in discrete “quanta,” Einstein www.21stcenturysciencetech.com what we really ought and ought not demonstrated, in his work on the Electronic subscriptions are $35 for 4 issues, to eat, it is nothing short of remark- $60 for 8 issues, and $80 for 12 issues. able that such a complicated pro- Back issues (1988-2005) are $10 each ($20 1. The practice of science is political. The foreign). Electronic issues from 2006 on are cess as global climate and weather is multi-trillion dollar pricetag of the proposed $10 each. claimed to be within our ken! The policy changes occasioned by climate re- Payments must be in U.S. currency. searchers is obviously a political matter, as many factors involved in the behav- are the billions of dollars allocated every year ior of Sandy—such as the early mid- for grants and studies. See, for example, © 2013 west winter storm, and the high pres- Steve Goreham’s delightful new book on the 21st Century Science Associates world of climate change hysteria: The Mad, sure zone over the north Atlantic Mad, Mad World of Climatism, New Lenox which prevented the storm from Books, 2012. 2 Fall/Winter 2012-13 21st CENTURY photoelectric effect, that all radiative ables,” as-yet-unknown (or poten- Planck, similarly, states that: energy exists in such quanta. As tially unknowable) characteristics quantum science progressed, very that would determine their later be- Where the discrepancy comes eerie aspects of the behavior of the havior, which only seemed random. in today, is not between nature physical universe in the very small Many experimental tests of Bell’s hy- and the principle of causality, but began to emerge. One behavior of pothesis have been performed (with rather, between the picture which physics at the quantum level re- a few assumptions), generating the we have made of nature, and the opened the dispute between the apparent result that among two en- realities in nature itself. Our pic- wave and particle views of light, con- tangled particles, one affected the ture is not in perfect accord with sidered definitively decided on the other in a way that precluded their the observational results, and, as I side of waves after the interference future behaviors having been pre-de- have pointed out, over and over experiments of Thomas Young at the termined at the time of the particles’ again, it is the advancing business turn of the 19th century. formation. of science to bring about a finer With the work of Einstein, the Some take this to indicate that in- accord here. I am convinced that quantization of light was beyond determinateness is essential, and that the bringing about of that accord dispute, but how quantized energy Einstein’s view of causality was must take place, not in the rejec- units could then act as waves pro- wrong – there is no cause in the very tion of causality, but in greater en- duced quite a bit of trouble. Later small, in the typical sense of cause, largement of the formula and a re- experiments, such as that performed meaning predetermination of the fu- finement of it, so as to meet at Hitachi in 1989, demonstrated ture based on present conditions. Yet, modern discoveries. that even individual photons, sent this is to put words into Einstein’s one at a time through a double-slit (and Planck’s) mouths. In a discus- Surely this refinement must take, apparatus apparently interfered with sion printed in Planck’s Where is Sci- as a sine qua non, Vernadsky’s con- themselves, as though they went ence Going, Einstein expresses him- cepts of the biosphere and noö- through both slits. With Heisenberg’s self: sphere. The quantum experiments interpretation, as codified in the described here have all been per- wake of the Fifth Solvay Internation- I believe that events in nature are formed with abiotic experimental al Conference of 1927, the accepted controlled by a much stricter and apparatus (and not without reason), view was that the quanta did not closely binding law than we sus- but the concepts of time required in have such physical parameters as lo- pect today, when we speak of one such biological processes as evolu- cation or momentum, but had a vari- event being the cause of another. tion, and in human thought and art, ety of locations and dispositions Our concept here is confined to can serve to dramatically enrich our they could take, when called upon one happening within one time notions of “causality,” and make to do so by a suitable experimental section. It is dissected from the possible the refinements that the sci- interaction that forced the particle whole process.