The Wonders of Uranus NASA's Voyager Captures a New World 3 Billion Miles Away Expand the World's View! Join the Fusion Energy Foundation
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The Wonders Of Uranus NASA's Voyager Captures A New World 3 Billion Miles Away Expand the world's view! Join the Fusion Energy Foundation. Subscribe to Fusion magazine. Enclosed is: • Sustaining membership $250 • Individual membership $75 • Corporate membership $1,000 (All memberships include 6 issues of Fusion.) • 1-year subscription to Fusion $20 (6 issues) • 2-year subscription to Fusion $38 (12 issues) • 1-year subscription to Fusion (airmail foreign) $40 Now you can subscribe to Fusion iu 5 languages • Fusion in Spanish, French, Italian, German*, or Swedish or Fusion Asia in English—$40 (4 issues) * 6 issues per year. EDITORIAL STAFF Editor-in-Chief Carol White FUSION Managing Editor Marjorie Mazel Hecht SCIENCE • TECHNOLOGY • ECONOMICS • POLITICS Fusion Technology Editor May-June 1986 Vol. 8, No. 3 Charles B. Stevens Washington Editor Features Marsha Freeman Energy Editor 36 The Wonders of Uranus William Engdahl Books Editor Voyager 2 Opens Up an Unusual New World David Cherry Marsha Freeman and Jim Everett Art Director After traveling 3 billion miles and 8V2 years, Voyager 2 has provided us Alan Yue with the first close-up views of Uranus. Photo Editor Carlos de Hoyos 43 Defeating Aids: How Lasers Can Help Advertising Manager Wolfgang Lillge,M.D. Joseph Cohen (703) 689-2497 The United States needs a "biological SDI," a crash program to advance Circulation and Subscription Manager laser and spectroscopy research to the point that we can screen for and Dianne Oliver eliminate the AIDS virus and other deadly diseases. (703) 777-6055 49 The Significance of the SDI for Advanced Space Propulsion and Basic Research FUSION (ISSN 0148-0537) is published 6 limes Dr. Friedwardt Winterberg a year, every other month, by the Fusion Energy A noted fusion scientist speculates on the SDI technologies that can be Foundation, P.O. Box 17149, Washington, D.C. 20041-0149. Tel. (703) 689-2490. Dedicated to used for advanced space propulsion. providing accurate and comprehensive information on advanced energy technologies and policies, FUSION is committed to restoring American sci News entific and technological leadership. FUSION cov erage of the frontiers of science focuses on the SPECIAL REPORT seil-developing qualities of the physical universe 9 )udge Takes a Stand Against Starvation Treatment in such areas as plasma physics—the basis for fusion power—as well as biology and microphys- NUCLEAR REPORT ics, and includes ground-breaking studies of the 10 Superphenix: World's Largest Breeder Comes on Line historical development of science and technology. The views of the FEF are stated in the editorials. 11 Taiwan's Fight to Go Nuclear Opinions expressed in articles are not necessarily WASHINGTON REPORT those of the FEF directors or advisory board. 13 The Reagan Administration Fusion Budget Subscriptions by mail are $20 for 6 issues or 16 Who's Out to Destroy NASA? $38 for 12 issues in the USA; $25 tor 6 issues in Canada. Airmail subscriptions to other countries 17 Cost Accounting: Slow, But Sure Death to NASA are $40 for 6 issues. BEAM TECHNOLOGY REPORT Address all correspondence to FUSION, P.O. Box 17149, Washington, D.C. 20041-0149. 19 Los Alamos 'Trailmaster' Drives for Fusion RESEARCH REPORT Second class postage paid at Washington, D.C. 22 Galileo Proven Wrong! and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to FUSION, P.O. Box 17149, 25 An Interview with Dr. Benny Soldano: Washington, D.C. 20041-0149. The Nonequivalence of Inertial and Gravitational Mass 28 German Physicist Demonstrates Quantum Hall Effect 31 An Interview with Klaus von Klitzing 32 New Experimental Results Surprise Quantum Theory 33 Low-Energy Positrons in Pair Creation 34 Curing Lung Cancer with Laser Light THE YOUNG SCIENTIST Copyright O 1986 57 An Interview with 'Teachernaut' Judith Garcia Fusion Energy Foundation Printed in the USA 59 Probing Inside a Comet Tail All Rights Reserved 61 Yes, Comets Are Made of Water ISSN 0148-0537 USPS 437-370 Departments On the cover: Illustration by Don Davis of a 2 EDITORIAL 6 NEWS BRIEFS computer-generated view of Voyager 2 about 45 minutes after it passed through the plane of Ur- 4 IN MEMORIAM 8 VIEWPOINT anus's rings. Illustration is courtesy of NASA; cover 5 LETTERS design by Virginia Baier Editorial The Frontiers of Physics? In this issue we report on a number of new discoveries, is the angle found by dividing 360° by the square of the or more precisely, a recasting of old discoveries, that are golden mean, (360 4- 2.618 = 2.618, approximately 137°). nibbling away at what are normally considered to be the This angle crops up repeatedly in the placement of leaves unchallengeable assumptions of physics. We welcome these as they form around a stem. And the golden mean ratio developments as a healthy sign. itself is found throughout the morphological structure of Are the results we are reporting at the frontiers of phys animals (in particular the human body) and in shell forma ics? We think not. What is missing is a commitment on the tion. part of the scientific community to challenge the most fun What is the significance of the new results reported upon damental assumptions of physics: to do away with the in this issue? abominable notion that the universe is an epiphenomenon We are not prepared to say yet, but it is clear that their of the interaction of particles and forces. implications will be revealed only as physics rejects the The exciting aspect of the discoveries we report, coupled present, fundamentally algebraic approach for a return to with a brief communication from nuclear physicist Erich the geometric approach that guided the work of Gauss, Bagge, is the convergence upon an alernative treatment of Riemann, and their scientific predecessors. The prominent certain problematic notions otherwise accepted in physics: appearance oi the fine structure constant is merely for example, the existence of the neutrino and the nonex one indicator that such a shift in approach is long over istence (or at least polarization) of the vacuum. due. It is clear that much of the work we are reporting depends upon the fine structure constant. It appears in the empirical The Classical Method and Natural Law formula that describes the variation of what was heretofore Every major development in modern physics has always known as the gravitational constant; it appears in physicist carried forward the method of Leonardo da Vinci and Jo B. Soldano's work as the bridge between his "correction hannes Kepler. Both approached science with the sure factor" and Planck's constant; and it appears as an apparent knowledge that the universe was organized according to an constraint that is violated i n the Darmstadt results. Lawfully, overriding natural law. They believed that God's universe this should be the case, because the fine structure constant was both good and beautiful, and therefore that physical is closely tied to the rotational action of "orbiting" electrons laws must be essentially harmonic in character. Both saw in an atom. the golden mean as an essential harmonic characteristic of The simplest way of thinking about the fine structure the creation. constant is in terms of a planetary model of the atom. It may For Leonardo or Kepler, it would have been ludicrous to be likened to the aberration of the Earth's orbit caused by pose any physical process as a purposeless epiphenome the shift of its axis, which occurs much in the way as a non of the interaction of brute particles imbued with dumb spinning top widens its spin orbit as its axis tilts toward the force. Kepler came to his great achievements in astronomy ground. because he was fully convinced that God gave man the task The fine structure constant itself tantalizes because it is of uplifting his mind by understanding the lawful ordering approximately the inverse of the "golden mean angle." This of the Sun and planets. 2 May-)une 1986 FUSION Editorial Leonardo da Vinci anticipated all of the greatest achieve significance of the "divine ratio," the golden mean, in all ments of modern hydrodynamics, including emphatically life processes, including the living universe. the existence of shock waves, because he knew that man's Johannes Kepler took this further, and identified five laws reasoning mind could understand this universe, which is of planetary action: the three commonly associated with governed by natural law, and that man's task was to use his him; the lawful distancing of the planets from the Sun ac Cod-given reason to continually perfect the Creation. cording to the golden mean principle which is embedded The predominance of natural law assures the coherence in the constructibility of the five regular Platonic solids; and of the universe—and our own ability to act upon it. This the harmonic ordering of eccentricities of the planetary coherence is not at all uniformity; it cannot be found by a orbits according to scale steps governing the distance be search for a fundamental particle. The law of the universe tween perihelion and aphelion of neighboring planets. is not a set of rules governing the behavior of objects; it is a process of perfectability. The Universe Is Negentropic The universe acts upon itself not as a continually repeat Unlike Isaac Newton, Kepler rightly insisted that the pla ing cycle, but as a spiral rotation, which continually grows netary orbits are primary, and that the mass of the planets in potentiality as it expands; and this growth in potentiality, was derived from the harmonically preformed orbits. This in turn, is continually expanded. This is true for the universe is precisely the conceptual framework from which the worK as a whole, in the macrocosm, and it is equally true for the of B.