TAPPING THE COSMIC FURNACE onnruiJANUARY 1981

EDITOR 8 DESIGN DIRECTOR: BOB GUCCIONE

PRESIDENT & ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER: KATHY KEETON EXECUTIVE EDITOR: BEN BOVA ART DIRECTOR: FRANK DEVINO MANAGING EDITOR: J. ANDERSON DORMAN FICTION EDITOR: ROBERT SHECKLEY EUROPEAN EDITOR: DR. BERNARD DIXON DIRECTOR OF ADVERTISING: BEVERLEY WARDALE

EXECUTIVE VICE-PRESIDENT IRWIN E. BILLMAN ; -."-. !:'!' VI'"- r,:--- i-

!.i !! P. . I .hi:"!- .i\ll "-T-ANCO ROSSELLINI

CONTENTS PAGE FIRST WORD Opinion Robert Anderson 6 OMNIBUS Contributors 8 COMMUNICATIONS Correspondence 10 FORUM Dialogue 14 EARTH Environment Kenneth Brower 20

LIFE Biomedicine Kathleen McAulrffe 22 SPACE Comment Jerry Grey 24 MIND Behavior David Cohen 26 CpNTINUUM Data Bank 29

FUSION ODYSSEY Article Mike Edelhart 38

THE BUSINESS OF FUSION Article R. Bruce McColm 46

FUSION POLITICS Article Daniel S. Greenberg 52

ROBERT BUSSARD Interview K. C. Cole 56

DIVINE ALCHEMIST Pictorial Thomas Weyr 62

ODD MAN OUT Ariicle Philip Hilts 68 BODY BALL Fiction John Keelauver 72 78 APERTURES Pictorial Geoffrey Golson PEOPLE Names and Faces Dick Te resi 84 94 A CAGE FOR DEATH Fiction Ian Watson FILM The Arts Jetf Rovin 99

BOOKS The Arts Marc Kaplan and D R. Bensen 102

STARS Astronomy David K. Lynch 106 PHOTO CREDITS 108 PHOTO CONTEST Competition 112 PERSIAN BRONZE Phenomena Nicholas Hartmann 114 GAMES Diversions Scot Morris 116 LAST WORD Opinion James Randi 118

-- .<}i".-:ie*er:<&) i.'MMI 'na;';:ISSN01-a9-B7--ij. U s V ralLW highly stylized art of The ,i ... .. :| - ." Japanese Kazumasa Nagaiis

I II rjoe *& featured on this month's cover. :>pyil!J-it«-:! Vshhgmivrj* Linear, computerlike patterns .* superimposed over realistic i' i.r': _'f.|u,,y ,,,.,, a r landscapes are indicativeof Nagai's unmistakable style, and exemplify Japan's current trend toward surrealism. A OMNI get from here to there And fiction often. raises.false expectations. For example,

how can we appreciate the problems . inherent in building the space shuttle after .. :ricted. having mentally ftown in so many fictional expose, radio news spaceships? vesiigative report, each We cannot rationalize the future by

iience under Ihere- using history, nor can we fantasize it. There ieor print space. Each will be only one future. And we won't pre-

messages in order to dict it, we'll create ft.

fan audience whose We create the future by buying it. and Terience are as broad we'll get what we're willing to pay for. ciru'm. As audience sizs We buy the future with our time, pur ge content reliaclsliUie brainpower, and the amount of money we

spend on it today If we cut baGk ihe amount of time, intellect, and money that we expend on national defense, the space program, or research and development,

we cut back our future. If we want prog-

ress in the future, we have te pay for it npw. The less cemmitted we are to creating '.he- future, ;he ess future we create.. FIRST dipnipsimplicih

WORD steading, result -By Robert Anderson ctive ing n be divided up i: a compost kPJIedia emotionally reinforce the simple answer while suppressing

01 Simplistic information is tt the insight necessary unable to deal adequately v for a complex ilure-.ar\d profits. canno!de£ "technological society^ afipnship between the iwo. 3 begin to understand this

>, we need to consider curre

f Mure, and profits.

suse two methods to view t

jgh historical extrapolation i

ily;'we can detect patterns, c

Wf j can oraciici wne be m tne year 2000 b n such as energy av£ cal progress, need to imprc

Omni magazi forgei about r

But that's probably

;vo! rua'-y shows us ho-. Dfl/inJIBU!

no question that if fusion "midget" fusion reactors. There's These machines Watson has lectured at universities in works, it will solve the world's could be used up and thrown away like Tanzania and Japan. His first novel, The * energy problems once and tor light bulbs. How does Bussard's midget Embedding, won the French Prix Apollo; all. The real question is, Will it work'' We miracle technology stand up to the big his second. The Jonah Kit, received top understand well enough the physics of a fusion establishment? K. C. Cole provides honors from the British Science Fiction fusion reaction, but time and money must the provocative answers in this month's Association. A novel based assume on the story generous dimensions if fusion is Interview on 56. Cole page is the author 'A Cage for Death" is due in the fall of 1981, ever io demonstrate its potential as an of What Only a Mother Can Tell You About to be entitled Deathhunter. infinite source of safe energy. Mike Having a Baby (Doubleday/Anchor) and Also featured is John Keefauver McCormack agrees. Before he was swept of several guidebooks on scientific ("Body Ball," on page 72). Keefauver has from office by the conservative tide last phenomena. A contributor to, and former had many pieces published in such November 4, Congressman McCormack editor of, Newsday and Saturday Review, periodicals as National Review and Omni. somehow persuaded his colleagues io Cole has also written for the Wew York His work can also be found in several vote for an energy package few of them Times and Glamour. suspense anthologies, including Random even understood Scertists and Private industry's development of House's Hitchcock collections. engineers for years have attempted Io commercial fusion has been but a drop in The visionary genius of fantastic realist harness the power ot the stars, bul only the bucket thus far, yet an increasing Ernst Fuchs is displayed in a gallery of recently have they demonstrated the . number of major firms are plunging in as paintings entitled "Divine Alchemist." possibility of actually building fusion a the program swings from pure physics to Art expert Tom Weyr explores Fuchs's reactor. The former representative from engineering. The end result? A worldwide hypnotic images and subliminal style. Washington State guided a £20 billion fusion economy within 50 years. Former See page 62. program through Congress that guaran- Newsweek writer R. Bruce McColm pro- Princeton's controversial professor tees a fusion reactor within the next 20 years. files the technicians who make it happen Julian Jaynes is profiled by science editor "It's the most important energy in "The Business of Fusion" (page 46). Philip Hilts in "Odd Man Out" (page 68). development since the controlled use of Mike Edelhart's "Fusion Odyssey" (page Hilts, a writer for the Washington Post, has fire," McCormack told science writer Dan 38) depicts a wo'd where limitless energy profiled many big names, including Walter Greenberg in "Fusion Politics" (page 52). has become a way of life. Cities, industry, Cronkiteand David Brinkley. But politics isn't the whole story. The even spacecraft, are powered by fusion Omni was named Best Magazine of 1980. business and the science of fusion form reactors. An associate editor of Omni, and Editor in Chief and Publisher other elements in a composite portending Edelhart has written several books and Boo Guccione was presented a Golden the eventual reality of free energy. ThFs has had articles published in New Times, Scroll Award of Merit for Outstanding month's Omni explores the implica- TV Guide, the Washington Post , Writer's Achievement by the Academy of Science tions of an alternative so profound we'd Digest, and elsewhere. He is also a col- Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films. And our better not letit'pass us by. umnist for TWA's Ambassador magazine. European editor, Bernard Dixon, was "Small is better," says Robert W This month's fiction includes Ian recently honored with the Glaxo Bussard, whose independent company, Watson's "A Cage for Death" (page 94). A Fellowship Award for his column Talking Inesco, wants to build cheap, modular, 1963 graduate of Oxford University, Science, in World Medicine magazine.DQ B OMNI HMBHHHHn HHfflffiJ ETTERS CQnnruiunjicATioai5

Robol Revolution heady problems of overpopulation and

A long-time advocate of full unemploy- space colonization. To be fair, of course,

ment, I read with great interest James S. Albus does offer the displaced workers Albus's intriguing article "To Pay for the the option of becoming programmers and Future" [October 1980], The potential of factory workers for the very robots that

robotics and information-communications displaced them, but such work seems little technologies to free humanity from drudg- improvement over what Albus sees as ery and poverty is wonderful indeed. drudgery in 1980. The problem Mr. Albus addresses is Perhaps most appallingly, Albus fuels crucial to the realization of this potential: our insatiable materialism. He points to Somehow we must change the way we unlimited cheap goods as central to the distribute wealth so that machine- robot revolution. Everything will be so generated profits can be spread around inexpensive, he predicts, that nothing will

in an equiiabie manner. I have held jobs be worth repairing, or keeping, or using only because of economic necessity and more than a few times. Disposing of the

see nothing noble about working for family car when the ashtrays fill will be money Moreover, consider the waste, commonplace.

pollution, and superficiality of lives The robots may becoming. If they are,

dedicated to the preservation ol our it's because people are bringing them.

present consumer society. If we got Let's fashion technology in the image of down to creating truly durable goods man and woman. Not vice versa. via robotics and translated much of our Rod Ausura hardware into software, we might find that Gaithersburg. Md. much of our present industrial activity exists only to keep people working at dull Still a Burning Issue and dangerous jobs. Your anniversary issue [October 1980] Perhaps the answer lies in beginning to carried a letter concerning the old distribute wealth to the tinkerers, inventors, dilemma of the re ative temperatures of

thinkers, artists, poets, and writers, as Heaven and Hell. It is time that this issue robotics displaces our citizenry from be finally resolved.

it factories and offices. Wouldn't be nice if I n a recent issue of Journal for Irre-

all take our doctor's we could advice to producible Results , a contributor finally slow down, get outdoors, tend a garden, resolved the flaw in the classic dispute. As get more exercise and sleep, and spend any high-school chemistry student can tell our days involved in creative activities? you, the boiling point of any substance Let's hear more about ihis topic. varies with the ambient pressure. Relying Phil Armstrong on estimates of the number of the damned Great Lakes Energy Systems and on the size of Hell (based on theo- BoyneCity, Mich. logical calculations), the pressure in Hell may be calculated to be on the order 3 If the robots are then of 10 coming, we should atmospheres. All will agree, I heed the Albus scenario as a warning of believe, that sulfur will boil at a con- the tragedy the robotic revolution can siderably higher temperature under bring. Obviously, Albus adheres to the old these conditions. doctrine that wherever technology pushes This should finally put an end to the

them, man and woman will love it. Heaven/Hell temperature debate. Horseradish! ArlhurS. Harrow Some people would prosper in such Tempe, Ariz. a world, true. But most would founder in a civilization of abundance without Eloquently Put

pecuniary incentive, challenge, or Omni has lit up my life for a full year now,

achievement. Sadly, the intellectual and I look forward to each issue as a child pursuits that Mr. Albus proposes as anticipates Christmas. replacements for effort in the profession is workplace My technical writing, and I simply don't interest many people. Not am continually appalled at the poor use '""" everyone can be satisfied pondering the of our language in all forms of communi- .

cation. Therefore, I was particularly We can't wau around forever, or even for must rely on mere faith that [God] is the pleased to read "Torrents of Babel." by very long, before this planet's natural only plausible answer to our plight. And Edwin Mewman [October 1980]. resources are exhausted. We must start we do have a plight. Caroline Scoulas immediately to explore the beyond, in DanaM. Groff.Jr, Riverside, III. depth, before we are forced lo import Tampa, Fla. materials that can be ours. Congratulations to Edwin Newman on The next election for the House of Wright or Wrong?

his article "Torrents of Babel." If we here Representatives comes in two years. So Whenever I hear "scientists" arguing in America cannof communicate properly lei's get involved and help get the right about the credibility of a phenomenon with one another (much less with the other people into office, people who recognize ["Scientists and Monsters," Continuum, peoples of Earth), how. when the time where our future lies. August 1980] that manifests itself through

comes, do we expect to communicate with Mark Vitali only, at best, skefchy proof, I recall an beings of another kind on another planet? San Diego, Calif. inspiring story

Anne McKinney It seems there was a famous bishop in Phoenix, Ariz. Music for the Ages the 1800s who was considered one of ihe

I thoroughly enjoyed the fine article "Video foremost authorises in science and Cotton Balls and Sexual Encounters Music" [The Arts] in the October 1980 theology His name was Wright.

As a biologist, I was particularly amused issue of Omni. I have always fel! that Omni One of his sermons was widely by Isaac Asimov's solution to the has done more to promote concepts not reprinted in many newspapers in the population problem [Last Word, October widely understood than any other northeastern United States. The sermon

1980]. However, I have reason to believe magazine. The format is easy (o follow, and suggested that man had discovered just

that evolving a strain of human beings with Omni has, I think, the ability to contact Ihe about all there was to be found and that

periodic-receptivity patterns will not best-known authorities on any subject now it was time to relax and ponder the reduce the number of sexual encounters. needed, fine poinis of all these discoveries.

Not because of the lack of pheromones. I am a student at Boston University, now At the time Bishop Wright had just at any rate. in my second year of computer engi- baptized Ihe younger of his two sons,

I have evidence. Using cotton balls, neering studies. For the longest time I had whose names were Wilbur and Orville.

surgical tape, and volunteers with a taste no idea what I was going to do with my During a darker period of my intellectual

I for the unusual. I have plugged my nose education after graduation. Computer growth used to proclaim myself a

and held my breath before engaging in graphics at first appealed tome. After "realist," until I saw this to be a very naive

receptivity-response experiments. Not some further thought, I have been state of mind. But how safe it was . . once, in many repeated trials, was my considering a career in electronic studio J. S. Todhunter

willingness to respond any different from techniques. Bui not until I had read your Fountain Valley. Calif.

I what it was when I engaged in those article did think of combining the two

encounters without the nose plugs. In fact, without compromise. Now I see that this is Plucked from the Abyss

I started each trial with the same, if not very possible. After witnessing the paranoid spectacle of increased, enthusiasm. Maybe someday someone will come up the Department of Energy making sound Although these experiments were not with a better name for "video music." Until and video tapes of American citizens *

performed under ideal experimental then, I wish John Whiiney further success exercising their constitutional right to free

I conditions. I feel the precautions and in his work. expression, want to express my procedures mentioned above shed doubt Pedro Gerardo Silva appreciation of your interview wiih Denis on Mr. Asimov's proposal. Another solution Boston, Mass. Hayes, of SERI [August 1980]. It's for (he population problem will have to be refreshing to see that at least one sought. Better luck next time! Divine Principles government agency ismaking wise and

John J. White- As an occasional reader, I thought the effective use of its funding, for a change. Tennessee Technical University second-anniversary issue of Omni was Mr. Hayes seems to be a very intelligent, Nashville, Tenn. very informative. articulate, and sensible person. These

As a Christian tundamenialist, however, I qualities are in short supply in our rather

Space Groups disagree with what appears to be your wasteful bureaucatic structures. I think it's

I am interested in contacting several of the general philosophy (lhat science and productive people like Hayes who will play space organizations frequently mentioned iechnological advance will not only save major roles in plucking our planet from the in Omni. However, l.heir mailing addresses us from ourselves but offer us a "better edge of the abyss.

are not readily available. tomorrow"). I find this humanistic view Alan Brookstone

Maybe a small space in each issue light-years away from the truth. We should University of Colorado devoted to these organizations and their consider those highly advanced Boulder, Colo. addresses would enhance the revital- civilizations that" fell, regardless of their ization of our space efforts. I'd like to be extraordinary technology. Their Source of Nebulae

able to colonize in space before I die. social/moral decay, along with other The photographs of nebulae reproduced Dennis A. Maguire contributing factors, terminated their in your November issue from my book. Andover, N.H. existence. Many of those factors are Galaxies were not attributed to the becoming evident today in our own scientists and institutions lhat created We agree. A comprehensive listing of international society. them. Readers interested in the sources of grass-roots organizations lor space will I won't bore you with my own theological thes= lovely photos will want to know that appear in our next issue. — Ed. convictions, except to stale thai I believe they are: page 92, David Malin. certain divine principles of behavior (not Anglo-Australian Telescope Board; pages Lobbying for Space found in today's textbooks) must not be 93 and 97, Hale Observatories; pages 94

if Although the 1980 election is now history, I ignored we are to survive (decently) tire and 95, Royal Observatory, Edinburgh; hope enough people took David G. next quarter century. Though science is page 96, Association of Universities for Webb's advice [Space. November 1980 J. vitally important to our society, its own Research in Astronomy. Inc., Cerro Tololo It's up to us to put into office people who finite efforts cannot safeguard a Tomorrow. Inter-American Observatory. will push through bills to aid our ailing good or bad. Beyond our limited Timofhy Ferris space program. perception and scionritic endeavor, we Hollywood, Calif. OO 12 OMNI DIALOGUE FDRURTI

In the readers, which editors, I and cor- object to the uwiy in which Vir. Bova has ing from an intellectual si and point and respondents discuss topics arising out misrepresented creationis's' objectives inspiring because I was beginning to think * of Omni and theories and speculation of in having creation taught in schools. A that there weren't any more human beings interest general are brought forth. The Christian is a lover ot truth and despises out there who still believed in rationality— views published are not necessarily those obvious lies, such as evolution, especially in reason as proof over unproven mys- of the editors. Letters for publication lies when such are Incompatible with the licism. I salute Omni for having had should be mailed to Omni Forum, Omni truth of God's existence. Anyone who has the insight and courage to print such Magazine, 909 Third Avenue, New York, studied evolution even remotely soon an article. NY 10022. realizes that the theory cannot include Hillary A. Bornor God: Theistic evolution is totally illogical. Oakland, Calif. Equal Time for Creationists The Influences of evolution have already

I applaud BGn Bova's piece on the horrible had effects on society. To continue I feel that I must comment on Ben Bova's creationists [Continuum, October 1980]. leaching a theory that stands on excep- article on creationists in Omni's October Since the rise of science. Ihere have tionally been shaky ground is extremely 1980 issue. I am a scientist, and I believe those who have chosen to reject its unscientific. that biologists "usi go on gathering findings because of iheir religious or Evolution is theory that a arises, not out evidence and refining their theories. I am philosophical prejudice. With the recent of evidence from the earth, but out ot also a Christian, and as such I believe in rise in political activism among funda- man's determination to deny God's the Bible and the divine creation of man. mentalists, Iheir to influence attempts existence. Evolutionists desperately seek I see no conflict between these two education have intensified. other answers. views. As a scientist, I must accept the

Many groups advocating "equal time" I find it distressing that Omni has gone evidence that points to evolution, but, as a lo r the creation is: viewpoint would have us along with the misinformation passed Christian, I cannot help believing that God believe that this is purely a secular matter down through the years. Why not run a directed this evolution. The Bible does not concerning a balanced approach to a debate between a creationist and an say how God created man. It only states controversial topic. It is obvious, however, evolutionist? Let the readers decide for that He did it. If evolution was the method, that Iheir true objective is a revival of themselves truth. which represents that is fine and does not bother me. I find it Chrislian cosmology Craig Miller hard to believe lhal such a world could It is disconcerting to note lhal the Arlington, Tex. evolve without some lorm of divine movement has Home chance ol success. guidance. society that gives A open-armed Ben Bova, I love you. Your editorial. "The Arthurs. Bland acceplance to such notions as ancient Creationists' 'Equal Time.' " to my mind, Albuquerque, N.M. astronauts, pyramid power, and aslrology was the most refreshing and most cannot be expected to scrutinize inspiring article written in eons. Refresh- Bravo, Mr. Bova! Your article on the creaiionism with an informed or skeptical creationists in Omni's October 1980 issue eye. There is no evidence that state expressed thoughts that I have long legislators or school-board members are entertained. Unfortunately, the creationists any more capable of resisting this retreat appear unable, or unwilling, to question from rational thought than private citizens. the written word. Remember, please, that This may be why the creationists have the word was written by man, a fallible chosen to advance their ideas by means creature indeed. Thank God (oops) that of public propaganda. Clearly, the biologists are willing to question what they appropriate forum for the resolution of a are told, that they do not take everything scientific controversy is in the relevant for granted. (Creationists call this faith.) If scientific journals. we all failed to question, nothing new The scientific community must speak would ever be learned. out on any relevant topic that captures the Let us be thankful that there are those interest of the public. The principles and who do question "accepted facts" and processes of science must be made clear "obvious truths." Any true biologist would to society al large. Writers like Mr. Bova welcome proof that his or her particular play an indispensable role in this effort. theories were wrong if the scope and

I look forward to 'oadir.g h:p columns. knowledge of science would be Steven C. Haack advanced. I am tired of having "faith"

Lincoln, Neb. ''!k:!'i*W!-jr:io. Hii.-sSranor. lor n !>:t flung in my face. If proof of creation, or

14 OMNI C0*.'"IMUEL!OM PAGE 113 TERRA 1NFIRMA EARTH By Kenneth Brower

first alien scouts to look down while it The jerk men'ors the diversify of the life been at war with those mother macro- on this planet are likely lo be a teeming within. molecules throughout its entire history. hard-nosed bunch, if they have These extraterrestrial scouts will be hard Human presence can be interpreted as noses at all. A safe assumption is that pressed to believe that ihe soil they find a withering of landscapes— an accretion they'll at least be tougher than the here is not a superorganism. it breathes of ruined Edens. Mesopotamia, that inhabitants of the lush, blue-green orb through pores burrowed by worms. (In once-rich land where 6,0.00 years ago our below them. From all that we can perceive good soil during one growing season, sapience produced the wheel, is now the of our galaxy, life is no picnic out there. 50,000 worms will overturn about seven wasteland we call Iraq. The United States,

And yet I'll lay odds that their first tons of soil per hectare.) It's alive with cradle of the modem civrzation that reaction will be one of surprise. bacteria and fungi, and sowbugs and produced the digital watch and put a golf

"The whole planet's alive," a lieutenant centipedes lace their way through it. It club on the moon, annually loses nearly will in say, rough translation, as he adjusts si thers with worms. Occasionally it 3.5 tons of soil per hectare. We are a the screen of a life-form detector. He will shudders with the passage of a mole. "humuscidal" animal. shaKe his Spartan head, or heads, in The diversity of species that aerate, President Carter asserted in a recent wonder. "The entire surface of this globe. refine, and renew the soil disqualifies soil speech that in 1935 the United Slates had is a.superorganism." as a superorganism — by most earthly "well over six hundred million acres of

Like all diagnostic ecuipment in use on definitions. The soil's great age alone is far actual or potentia 1 cropland." In the their world, the aliens' life-form detector more ancient than any beehive or termite following 45 years, "one hundred million of resembles a seismograph. The machine mound. Its growth is excruciatingly slow, a Ihose acres [we re J effectively destroyed." will register a wiggly line encircling the centimeter every 150 to 500 years. In Ihe On the soil that remains, we are producing earth's relatively nert. peaceful core and nutrient-rich layer known as humus, more crops than ever before. But to crust — an epidermis of life. The line will be organic molecules 3.000 years old are achieve this abundance, we are poisoning scratchy and discontinuous over the still on Ihe job. Ihose precious remaining acres with pes- oceans, where life is dilute. It will track thin These dark brown organic macromole- ticides, fertilizers, and salinization. By over deep deserts and over the poles, cules form the basis of almost all life on "mining" the soil, we plunder the land and where lite is sparse. But over the soil- this planet. And yet one of the soil's more sfeal from our descendants. The dream of coated continents, the line will jump and singular productions, humankind, has converting biomass into alcohol and

gasoho.l is built upon a soil profile that is steadily diminished each year. Like so many of our schemes, biomass

conversion is a shortcut. The idea is to

harvest crop residues and leaf litter rather than to wait millennia for ferns and diatoms

to compress into coal and oil. It is a tech- nically ingenious plan, but ecologically horrendous. The soil needs that leaf litter and crop residue. Humus requires the constant addition of new decay- ing biomass io maintain itself. Wher- ever the biomass harvesters wander, the organic component of the soil would be impoverished, and carbon and nitrogen cycles in the soil would be disrupted. Biomass conversion is a way of tak-

ing still morefrom the eroding land- scape and giv nc; ever \e~.s back. The hitch in the dream of driving on gasohol to the supermarket is that, when you arrive, there may be no bread on the shelves. Soil is overdue for a revolution in the way

we think about it. Part of that revolution will ti anile si itself in a return to organic farming and the nonuse of chemical

:;ontinufdonraOl i:i BRAIN MENDIN

By Kathleen McAuliffe

hen a vital tissue or I ^% I organ thirds of the cells survive and establish and Huntington's chorea, numerous I becomes defunct, interconnecting 1 ||l cadavers links with a neighboring disorders of the hypothalamus are ** V^and prosthetic devices are the neural center. As dopamine levels begin to subsumed in this category. Results from logical places one would turn to for spare rise, the rats show a decrease in behav- experiments now being done on primates parts. Neither avenue is possible for ioral abnormalities associated with the will prove crucial in assessing the clinical victims of brain lesion. Their disability disease. utility of this procedure. Even if scientists results Irom the death of tissue in small, a "We've now examined the grafts for are successful beyond theirwildes! confined portion of the brain, often no about a year, is which almost half the life dreams, however, the path from monkey to larger than a grape. But some of these span of a rat," Hoffer says, "and there man may be strewn with moral obstacles. people could benefit from a novel, though appears to be no rejection. " How do they "Where are we going to get the embry- controversial, of organ type bank. escape detection by the host's arsenal onic tissue?" asks William Regelson. Embryos, including human embryos, against foreign invaders?The secret lies in of the Medical College of Virginia. might become an invaluable source of the brain's blood barrier; which screens "You'll have to use a living human embryo. brain tissue for transplantations. This is out antibodies and other lymphatic, cells, An aborted fetus won't do. Are women the impact of research conducted by far the As as body's immunological system going to become mpregrated to pro- Barry Hoffer, of the University of Colorado; is concerned, the brain is neutral territory vide embryos"-' Wo rt-i faced with a very Richard Wyatt, of the National Institute of where foreign grafted cells can coexist serious problem, and we'll have to find Mental Health (NIMH), in Bethesda, with the local inhabitants. The eyes, too, ethical alternatives to it. For example, if we" Maryland; and Lars Olson, of the share the brain's special status of being can develop the technology to grow Karolinska Institute, in Stockholm. While "immunologically privileged," thereby embryonic cell lines in culture, thai older animals' brain tissues rapidly "' raising hopes of someday grafting new might provide one solution degenerate when placed in foreign eyes for the blind. Likewise Hoffer, for ethical reasons, surroundings, embryonic cells have no Much closer to realization, according to rules out using living embryos. But given trouble adapting to a new abode. The Hoffer, is the prospect of using fetal no other options, he thinks aborted fetuses researchers extracted brain cells from a implantations to cure certain forms of could indeed supply the donor material. To rat fetus and implanted them in a brain impairment that involve a focal loss obtain the fetal tissue, he foresees no need comparable region of an adult rat's of neurons. Besides Parkinson's disease to modify abortion techniques now being lesioned brain. Instead of dying, the cells used in hundreds of clinics. continued to develop normally and grew Still, abortion itself presents a moral into the host's neural network. dilemma for many people. Hoffer would But embryonic cells are more than good much rather find a substitute for the- colonizers. They are skilled pathfinders, embryonic donor altogether. In the case ot and this talent is crucial in repairing lesion Parkinson's disease, he may already have damage. Confronted with millions of succeeded. The peripheral nervous tissue crossroads, called synapses, fetal cells of an adult, he believes, could serve the seemtohavenodifficuhy tirdng ;he.r same function as embryonic brain tissue. way to the target area. Indeed, even when "Luckily, nature has been parsi- implanted oft course, they have an monious," Hotter remarks. "Dopamine uncanny way of reaching the desti- acts as a neurotransmitter in the brain, nation that nature intended. The naviga- but it is also used in the peripheral tional feats of birds and fish are tame nervous system, for example, in the adrenal by comparison. glands." When adrenal cells are used as Already Hoffer and his colleagues are the graft material, Hoffer found that using embryonic grafts to alleviate the "they become more nervelike and send symptoms of lab-induced Parkinson's oul branches that can actually grow into disease in rats. For both man and rodent, the recipient's brain." This strengthens the disorder is caused by a lesion in that the possibility that Parkinson's part of the brain responsible for pro^Jng victims might supply their own grafts by dopamine, a substance essentia. ior donating a portion of their adrenals. normal r.iotor control. The scientists For other brain disorders, nature may transplant lissue from an area o' a fetal nof be so parsimonious. If vital neuro- brain that corresponds to the site of the chemicals are not present in the periph- lesion in afflicted rats. Approximately two r- -','.; receive ce!i .vvpi'v eral nervous tissue, the embryonic 22 OMNI COMIMJEDON PAGE 110 BRING ME SOME STARDUST

By Jerry Grey

next best thing to going there quence of experiments The that turned carries ihe samples home to Earth. is having someone bring back a out to be needed. The "direct entry/direct return" ap- present. In planetary science, Those experiments could be done by proach is simpler, but the Mars lander's that "someone" must be a robot. human technicians easily, but NASA's return rockets would have to lift it out of the Planetary return missions were once dreams of a manned flight to Mars went planets gravity well. To keep its among weight NASA's most promising research. down the tubes in the post-Apollo de- down, the rest of the probe would have to Today they are among the most neglected. pression. The Soviet Union still plans a be simplified; it could grab only a random The material our Apollo astronauts Mars voyage, but the trip will probably sample from an unselected landing site. brought back from the moon showed what not occur before 2000. Since both techniques use conventional actual samples can do: It told us the Instead, however, we could bring some rockets for the trip to Mars and back, both moon's age and revealed its chemical of the planet here. The Russians showed methods would require al least two shuttle composition. And that told us about the the retrieving way by lunar samples nearly flights to place the hardware into Earth moon's early years, including the tem- ten years ago. A planetary return mission orbit. The direct-entry mission might even peratures and pressures at which it costs more than a lander, but it would be need three. But the orbital-rendezvous formed, the level of volcanic activity, the far cheaper than a manned flight. The mission could use ion rockets for the energy available for lunar evolution, and hardware prototypes for a Mars return transport vehicle (they are too fragile to even Ihe nature of the solar wind. mission have already been built. All that's land on Mars); in this case, a single shuttle Planetary scientists need thai sort of missing is a commitment to the project flight could do the job. In either case, the information as badly as selenologists do. and the money to pay for it price tag in 1978 was about $1 billion, plus Our missions to the planets, valuable and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has the shuttle costs. spectacular as they are, have not been suggested two ways lo return samples The outer planets would be even more able to provide it. Even the two Viking from Mars. In one, a sample carrier difficult. They are so far from the sun that probes, which analyzed Martian soil launched the by shuttle lands on Mars, solar-powered ion rockets would not work, samples and relayed those data back to collects some soil, and returns directly to and even high-performance chemical Earth, could not answer the key question: Earth orbit. In the other, the returning rockets are probably impractical. And the Is there life on Mars? Viking's robot sampler meets a transport vehicle in Mars atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn are instruments could not perform the se- orbit, and the transport vehicle then probably too inhospitable for a lander to survive. We'll learn more about that during Ihe Galileo mission, which will probe Jupiter's atmosphere in the mid-1980s. There is one outer-planet mission that might be practical, however: a.sampling probe of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, Titan has a relatively cense amir) sphere and is now considered the most likely home of life in the solar system, other than Earth. Another possible mission, one with more than just scientific interest, is a sample return from the asteroids. Laden with metals, organic compounds, and water, the asteroids might be an endless source of raw materials for space industry. The knowledge gained by analyzing an asteroid sample would be incalculable, with enormous economic value. For today's planetary scientists, however, the idea of bringing home a piece of any planet is only a wistful dream. Unless the United States pulls itself together to rebuild our space program, there's little hope ot realizing it. Lef's hope that Congress and the administration will soon see the light. DQ PLEASURE MACHINE nniruD By David Cohen

Psychological iheorisis once con- Some hedonists, the researchers dis- to give pain. Ten percent ot the subjects sidered pleasure an important covered, hogged more lhan 15 minutes of stalked out of the lab saying that the

catalyst of human action. It was absolute personal pleasure. Then the experiment was dirty, immoral, and so influential that Freud elevated it to scientists had trouble persuading them to beneath their dignity. Of those who did principle, arguing that all human life is a stand up and go home. take part. Thomas reported, most enjoyed struggle between life instinct, the attempt But the question Thomas and Brock the experience. One man said, "It's a to get as much pleasure as possible, and wished to address with their chair wasn't unique way of getting to know people" by death instinct, the wish to give it all up and self-satisfaction. They wanted to explore giving them a bucket full of pleasure. return to dust. the patterns oi pleasure giving between The Ohio State study found that certain

Yet during the past two decades strangers. To this end, they adapted the rules seem to apply to pleasure giving. It, pleasure has suffered a period of neglect. format of Dr. Stanley Milgram's classic for instance, the person in Ihe.chair is

It was too abstract a concept for experi- experiment in obedience. In that test perceived as being of high social status, menters. They could gauge the effects of Milgram asked subjects to deliver what he gets more pleasure than others would. tangible rewards, like offering a research appeared to be dangerous, and Also, pleasure giving works better with rat pellets of food or the opportunity to sometimes fatal, electrical shocks to heterosexual pairs. Men gave women mount a willing female. Bui pleasure itself strangers. He found that few refused. more intense and longer bouts of pleasure remained difficult to define— one 'The Ohio State team, by contrast, than they gave other men. And women person's pleasure being another's' pain— offered strangers the opportunity to give were just as conventional. They preferred s and it was also impossible io quantify. pleasure to one another. Thomas invited to press the button for men rather than for The coup de grace to science's positive subjects to his lab, showed them the other women. Thomas also asked sub- perception of pleasure came from the pleasure machine, and then told them jects to rate how attractive the person work of sexologists William H. Masters and they would have a chance to deliver in- in the pleasure chair appeared; he found Virginia E. Johnson. These physiological tense pleasure to someone just by that the more attractive the person, the experimenters persuaded subjects lo pressing a button. more pleasure he or she received. make love in the lab. From their work came Thomas and Brock found, to their One doubt dogged the Ohio State remarkably interesting measures of penile surprise, that tar more people refused to experimenters. Could their research be erection, vaginal dilation, contractile give pleasure than refused Milgram's offer invalidated if the subject and control gave power, blood flow, and other purely each other pleasure before being tested? physical responses. But not one word Dating couples, Thomas reasoned, had about pleasure. Though Masters and the chance to give each other real Johnson never suggested that pleasure pleasure, body to body, rather than ar- didn't play a part in sex, their approach tilicial pleasure, button to button. So, he focused exclusively on physiology. thought, dating couples might scoff at the

Today however, pleasure seems to be machine. Mot at all. Dating couples spent making a comeback. Researchers Randy more time giving each other pleasant

Thomas and Tim Brock, of Ohio State vibrations than did all other twosomes. University, have developed a machine that Clearly the more intimately people knew measures pieas.re. The device is a each other, the more reciprocal pleasure variation of Stanley Milgram's famous pain they were willing to offer. seat. Instead of delivering the vicious Some social scientists have predicted a electrical shocks that Milgram required for future of impersonal sex in which the his study of obedience, however, the human race has abandoned carnal pleasure machine treats sitters to pleasures in exchange tor being seduced exquisite, sensual vibrations. and caressed by all kinds of electronic The subject sits on a pad placed in the wonder devices. The experiment in Ohio seat of a comfortable chair. At the touch of suggests, however, that part of the good a button, the pad produces undulating derived from the pleasure machine is the nirvana. Subjects in Thomas and Brock's joy of knowing that another human being surveys rhapsodized about the intense controls the buttons that deliver the right pleasure of tne feelings they received, in vibrations. Probably, even by a.d 2100, one test, subjects were allowed to give Thomas concludes, the best pleasure themselves the experience by pressing won't come from machines but through the button that set the seat vibrating. Would you offer ecstasy ;-, a <:>;;,: strange? interaction between people. OO 26 OMNI coruTinjuurm Edited by Dick Teresi

VHO SPEAKS FOR

help. atomic power essentia) , or too dangerous for mankind to play So we mainstream citizens need (And so doe's the genet- coal instead, will ourplanet icist when he steps away from bacteriophage mutations io pon- Iswith? If we burn substantially more heat up-enough to melt the Antarctic ice cap- and create ocean der the wisdom tif space explorations.) But where -do we turn for 7 resorts in Kansas? guidance Who speaks for science? Who has the facts? long-established scientific, medical, and If you don't feel like deciding these questions- how would you Well, there are the like to determine the acceptable amount of low-level radiation technical professional societies, lor starters. There are. voluntary exposure for humans? Or the point at which life begins? Or health organizations and government experts with data .at their whether gene splicirig is a wonder tool or a potential toy for mad fingeri.ips And more recently there has arisen an immense new scientists? Or what we are really doing to the- ozone layer? chorus of voices to catch our ear— sometimes urging specific Back in the times when a pope could settle the rival claims ot policies, sometimes warning us of inevitable catastrophe if we two seafaring nations simply by drawing an imaginary line ignore its advice Consumer-advocate groups have proliferated through a virgin continent, public policy- was more- easily made. as our lives become more. interdependent and as. society be- And in those days, even though Copernicus's calculations of comes more conscious of the multiple effects of science- and planetary orbits might discomfit scholarly clerics, science was technology on human well-being. essentially remote from ordinary life. But scientists are political animals, too, subject to feelings, of Now. however, we no n scientists— and the legislators who rep- predilecT!;-.n.i. v-:i -Meo logical Meanings. Il is the obligation resent us — are required to weigh issues far more ambiguous scientific organizations ;o icen:ify the ms elves fully, stating their than the partitioning of terra nova or the movement of the purposes and any relationships they maintain with industry or spheres, for our -society is balanced rather precariously on in- government, so that we can DSi'.ej evaiuaie rnsir contributions. creasingly complex technology. "We are living in a revolutionary And scientists, says- Nooelist Rpsalyn 3 Yalow. have a special age," says Waiter Cronkite. "In one generation we- have entered duty to "state what is scientifically known to be fact and to three new eras— the Atomic Era, the Computer Era. and the distinguish fact from hypothesis arc ..udg-enl Space Era. Understanding any one of these requires mote infor- Perhaps if is a sign of the times that one new organization, the mation than any one of us could possibly have." Scientists' Institute for Public Information (S1P1). is attempting to Small wonder, then, that governments sometimes beget gather several conventions' worlh of scientists under one "roof" strange policies and that we must include tough risk/benefit Supported by public contributions and occasional foundation ratios in our equations. Automobiles, which kill 50,000 of us every grants, S1PI has established a Media Resource Service to give year, remain' acceptable, although we debate whether, saccharin reporters access to several thousand independent experts in is worth the putative risk of causing- even a few human -bladder- fields as diverse-as behavsor m'odificalidn. solar energy, lasers, cancer deaths each year Moreover, so many of ourproblems are When Cronkite calls in, the-SIPI people global, not just local or national, and an awesome number ot the say, he'll quickly be given names and telephone numbers of spe- choices we make could, have far-reaching consequences. cialists who can explain technical subjects. And where do we get our information, anyway? Strong emo- Wll outfits like SlPI .give people more balanced doses of infor- tions and prejudices, politics and profits, color the. picture. We're mation lhan they have gleaned from Ralph Nader or the Depart- vulnerable io hard sells because so much of our knowledge ment of Energy? Maybe so.—ALTON BLAKESLEE comes at us piecemeal, in packets proor con something. Hastily skimmed headlines, 20-second TV coiTimerc ; als ana seductive StPI, 355 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017, is kept .busy slogans "educate" us about how many billions cf mouths world answering a heavy load ot calls Irom the press. Requests from agriculture can feed; the relaiive dangers of plutonium waste, nonmedia sources must be in writing, says public information asbestos'in hair dryers, and birth-control pills, director Fred Jerome.— Ed. conrnruuunji

WOMEN'S BEST-KEPT to make it soft and slimy so

SECRET that it will go down their small throats with greater Women are not expected lo be able to keep a secret, • Goldenrod does not cause but they guard one vital hay fever; its pollen is too biological secret better than heavy to be carried by the any other mammal does. wind. The real culprit— rag- According to Dr. James L. weed — often grows along

Gray, ot the State University with it, but ragweed's incon- of Mew York at Stony Brook. spicuous flowers usually go women are unique among unnoticed next to the gold- female mammals in that they enrod's bright blossoms. keep their own period of fer- • Dragonflies don'l bite; tility a secret, not only from they eat mosquitoes and their mates but also from gnats, not human flesh. They themselves. don't sting, either. In olden By keeping their c&rio-a offer !:!/!/ a mep seers;, esyi one sasniisi. In the course of evolution, their long, thin women force their mates to hang around, lighting off potential rivals. days bodies Dr. Gray believes, women and fearsome appearance adopted hidden fertility, be- ovulates only once a month. are among the least intelli- led people to nickname cause it encourages faithful- To ensure offspring, he has gent of birds. Crows and them "devil's darning ness in their mates and thus to copulate with her re- bluejays are the smartest. needles."— Stuart Diamond helps them maximize their peatedly over a period of • Toads do not cause warts; chances of evolutionary time. Once this investment is they have warts. These "One way to maintain your success. made, the best way for a warts are not contagious. lifestyle when you're getting Speaking to the Animal man to ensure survival of the • Bats are not blind; they poorer is to borrow." Behavior Society, in Fort Col- resulting progeny is for him have eyes and can see in — Andrew Tobias lins, Colorado, Gray said to stay around, fighting off ri- daylight. At night they see by that males and females are vals for his ever- receptive emitting a high-pitched "A new idea is delicate. It counted successful in evolu- mate and helping io care for screech, which bounces off can be killed by a sneer or a tionary terms if they rear his children. objects and is picked up by yawn; it can be stabbed to many offspring to maturity. Evolutionary success the bat's antennae— a kind death by a quip and worried For male mammals, there doesn'l imply total faithful- of sonar. to death by a frown on the are two strategies to achieve ness, Gray added, but wom- • Raccoons do not wash right man's brow." this goal: impregnating as en's secret fertility means a their food; they dip it in water — Charlie Brower many females as possible successful man has to re- and avoiding parental care strict most of his attentions to or impregnating one female only a lew mates, so that he repeatedly and helping raise can impregnate them him- her young. self and nurture their Females also have a young. — Barbara Ford choice of two strategies; hid- ing ovulation and remaining ANIMAL MYTHS continuously receptive or displaying ovulation and re- In our continuing search stricting receptivity to the for scientific truth, we de- fertile period. bunk a few more medieval By choosing hidden superstitions: ovulation, Gray explained, a • Snakes are nol slimy; they woman reduces a man's are dry and smooth to the chances of making her touch. pregnant to about 1 in 30 for • Owls are not smart; they Say good-bye to the idea that owls ate wise. They are not very each copulation, since she have very small brains and bright, have smalt brains, and are among the dumbest birds. 30 OMNI 5

TEST-TUBE-BABV GNAWS CLINIC The land-based answer to An Elizabethan mansion, Jaws is being provided by Bourn Hall, is the unlikely beavers, raccoons, and setting for the world's first squirrels, which love to mas- test-tube- baby clinic, which ticate TV cables, telephone opened this past fall in cables, and similar parts of Cambridgeshire, England. technology's circulatory sys- The clinic is directed by tem. In New York City, tele- Dr. Roberl Edwards and Pat- phone company employees rick Sleptoe, pioneers of in found 830 breaks along 1 vitro fertilization, whose work kilometers of cable in just was responsible for the birth one neighborhood. Squir- of Louise Brown in 1978. The rels, it seems, enjoy gnawing fee for treatment at the clinic on low-voltage lines. The

is £1,680 ($4,000). phone company had to en- Edwards and Steptoe do case the cables 1 in steel. not guarantee pregnancy. At the 1980 Winter Olym- RADIOACTIVE TEETH Uranium teeth were intro- Last year they reported that pics, held in Lake Placid, duced in the mid-1930s; the only 4 of their first 52 implan- New York, ABC-TV officials That wonderful, warm tiny amounts of radioactivity. tations had led to pregnancy found thai bears, raccoons, glow in Grandma's smile luciged harmless by Food and that only 2 of those had and beavers were chewing may reveal more than inner and Drug Administration

produced live babies (one of on the 80 kilometers of triax- beauty, it may be due to standards, came into wide them Louise Brown). Thou^ ial cable strung around radioactive dentures. use. In fact, many, if not sands of foreign women Whit ef ace Mountain. ABC Millions of Americans. are most, of the 18,7 million are already on the waiting list put up fence around the ca- wearing false teeth that have Americans who wear false for Bourn Hall, where 30 pa- bles. It didn't work. The net- been treated with tiny quan- teeth probably wear den- tients can be treated at any work even considered skunk tities of uranium oxide to tures that have been treated one time. — Bernard Dixon. oil as a repellent, but techni- give them a glow that ap- with uranium. cians objected. Finally, a proximates that of natural But the days of radioactive Science fiction is a kind of sonar monitor was installed teeth Otherwise, the den- smiles appear to be num- archaeology of the future." so that ABC could detect tures would look out of place bered. Bad press in the — Clifton Fadiman and repair the cables each among the real ones. 1970s— particularly in Great time they were chewed. Britain — has led the Ameri- In Florida, a supertermite, can Dental Association to which gnaws through plas- recommend that denture ter, mortar/and various manufacturers forgo the use chemical coatings to get at of uranium as they perfect the wood underneath, has nonradioactive substances. been discovered. This ter- Among the new fluorescent mite, of the genus Copto- substances are salts of termes.: was found in a cerium, used in flints, and Broward County condo- terbium, used in lasers and minium complex. "They television tubes. Within a are bad, real bad," said one year such substitutes are io found thou- expected to ail but replace lem chewing his that old nuclear glow. room. —Stuart Diamond lites also have been eating through some "Forget your opponents: telephone lines in Louisiana. always play against par." —Stuart Diamond — Sam Snead CDruTiruuuRji

AURORA WATCHING sun cascade through the derstand and attempt to dif- Dr. Bukantz also determined neutral charge of Earth's fuse the magnetic storms that cat saliva made patients One of the las! large-scale magnetic field in the auroral that often accompany au- release histamine, which natural phenomena yet to be region. But it is not known roras and that disrupt com- produces allergy symptoms satisfactorily explained is the why the particles, which munication Another is Bukantz's work confirms greatest light show on Earth, elsewhere in space move to find a way to ward off earlier studies by Dr. Harold the brilliant Northern and relatively slowly, become aurora-induced currents that Southern Lights. so extremely excited tn the can flow through pipes. Physicist Arthur Wong and auroral region, that they A prime example is the a team of UCLA scientists create spectacularly bright Alaska pipeline, which has have worked out a scheme lights. been seriously corroded by to send high-trequency The ground site, 40 these currents-. radio waves, 40 times kilometers northeast of Fair- — Caroline Rob greater than those of com- banks, Alaska, is being pre- mercial radio stations, to pared so experiments can " [Sciencel has conquered measure the velocity and start early this year. The site many diseases, broken the density of charged particles was chosen because of its genetic code, and even in the auroral ionosphere proximity to the North Pole placed human beings on the (between 105 and 240 and to a nearby radio sta- moon, ye! when a man of kilometers above Earth) tion, complete with radar eighty is left in a room with Wong says, "We will have and telescope. A 15-meter two eighteen-year-oid an invisible arm touching antenna has already been cocktail waitresses, nothing and feeling the ionosphere built, and a two-megawatt happens. Because the real layer by layer at predeter- high-frequency radio trans- problems never change." mined heights, which can mitter is being completed ai — Woody Allen, in cause electromagnetic in- UCLA. Side Effects teractions, easily tracked Chief interest in the proj- down by radar or seen ect comes from the quest for CAT SPIT through telescopes." basic scientific knowledge, lights turned but The get on, Wong says the study If you're allergic to cats Baer, of the U.S. Food and Wong says, yield practical when charged may some and if allergy shots don't Drug Administration, which particles erupted from applications. One is to the un- help, it may be because the show that the cat's pelt may fault lies, not in your pet's simply be the area where pelt, but in its saliva. Until re- allergens from other sites,

cently it was believed that including the saliva, are the allergen responsible for deposited. sensitivity to cats resided Someday, Bukantz pre- solely in the pelt Extracts of dicts, an extract of cat saliva pelt are used to desensitize will afford better protection persons allergic to cats. The than today's extracts. The treatment works better for saliva extract would also be seme people than for others. purer (pelt extracts usually Dr. Samuel C. Bukantz. include some blood) and chief of the division of allergy easier to obtain and could and immunology at the Uni- be taken without sacrificing versity of South Florida Col- the cat.

lege of Medicine, in Tampa, Until a saliva extract is

finds that some patients who available, however, it's prob- are allergic to cats are more ably a good idea for anyone sensitive to their saliva than who is sensitive to cats to re- to their pelts. Both skin tests frainfrom kissing them — on and test-tube blood studies the mouth, anyway, ite Northern Lights: Beautiful, mysterious, but bad furnished the same results. — Barbara Ford 32 OMNI CAPTURING When the energy books had SPELLBOUND I tion— theophylline— without BLIZZARDS been balanced, this first at- ASTHMATICS experiencing noticeable ad- tempt already proved ap- verse effects Under hypno-

! sis, Wouldn't it be nice to cap- proximately equal in cost to A San Antonio, Texas, four-children registered iraaiiionai chilled-water cool- pediatrician discovered no reaction at all to an al- ture the blizzards of January has |

and ihen release them to ing. This winter Taylor and a promising treatment for : lergy sKin test. cool your house come July his colleagues are. consider- and August? A Princeton ing less.costlymethodsof University physicist has making the snow and done just that. important, better methods of

Last summer former Los containing.and preserving it. Alamos bomb maker Theo- This idea comes from a dore B. Taylor cooled a build- man who for many years' was ing on the Princeton campus regarded as one of the fore- by using, melt water from most designers of atomic

1 ,000 cubic meters of ice weapons, Asa conceptual made with a ski-resort snow phys:c-!St at Lcs Alamos Sci- machine. The ice was stored entific Laboratory. Taylor de- the largest -yield fis- in a plastic-lined , tapered pit signed 20 meters on a side and 5 sion bomb ever exploded meters deep, and covered and also what was then the over witha tarpaulin. During the summer the melting cold water was """ pumped through the build- ing's radiators. Though the ice took just 250 hours of

snow blowing to make, it provided the same cooling as four standard residential air conditioners- working through an entire summer. study at thescbor ricsdepartmt

Asthma is c chiefly by biff ing, Dr. Zelizersays. Bro cho constriction causes heavy mucus secretion. youths would either- stare at swelling membranes, and fit-

an object or conjure up a- ful-coughing. Attacks are pleasing mental image. On iriggered by emotional dis- boy pictured himself r'unhin tress, allergies, stre along and breathing Ireely exercise, or the presence o as his lungs cleared out, ital agents.. After lear-ning'the method, All the adolescents per-

all the children still suffered formed well in a follow-up asthma attacks. Buithe at- test and now hypnotize tacks we're- shorter and less themselves about.o frequent and resulted in month. The boy who visu- fewer emergency-room vis- alized himself running even-

its. All of the children tually won a race at a track stopped taking medica- meet.— Robert Brady "

CDRJTiaiuurui

HOT-TUB HAZARDS out, slide under, and drown. CANCER SLEUTH experiments financed by Soaking in water over Sereno and by Nuc-Med, D The Consumer Product 41 G can also bring on heat A radioactive drug now in Inc., and Nuclear Pharmacy, Safety Commission warns stroke or even hyperthermia the works might ultimately both in Albuquerque, New hot-tub aficionados against if the body fails to regulate detect most cancer cells ear- Mexico. getting themselves into hot its internal temperature. lier than current methods "In theory, this drug can water. The agency recorded Pregnant women— or do— even, perhaps, before detect tumors before there ten hot-tub drownings in women likely to become they develop fully into are any clinical manifesta-

1979— all caused by exces- pregnant— should keep tumors. tions, such as intrauterine sive temperatures— includ- hot-tub water below 40"C. This diagnostic sleuth may bleeding and lumps on the ing three linked with alcohol says Mary Ann Sedwick also guide doctors in moni- breast," says Fred Mondrag- consumption. Harvey, a research associate toring metastasis (tumor on. of Nuc-Med. A husband and wife at the University of Washing- growth) and in determining The theory is that most drowned together in a hot Ion Medical School. whether cancer patients re- cancers in humans secrete tub in California. Both were Dr. David W Smith, also af- spond to chemotherapy. Test a placental hormone called heavily sedated with liquor filiated with this school, re- results for two patients given human chorionic gonado- and medication for high cently studied pregnant the drug at Vancouver Gen- troph^ (hCG) and that when blood pressure and heart women whose hyperthermia eral Hospital, in Canada, animals such as sheep are conditions. seemed to have caused fetal injected with hCG, they pro- Most hot-tub makers post brain damage and deforma- duce an hCG antibody that guidelines formed by the Na- tion. He began the research scientists can extract and tional Spa and Pool Institute. after observing that guinea isolate from blood samples. Diabetics or patients with pigs were more prone, when They "tag" or "label" the

other serious ailments are overheated , to bear off- antibody with technetium advised lo consult a physi- spring with birth defects. 99— the most widely used cian before they take a dip. One woman whom he radioactive drug— and inject Persons taking regular examined — who suffered the substance into the medication should forgo hyperthermia in a sauna bloodstream. long baths inahottubto while pregnant— bore Now most "tracer" drugs avoid nausea, dizziness, or a baby with dislocated hips, are targeted to reach certain fainting. Drowsiness can brain damage, and a ner- organs, such as the heart or make a hot-tub bather pass — lungs, to find pinpoint vous disorder Robert Brady Cancers sfiow up as dark spots. and disease. But the new

were seen as promising . radioisotope latches on to enough to encourage clini- the hCG that surrounds cal trials on humans in the cancer cells and leaves United States as soon as the normal cells alone. A gamma Food and Drug Administra- camera imaging scan re- tion gives an okay. Prelimi- cords this detective work as nary tests on mice, rats, a dark spot (the cancer) con- rabbits, and dogs have trasted sharply against a demonstrated that the drug grayish background. The is safe. most effective radioactive

"It's possible this agent agents now available can can detect ninety percent of detect only certain cancers, all cancer," says Dr. David and then only about half the Crockford. of Sereno Labora- time.— Robert Brody tories, in Switzerland. He de- veloped and patented the drug with Dr. Buck Rhodes, of the University of New the part of every organism to Mexico College of Phar- live beyond Its income.

Hot-tubbing: A whole lot of tun. but keep your head above n. macy, which is conducting — Samuel Butler 34 OMNI . ,

FAST-FOOD BEES ered in many areas the sin- I grow 4 meters proteh-rich cattle feed. They gle most troublesome sum- a year, to a mature height of are now eaten like candy by The flourishing fast-food mer pest. A single sting can 20 meters, and to a thick- children or— dipped in a industry has produced yet kill an extremely allergic per- ness of half a meter. Its cut pepper sauce— by adults as another side effect— an ex- son wilhin half an hour; stumps regrow so fast that hors d'oeuvres. One tree can plosion of bee populations Morse said. ihe National Academy of produce 20,000 seeds a and concern about the med- Scientists at Cornell have Sciences says it "defies the year. The seed pods can be ical effects of more frequent been developing a bee vac- woodcutter." Its scientific eaten raw, popped like pop- beestings. cine, using venom from yel- name is Leucaena leuco- corn, ground into flouror cof-

it Bees, seems, love most lowjacket colonies. To collect cephata , and its disciples fee substitutes, made into o! the food now commonly the venom, the researchers nickname it the "schmoo," red and brown dyes, or eaten on the street: hamburg- put an electrically charged after the mythical Al Capp painted as ornaments that ers, hot dogs, steak sand- grid of wire under a labora- cartoon creature lhat pro- are then sold. The. pulp can wiches, ice cream, soda. tory bee nesl. The wire re- and beer. But this has pro- peatedly shocks ihe bees, duced an explosion in the which become angry and at- population of yellowjackets, tack the device by stinging which are really a breed of It. The venom dripsdown stinging wasps. "Some onto plastic sandwich wrap people have been stung in and is collected. the mouth while Ihey and a The researchers also have wasp take a bite of the same discovered various ways to hamburger." observes Roger prevent beestings besides A. Morse, a Cornell Univer- abstention from fast foods, sity professor who has been One is not to smell— either

studying the insecis. good or bad . Both kinds of Several dozen docu- odors attract bees. Anofher mented deaths from bee- is to jump into a nearby body stings have been recorded of water, The bees won't in recent years, but re- follow.— Stuart Diamond searchers fear the toll may climb. Bees are now consid- "Science is a world of most phals; Almost as versatile as til Abrter's schmoo. unlikely truths, Andifwe

have found that it works, we vfded U'l Abnerandhis be made into paper. Bees have to thank the imaginative friends with unlimited sup- appreciate its small white courage of men who were plies of milk, butter, and flowers. willing to fly in the- face of eggs. Questions remain about their five senses, from the A native of Mexico, the its growth under intense cul- " day of Galileo to Einstein. schmoo tree has not been tivation, but scientists be- — Jacob Bronowski cultivated widely. Itowes its lieve ihe schmoo tree holds phenomenal growth to a tap- great promise. They suggest SCHMOO TREE root as deep as the tree is that researchers should de- high. The root can rea' i nu- velop the best strains. so. the An almost- magical tree trients and water supr ::es tree can be widely grown ihat can be used as a usually out of reach o other —Stuart Diamond cocktail snack, a fertilizer, trees. Recent experiments in timber for homes, fuel for Hawaii, the Philippines, Aus- "I am sorry to say there is too point stoves, a coffee substitute , a tralia, and Haiti conclude, much to the wisecrack flour surrogate, a child's that Ihe tree can quickly re- that life is extinct on other- ~ candy, and cattle forage has plenish depleted fc rests and planets because their

gained scientific attention as feed starving rhilli- nsin scientists were more

a boon for poor nations. u n de rd eve I oped countries advanced than ours," ers we. facing a bee plague? The tree, a relative of the The leaves can be used as — John F. Kennedy '

coruTiruuunn

NOT-SO-MIGHTY THC mice never bothered MOUSE to mount receptive females, and the CBN males lost in- Ever meet a mouse with a terest in mid-ardor. Yet none

languid libido? If you do, were sterile. there's a chance its mom The afflicted mice regis- wasapothead. tered low levels of plasma University of Texas re- LH (luteinizing hormone) searchers Susan Dalterlo and FSH (follicle-stimulating and Andrzej Bartke fed hormone)— gonadotroph ins modest amounts of tetrahy- responsible for the produc- drocannabinol (THC) or tion of testosterone and cannabinol (CBN) to preg- other sex-related steroids. nant mice the day before Even secondhand exposure Ihey gave birth. THC and to CBN and THC at sensitive CBN are the chemicals periods of development ap- primarily responsible for pears to affect the endocrine Even those great pioneers of research William Masters and a marijuana high. system permanently, the Virginia Johnson (above of the Grafenberg spot. Then the nursing rodent study concluded. mothers received six. addi- "We don't yet know exactly The ejaculated fluid that propose that 'vulval' and tional daily doses. Sixty to 80 how, nor do we know the im- they've analyzed is chemi- 'uterine' orgasms describe days later, when the male plications for humans," Dr. cally distinct from urine and the two ends of a continuum offspring had attained Dalterio says. "Bui it's con- vaginal lubrication. "It's most that represents the involve- adulthood and were tested servative to say that preg- like vasectomized-male ejac- ment of major muscles that for machismo, there wasn't a nant women should avoid ulatory fluid," says Perry. participate in the different Mighty Mouse among them. marijuana."— Judith Hooper To determine when a types of orgasm. However; The THC-exposed young woman is having an orgasm. most women most of the were fat and had small tes- GRAFENBERG SPOT Perry and Whipple use a time have a combination of

tes. In both the THC and vaginal myograph; it meas- the two, a 'blended' or- CBN groups, courtship was Two bold discoveries have ures muscle tension and gasm." drastically impaired. The emerged in the realm of hu- the forceful contractions of And the two researchers man sexuality: Research- the pubococcygeus (PC) have reassuring news for

ers have found that there is, muscle during orgasm. some women; "Medical doc- in fact, more than one kind of During some orgasms, tors often diagnose patients woman's orgasm and that that is. The researchers were who ejaculate as having 'uri- women can ejaculate, de- mystified because some nary stress incontinence' in spite the fact they have no women reported experienc- that their ejaculate wets the

prostaie gland. ing an orgasm when the vag- bed. Now it seems that many The evidence comes from inal myograph showed no women who are embar- John Perry and Beverley significant PC muscle activ- rassed to be called bed wel-

Whipple, a psychologist- ity. Perry and Whipple in- ters actually have 'retro- and-nurse team, of Associ- vented a uterine myograph grade ejaculations' into their

ates in Biofeedback, in Ver- and added it to their record- bladders, and this creates mont and New Jersey. "Wb ing repertoire. They found an urgent need to urinate have films," they report, "of that some women experi- after sexual activity." Ihe ejaculate squirting out in ence orgasm when the — Bryce Britton response to direct stimula- uterine myograph shows ac- tion of an area called the tivity, even though the vagi- "If you're doing something

Grafenberg spot. It's located nal myograph doesn't, and the same way you have been

in the anterior wall of the va- even when no clitora! stimula- doing it for ten years, the gina about an inch behind tion is involved. "The em- chances are you are doing it " the pubic bone. We think it's pirical results of our work," wrong. Marijuana' Libido tessener? the female prostate." Whipple says, "allow us to — Charles Kettering 36 OMNI FUSION ODYSSEY

Rockets soar on pulsing sun power while cities bask in the glow of hydrogen light as a new age emerges from the atom's core BYMIKEEDELHART

Ililtingv. back in my comfortable, contoured of view. seat, I adjust the small television screen directly in front me to obtain a better

Through tiny earphones provided by the flight attendant, I hear the crisp, technical chatter of the crew as they ready our shuttle for liftoff. Outside my cabin window, the flat expanse of the Interplanetary Tourist Embarkation Base stretches toward the city, several kilometers away. Though it is long past midnight, lights still blaze in the city.

Conservation is no longer the national bugaboo it was in my father's day. Glowing lights outline the dark, squat reason why: a fusion-power plant stationed between the spaceport and the city.

Thetanklike building— a friend of mine compared it to a humpbacked tortoise— is responsible for all the casual energy use in the city and for this rocket trip, too. The shuttle is being launched at night because the power drain on the fusion plant is minimal. In a few moments all that excess power will rush toward the belly of our ship and will begin the process that is going to hurl us beyond the atmosphere. Voices in my earphones become more imperative Service crew members hustle about. For a moment silence, then a countdown. The video screen displays the marvelous process taking place below. At the flick of a swilch, millions of leftover kilowatts pour into a phalanx of powerful laser cannons arrayed around the base of the ship. Searing beams of light shoot forward, converging on a circle of mirrors. A computer chatters in my earphones. The mirrors move ever so slightly, focusing each violent red beam until a solid scarlet column of force shoots upward from the mirrors. The picture on my screen is so intense that everything around me assumes an eerie red glow.

Slowly the shuttle begins to lift, pushed skyward by a thick shaft of fusion-generated laser light. Within seconds the heavy hand of g force distorts my view as, from the

PAINTING BY VINCENT Dl FATE '

corner of my eye, I watch the earth race malion plants separate it out of ancient ment. When the hydrogen neared fusion away from my window trash dumps. As a happy offshoot, our level, ilachievedaformknownas plasma, a The laser glow soon vanishes. We have economy has become very manageable gas with the electrons stripped from its

reached escape velocity. The pilot because supply -and demand can be pre- atoms. If the plasma touched any other switches the view on my television to a for- cisely controlled. object, it would immediately give up all its ward camera, and magnificent space, Atthe other end of the cycle, fusion gives heat, making fusion impossible. So some

lavishly strewn with stars, comes into view. us the power to atomize any material we method of containing it in a vacuum cham- In the foreground floats the spindly form of don't need. Dad says that when he was ber was seen -to be essential. All sorts of Prometheus, an interplanetary liner that will young, chemical wastes caused serious imaginative ideas were tried. carry me on my fong-awaited excursion public concern. Such wastes lay around for One approach, magnetic fusion, used through the asteroid belt. decades while scientists argued about various techniques to heat a cloud of fusion

Unlike the old-fashioned chemical rock- ways to eliminate them. Now we just heave fuel until it became a glowing gas. then ets I've inspected in the Smithsonian, our wastes into the fusion torches, which trapped the hot gas in a magnetic "bottle." Prometheus won't blast oil in a roar of break them down into simple, safe atoms. Scientists knew that the basic ingredients flames and then drift about in the solar A few decades have passed since fusion of fusion, deuterium and tritium, have a system. Fusion gives our ship the steady- was first seen as a realistic dream in an negatively charged electron circling about state power to drive around space, slow- energy-parched world. In the 1970s. Dad their positively charged central nucleus. In ing, accelerating, and maneuvering at will. says, scientists knew there was enough their natural state the atoms have no net Space travel no longer requires the elabo- energy locked in one cubic kilometer of charge and ignore magnetic fields. But rate planning that comes with aiming to- water to surpass all the known reserves of when the atoms were heated until they be- ward short-lived launch windows. Once my oil. They understood, too, that the key to came a glowing gas, the electrons were

shuttle and Prometheus dock, I rush to my releasing this energy was lo make two stripped from the nuclei. The interleaved seat in eager anticipation of my first flight deuterium nuclei — containing a proton clouds of negatively charged electrons on a fusion-torch rocket. and a neutron — meld together to form a and positively charged nuclei could then

Again my video screen lets me see the interact with magnetic fields. If the mag- interplanetary vessel's launch. The camera netic fields were shaped properly, they con- view now comes from a small satellite many tained the glowing cloud of gas, increasing kilometers below Prometheus. My televi- the chances that the rapidly moving nuclei sion screen shows the spacecraft's insect- would collide and fuse together. iVivid laser flares like configuration. Far aft is the fusion rock- In the 1970s fusion reactors were clas- of their et. It duplicates a laser fusion-power plant, bathe the hydrogen fuel In sified by the shape magnetic bot- but with the solid container replaced by an tles. The solenoid was a cylindrical mag- forceful light, and invisibie magnetic nozzle. netic field generated by a long coil of wire. "Stand by," the pilot intones over the ear- an awesome finger of sun Solenoids had "pinched" ends to contain phones. "Ignition!" On the screen, vivid power blasts from the plasma, but they had a tendency to laser flares penetrate the explosion cham- leak. One solution to this leaking problem the ship's accelerator. The ber to strike a pellet of fusion fuel. A white- was to bend the solenoid into a circle, join- hot flare saturates the screen. When fusion torch is lit. ing the ends and creating a doughnut- cameras adjust, the screen shows shaped magnetic field. The plasma still the We drive toward the stars.V the awesome finger of sun power, like a tended to leak out the sides, though not as small solar flare, blasting from the rocket's badly, because the curvature was stronger magnetic nozzle. The torch of Prometheus on the inside than on the outside, To coun-

has been lit. We drive toward the stars'. teract this tendency, scientists introduced

Fusion power has had a most stunning a twist to the magnetic field, so that it im- impact upon life by this year 2035. My fa- helium nucleus. They had even used the itated the cords in a ring of rope. Two therandloftenspeakofit. He finds fusion's process to manufacture horrendously de- methods accomplished this magnetic dominance almost incomprehensible, structive bombs. But figuring out how to "twisting." One was to twist the coils carry- while I, in turn, find his recollections of the control the reaction proved troublesome. ing the currents that produced the mag- prefusion era quite shocking, How, scientists wondered, could they netic field. The other induced a current in My father was once a miner. He is still sufficiently simulate conditions within the the doughnut of plasma itself. The mag- young enough to dig coal, but for the past sun to force the positively charged nuclei to netic field from the plasma current com- 20 years he has been retired on the gov- overcome their electric repulsion and bined with the magnetic field from the coils ernment's fusion-displacement pension combine? Obviously, scientists couldn't to produce a magnetic bottle. plan. No one mines today, There is no rea- work with the trillions of tons of matter the A third shape for a magnetic fusion field son to. Coal is probably the most worthless sun has. Instead, they would have to raise a was called the mirror machine, It used a material on Earth; oil runs a close second. tiny bit of deuterium to solar temperatures; coil wound like the seam on a baseball. The

We don't even use oil for lubrication any- this would begin the fusion reaction, which magnetic bottle it made looked like a more; fusion-generated synthetic chemi- could then sustain itself. At the time many twisted bow tie. Combinations of these cals do a much better and cheaper job. people had an image of a fusion reactor as basic forms were also tried; two mirrors The hard times my father remembers a boiling inferno. They didn't realize that, coupled together as well as long solenoids seem very remote to me, Today life is infi- while the temperature of fusion hydrogen with mirrors at the ends. nitely rich in resources. Our fusion plants had to be raised beyond 350 million de- Eventually the leading candidate in the generate all the power we could possibly grees Kelvin, the amount of matter used race for magnetic fusion became the use. More important, they make it possible was so small that little actual heat was in- Russian-invented Tokamak (an acronym to create almost any material we want and volved. A liter of deuterium — in which one signifying toroidal magnetic chamber). The get rid of anything we don't want. The virtu- proton is joined by one neutron — held in Tokamak was a large, fat doughnut wound ally limitless amounts of power and heat fusion-reaction conditions contains only with a coil of wire to create the primary from fusion enable chemists to create 10.000 calories of heat, barely enough to ring-shaped magnetic bottle. An iron trans- chemicals" "that were inconceivable when warm a cup of coffee. former core passed through the middle of

Dad was my age. If we need a new lubri- Even so, achieving the temperature and the doughnut, which, when activated with cant, fusion-powered factories synthesize pressure required for fusion took much in- another coil, induced a current in the it. It we require more steel, the fusion recla- genuity. The basic problem was contain- plasma that twisted the primary magnetic^ 40 OMNI field. Because of this need for a trans- peratures high enough to ignite the small, squat build ng. il was set well apart former, the Tokamak was limited to pulsed plasma, but the plasma wasn't sufficiently from other surroundings and heavily operation. Although the "on" pulses could dense. In 1977 the MIT Alcator-A experi- shielded to prevent possible escape of _ last many minutes, a lime came when the ment created plasma densities sufficient to high-speed neutrons. At that time the machine had to be shut off and the trans- produce energy successfully, but the deuterium used in fusion created many former reset to zero so the process could plasma wasn't nearly hoi enough. high-speed neutrons, which had to be siart again. This necessity for pulsed oper- By the mid-1980s, the imperfections had handled with care. Now we use a better ation was the Tokamak's drawback. Even- finally been squeezed from the fusion sys- reaction that meWs hydrogen with boron tually scientists achieved a constant twist in tem. Both implosion and magnetic fusion and produces no neutrons whatsoever. the magnetic field while still maintaining the were found to have some applicability. By Over the next few years more and more advantages of the Tokamak. the 1990s, fusion had emerged from the positive news came from the fusion lest In inertial fusion, a second, path to sun laboratory. In that decade the first full-scale site. Proper temperature and pressure power, the energy needed to raise the tem- fusion test facility was built near our city, were achieved. Reactions that generated perature of hydrogen fuel is added quickly. One of my earliest memories is the day more power than was required to contain

This reaction happened so fast that the Dad and I went down to watch the en- them became standard. Ever more energy inertia of the particles kept the fuel from gineers retrofit our local water plant to pro- was produced. And steadily the hardware

expanding too quickly, allowing the iusion vide iuel for the fusion reactor. I was im- for turning the formless energy of atoms reaction to take place. The two primary ap- pressed and excited by the big machines into usable power improved.

proaches to inertial fusion used focused and hard-hatted workers, but it wasn't until The day of the crucial system test came

I that the beams of lasers or high-speed particles to later that I understood what they were do- when was eleven. At noon day implode tiny pellets ot fuel. This compres- ing. The engineers were routing the city's local utility was going to turn off its power sion produced the temperatures and den- water through a small plant that extracted plants one by one. The power would be sities needed for fusion to occur. all the deuterium atoms from the simpler, replaced by electricity from the fusion At Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, for "ordinary" hydrogen. One water molecule plant. At the appointed hour all lights instance, a huge, multitubed laser cannon in every 6.500 contained the heavier flicked off and, moments later, flicked on named for Shiva, the muitiarmed god, con- deuterium, which would be used to fuel the again. The age of fusion power had arrived. centrated kilojoules of energy onto.- milli- fusion reaction. From the separation planta Once the potential of the new energy

gram pellets of fusion fuel, In these early tiny pipe, just big enough to supply the jet source was demonstrated, it spread like laser implosion experiments, researchers for a drinking fountain, carried the flow of lightning across the globe. Every country

were able to compress the deuterium gas heavy water to the reactor site. I remember threw all available funds into building fu- pellets until the fuel was denser than any my father telling me at the time that the little sion stations. During my adolescence fu- naturally existing form of matter. Some fu- pipe carried enough fuel to power all the sion settled in as the basic energy source early sion reactions took place. machines in the world. I was awed. on Earth. But contrary to what some

In 1978 the Princeton Plasma Physics About five years later the experimental fusion advocates had hoped, il wasn't Lab Large Torus experiment created tem- fusion station was finished. A surprisingly cheap. Fusion didn't wipe out energy costs. The plants were expensive, and we

are paying for them stili. Refitting the en-, ergy production system and coping with social change also cost money. But fusion's fuel costs were fixed. We no longer have to worry about energy ex- penses continually rising. Nor do we have to fear the OPEC of old. After all, what group can control a resource that is univer- sal? Fusion will become gradually less ex- pensive as the clout of the new power source hits every corner of the economy. When mankind recovers from the costs of converting to fusion, the price for our en-

ergy will become much lower than it is now. The basic effect of fusion is thai, in my

father's youth, things looked as if ihey would only gel worse, but now they look as

if they can only get better. My dad gets emotional when he talks about the good life we live now. He remem- bers ttie desperation of the days before fusion, the sense that society was racing against time to develop a new energy source before fossil fuels were totally de- pleted. He looks back, aghast, at the politi- cal and emotional resistance to fusion at a time when the human race stood on the brink of extinguishing itself. Fusion, Dad says, was humankind's last best hope for surviving its own excesses. He still some- times can't believe that we managed to

successfully implement it in time.

As I look out the window of my space- craft, watching the solar system swirl by,

lifted on a pillar of solar flame, I can't imag- ine a different— or belter— world. DO r

The U.N.'s Moon Treaty. It could be disastrous for Western space operations. We'll show you why, and how you can help to prevent this disaster from happening,

, . fiction, Plus , award-winning science art, GIVE THE BEST and photography . . . regular columns on space, ihe arts, life, the earth, and UFOs

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jobs that humans cannot perform.

The New Space Program. NASA's space Genetic Engineering. From cloning to shuttle will reopen the High Frontier, taking test-tube babies, from microbes that men and women into orbil for advances _ gobble up oil spills fo new cures for killer that will lead to solar-power satellites, THE FUTURE. diseases, the biological revolution is lunar mining, and factories in space.

This holiday season give your special must have more realistic policies toward friends something really special. Give science in general and space in particular, them the world, the universe, and beyond. annrui Give them Carl Sagan and B.F Skinner OMNI will introduce your friends to a world Subscription Dept , P.O. Box 908. Farmingdale, N.Y 11737 and Alvin Toffler dissecting the mysteries of growing intellectual vitality expanding of the universe and the human mind. drama, infinite and hope. Yes! Enter a one year sufiscri prior, (12 esuos) to OMN n the name listed belqw. I for saving:-] of off the enclose ^y check, i or money orderD $18- a S6 newsstand Give thsm Ray Bradbury and Frank gift A full-year of OMNI - 12 thick, dazzling pi-ce i.Fn-' Ur led kingdom Subscriptions, send payment of £1 1 to OMNI Subscrip- Herbert and Robert Heinlein creating issues — costs only S18, That saves you $6 tions. 2 Bramber Rd... London W14.) imaginary worlds that have a way of off the newsstand price and includes a becoming real. Give them thinkers like handsome gift card to announce your

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Give them OMNI. in Next Year Omni . . , your friends (and D Check or money order enclosed D American Express you) can look forward to such exciting and nV!SA{BarftAmeric'ard] D Master Charge OMNI is the magazine of the future that informative pieces as; Account # Expl'ailon Dale „—_ started a revolution in the way people view the incredible scientific and technological The Energy Puzzle. Year-long emphasis II I i I I I [ I I I I I I I breakthroughs of the 1980s. It's the bold, on the exciting new technologies that can graphic, plain-language science end energy shortages, starting with a magazine that has become a forum for special issue onfuslon. discussing scientific questions that both

stimulate . , and trouble us . and a platform Robotics. Machines that move, talk, work r July, 1981 OOJB1 for those of us who believe our country on assembly lines and at the bottom of the Private fusion-research firms link today's theories and tomorrow's world of practical, universal energy THE BUSINESS OF FUSION

BY R, BRUCE McCOLM

Tthiro Ohkawa, of Gen- make fusion engineering harder and Dr.eral Aiomic Corporation, the physics easier, so that we could oversees two minia- study the fundamentals of the

ture suns. The larger, physics involved. But now is the time Doublet III. is the world's largest in fusion when we must make the job "S privately buill Tokamak fusion harder for the physicist and easier reactor. Standing inside a gigantic for the engineer, so that we can shed hidden away in the ravines create power plants that are simple of Torrey Pines Mesa, near San enough to build commercially. From Diego, it weighs 272.160 kilo- an engineering standpoint, OHTE grams and stands some ten meters is almost likeadream," tall, swathed in 163,296 kilograms Ohkawa represents the two sides of superconducting magnets of private fusion development in the and high-energy beam genera- United States today: massive, tors that look like boilers that have megawatt systems linked to thyroid problems. government grants and programs, The smaller pseudo-sun stands in balanced by tiny, idea-intensive, Or, Ohkawas garage. After working hardware-light creations supported all day on the government-backed by private sources or a single magnetic giant. Ohkawa and his entrepreneur's enthusiasm. Over the crew spend their nights tinkering past ten years private investment in with an entrepreneurial contraption, fusion has reached S15 million a OHTE (from the Japanese word for year, a pittance when compared Bathed in violet laser glow, a liny plastic bail "check"). It looks like an M. C. with the Department of Energy's of hydrogen fuel (above) awaits the implosion Escher birdcage, but, Ohkawa says S400 million annual fusion budget thai will begin tusion. Massive pipes surround otfhandedly. "If it's successful, and the $80 billion spent by Ameri- the Sat o! Doublet III, pumpkin the largest Doublet would become obsolete." can importers last year for oil. privately buill Tokamak fusion reactor {right). Ohkawa feels his privately funded Though dollar amounts are modest, machine could yield a commercial the number of companies involved reactor just about four meters in is considerable. High-tech giants diameter by 1 990 at one tenth the like Grumman Aerospace, cost of those being developed by McDonnell Douglas, and TRW are

Main Line government programs, !l Operating government fusion labs could be mass-produced and and huge, Main Line experiments; plugged into and out of existing small development companies, power plants like a light bulb. such as Mathematical Sciences With an inventor's glee. Ohkawa, Northwest and KMS Fusion, are master of the mammoth machine, probing new. more flexible ways of explains the. beauty of the small: creating fusion power and tying it in "The idea up until now has been to to a workable commercial network. PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAN McCOY

issue. Without it, we

will stay low-tech, exporting wheat, importing carsV

this view. They note that the Most fusion experts project that a tion to large capita! costs of fusion mature iusion economy will develop developments— upward of $50 by the year 2050. Many, in fact, billion— have soured utilities on believe thai the successful giant Tokamak reactors, which will development df fusion by then will cost billions of dollars each and will be necessary to maintain a stable last only about 30 years. Clint U.S. economy; without it, our sys- Ashworth, president of Pacific Gas tem will crumble. Dr. Dave Dingee, and Electric Company, for instance. of Baiielle Pacific Northwest recently said that, "What this country Laboratory, in the state of Wash- needs is to orient its fusion program ington, suggests that fusion will more toward turning fusion into a first enter the energy mix in real energy option and not just about 2020 as a breeder reactor, another nuclear reactor. What we producing fuel fdf already-existing ccc'img fiose.s spiays Iron don't need from fusion is a huge, fission-power plants. Twenty years A fountain o! the Dase of General Atomic's Doublet III (left), a complicated nuclear plant with later, he speculates, the first true will generate enough many of the same problems as the fusion reactors will be on line, Tokamak that technician views nuclear plants we already have." generating nearly 15 percent of all power lot a oily, while a KMS William Sauber, of Dow Chemical the energy society requires. magnified laser-iusion pellets (at top). Glass tracks fusion However, oiher experts take excep- laser-lusion targets are coaled in gold (above). Company, who developments for the chemical industry, plants are needed to phase fusion into our sard's Riggatron is a small, adaptable fu- also objects to the knee-jerk notion shared energy picture, but he offers the sugges- sion reactor design. It looks like an over- by the national laboratories [hat bigger fu- tion that large power plants tend to be more stuffed Slinky and weighs 9,072 kilograms. sion necessarily is better. "There seems to economical than, small power plants. At a The Riggatron will achieve fusion through a be a Doomsday disorder that afflicts all 1,000-megawatt level, Tokamaks, fhe Elmo technique called pop-gas fueling. Like a government programs where you have an Bumpy Tori, and other large formats will supercharged engine, it will be fueled with elitist group spending oceans of money work well and will be introduced on a rela- a gas after initial ignition is reached; the and figuring on fifty years lo develop a tively wide scale. second thrust -will create enormous tem- commercial reactor The entrepreneur is Yet the theory of throwaway Tokamaks peratures and plasma densities. thwarted, because the government has and small fusion reactors dominates dis- Riggatrons will burn out quickly, but they sucked up all the capital from the private cussion among private fusionists. For can be handled much as aircraft engines sector, If allowed to remain with the entre- them, the small fusion reactor will bring now are. After so many hours they can be preneurs, a commercial reactor would be commercial reality by 1990, and wide ac- unplugged and either thrown away or sent developed much sooner." ceptance by 2000. Radiation risks of a back to the manufacturer for recycling. Though there is widespread agreement large plant designed to last 30 years will be "The gadget costs almost nothing," Bus- on the heed to make fusion reacfors as eliminated. Total development costs will be sard says "You ecu d ease ihem like Xerox small as possible, sharp differences re- just £100 million to $200 million, and the machines. If you decided lo charge Ihem off main concerning just how this translates small reactor could be updated with rela- against taxes, you could throw them away." into development. Those involved in devel- tive ease as the technology progresses. The trials of the small-format fusion en- opment of Main Line fusion machines be- Perhaps the most vocal proponent of the trepreneur are exemplified by Yugoslav- lieve Tokamak reactors will be the first built small-is-better school of fusion is Dr. Robert born Bognan Vlagiieh. p'esioent of Fusion because they are the most thoroughly Bussard [see Interview, page 56], presi- Energy Corporation, in Princeton, New Jer- tested. Dr. Stephen Dean, of Fusion Power dent of International Nuclear Energy Sys- sey Unlike Bussard, who has been on the Associates, a group of several engineering tems Company Inc. (Inesco), in La Jolla, inside of fusion since its early days, Mag- and industrial firms supporting fusion, California, and a former deputy director of lich has stood on the fringe of the fusion maintains ihat today's seemingly massive the laser-fusion program at Los Alamos. He revolution. Since 1977, his fusion machine, Tokamaks won't be any larger than existing said, "Once you start a new technology, you Migma, has been idiefcr ac< of funds. With power plants when scaled up to commer- inevitably improve it. If the first fusion plant $6 million raised from private sources, cial size. "Tokamaks right now are small, costs three billion dollars and has a thirty- Maglich developed his controversial idea compared wilh eguipment used in a coal- year life, it will be obsolete before the end of based upon the relatively unknown physics powered plant. By the year 2000, To- it's life and will noi be able to compete wilh of colliding beams. In his system, positive kamaks will be about one third the size of other technologies. With a disposable To- ions are injected by a particle beam into a today's power plant." kamak, upgrading is easy and can be done magnetic fie'd where fhey mix with elec- Don Kummer. fusion director at McDon- while you're still running along." trons and fuse. Because temperatures nell Douglas, acknowledges that smaller Like General Atomics OHTE, Dr. Bus- achieved are some 200 times those of nor- mal fusion reactions, Maglich claims that Migma will be able to use the advanced nonradioactive fusion fuels, such as lithium and boron. This could produce a fusion- energy system devoid of any radioactivity. Migma consists of a cylinder 1.3 meters

in diameter and 2 meters long that pro- duces two to five megawatts, the amount of energy needed to power an average block in midtown Manhattan or an entire subur- ban shopping mall, Large power stations could be created by combining these "migmacells," as Maglich calls them. "For

the first time," he asserts, "this offers mass production in energy. Utility companies have dreamed for years about having stand- ard power stations. Now they can have them." Migmacells render high-tension wires and huge power plants obsolete and allow poorer countries to participate in fu- sion. In place of a $200 million fusion reac-

tor. Third World countries could afford a $1

The Electric Power Research Instiiute (EPRI), a clearinghouse of energy pro- grams, is funding a TRW study to assess future uses of advanced fusion reactors. Robert Scott, director of EPRI's fusion pro- gram, believes advanced fuel systems will "give utilities an energy source M"i£L can be placed in urban centers. When fossil fuels are exhausted, electrical utilities will face the problem of being excluded from ur- ban sites. Since half the consumer's electric- ity costs come from transmission, giving * up those locations will be an expensive proposition." Another small reactor design is pro- posed by Ma'.hc-rrw.icai Sciences North- west, Inc. (MSN), of Beilevue, Washington Considered by many "the best small sur- vivor of the fusion program," the company - has bee. ' working on laser and magnetic fusion since 1975, Using a Soviet concepl reported a few years ago. MSN developed a compact reactor design called Tract, whieh eliminates the need for large con- A smooth whiskey finement magnets. Funded at the outset by the Energy Department, Tract will cosi £100 million for a 7.3 x 26-meter pilot power is art. successful., aworkof plant. If Initial tesrs prove a Tract plant could be built by 1990. Industry favors smaller fusion reactors because they have rhore uses than the large steam-kettle methods of harnessing A smooth star power. Fusion systems of every size can be used as fuel factories for existing fission reaclo's Both small and large de- at breed plutonium and other fis- whiskey signs can sion fuels from low-grade ore at one tenth the cost of today's nuclear fuel, Not only would this uranium be cheap, but it would 101 proofis a also not have to be developed !o weapons grade, reducing nuclear fears. The advantages of small designs center on cost and adaptability. For example, masterpiece. government and private studies show that small fusion plants can produce steam three times as cheaply as coal-fired plants WILDTURKEY'/IOI PROOF/8 YEARS OLD can. And the plug-in replaceable fusion BEYOND DUPLICATION. units., some experts claim, could be used to retrofit every power plant in the United CONTINUED. ON PAGE3S Science will harness the sun's power because one man whipped Congress into line BY DANIELS- GREENBERG

McCormack ponders the questions: MikeHow did you do if? How did you get Congress to pass a billion-dollar fusion- power program on the eve of the last election"? Why did federal legislators vote for an energy machine that few of them understand— one that won't produce commercial electricity until at least the year 2000, if then?

"I explained to ihem," McCormack responds judiciously, "that fusion is the most important energy development since the controlled use of fire." He pauses a moment to let that statement sink in, then adds, "It is, you know"

Suddenly it's clear: The blocky. graying ex- chemist isn't merely the congressman from Yakima, Washington. He's a messiah in horn- rims— the messiah of fusion energy. McCormack is the reason why the United States will mount an Apollo-style effort to put fusion power on line as quickly as possible. McCormack s achievement is even more impressive when you give it some thought: Fusion lacks the cold-blooded political appeal usually needed to open the taps of the U.S. Treasury. Practical fusion power is at least 20 years away; the politicians who sow today will be long gone by harvest time. The moon program at leasf offered eye-popping milestones every few months: John Glenn's solo Earth orbit in 1962, Ed White's 1965 walk in space, the climax of Neil Armstrong's moon walk in 1969. All these gave glory-seeking politicians the opportunity to pos- ture before big TV audiences. Fusion presents no such opportunities. Instead, its supporters are labeled as big spenders at a time when that repulation loses elections. With fusion facilities concentrated at just a few sites, congressmen can't even promise constituents a lucrative dip into the pork barrel. And controlled fusion offers no discernible military advantages. The Soviet Union pioneered in the field, and our scientisls still cooperate closely with Ihose in the Soviel program.

PAINTING BY SHEILA ROSE first "The Group relieves mat there is To top it off, McCorrnack's bill came up They could live temporarily with a page: the questions for a vote noi long after then-Energy Secre- stretched-out program. Research at an urgent need to answer tary James R. Schlesinger had scoffed al Princeton, MIT, and other American cen- concerning feasibility and that the momen- tosion research as a "scientific sandbox" ters would soon prove the feasibility of fu- tum of the program developed over the should and ordered his aides to lop off more than sion so clearly that the politicians would past few years is a major asset and half ils allocations. have to accept a speedup — or so they bo developed." With such odds to overcome, fusion's hoped, The go-ahead applied mainly to mag- related technol- political triumph was not won easily or con- But fiscal troubles were compelling the netic confinement and ogies—unclassified Tokamak research. ventionally. It had come a long way. Though White House to squeeze ever harder on Superpower U.S.A. leaves few technologi- federal spending. Schlesinger, who had The message was simple: Keep it going. cal bets completely uncovered, some op- chaired the old Atomic Energy Commission Less clear was a long passage about tions are explored only cautiously. Until the from 1971 to 1973, believed fusion was sci- inertial confinement, using lasers or parti- ignite "thermonuclear burn." mid-Seventies, lusion was one of the lightly entifically immature— it had been when he cle beams to research in this area under deep covered bets. By 1968, when the overall dealt with it. Like many others, he con- Most was nuclear budget was well into the billions, cluded that fusion could not stave off an military security because it might someday fusion received a mere $26.6 million — tight energy crisis. Several key energy be used to trigger fusion weapons, It was rations, given the high cost of research strategists feared that publicity about fu- also rumored that inertial confinement hardware. sion's long-term wonders would breed could simulate nuclear blasts in miniature But in April 1969 the USSR announced a complacency about a foreign oil cutoff. So and permit clandestine weapons tests were major advance: Its Tokamak T-3 fusion Schlesinger put out the word: Cut $150 mil- even if a full-scale nuclear test ban reactor and a companion device known as lion to $200 million from the fusion budget. passed. theTM-3 had produced hotter, denser, and Suddenly the fusion community was in a Inertial confinement was considered so longer-lasting plasma than anything previ- battle for survival; their chosen weapon: a sensitive that most of its funding came from ously achieved. The Russians, eager to col- study by an impeccable panel of experts. the Energy Department's (DOE) Defense laborate with American scientists and en- Programs Division. In Congress, its legisla- gineers, openly published their findings tion went through the armed services Report simply and invited foreigners to take a look. To- committees. The Foster c-assmcation policies kamak T-10, about three limes as large as noted. "Presen.l may of inertial theT-3, was already under construction at a impede adequate assessment" ^Inertial confinement using confinement and recommended periodic plant in Moscow ratings cer- Suddenly the U.S. fusion budget took off. lasers or particle review of the Security to make tain that "no unnecessary hindrance is It was $36 million in 1972. nearly double beams might someday be used ." of the program. . . thai by 1974 — a brisk rate of growth con- placed in the way sidering the Nixon Administration's haired to trigger fusion The Experts Group won the support fu- Deutch. now back at MIT. of big research spending. By 1976 the fu- weapons or simulate nuclear sion needed. hesitation that "the Foster Re- sion budget had risen nearly tenfold from says without blasts in miniature, for saving the the 1968 level. The Moscow Tokamak had port provided the basis done for American fusion what Sputnik had permitting bomb tests despite budget." But still another bureaucratic blow-up fal- done for the space program. a nuclear ban.3 behind. This one began with a In 1970 McCormack, a ten-year veteran lowed close of Management of Washington's state Senate, was elected rare offer from the Office extra $30 million to Congress by an upset vote. McCormack, and Budget (OMB)-an then forty-eight, had been a middle-level above DOE's original budget request. chemist at the Atomic Energy Commis- OMB. usually cast as a tightwad agency, sion's Hanford nuclear facility, and he At that time the director of energy research said the funds could be used for fusion if made a prescient bid for the unofticial role at the new Department of Energy was John DOE chose. But Deutch. along with other of "Mr. Energy." M. Deutch, a professor on leave from MIT. high-level science chiefs, rejected it. Fu- even With the space program in decline, (he He asked John S. Foster, Jr.. to head an sion, they said, should be kept on an other then-House Science and Astronautics eight-member study group that is widely keel; the money could be used for Committee was eager to carve new fron- credited with saving fusion from Schle- energy research. To this day, fusion's back- delayed the tiers. Since no one else was much inter- singer's ax. ers contend that the turndown ested in energy in those pre-embargo Foster, vice-president for energy re- program an extra year. the days. Representative McCormack was search and development at TRW Inc., had With its political flanks protected by made chairman of the committee's new sterling credentials. A physicist, he had Foster Report, the fusion program began to could Task Force on Energy— a rare honor for a spent most of his early career in nuclear yield highly encouraging results. But faster? mid-1979, McCor- freshman congressman. Back in Washing- research. He had been director of the it go even By ton's Fourth Congressional District, where Lawrence Livermore Laboratory from 1961 mack had no doubts. this point, set the Hanford payroll puts the dinner on a lot to 1965. then moved on to direct research A Washington veteran at he of his It reported to of tables, McCorrnack's swift rise to a key and engineering at the Pentagon — per- up an expert .panel own. energy post was noted with approval. haps the most demanding managerial po- the Subcommittee on Energy, Research, he chairman, Though the news. from Moscow had sent sition in American research. Foster was and Production, of which was our fusion budget soaring, Soviet achieve- known at TRW as a master of his profes- under the House Science and Technology ments couldn't keep the political heat on. sion, one of the few who could sort winners Committee. For chairman — always the politics— Coming to power on a pledge to slash gov- from losers early in the game, without wast- crucial spot in panel McCormack ernment spending, the Carter Administra- ing time or money through excessive cau- chose a true believer: Robert L, Hirsch, manager for exploratory tion couldn't see that it made much differ- tion. Exxon's general former of ence whether practical fusion arrived in the The Foster Report— formally titled "Final petroleum research and the head fusion program. year 2005 or in.2025. Keep it going, they Report of the Ad Hoc Experts Group on DOE's told fusion planners, but there's no need to Fusion"— covered the tield. But to Wash- Before leaving the department, Hirsch had lought bitter battles against hurry — or to pour a lot of money into it. ington aficionados of report literature, a many With a budget then over $300 million a peculiar and highly influential form of budget cutters. Now he came roaring back year, fusion researchers were not worried. politicking, the essential words were on the against the timid bureaucrats who, he felt. 51 OMNI CONTINUED ON PAGE 109 As the most vocal and visible advocate of the smail-is-better school of fusion, a former rocket engineer recalls the frustrations in trying to persuade Uncle Sam not to think big irUTERV/IEUU

much as 20 years sooner W Bussard compares his bitter four-year battle with produce commercial fusion power as Robert counterparts, saving billions in development the federal fusion bureaucracy to a Robert Ludlum novel. than its Main Line Bussard's dollars. portable, flexible high-energy neutron source, the Rig- It's more like the tale of David and Goliath. A producing fusion power, fission power, ethanol small, independent company Inesco (International Nuclear En- gatron is capable of nuclear fuel. In addition to all that, it ergy Systems Company), wants to build cheap, modular, "midget" for cars, oil from tar sands, and estimated profits that boggle the mind: One "high- fusion reactors that could be used up and thrown away like so could furnish fusion "establish- growth" model shows Riggatron-based fuel production outstrip- many light bulbs. To do it, he's had to buck a the year 2000. ment" that would prefer to spend its money on large, expensive ping Exxon by earn the enmity of machines. Bussard compares the mammoth "Main Line" reactors How has this miracle technology managed to It all began in 1977, when the Energy 1 being developed at Princeton, MIT, and Oak Ridge to dirigibles— fusion experts at DOE? Administration (ERDA) funded a = interesting research devices that are unlikely ever to produceeco- Research and Development study of Bussard's Riggatron. The results, I nomical net fusion power. But the Department of Energy (DOE) $637,000 conceptual panel, were discouragingly negative. said that Bussard's three-foot-high Riggatron won't fly. according to a DOE review f, has certainly offers a Inesco protested that the panel was blatantly biased — and f The "throwaway" reactor— if it does work— in to stacked with representatives from the Main Line labs who felt f tantalizing alternative. Since it is small, it can be plugged answer a wide threatened by this new entry into the nuclear-fusion business. § existing fossil-fuel plants; its modular design can Line interests in Congress against a $7 £ variety of specific needs. The most important thing is it could Indeed, lobbying by Main .

million appropriations amendment to supporl Riggatron research himself primarily as an engineer. He was alternate division leader was so "hysterica!" that Representative Manuel Lujan, Jr., a New of the laser-fusion program at Los Alamos and head of R&D for a

Mexico Republican, was moved to speculate thai it was "very well division of Xerox Corporation. Before that, he developed nuclear- ""orchestrated and most probably [had] an ulterior motive." rocket propulsion systems for TRW Los Alamos Scientific Labora- Pressure from Congress, the Office of Management and tory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Budget, and such luminaries as Edward Teller eventually did win This background, above all, has positioned him against what he the Riggatron a second panel review, But the results are hardly perceives as the slow-poke approach oHhe Main Line program. conclusive: The DOE is sticking to its previous no-go position, With an investment so huge and expensive, the Main Line fusion while Inesco is insisting that the concept was vindicated. "We've reactors can't afford to make mistakes. Bussard, however, believes won," says Bussard. in the kind of high-performance engineering that entails taking

As a former assistant director of the fusion program at the chances in pushing technology to its limits. "They're learning a lot Atomic Energy Commission, Bussard knows his way around bu- of interesting things in the Main Line program," he says, "but they reaucratic wrangling. He even holds a Ph.D. in plasma physics aren't doing fusion. They're just watching plasma particles dance from, of all places, Princeton University. But he likes to think of around." Dr. Bussard was interviewed for Omni by K. C. Cole,

Omni: Is there really a fusion "establish- ently from a standard Tokamak. It's dispos- deuterium-fusion process. This is accom- ment" in the nation's capital that excludes able, or, more accurately, recyclable. plished by capturing neutrons in lithium, all but the Main Line magnetic-fusion pro- Which is it? But you can't put the lithium "blanket" out- grams from getting funded? Bussard: You can do either. You can either side, because the shield keeps the neu-

Bussard: If you ask people in the govern- rebuild light bulbs or buy new ones. It's all a trons from getting outside. You have to put it

ment, they would categorically deny it, ob- matter of cost. Do you recycle your light inside. So the choice of superconductors

viously, because to admit it would be to bulbs back to the GE light-bulb factory? requires a design in which you have a huge agree that they are perpetrators of evil. So No. You buy new light bulbs, don't you? In superconducting magnet filling a tremen-

they say, "Of course not. Anyone with a this case, it is cheaper to throw the light dous volume of space in order to have a good idea is welcome to come, and we will bulb away and buy a new one. We made a little bit of fusion plasma continued inside be glad to support them." study that shows the cost is just about the two meters of shielding and a meter of Omni: But in reality? same to make a new Riggatron from lithium blanket.

Bussard: In reality things are quite compli- scratch as it is to recycle an old one. It also makes the blanket an integral pari

cated. Everything is funded by the De- Omni: That sounds pretty expensive, ip of the plasma machine, which is a night- partment of Energy establishment through have to plug in a new fusion reactor every mare to maintain. We have taken that whole

Germantown, Maryland, which is the old fifteen or thirty days. geometry and inverted it, put the blankets

AEC [Atomic Energy Commission], Com- Bussard: Is it too expensive to plug in light outside where they are cheap to build and bine this with a small number of people who bujbs? maintain, use water-cooled copper alloys wander around the country, contending Omni: But we are not talking about light for magnets, and end up with a Riggatron a that they should be given government re- bulbs. We are talking about fusion reactors. thousand times smaller and four thousand , search money to fund new and novel re- Bussard: It's all a matter of looking at power times cheaper than a superconducting search solutions for fusion, in fact, one can levels and the costs of the power. The total machine. show by known physics that most of these energy output of Riggatron is so large and Omni: Ifthey cause'so many problems, why solutions don't work, which is why the DOE the cost of the machine so small that when do all the Main Line Tokamaks use super-

in its reasonable wisdom has chosen not to you replace it. even if you threw the old one conductors?

fund them. But we did not invent a new away and buried it in a mine shaft, it would Bussard: Because they have a nice scien- magical confinement scheme. All we did cost you only 1.3 mills per kilowatt hour of tific property. Once you have current flow-

was to take the world standard confine- electricity that would have been produced ing through them, it flows forever Scientif-

ment mechanism, the Tokamak, and shrink by that machine. ically, that is appealing. It is like believing in

it in size— by an engineering approach, not Omni: And is that substantially cheaper motherhood and believing that sunshine is

a physics approach. The physics is per- than what the big Tokamaks could pro- good for you. It is nice if you have no losses,

fectly sound. We don't want to fight un- duce? but it doesn't pay. proven physics. We never did. Bussard: Yes. You can't throw away the big Omni: The other major difference between

Omni: Then how do you explain the reac- machines. They are long-term, thirty-year- how the big Tokamaks work and. . tion you got from DOE and the Main Line lifetime machines, multibillion-dollar in- Bussard: How they work? Do they work? fusion people? vestments. They are so big that the down Omni: Well, how they are designed to work. Bussard: The reaction is simple. Suppose times are nine months or thereabouts when Bussard: There is no machine that makes we're right. Suppose our machines do run you have to take one of these big turkeys fusion on this planet. None. To this day, no

as all nature tells me they will. By 1984, we apart and rewind it. one has built a machine that sustains a will have five machines that run at power Omni: The Riggatron is so much cheaper controlled fusion reaction. The only proof outputs of two hundred million watts for a because you avoid two very expensive and that we can truly make fusion power has couple of seconds. Our first commercial complicated technologies— super- already been demonstrated by five na- plant will be running in 1987, twenty years conducting magnets and neutral beams. tions, and those are the superpowers, sooner and at one fortieth the cost of the Right? which have exploded thermonuclear Main Line program. Now who in the na- Bussard; In part, but that is not the main bombs. tional program can be enthusiastic about advantage. Use of superconducting mag- Omni: Do you. think this surprises a lot of that? The Riggatron's swift development nets forces the overall design of the ma- people?

could, in their view, put careers on the line. chine to be fundamental different, to be Bussard: I think a lot of people think fusion

Long-term personal futures are involved in very large and very expensive. You cannot is further along than it is because off he way this program. The bureaucracy in Washing- put a superconductor next to the fusion the public-relations campaigns have been ton, which has planned the main national plasma; because the neutrons will over- waged, at least by the government, imply-

program, is now faced with a curiosity of a heat the superconductor and it will cease ing thai fusion is sort of here.

twenty-year-sooner solution that it didn't in- to be a superconductor. So you must move Omni: You've said that essentially what is vent. That doesn't make people feel good. the superconductor behind shielding — being done in the Main Line program is not

It's human nature. heavy metals, stainle'ss steel. But if you do fusion, but watching plasma particles

Omni: But the Riggatron is designed differ- that, you still have to breed tritium for the dance around. What did you mean by that? 58 OMNI CONTINUED ON PAGE 90 DIVINE ALCHEMIST Jhk *^- :

The sublime is made visible in the art of Ernst Fuchs BY THOMAS WEYR

Viennese painter Ernst Fuchs inhabits the house where the future began. Built in 1888. the elegant villa is a first break with the drab, imitative architecture of the nineteenth century; it marks the beginning of art nouveau in Vienna and the birth of modern architecture, To Fuchs, all artists live in the future. "They design possible future worlds. The cupoiaed buildings of the Renaissance were copied from

De.'3'7 loyn CneruE Like an Amethyst (below); Cfierub will- Ranbouv ''.'Vmgs \!^p: [he background of Ra- phael's and fvtantegna's paintings. The frescoes of the Baroque show man in flight, breaking the bonds of gravity, space, and time. Goya and Leonardo drew flying machines." Fuchs thinks thai some of his own apocalyptic pa -liirgs have a quality of the New Age he sees com- ing. It will be a mixture of romanticism, faith, and ex- ploration of the spiritual self, Like other members of the Viennese school, the artist fell early under the in- fluence of Sigmund Freud. "Whether Freud's theories

Jesi-.s Fantocraror (left); Cher- ub with Horns of Flame (lop nghij. and The Tree of Eden. were scientifically correct or not," Fuchs observes, "doesn'l matter as much as his crucial discovery that the unconscious is a discrete realm that must be made visible." In Fuchs's view, the artistic imagination should turn to exploration of supernal events like the "shining cloud" that bore Christ to heaven or the miracle of Fa'tima. "Art is the original manna in the desert," Fuchs says. "It alone enables everyone, even those who do not believe, to taste the true values of life. We stand on the threshold of a new era, which is revealed to us through the prophetic quality oi art "DO

Detail showing omnipresent cherub (above): Sphinx Callipygos, T965 (tight). OMNI PROFILE

Scientists are of two minds about Julian Jaynes's heretical double-brain theory of human development

^^ulian Jaynes's otfice should be righl Ihere. The den of Princeton's outlandish theonsl must lie somewhere between that classroom on my left and the laboratory to my right, where a woman in while is perched on a stool. I ask. but the young lab worker doesn't know where Jaynes is. What about the door behind her stool? A closet, she says.

I stand there lor a moment and then, half-heartedly, open the closet door. A shaggy head with Iwo bewildered eyes pokes out from behind it. They belong to Julian Jaynes, the unassuming profes- sor who wants to rewrite most of human history. This sort of presumption inspires vicious attacks from fellow scientists Psychologist Ronald Hayes recently as- serted. "The Code of Hammurabi and large portions of the Old Testament are products of people who today would be shuffling through mental institutions. Until about thirty-five hundred years ago the entire history of human activity— in- cluding the development of language. writing, law. mathemaiics. and art- could be attributed to people whose thought processes would be labeled psychotic by our contemporary stand- ards. This is the shocking hypothesis of Julian Jaynes." Shocking, indeed! The mixture of obscurity and surprise in the location of Jaynes's office is sym- bolic of the man and his singular career. A shattered academic reputation and one hell of a scientific controversy lie in

PHOTOGRAPH BY MALCOLM KIRK ODD MAN OUT BY PHILIP HILTS the wake of this psychologist who dared voices of gods or angels and allow them- thusiastic students to his lectures. Their suggest that modern consciousness actu- selves to be guided by them. Man had a professors, however, are more skeptical. ally evolved from an earlier two-part mind. .dim awareness of himself and the world, Classics scholar George Pigman, of Cal- Jaynes brought modern psychological but he was directed in larger matters by the tech, when asked about Jaynes's schol- scrutiny and 20 years of meticulous re- voices, much in the way present-day arship, replied, "There is no scholarship." search to bear on our distant ancestors. By schizophrenics hear their own lucid, con- Carl Duncan, a psychologist at North- comparing behavioral attitudes expressed niving voices. western University, was caustic; "Jaynes is

in the Iliad, the Bible, and other works ot In' Other words, Jaynes believes, our an- extremely clever to think up this thing. I only early civilizations-, the Princeton theoreti- cestors were uniformly schizophrenic and wish he would put thai cleverness lo more cian formed the basis of his remarkable were not rationally conscious; civilization serviceable use." hypothesis. was built by creatures who did not think. Other negative reaction is less cerebral. Until about the year 2000 B.C., Jaynes In 1977 Jaynes published his theory in a Soon after the publication of his book, postulates, humans did not possess con- book, The Origin o! Consciousness in the Jaynes delivered a lecture at American

sciousness as we know it. in ancient ar- Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. The title University, in Washington, D.C, In the audi- tifacts and writings we notice a striking ab- was intentionally abstruse, and the book ence was Ronald Hayes, who apparently sence of introspection, of planning for the jacket was plain white with no illustrations, could not stomach Jaynes's speech. He future, of putting human personal experi- at Jaynes's insistence. The theory was wild grimaced, groaned, and slapped his hand

. ence info narratives to clarify current think- enough that he didn't want some wilder to his forehead ihroughoui the talk. ing. These are all hallmarks of conscious- book jacket sending him into the Von Dani- When Jaynes was finished, Hayes shot ness as Jaynes defines the term. ken category of crackpots. He is serious up and walked toward the door, without

Ancient man, Jaynes surmises, lived with and willing to be proved wrong. If Jaynes waiting for the question-and-answer two minds, one dominated by the left side is right, his theory will rewrite many pages period, chomping on a cracker as he went.

of the brain, the other by the right side. The of history, psychology, and linguistics. It Jaynes was sitting on a couch as Hayes former defined man as he appeared in an- may also suggest a future not now apparent passed by, and some crumbs apparently cient literature, a creature of everyday life. to anyone. dropped on Jaynes. Some people in the The other half, the right brain, was godlike A tall, thin man with unruly, sandy-col- audience interpreted this as a comment and "spoke" to the workaday part of the ored hair and an oratorical voice, Jaynes that Jaynes was crackers. mind through auditory hallucinations. bids me enter and clear a space among the Hayes says that he did not intentionally

These hallucinations ; raveled from the right heaps of papers while he makes tea. His crumble crackers on Jaynes. "I have no side of the brain is friendly across a nerve pathway manner and humorous. recollection of this," he claims, "but I would known as the anterior commissure to the Amazed that he managed to sell more be happy to be that colorful. I'd be happy to left side, where the voices were "heard" as than 50,000 hardcover copies of his for- dismiss him with a crumble and a crunch

if they were coming from outside the body. bidding-looking book, the psychologist and then walk disdainfully away."

Hence the steady stream of references in acknowledges that it is still in demand. He Jaynes's work has drawn some positive ancient literature to people who "hear" (he d.raws large numbers of interested, en- comment from scientists, but they stop short of resounding endorsements. "The

bold hypothesis of the bicameral mind is an, intellectual shock to the reader," Stanford University psychologist Ernest Hilgard ob-

serves, "but he is forced to entertain it as a possibility. He is asked to think about mat- ters he has never thought about before, in contexts and relationships that are strik- ingly new." 'A work like this is a speculative creation, an achievement that generates ideas and stimulates thinking instead of making a final statement," argues Jerome Singer, an author and a Yale University psychologist. Jaynes insists his "bicameral man"— with two chambers in his mind — can ac- count for many things in ancient history that are not easily explained any other way. The origins and oddites of the ancient religions with their multipleand talkative gods, or the fact that all those gods are now silent, can be explained naturally even neurologically, by Jaynes's two-part-mind theory. "Take away the voices, and unthinking people would still be capable of a great deal of normal, everyday behavior," Jaynes notes. After all, we drive the highways with- out thinking about each of our actions and play the piano without pondering each note. "Even the most intellectual activities are largely unconscious," Jaynes reminds us, "as we know from the testimony of bril- "7^4^ liant writers, artists, and scientists who say their ideas simply 'come' lo them, popping out of the unconscious."

'When I grow up. I wan! to do an apologist for Arab oil interests." "One of the key bits of evidence Jaynes offers is the Iliad, a document he says was a

is ,vrii:e-i. al lea-: parcy. before man was fully i/o ice be i piooaoly tempted to picture

conscious, In i! we find evidence of the them as Keystone Kops. bicameral mind. "The characters oi the Society was then becoming extremely Jaynes is amused by criiicis""- oespi;e Iliad do not sil down and think out what to complex, populations were becoming very what it's done to him. This closetlike space do." Jaynes says. "They have no conscious arge. and writing had begun to supplant might conceivaby nave been. a arge. airy internal gorily in building, Hrd as we know : and ce' lair ly no "itio- the authority of voices. The office, a better had Jaynes held spection. Given our current subjectivity, itis voces a" fir&l became somewhat confused his tongue. Still, the controversy here shorn its impossible for us to appreciate what i was and contradictory, then finally oegan to seems drained of its blood, of

like. Whec Agamemnon, king gf men, robs grow silent. Their loss, Jaynes feels, is thorny spines, a passive beast that can be

Achilles of his mispress, ii s a god who cm;..rr.ee: io ""us cay. especially by religious sen; from Ihe room by merely changing the grasps Actiilles by his yellow hair and persons who wonder why Go.d gave man topic of conversation. Papers, books, and floor, warns him not to strike Agamemnon. It is. So many miracles and apparitions in an- letters spill into piles on the competing

cio-ci who rises out of the g"-;y sea and con- cient times and then sucder.iy ceased for space with the little tribe of plants and soles him ... a god who leads the armies- Eventually humankind began to replace the rusty hotplate that hold floor positions in into battle, who speaks to each soldierat the lost voices with subjective, -larraura back of his chair. Jaynes is wearing his the turning points, who teaches Hector judging, introsoeclivs censciousriass. fhe professorial, tweedy sport coat, a ye ,ow

what he must do. It is the gods who start wonderful certainty oi these voices gave sweater, and gray flannel pants. quarrels among men that really cause the way to. the. more ambiguous practices of f his iassion. he

war, and it is the gods who plan the strategy proohecy and oracular divination, which gazer of the. war. In fact, gods take the place of began during th^s Period. conscousness The cecnrdos of action Jaynes aiso believes that consciousness

is charging m our awn time and that it may

be possible l.:-r_ si,, "c expand the 'mind- d study space" we have, built up within ourselves. A trough

I of our bicameral heri- o have psycholo- full unders l s to teach our children "Heb sreeive more powerfully. plants, and attempted to find out whether one particularly long-suftering mimosa

plant could learn. It couldn't. "I moved on to P'0!O"G-3. delicately running paramecia n

,na: i/vhc.i must be nte.ect.Ja > disciplined a T maze engraved in wax on black Bake-

Arrested with laughter. Jaynes swirgs lite. It paramecia could learn, I fell, they had i only J.R.R. Tolkien around his bright blue office chair. He is to be conscious. They Weren't.

t adequate evidence." delighted by the cracker crumbs story He "After other failures to Tno learning n -he wiih lough, that the bicam- might appreciate the fairness of scientific lower phyla. I moved on to species DENIM For the man who doesn't have to try too hard. He doesn't have to. Things come easy for the man who wears DENIM? Because a man feels better. A man feels cooler.

A whole new feeling in Cologne and After Shave. FICTION

It was the ultimate gamble. The stakes? His life

BY JOHN KEEFAUVER

Everything seems to be "There is absolutely nothing "Good evening, Mr. Welling- inside, of course, the. part in order. Mr. Welling- to worry about on that score, ton. Welcome to Body Ball. immediately below the playing

ton. You may now re- sir. It will be disposed of per You may hang your coat on surface, wa& "ar cii'cror: serve the Body Ball at your our agreement. We stand on the rack to your right, sir, and deep enough to hold a body. convenience." our record, and I'm sure you then enter the room directly The giant pinball machine

"Very good. I'd like it on the are aware that we have been in front of you." was the only thing in the room seventeenth, al eleven." in business long enough to Wellington was surprised as except for a chair in front of it

"It's available then, sir. If you have an excellent one." he walked into the room. The and a few steps that led up to care to read through the con- Wellington nodded. "Well Body Ball machine was its lower end. As for the room-, tract, and sign it, we can aware. I'll sign." gigantic. He'd known it would around the upper meter or proceed for that night." At precisely eleven o'clock be large, of course, but had so ran a strip of mirrored,

"That's not necessary. As on the evening of the seven- not imagined it as stretching one-way glass, behind which, long as the major points are teenth, Wescott Wellington nearly wall lo wall and being he'd been told, there would be the way we agreed. I'll sign." pulled his Mercedes to the ten to twelve meters wide. spectators, both official for

"They're as agreed, sir. If curb in front of one of a They must have torn down verification and some simply you win at Body Ball, you number of undistinguished almost all the walls in the there to enjoy the show. collect one million II you lose, row houses and turned it over house to make the room large He eased himself into the ail your financial assets go to to an attendant who had been enough for it. On the other chair slowly. His age and his ." its size, the syndicate, and . . waiting there. As the man hand, aside from paunch would be against him

it "Never mind. I know the drove the car off, Wellington nothing about was different when he played the machine, second pari of it very well." rang a doorbell at the house. from the hundreds of pinbal! of course, but otherwise he "Of course, sir," The door opened up machines he'd seen for was a healthy man. Deeply "That's the only thing that automaticaily, and he was almost as long as he could tanned, impeccably dressed, concerns me. frankly— the ushered inside by a voice remember— nothing different gray hair darkened, fingers disposal of the body.'' coming from awall speaker. on the outside, that is; the manicured, and already

PAINTING BYDI-MACCIO )

feeling an anticipation, a thrill that he had to head level and was -skiing against the vice, just give. me a call. I'm here lo help." thought he had lost forever, he smiled when machine's giant plunger. "Thank you." an attendant approached. "Now, sir, if you will permit me—" As the attendant left, Wellington mused

attendant, with faint smile that it only proper that "May I be of service, Mr Wellington? The crouched beside him a was Something to drink?" now, buckled and locked the seat belt care- he should oe o-fered "servce" at this time, "No, thank you. The Body Ball is ready for fully, and then did the same to belts at his the pinnacle of his career. God knows, he'd my use?" ankles and wrisls so that, besides being earned it. All of it. Service came wi!h the

life, life. "Yes, sir. May I help you with it?" made safe against be.-ig thrown from the good the rich-life. The gambling

"If you will." scooter, he was unable lo guide il by using Millions won; millions spent. He'd had it all.

Wellington gol up and slowly walked to his limbs outside it, although he was al- He'd been everywhere, done everything, the giant pinball machine and climbed the lowed to use all the body English he was bought everything. And all because of steps down at its lower end. On the top step able lo muster dice, cards, horses, the wheel, you name ft. he bent and went through a small doorway "There you are, sir All ready to go." He'd always been a winner. Always. And he into the machine as the altendant hurried "Thank you." didn't have the slightest idea why. He had up the stairs behind him. "As soon as I get out and close the door. no system, no nothing. It was uncanny

Inside, still in a crouched position be- just call when you're ready and I'll send you He'd been barred from many a place cause of the glass above him, a pane that on your way." through the years because of his continual

extended over the playing area, he edged "Right. It will be a moment. I want to relax winning; he'd had to disguise himself, use onto a bucket seat that was attached to a some first," a phony name. - wheeled scooter. The back of the seal rose "Of course, sir. If I can be of more ser- He'd resented having to do that at first the subtertuge — but gradually he had

learned to look forward to it. Because when you won almost consistently, gambling After you play became— there was no other word for il— just plain boring. To him, anyway, and get- ting into the places he'd been barred from the Temple ofApshai, was a challenge and aiorxed trie boredom for a while. Boredom, in fact, was his you can play greatest problem now, and he might even have gone into some other line of work ex- Sticks and Stones for free. cept for the style of living he'd become accustomed to. and, boring or not, gam- bling was his life. Within the 200 rooms and for no extra charge. In fact, if When he heard of Body Bail, he was catacombs of the Temple of you're not satisfied with the attracted immediately, thinking it impossi- Apshai, untold treasures await 'Temple ofApshai," you can ble to be bored by the game since he could you -the hero. All you have return it within 10 days and still never be certain that he was going to , to do is elude, outsmart and keep "Sticks* Stones!' win— in the long run. that is. One loss when outwit the beasts, monsters But don't wait, this special playing Body Ball was !he final one, there was absolutely no chance to recoup, to and demons lurking in the offer is limited. (We'll also send win. He'd be dead. dark labyrinth. Spend minutes you a catalog outlining our He knew the backers- casino people. or hours on this role-playing other exciting com- They were reliable Me spolied :o play and, fantasy — the boldest computer puter games). as he expected, was guickiy accepted not game in our Dunjonquest™ only because they thought he had enough money to make it worth their while if he series. should lose but, far more important, be- Now, when you order the cause he was a winner and because ca- of Apshai," get the "Temple you sino owners wantec "o get rid of winners— "Sticks & Stones" board game legally That was why they had invented the game, he suspected, with its extreme pen- Automated Simulations, Department OM alty for losing. P.O. Box 4247, 1 988 Leghorn Street But why would winners play Body Ball in Mountain View, California 94040 the face of such a penalty 7 Well, he didn't know what motivated the rest of them, but

Cassette ($24.95) Disk(S29.95) he knew about himself He was here for the ultimate thrill, the greatest challenge, wilh TRS-80 D 16K, LeveMl D 32K TRSDOS absolutely no possibility of boredom. One APPLE Nat available n 48K Applesoft In ROM loss ended it; if he lost, he lost his life. PET 32K D Not available He had "practiced"- a joke. He hadn't

(Add$1.00shlppinco d plus or tax for California handling charge; 6% &'A% residents. even liked pinball when he was a kid; it was a game played by addicted robots- numbskulls, in his opinion. And, of course,

Add there had been no money in it. But during the last few days he had wearily played dozens of times, always winning, ofcourse. Even so, he suspected that the correlation Check enclosed. Charge to: VISA _j MasterCard between playing ordina'v p nball machines Amniml--S and playing Body Ball was infinitesimally

slight, if existenl al all. In Or ch org e by phone: (8 00) 824-7888, operator 861 . California: (800) 852-7777, Operator B61. Now he would find out for sure. If you prefer, coll these umbers tor a list of the computer slores near you. Taking a deep breath, he called out to the . .

allei'danl iha; ne wai; 'eady to star!. so th-:: yooed we::- great enough to jolt him scooter with his be'tec wrists. He zipped "Very good, sir." harshly when the scooter hit a padded ob- past two padded obstacles, another mush- He felt the scooter move as the plunger stacle shortly after he rounded the top. The room, and another flipper, gaining speed behind him was drawn back by a powered scoojer, which had an inflated tirelike rim, all the time. Ahead were two more raised, .^.device Slowly he rolled backward until the bounced back with a jerk to the top of the na'allel co-rido'i. directly in front of the slot; P ungor was released abruptly and- he was playing area, and from here he would begin below the corridc-'s ne saw there were only shot up an inclined corridor at stomach- his all-loo-speedy descent toward Ihe exit two flippers that could stop him from going jolting speed. slot at the bottom. through the hole. Ahead of htm. rising vertically at the Just below him now were two raised, Wilh desperate yanks of his wrists and higher end of the machjne, a blinding array parallel corridors. Hurtling backward, he body against the belts, he was able to jerk

of colored lights began to flash spasmodi- went through one of them, bouncing off its - the scooter to the left enough to smash cally on a huge board; in the board's upper sides and triggering a barrage of blinding against the lop of one of the corridors, center brilliant green lights spelled out lights and a ce^lening cacophony of bells which sent him back up the machine about body ball, and under the lights was a and buzzers on the vertical board and play- three mefers. Right back .down toward one clock. Activated by Ihe plunger's release, ing area (something, he was to learn, that of the corridors he sped, though, zipping

the clock's second hand was already mov- happened every time he struck anything). through it cleanly and .setting off an even

1 ing. If he stayed on the playing area .four Coming out of the corridor at a slight angle,' more horrendous barrage of lights and noise.

' minute's — one minute for each letter in he crashed into a giant mushroom-shaped But again, using savage jerks, he was able v BOC the exit s ot at the lower end of the p.rotrusio.n that, with its springy edge spur to hit Ihe last flipper before the exit slot; it machine would automatically be closed at him off to another mushroom and he slammed him to the far side of the machine, the end of that period of time by a device smashed against a rectangle-shaped where he hit another triangle-shaped pad- triggered by the ticking clock, and he paddsc obs:ac!e near the left side of the ded, obstacle wilh such force that he would win his million dollars'. playing area. From here he dropped alarm- thought his head would be thrown from his

If, on the other hand, he lai ett to slay on ingly until he crashed into a flipper about body. Rolling backward, he crashed vi- Ihe playing area four minutes and dropped halfway down the machine. The flipper ac- ciously into another mushroom. This one through the open slot, a device, triggered tivated or contact, shot him to the far side shot him against another tire-rimmed ob-

by his falling body, promptly slid the metal of the machine, toward the top. where he stacle. Then he bounced off it and landed covering over the slot and him, With the crashed into another mushroom, which against another Hipper, which smashed covering closed, and with the rest of the smashed him into the bottom of one of the him against the side of the rubber-rimmed lower part of the machine equally raised corridors. machine with such force this time that his sealed — the part, that is, into which he had From here he rolled straight down Ihe head crashed into the back of the scooter, fallen— cyanide pellets were dropped into center of the machine toward the exit slot, stunning him Groggy, he hita rubberized, acid, releasing killing gas. skimming past two mushrooms and not fingerlike obstacle. His speed gradually lossonoc: as ne ap even getting close to a flipper, even though And then he was speeding down again. proached the top of the playing area. Even he savagely yanked at the arms of the A flipper jolt, and he was moving cross- ways, and then up once more. He was spun backward and came up heavily against a

mushroom, Then he caromed off into > another. Lights exploding before his eyes. Noise hammering him. Body spinning, lerked Thuds. Oashes. Belts into gut. wrists, ankles. Up, Down, Across. Down

Up. Across. Up . . He was near the lop ol the machine when the covering slowly slid over the exit slot. He had won — again.

He felt the old boredom within days after

he collected his million. And it wasn't long

before it was unbearable again; worse, be- cause now, having won the ultimate gam-

ble, what was left? It was impossible lor him

to really win. if seemed —win freedom from boredom Quit? Qui! gambling? That thought itself was depressing enough to lead, finally, to thoughts of suicide. Gam-

bling was his life. Was death better than boredom? He was beginning to think so. As he was getting ready for bed one night, he gloomily came to the conclusion

that it was. and he decided to play Body

Ball again . . . and again . . . and again , , until he must lose.

It seemed that he had no sooner got to sleep, though, than he woke up with a start. his boredom gone and his whole body tin-

gling with life. He'd bet the Body Ball owners— with suitable odds, of course— that the cyanide pellets wouldn't drop into the pail of acid. How could he lose? DO 76 OMNI APERTURES '~">0,000th of a second, glitter dust sparkles within a popped balloon

). Robert H. Miller, of Rochester, Michigan, captured this image L! 1e the glitter still retained the balloon's f rystallized vitamin C {page 78) mirrors tf symmetry of photomicrography. Suzanne Groet, of Upper Arlington, Ohio, matched a Hertz Ortholux microscope to a Nikon M35 and caught the startling pattern of the vitamin. A similar technique was used by Gary W. C tington Beach, California, to turn potassium sodium tartrate (below) into a — r inq flow of colors. Giovanni Sanitate, of Detroit, cross -polarized the point of a

York, used ordinary ice cubes to create an

sn fireworks (right). Schenke set the stage for his glacial \ >ackground, fluorescent and incandescent lamps. A Nikon FTN and Kodachrome 64 film recorded the image before it was lost to a quick melt.

-A

,

NOBEL PREDICTION

.By DickTeresi

The 1980 Nobel Prize for physics 1980, he wrote me a letter, boldly picking was awarded to James W. the presidential nominees. Stuckey Cronin, of the University of predicted the Republicans would Chicago, and Val L. Fitch, of Princeton nominate a President/Vice-Presidential University. You may have read of this ticket of Howard Baker and Alexander announcement this past October in your Haig, who wojld be cittcci against the

local newspaper. Then again, if you were Democratic duo of Fritz Mondale and one of our oncine! Qrr.ni readers, you Georgia Senator Sam Nunn. would have known the identity ot the Nice try, Bill. But maybe you'd best stick winners over two years ago. We to the Nobel prizes. announced in October 1978, in our very

first issue, that Cronin and Fitch would Good news for Ham, the space chimp. In become laureates. our November 1980 issue we reported that Writer William K. Stuckey, in his article America's first primate in space (he was

"Nobel Prize" that month, predicted that blasted into suborbital flight on February 1 the frontrunners for the Nobel in physics 1961) was living what appeared to be an would be Arno Penzias and Robert W unpleasant existence at Washington, Wilson. They did in fact win in 1978. D.C.'s National Zoo. Stuckey went on to say that next in line He has now been moved to the North would be Steven We nberc and the team Carolina Zoological Park, in Asheboro, of Cronin and Fitch. Weinberg won in 1979. a state-run zoo that specializes in And now Cronin and Fitch, who have "rehabilitating" chimps that have been demonstrated that subatomic particles raised by themselves. Ham. now 23 years do not always behave in a symmetrical old, has spent the last 17 years of his life manner, have been tapped by Stockholm. alone in a cage. Such chimps often have David Hall: Mixing a Stuckey does not confine his predic- problems communicating with, and tions to science, however. On May 13, responding to, other chimps. The plan at Hall now finds wearing trousers to be Asheboro is eventually io let loose in Ham illogical , restrictive, and unintelligent. It is a new half-acre outdoor habitat (complete his goal to persuade more men io switch with a running stream) to live with their to skirls, especially since women now present community of six chimoanzees. have society's sanction to wear pants. At this writing, Ham is still being kept in As part of his campaign, the scientist

a single cage, but zoo keepers are putting nas worked out a compute 1 " program, chimps in the cage next to him so he can which includes a "Boolean Truth Table" get used to them. Ham, according to zoo and a binary classification of all forms of

spokesperson Via re i a Constantino, is !eg cloning. I.nar ne claims somehow

doing very well so far. She describes him shows the logic of his dress code. "I as "still a magnriceni specie-en and a based my program on three basic very nice animal." assumptions." he says. "We are all born The National Zoo has officially loaned naked, and clothing is a form of man- Ham to the zoological park for breeding made technology. Men and women have purposes. "But our first goal." says two legs, and anatomic differences (at "is to that Constantino, see Ham becomes least when it comes to skirts) are minor, a real live chimpanzee again." and the laws of morphology can prove that

when it comes to clothing there is no ana- When computer scientist David Hall tomical reason why men should wear arrives at Stanford Research Institute pants only,"

International to do consulting work, his Dressing robots is another of Hall's colleagues there are no longer shocked to concerns: "As robots become used in see him wearing a skirt. Several years ago, domestic and office situations, they'll need while attending a yoga conference in androidlike clothing to protect them from India, Hall tried on a skirtlike wrap called a scuffs, scratches, and dust. Skirts are by James Cromn- Vtepicxsdhirp ,".- lungi; he's been hooked ever since. farthe bestdesign solution. "OO 84 OMNI . '

metals lines, stored underground for the winter high temperature to convert and months, and used in hydrogen-cell cars. It waste into their component elements. BUSINESS stretch- Eliminating the high-energy input of pres- is Escher s opinion that "hydrogen es out the fossil-fuel resources at the same ent recycling techniques, fusion energy greater rate of recy- ""States by the early twenty-first century, time you make superior liquid fuels, such would allow for a far recycling of low leaving fossil-fuel plants as backups. as synthetic methane, with the nuclear-fu- cling and also allow for the now too costly to bother with. But there is more. Instead of wasting pe- sion process. When coal becomes expen- grade ores, technicaJly feasible, the fusion- troleum and coal to extract oil from tar sive to extract, it is economically more sen- Though immediately dis- sands, small reactors can be flown to re- sible to use nonfossil hydrogen." torch concept has one be ex- mote locations to produce needed steam. Besides providing an inexhaustible en- cerned drawback; Energy must trash and pulverize it Or, what about star power under the ergy source, fusion is expected to create pended to separate it fed into the high-temperature hood? Inesco. in conjunction with Litton In- spinoff technologies similar to those before is Dean says, "You won't dustries, studied the. possibility of using a created by the space program. Offshoots plasma. Stephen automobile into the reactor. small fusion reactor to produce ethyl al- of magnetic-confinement research done want to feed an of years from will cohol from sugar cane. Bypassing the by such companies as General Atomic in But hundreds now we the fusion torch because we will need forfossil fuel, the small reactor would the late Fifties and early Sixties have al- have to use reduce the cost of ethyl alcohol to any- ready found uses in Ihe marketplace.. have no olher choice." business concur where from 33 cents to 38 cents per gallon. Maxwell Laboratories, for instance, man- Visionaries in the fusion implications of a fusion economy Cane fields in Hawaii and Mexico could be ufactures Ihe Magneform, which uses that the of a new method to converted to transforming solar-grown magnetic confinement to produce every- go far beyond the grasp milk bottles. A fu- cane into fuel. Using Litton's experience of thing from cigarette lighters and sophisti- clap aluminum caps on mounting methanol plants on barges, we cated rockets to c.hainsaw handles thai sion economy would affect the technologi- in general. Ohkawa could float small reactors to sugar fields don't break. Another spinoff is a revolu- cal base of society a fu- anywhere. One hundred ninety-six such tionary form of welding. "With high mag- warned about the consequences for development plants would produce enough ethyl alcohol sionless United States. "The fusion economy is really asocial, nola to run every car in the United States. Bus- of a technological, issue. The United States, sard says it would take 12 years to con- resource-rich nation, could struct these plants at a cost of £240 million theoretically a toward solar and apiece. "But we would have eliminated the make the choice to go tMost fusionists agree while Europe and Japan, fuel problem for cars." he notes. coal, Western have that luxury, must take the At KMS Fusion. Inc., in Ann Arbor, Michi- that a fusion economy would which don't of nuclear and fusion. Their emphasis is on laser fusion. direction gan, the in of usher an age fundamentally built on im- Through a system of mirrors and lenses, economies are

. value to KMS bounces a beam from a large infrared limitless hydrogen fuel porting raw materials and adding their exports by using high technology, laser at a fusion-fuel pellet the size of a and technological you hear people argue fusion in Ja- speck of dust. In 1974 KMS was the first When spinoffs that will spur ask whether fusion is high- organization in the world to produce neu- pan, they Their survival de- trons by imploding a fuel pellet with a American industry technology enough. this situation for fifty high-power laser, achieving the first labora- pends on it. If you ran to a commercial rebirth3 tory-scale inertial-fusion reaction. years, Western Europe and Japan would KMS Fusion has developed microminia- dominate high technology. The United States would remain low in technology, as ture pellets of fusion fuel lhat it hopes will export wheat and be mass-produced for laser-fusion reac- we are now. when we cars. Our energy situation might be tors. The laser fusionists are also .experi- import circumstances, but menting with various beams capable of netic fields," says Alan Kolb, an eminent all right under those wouldn'l be." powering a commercial reactor. physicist and president of Maxwell Labora- our economy Other fusionists, however, anticipate that A KMS subsidiary, Radsyn, Inc., has con- tories, in San Diego, "we've been able to American energy mix tinued some of the company's early work develop impact welding. With this method, a domination of the power on generating hydrogen and methane from you can weld five to ten wall thicknesses at by synthetic fuels, coal, and solar the United States fusion radiation. Henry Goinberg, presi- a shot, while conventional welding deals would effectively close technological markets. dent of Radsyn, said, "Fusion is almost a with only one wall thickness." off from world large array of Tokamaks, Elmo pure radiation source- Virtually all of its en- In the future, fusion could turn the chem- The the high- Tori, and Doublets on the national ergy comes oui as high-speed neutrons. If ical industry upside down. Using Bumpy today resembles a phalanx of such a pure, high-intensity source is not temperature fusion plasma, chemists landscape weak-batteried cars trying to start up in converted into another, storable form, it will could take low-level carbon or hydrogen engine that kicks over will be converted to heat. The trick is to find combinations-for example, carbon diox- winter. The first inaugurate the Fusion Age, processes in which radiation and heat can ide—and forge the molecular structure de- ihe challenge of com- work syrnbiotically." sired, eradicating the polluting residue of Then will come It will present the emerg- Should Radsyn master the trick, Jules today's complex hydrocarbon processing. mercial utilization. fusion industry with unique questions. Verne's prediction, in The Mysterious Is- "The implications of this," Sauber claims, ing our a power of such land, that "water may be the coal of the "are that we wouldn't have pollution, but we Can we put to own use streetlamps from future" might come true. Most tusionisis would have vastly improved, purer materi- enormity? Can we make Sauber de- agree that a fusion economy would usher in als. With fusion, the chemical industry the universe's beacon? As clear night go out and lie on an age of limitless hydrogen fuel. William would experience a total rebirth." clares, "On a the sky. There you Escher, of Escher-Foster Technologies, For metallurgists concerned with the your back and stare up at successful fusion reactors. Inc., in St. Johns, Michigan, asserts that, scarcity of strategic mineral resources, fu- see millions of inventions technologi- simply by generating electricity, a fusion sion extends a promise of ecologically Like most of our and reactor could produce 453,600 kilograms sound -scrapyards. The fusion method for cal development, the processes found readily in are those most easily du- of hydrogen-* day or the fuel equivalent of recycling metals and urban waste was nature instead of scaling up, as we 10,000 barrels of oil. Even with existing proposed in 1969 by William C. Gough and plicated. But scaling down technology, hydrogen produced from fu- Bernard J. Eastland. Their method, called do in industry, fusion means nature."DQ sion can be pumped into natural-gas pipe- Ihe fusion torch, would use the reaction's what already exists in 86 OMNI his own. He refused to accept the Ph.D. for be the origin ot the consciousness thai I'd ODD MAN OUT which lie nat; finished .ail the 'oquirements. been seeking so long in evolution?" No way, 'A ridiculous, useless badge," he says, language experts state, pointing out that 7" ^11 IMJED FROM PAGE "My brains are my credential. He simoly the English word mind has no real equiva- synaptic nervous systems -'lalworms left the country, going to England, where lent in contemporary Italian, -either. "Not earthworms, fish, and reptiles -which he lived on meager savings while he- read, finding it in 3.000 b,c, is less exciting when could indeed learn, all on the naive as- thought, and walked, mile after mile, through you realize it's not in present-day Italian." quilted pastures. philosopher historian sumption that I was chronicling the grand the hedgerows and says a prominent and evolution of consciousness. Ridiculous!" As Jaynes settles into his office chair of science. Jaynes was so dedicated, he eventually after getting a second cup-bf tea. he- talks of The instant he made his breakthrough moved into the basement laboratory at Yale how the Iheory finally began to gel, Lighting Jaynes knew it would be mocked, but he and set to work. Embarrassed faculty a small cigar and letting the match drop couldn't shake his conviction that he'd member'.; wouln occasional walk in on the among I he oooris on the floor, he says, found the key. "I knew everybody would say

I of weariness, young scientist When he was wearing a tee "When I came from England to Princeton I was insane. had a feeling shirt and had shaving cream on his face. sixteen years ago, .everyone was Still con- even though I saw how everything clicked

' Jaynes took, many "hermitages. " as he fused about the subject. So star;ea Iresh. together. I realized that the problem of con- called them, shutting out all human contact by trying, to trace the history of the. mind- sciousness had stumped so many people

ii if while holing up somewhere to read, think, body dualism. I traced it back until Disap- because it wasn't in evolution, was in and do nothing else. He could go on his peared, And where did itdisappe'ar?lnthe human culture." hermilages without physically removing Iliad. Dualism is prominent in Plato and in Once Jaynes had put together the out- himself from tha; basement -ccr"-. one Vac the Pythagoreans, but no! in the Iliad." lines- of his theory, "I had to do a lot of study colleague recalled. "He would announce Jayres then siaded studying the words to bring all this within the realm of the pos-

1 ihat he was on a hermitage and then simply or mine ir the '."ao . Psyche did no- mea- sible in my mind. I had the same questions

r rathe: lie has. It impossible. not talk to anyone, not even g ee; :h-r~'..'-is: mind as it does today bu- sub- everyone else seemed sit in his chair and think, When we asked stances, siucn at oiood or breath. Thymos. The pyramids built by unconscious what he was thinking of, he would get a which later came to mean emotional soul, people? Unheard of!" sickly smile on his face and say nothing." in the Iliad means only motion or agitation. He began to experiment. "I could make

Even after all his work at Yale, JayneS was Most important is the word nous, which some predictions about things in the' Old stiil confused about consciousness and later came to mean conscious mind :r 'he Testament. The older parts of the book began to realize that everyone else's psy- iiisa it me'ev means field of vision. should be bicameral, thai is, there should . -.-:: chology was jUSt as confused The'e /.' a Jayres skips apcakinc. for a mon-ie~- be an absence of mind words, and there no agreement on a definition of it. Notions leans back in his chair. "Then it just sud- should be the hearing of voices, The newer of awareness, learning, and all manner of denly occurred to me one day that since parts of the book should tie-conscious, with perception were mixed mlo me concern they did not nave words -or consciousness, the writers making introspections plans. Jaynes eventually decided to strike off on maybe they were not conscious! Could this and soon, ano ".ne.'eshojd be a loss of the

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Truth, the In voices of the gods. I was right." praise even Jaynes's strongest admirers swer, the One Single Cause. Jaynes carried on other, more unor- offer. "Julian Jaynes," says a prominent the frustrations and sweat of laboratories thodox experiments, including the time he psychologist, "is a serious, committed, bril- science feels the same temptations to invented a little test of right- and left-hemi- liant, sensitive person, and he fell in love swarm into sects. And all my work is a part - sphere dominance that involved looking at with ideas. Serious 'scholars have love af- of the transitional period after the break- two little cartoons and telling which face fairs with ideas like this. Who knows? down of the bicameral mind." seemed happier. Jaynes designed the car- Maybe he's even right. Maybe there is a As Jaynes gets up to go to a faculty party, toons so that the expression varied de- germ of truth in what he's saying." it is nearly sunset. Though he does join with pending on which side ot the brain was If what Jaynes is saying turns out to be the faculty in events at the university, dominant in perception. He cooked up the true, it will have an enormous impact on Jaynes is virtually not a part of it anymore. thing one midnight and was so anxious to science, religion, and the future of the From the rank of assistant professor not far experiment that he wandered the halls of human mind. The theory destroys the from tenure, he has now been demoted to of his building looking tor someone to try it on. foundations of religion. Belief is unmasked part-time lecturer with a salary $4,000 a No one else was working at midnight, and as delusion or hallucination. Though the year, less than a graduate student makes. so he set oft for the nearest bar. He found theory says nothing about the existence of Whether he is a prophet or not. Jaynes is only one drinker and the bartender. "They God, it does blow away in a single blast all certainly without honor among the academ- they idols, rituals passed down ics at Princeton, But however successful thought I was crazy," Jaynes says, "but the books, and went along with me." The test was success- from ancient times. Jaynes and his controversial theory end ful and has since backed Jaynes's two- As for the mind, Jaynes believes we are up, he has at least accomplished one, core minded view in something over 80 percent in transition from the bicameral conscious- task that he set out to do. Jaynes once said of those tested. ness that built religion to the rational con- that psychology as a science should not A neurological experiment Jaynes has sciousness thai is science. With science ape physics in its mathematics or its cer- tried to get under way. but which is techni- we must accept a degree of uncertainty tainties, Physical discoveries may be cally very difficult, involves testing the about ourselves, about the world, and called breakthroughs, he said, "but psy- brain-wave activity of schizophrenics at the about knowledge; we cannot revert to des- chology's correlative verb should be break moment they experience hallucinations. perate yearnings for holy voices, which out." Whenever some mode of thinking, or Jaynes's theory predicts that the right those who embrace new cults and flock to some theory, throws a net around the think- hemisphere should bear measurably more mullahs are doing today. ing of psychologists, the time will come of the activity during hallucination. If the Jaynes adds, though, that science itself, when that "envelope is suddenly seen to be voices heard by hallucinating schizophren- "for all its pomp of factuality, is not unlike a subjective barrier, a part of the psycho- ics are geneiaied internally in the right side some of the more easily disparaged out- dynamics of the scientist himself." of the brain and are perceived by the left oreaks oi pscudO'ehg. ion. In this period of From traditional psychology, from rat side, the physical basis for Jaynes's theory transition from its religiious foundation, sci- labs and blind mazes, from the quicksand

will receive a tremendous boost. ence oiten shares ;th a hundred other of verbiage about consciousness, Julian

Such a test might strengthen the faint :r rationalisms the nostalgia lor the Final An- Jaynes has broken out.DQ

0/*>TH^HCO& ,K,T(J*<-

"I'm afraid you're not qualified to join. You don't have enough worldly goods to renounce. .

was the burden of our calculations in 1977. he can take on that arc on the first wall are iniTERVIELTU And that was the basic thing that my col- three times the highest heat fluxes that we league Dr. Bruno Coppi, at MIT, who is the have ever seen required for any version of

coinventor of this concept, learned — that it Riggatron reactors. And he sal on the panel "Bussard: Generally, the national fusion was possible to reach igmlinn by ohmic and said that heat transfer is no problem. review basically program is dominated by considerations of heating alone, without any neulral beams. Omni: Then can we what understanding pasma physics, not to be without any microwaves, just through happened? You received more than six confused with building devices to control resistance in heating the plasma. hundred thirty-saiien thousand dollars fusion. The national fusion program, which .Omn/; Why didn't anyone else think of that? from ERDA lor a conceptual study, after is now running at 1.8 million dollars a day Bussard: Weil, they did a long time ago, which it was downhill all the way. and would like to spend more, is doing lurnishing ihe oasis of the world fusion pro- Bussard: No, il was uphill. It was progress beautiful research on the nature of plas- gram. Then they abandoned it al! and went as far as we were concerned. For the firs! mas, their confinement, their instability, and back to studying basic ohysics. But physi- time we had money to explore the engineer- their transport across magnetic fields. We cist don' 'hir-; about, nor do they under- ing parameters that bounded the physics need that. We rely on some of thai for basic stand, power engineering and are not requirements. As a result of that study, I was information. But the national program is re- abreast of cur rem developments and mate- a hundred percent confident it would work. ally not an R and D program. There is no D. rials lhat come from other fields. They Omni: But something happened. scientific Omni: You mean they want to. know all of the seized on superconductors as wonders of Bussard: Yes, it did. The commu- physics thoroughly before fhey try any- science, and the whole program has gone nity aligned itself against us. In the spring thing'' off in that direction. We took a different ap- of 1978 a board was convened to evaluate feasibility. panel met and Bussard: You hit it right on the head. And proach and said. "Let's look at what the Riggatron's The report. report so that is almost the only thing they can do, aerospace world brings to us," because I produced a The was because the large machines Ihey're am an aerospace engineer by back- asinine that Inescd wrote a twenty-page rebuttal the panel to re- evaluating as fulure power systems are ground. That's where I began. rebuttal. The got gigantic and cost several billion dollars convene and consider it again. They came each. Before you are willing to commit sev- out with essentially the same kind of idiotic eral billion dollars on one machine, you had statements. Then they went downtown to

better know everything in the world about it, higher levels of DOE and made presenta- absolutely everything. Our machines are fions condemning the Riggatron concept. frWith our approach, hand-made versions, buili in small ma- The Office of Management and Budget chine shops. At most they will cost about a we will be able to test was brought in to hear those presentations, get them to say this was a bad million fo a million and a half dollars each. whether fusion ostensibly to Not billions, millions. We plan to build five of idea. The OMB got so troubled and un- before them simultaneously— of slightly different actually works or not happy it called me right away and said. "What Ihe hell's going on? We hear this configurations, shapes, fields, mate- anyone else can If rials—and find out which ones work best, thing won't work, that the machine will we find it doesn't work, the of why and how, and which ones fail. break." It was the first I'd heard such a Omni; That seems ironic. The national pro- world's fusion programs meeting. of gram is trying to save money by being cau- Eventually OMB called its own meeting will be in deep, deep troubled [Office oi Energy Research], OFE [Of- tious, when in truth. . OER Bussard: They are saving, in respect to ihe fice of Fusion- Energy], and OMB. And OMB

program they are doing. If you went and went away completely with a mind that the built five two-billion-dollar machines and entire DOE review report was discredited. ran three of them to destruclion, you would Totally and fairly discredited. have blown away six billion dollars, which Omni: In other wo'ds when the DOE review Omni: Was this the meeting that someone isnt ise. panel said you were pushing technology described as a shootout? them, With our approach, we shall be able to beyond the stale of the art, it didn't know Bussard: Yes. We utterly destroyed test whether Tokamaks work or not in a fu- what the .stale of the art was? technically. We were right and they were sion mode before anyone else can at very Bussard: The panelists didn't have any wrong. Congressman Mike VicCormack[of at to low cost. If for some reason, unknown to all. idea what the state of the art was. If you Washington] asked the people DOE a new physics problem appears, we will look at their backgrounds, almost without arrange another review committee from second group learn it sooner than anyone else at modest exception, they have never buill anything, outside of the system. The cost. We may even find that Tokamaks don'l of any kind, at any time was headed by honest guys with track rec- work— in which case all Tokamaks don't Omni: Didn't they say for example, lhat the ords of some stature. Their report showed work, In that case most of the world fusion lirst wall in your Tokamak would melt? conclusively by all known physics that the programs are going to be in deep trouble. Bussard: That was nonsense. Total non- machine will ignite. reaction to this Omni: Let's go back to how Riggatrons are sense. It was said by people who have no Omni: What was DOE'S different. Another expensive technology experience in building heat-transfer sys- second panel review? that you avoid is neutral-beam injection. tems thai conduct high-heat Hows. The Bussard: They wsniec oevo Jtiy to ignore it. How can you get to high enough tempera- kindest thing that you can say about those The Office of Energy Research finally came tures with ohmic heating alone? on Ihe first panel is that they were woefully out with a report around the end of Novem-

of If of Ihe report Bussard: II is like heating a ioaster wire. ignorant of Ihe engineering technology ber 1979. you read the body that Fusion will begin to occur if a current is high-power machinery. That is Ihe kindesi and the technical analysis, you will find

it one- simply passed through the plasma. If re- thing. For the second review, we had an it says what I said earlier. But has a quires a certain set of conditions for the honest, unbiased, and non-bought-and- page executive summary dictated largely

plasma density. If the plasma density is too paid-for reviewer in Ihe form of a gentleman as a cautionary note fo upper management it's low, putting the current Ihrough it will not from NASA Ames. This man has built a at DOE. It says, in effect, Well, high-risk, in work successfully. II the plasma density is high-temperature, water-cooled, con- and it may work and it may not. but any

it of too high, it is-gping to require much too sisted arc with the Ames Jupiter arc reen- event should be viewed in the context lis much current. There is a range in beiween hv healing :es\ facNity — lor ihe shuttle, fhe larger program. Meaningless. So now those two in which the density is just right. a tremendous machine. It has run three they can ignore it. The report was never To find out what those conditions were, that years without a failure: The heat fluxes that distributed. You don't want to distribute a 90 OMNI

'':•:. : report like that, right? You want to distribute Omni: And what exactly are those pro- cassettes only the executive summary. So they did. lecred profits? "Most Omni: Could one problem with acceptance Bussard: II depends on how you capitalize

of the Riggatron fusion reactor be that it it. If you use thirty percent equity capital are afraid of me" goes totally against the long-life thinking investment and seventy percent borrowed -StevieWonder- that goes on in the utilities industry? capital, you can generally show a case for

Bussard: li doesn't go against. It's as if we an eighty to one hundred twenty percent

A lot of c; took a ninety-degree turn in the road and return on investment. Only if. you're in a Stevie's opinion bly considered asking said there's another way around a certain totally free economy, of course. about their performance. But he's such mountain. You don't have to climb straight Omni: That's certainly a very profitable a perfectionist, they may have been over it; you can go around the olher side. business. So why did you need govern- Omni: You've said that the utilities don't like, ment involvement in the first place? Not TDK. TDK SA's Super Avilyn magnetic particle revolutionized high the large Tokamak approach, either, be- Bussard: I simply wanted to get one gov- bias cassette music. No rock is too hot cause they are too complex and too ex- ernment contract, which has one very great to handle. Classical music keeps all of pensive. The Riggatron is appealing be- virtue associated with it. It means that our its dynamic range. Jazz sizzles without cause it's modular and replaceable. How Tokamak was at least of sufficient interest hiss. There's for all the a headroom does that work? that the government would look at it and challenge and drama of music. Bussard: Think ol a string of light bulbs. You say, "Hey, that's interesting. Let's put our ForStevie, "It's a little music machine want to have five lights burning at all times. USDA prime beef stamp on it because we'll that delivers the best sound, for its You build a string seven bulbs long, and fund a study," size, I've ever heard." There's good light five of out. this big reason. Its 250 components are you them. When one burns Omni: Then why did you go through checked thousands of times; 1,117 you turn on the sixth and you have no down battle if government approval wasn't all checkpoints for the shell alone. And time and replace the burned-out bulb. fhal imporfant? SA is guaranteed a lifetime.* Enough Omni: So you can make power for utilties. Bussard: Because the government pro- to please any perfectionist. What else can Riggatron do? duced a report that was technically false, Bussard: That all has. to do with producing which was made available as a public offi- cheap steam. The Riggatron is really noth- document. I went to some government ing but a steam generaior. When you com- cials to make them do an honest assess- pare the cost of steam from natural gas- ment, on paper, admitting what they had

fired plants or coal-fired plants, this thing done. That's all. I don't like being lied produces steam at one third the cost. So about. we make such steam, and with a gadget Omni: Since you're in this for profit, why

that's so small it can be shipped in an should the government be supporting your airplane lo the tar sands region. Then we research? pipe steam at three hundred fifteen de- Bussard: I'm in this for a lot of reasons other grees centigrade down one hundred than profit. Its a damned shame that the eighty-three meters to tar sand formation United States- is not solving the energy ' and steam-distill the tar sand and get oil. problem. The U.S. government alleges that

Omni: All this and you make ethanol, too. its interests lie in solving the energy prob-

Bussard: That's a different use of the same lem. As far as I can see, those are empty cheap steam. It's just the fact that the words. The government's interest is in steam is so cheap and comes from an in- doing research on long-term solutions, not exhaustible source. in grappling with real solutions for today.

I can also lell you about breeding nuclear The technologies that could be brought to fuel. The world is building reactors whether bear now. such as the Riggatron and other we are or not There are hundreds of them things in energy development, are not overseas; ihey are being built in France like being promoted by the government. potato chips. All will need nuclear fuel. Omni: Had you stayed at the AEC, would Riggatrons are probably the world's best you have been able to convert the federal

breeders of commercial-grade fuel. It is fusion program to Riggatrons? completely proliferation-proof fuel. You Bussard: I've no doubt that the AEC would

can't make a bomb out' of it because it is have picked if up and run with it. I believe isotopically all mixed up. And there's an that sooner or later the government will be

infinite supply so long as you have thorium, driven to it. Let me add that it is being done and there, is twice as much thorium as there now. Independent of us and the Energy is uranium 238. Department. The Soviet Union is busily

And last, but not least, because it is such constructing a Riggatron-like device.

a copious neutron producer. Riggatron Omni: What is their name for il?

light bulbs can take fission waste products Bussard: It's called the T-200. The Russians from reactors or from hybrid blankets and are certainly going to build these machines put fission-waste-product blankets around as the best vehicles for fusion. They're also the machine. Then, by neutron transmuta- going to build them in order to produce tion, you can burn up the wastes so that massive quantities of plutonium for the they no longer constitute a nuclear-waste- Soviet plutonium-reactor economy, and siorage problem. they have said they will do so by the early Omni: Is this how you come up with these 1990s.

incredible profit projections? If our current program is successful, we

Bussard: The profit figures come from al- should beat them to it by five to seven most anything this machine can be applied years, recapture the world energy market

to. It turns out to be the same incredible from the OPEC cartel, and provide cheap profit margin, because the energy cost for energy— across the board— for the next any of them is so small. several centuries, at least DO A CAGE FOR DEATH

Born of Hewitson's obsession, the machine was built to vanquish mankind's greatest foe BY IAN WATSON

Hewiison's Thanatoscope was the ultimate prod- ever tried lodemonstrale the converse occurrence: the arrival uct of Ralph that strange man's obsession with death. of Death as an active force. Thanatology is, of course, the study of dying, and Hewitson was a tall, black-haired man with a slight perma- Hewitson's machine was intended to enable us to see. nent stoop as if he never trusted doorways to be quite high and ideally to "trap," Death itself. Or himself. Ralph enough to let him through. Hewilson always took it very personally that he or anyone else "I wonder whether Death's doorway will let me pass when should have to die. my time comes." he said lo me one day, darkfy humorous "Or No doubt all of us go through this stage of horror and affront will I gel- stuck in il? Halfway in. hallway out? You know, I've when we are children Then we file the trauma away in the been thinking that zombies could simply be people who get back of our mind. We lock it up in the mental lumber room, and stuck in that door. Their conscious mind has gone through, but il creeps out in again only our last days. Sometimes it remains the automatic mind gets left on our side of it, running the as offensive as ever, but increasingly nowadays- thanks to body mechanically" the Thanatology Foundations centers across the land and the "You mean the autonomic nervous system, don't you reinterpretation of dying as an altered state of con- Ralph?" sciousness it is transfigured into a friend, an intrinsic part "Do I? Do \T of oneself, the keystone of the arch of life. I'd come to the Sixth Street Thanatology Center only three Hewitson. however kept intact the old animist vision of months earlier from Neo-Theology College after majorfng in some invisiole thief ot lite. His Thanatoscope— his death- Deal h-of -God counseling, and il was something of a shock for watch device -was to be the tripwire camera, and cage, that lo find me someone who- if he plainly didn't believe in surprised Death himself. God— nevertheless firmly espoused the doctrine of death True, some scientific testing of death has been conducted incarnate. But I had taken a liking lo his black jokes, which m the centers in addition to the psychological studies and seasoned his obsession with a dash of pepper. therapies - bul only in the sense of weighing the before body No doubt this was the way he performed in his own counsel- and after death to see whether any tiny weight loss occurs, as ing of the dying - he made death seem something of a farce, of a departing soul, or using aura photography to try to record a Marx brothers' comedy. That approach could probably work this departure on film. None of these fringe invesligators have wonders wilh some people, I've met them. They hate to be

PAINTING BY MARSHALL ARISMAN 3

conlemplalive about their demise. They as well, then, were tiny pheromone taps Theology College would be up in arms."

think that it's sanclimoriious. Whereas with with the stored drops of the chemical iso- "I guess it's a way of persuading people

other people who are still scared— well, a lated by vacuum and mini-Faraday cages. to volunteer," I joked in turn. "Roll up, roll joke could be a fine nerve tonic. His idea was to .imitate death: to hyp- up! Come into Hewitson's Death Cage and - Of course, to Ralph deep down this was notize oneself into a deathlike trance, then he'll make thee immortal with a hiss ... of no joking matter turn the taps on. cyanide gas. Oh, but you re forgetting

I was being given a guided tour of his "Do you want me to lie down in there?" I something. Ralph. You'd kill the subject machine up in his office on the fourth floor asked him. "Is that what all this is leading that way, before ysu nailed his death. Baby

of the center. It was a pleasant, sunny room up tor and the bathwater, Ralph. Baby and the

with a gilt-framed medieval Dance of Death "And then I release the nonexistent whiff bathwater!" 7 " ." on one wall and, by contrast, on another a of cyanide he suggested with a chuckle. "Ah . . Ralph looked crestfallen.

large color photograph of the Taj Mahal. "Oh. no, Jonathan, nothing like that. But of But this was all just horsing around.

look it The machine, which up most of the course you can try out for size and com- "You're going to try it out yourself, then?" I

spare Moor space, was the "excluded mid- fort if you like. This'll be a pretty famous bed asked, more seriously. "But by just simulat- 7 7 dle" between horror and blissful peace. soon. Much more famous than your historic ing death By preienoing 1 lake it that'll be

Ralph had, however, included it: away not beds where Good Queen Bess or Lincoln with the Swami's help?" of greeting death with alarm or with joy but or Shakespeare slept. Go ahead. I'm not, The Swami is our pet name for our Indian of damned well capturing him. proprietorial." counselor. Mr. Ananda. Ananda has delved There was a waterbed-cum-bier, im- "Well, thanks, but no thanks." deeper into the oceanic unity state of death

within del- it planted with medisensors, set a "I wonder whether I should equip with insertion than anyone else I have ever met, filigreed icately Faraday cage, which could cyanide gas or something similar. Then I (An oceanic state, on the one hand, but he

block out any kind of electromagnetic radi- not only catch Death, but kill him, too. After also compares entry into it to a space cap-

ation or isolate any radiation arising within all. if you can legitimately shoot someone sule leaving the familiar earth behind and

it. Enclosing this cage were polarizable you catch burglarizing your apartment — entering into orbit high above where an glass walls thai could be rendered minor details are erased, up on the edge of opaque- turned into an infinite inlernal the endless sea of death space.) Ananda mirror. Various tiny cameras and mirrors has used deep meditation and self- were mounted within on silver rods, and hypnosis techniques, of Indian origin, to outside the glass walls were fluorescent plumb this"way station into nothingness— 6^s / gazed through screens, an electron scanner, and a kind of sometimes accompanying the dying hooded periscope. Also within were small, (he hooded periscope into down, or up there, in deep rapport with

highly sensitive (to one part in a billion) full life the peariy-lit them— before returning to to report chemical sniffers alert to the pheromone of on it. Needless to say, Mr. Ananda has bier death, the complex chemical released in interior, the empty never met Death — Mr. D — on his journeys. minute traces by the dying body, that we reduplicated itself "I've been taking lessons," Ralph nod-

sometimes call corpse sweat. This chemi- ded. 'Admittedly. I haven't spent years at it perhaps a dozen times in I cal is akin to the sexual aitractor phe- as he has. But I think I can turn the trick. all romones released by humans and other all directions before think so. When I get down deep enough,

creatures, and personally I think it is a nor- own fheta-thanatos brain waves will losing itself in a fog. my mal evolutionary by-product: a warning start the pheromones of death dripping." " signal to others in the vicinity. "When's all this going to happen 7

Most deaths in ancient times would have "Next Tuesday. I'll need a few observers. been violent, in one way or another, and Ananda has volunteered, though he thinks spelled trouble. Hewitson, of bourse, my motives are— well, you understand. But thought differently. He had the notion of this well. Death's a mass murderer by compari- he's cleared a space in his schedule."

molecule as an attractor signal, too. It was son. The biggest criminal." "I can spare the time, too, Ralph." " something that Death would smell and de- I couldn't tell whether he was joking or "Good man. Now look down here — scend on like a mating moth. The death being serious. He showed me how the periscope, the orgasm couldn't happen until Death had "I wonder in that case whether I'd be optic fiber, and the mirrors let the outside, been called, This accounts for certain killing Death in general, or just (he personal observer see around the whole inside of overly protracted deaths; the bodies of death of whoever was in the machine." the cage even when the glass walls are

such people simply, couldn't produce 'A whole lot of people die every second. mirror opaqued. As I gazed through the

enough of the pheromone. Ralph. They die simultaneously. Even if this hooded periscope into the pearly-lit inte- True to form. Hewitson had managed to Death of yours skipped about at the speed rior, the empty bier reduplicated itself

get tiny .amounts of this corpse sweat syn- ol light-" perhaps a dozen times in all directions be-

thesized, and he had built a number of "Okay, I see your point. I suppose death fore losing itself in a thickening golden fog prototype death traps designed to release could be general and particular, though." while the filigree network of the Faraday

quantities of it to shut and snap on what- He hemmed and hawed awhile. "If I killed cage overlapped and overlapped itself

ever vectored in upon the molecule — with the particular death — if I zapped the bullet within the mirrors.

no success. So he concluded thai a dying with this person's own special name on it,

body actually needed to be there. right out of the way, swatted it, squashed it, Tuesday came. Besides Hewitson and Despite his qualms at taking life— which vaporized It— would this person," and his the Swami and me. there was also present he regarded as sacrificing to Death — hand drifted over the imaginary contours of in his office Dr. Mary Ann Sczepanski. our Hewitson had equipped his second- his subject volunteer, as sensuously as a foundation medic, looking lovely in tight generation traps with dying animals. But fantasizing soldier stuck in a jungle hun- silver pigtails, her de rigueur white coat again with no result. Whereupon, he con- dreds of kilometers from a brothel, "would carving her flanks in ivory marble.

ceived the idea that the deaths of animals this person live forever? Would I have per- Here, then, was the mousetrap with the and the deaths of people may be different fected an immortality treatment7 Rich irony. big cheese- Hewitson — soon to be laid

in essence. (He became interested in the Jonathan, for the Thanatology Foundation out in it. synthetically Gorgonzola-scented

Catholic doctrine that animals have no thus to defeat its own purpose!" His voice with death (though it wouldn't be an odor

souls and are automatic objects.) hushed, mock-conspiratorially. "Don't that any of us could pick up consciously), a . Incorporated in his perfected machine breathe a word of this to anyone. Your Neo- trap of the nonlethal variety. 96 OMNI ' I

"II is a ten far better thing I do now," Ralph Ralph's bare calf, waiting — at Mary Ann's

grimed, hamming if up a little— to Swami command — to plunge a massive dose of

Aran —.as, I da's ev'dem disapproval eladin stimulants into him should the need arise. Three-day workweek? a Ihin linen smock, he wriggled through kept my hand on the button that would mul- the door of the Faraday cage, careful not tiply the power fed into the Faraday cage (0 buckle any gt the sur rounding ihin wires. fiftyfoid. Marijuanahol?

He stretched himself out on she water bier. What I saw then didn't record on the

I shut the door and locked it with Ralph's videotape — as if the tape couldn't register Cancer Cured? instructions. if it golden key, as per The key light of the wavelength I saw, as came

chain I slipped round my own neck. Then I a different spectrum entirely! But my from Get a turned on the current to the cage, at very eyes saw it — I swear it. jump on the low power. It hummed faintly. A red (except that it wasn't "red") thing future The glass wails descended and locked appeared abruptly, perching on Ralph's with

together, still in their see-through mode. Air chest. It was like a bat; it was like a giant

recycling on. moth; it was like an angel on a Christmas

"You look like Snow White," shouted Mary tree illuminated by firelight. It flickered.

Ann, checking his vital signs on the. read- strobelike. It seemed" to- dance in and out of

,v*-i K out "Du: ore's ; s ooiscned sp:ji;j? existence, it had d.g gassv eyes and a tiny TheBookof

Hearing her, Ralph nodded ironically in sharp beak. It had scalpel claws on its veil-

the direction of Mr. Ananda. Then Ralph like, wings — if they were wings — like the

composed himself as Ananda began spurs that are fastened on fighting cocks. (1 loudly to intone a monotonous tape-loop realized that I was seeing only what my Predictions refrain in Sanskrit, which Ralph took up — eyes and brain could see, not necessarily

suppose — In duet, though I couldn't hear what was ac.uai ;nere.) by David Wallechinsky, his v "Theta finale! " sang the Swami. who Wallace, Soon Ralph I nd, and I couldn't see any of this. "Stimulants. Mary Amy opaqued the gla Ann," and Irving Wallace VVhe- peore periscope, "I already have! The signs show—" lyin; ig he was suitably I squeezed my button, too, at the same Tomorrow's #1 bestseller

blanched and' nearly inner time. It wasn't needed. Whatever Ralph from the creators of The light- He. lay be self, which had set up to trigger the powering up of the : People's Almanac and lay beside ano Toe to toe cage had already done its job The cage with ye! others Each in their gi ded cage, cracked with iifty'old insulsiic-- TheBookof Lists. the bars of whicn grew thick as the The needle had slid into Ralph's caff He S12.95 bodies proliferated further. It was quite erked. like one of Galvani's frogs. easy to lose the' center of focus and get est. He sat upright on the water bier, his eyes IWiilamMorrwB At this moment Ralph's machine seemed wide open. more like a device fc cloning corpses. The red thing leaped irom him. fliokenng, The descent -,; trv cr^.tn '-ance "ook phasing in, phasing out (but more in than

the best part ot an hour Mary Ann moni- out). It hit the side of the cage and seemed tored Ralph's vita signs dutifully the whole to pass through the electrified filigree. And

the glass walls, loo. But. no. it passed

Li con wha* seemed like a groat marble through, yet not into, the room we were in. It block, a white kaaba, a mausoleum. A be- passed through into one of the reflected

draggled pigeon strutted to and fro for a doubles of the cage, actually into it, leaving

while on the window ledge. Distant street no "original" behind in the real cage. I drifted sounds up, and a few limes the realized, as I hadn't earlier, thai there had

.vhi'iii-g of copiers beat down. Otherwise il been only "one" of it all along, from the was very quiet. moment of its first appearance. No reflec- Mr. Ananda peered at the brain-wave tions. No duplicates. Many reflections of screens. He tapped one with a slim brown Ralph, but none of it. How could something finger and impeccably manicured nail, I could see with my eyes not possess a

"Here's the beginning of the theta-thanatos reflection in a mirror? Perhaps il had to do

,_ rhythms." wr.n r.s ow~- indlvis b;e esse -."e

I hugged the periscope hood around my The red moth beat from one phantom head and heard only the Swami's voice. cage to the next, circling outward from the OMNI "The other rhythms have flattened out now. real Ralph Hewitson. But as it got farther

It'll four or i take ve fr nn:es more before the away, the golden bars thickened. Now it TIME CAPSULES. theta-thanatos is full enough to switch on was flying into a wall of increasingly thick Now, the magazine of the future can the phBromone drip." But I wasn't about to syrup. It could get no farther out through be keptsa-e roi she fcii.r.;. Ssore your

pull away. 1 had no intention of missing iiie reflections. anything — not that I believed there would Ralph, sitting upright and following it with be anything a running, his {and videotape was gaze, grabbed in the air with both ;ues in mint condition hiLtetiniiely i he anyway). But I'm like that Set me- on a hands. The air above the real water bier in Bach case includes a gold transfer hilltop and tell me to count shooting stars was, of course, empty. The thing- and I'll watch all night, for a friend. Death— wasn't there. But all the hands of Send your check or money order

. , 'Ah , Pherorrtone drip on now," Mr all his reflections grabbed in unison in all f- to S14.00;6for$24.00; Ananda announced. the mirror cages, He seemed to know stpaid. USA orders only] to; OMNI urary Case, RO. Box 5120, Philadelphia,

I sniffed reflexively, even though I'd have exactly what he was doing. smelled nothing whether the experiment Deaih flapped frantically around the cir- had been enclosed in glass or not. cuit, from one cage to the next, to evade his

I watched the. point of the needle, near hands. But it was all one cage to Ralph. He caught it. He caught il! In a cage fingers still clutched. Ah. I could see what his lip, I couldn't believe that. The reflec-

thrice removed from the original, his reflec- he was doing, though to the others it must tions had gone away, wherever reflections

tion's hands closed on it and held it tightly have seemed an insane pantomime. He go when they're off duty, but his reflected His own hands— and those of all the other was. tearing Death free so that he could hand was still clutching Death out there,

— that hold it in one clenched hand — to throw it far mimicking the shape and stance of his real .. reflections of him were empty. But not pair. Not those. They held the red thing. The away from him? No, he'd never give up his hand here.

bat-moth. Death. hold on Death now that he'd succeeded. I tore the key from my neck, snapping the

it Death slashed at his hands wilh its wing He held that one imprisoning hand aloft in a chain in my haste. I jabbed at the lock a claws. and gouged with its beak. Blood ran kind of open-fisted salute, grinning through few times before Tgot it in and turned it.

down the hands and wrists of that one re- his agony, baring his teeth. I pulled the door open. Ralphcrawledout flection. The real Ralph cried out in pain. Yet "Cut the current!" he. ordered harshly. and stood, his clenched empty hand at arm's his face. his hands showed no trace of wounds. Only I squeezed the bulb, The crackling hiss length, triumph and torment on the hands of the one mirror image that held faded away. the creature were flayed, but he felt the "Unlock the cage, Jonathan!" Even in his Three days have gone by now. Ralph

pain. He continued to wrestle with the. crea- pain he refused to abbreviate my name. hasn't slept a wink. I doubt that he could let

I, ture. Face distorted, he held on: two empty I hesitated briefly Was in effect, letting go now if he wanted to. His hand and Death hands cupped in midair, sinews standing Death oul into the world? But with the cur- are too intermixed: claws trapped in bones,

out, And however much it hurt him, however rent no longer flowing. I suppose a mesh of. bones binding wings. His hand remains

much flesh it tore i'on h s phantom fingers, wires could be no obstacle. bent like that of the worst victim of arthritis,

his linger bones still held it securely out in Ralph saw my hesitation, "You fool, I've unable to flex, yet to all other appearances the reflection. gof hold of him!" he shouted in my face a perfectly unblemished hand. "What's happening?" Mary Ann Galled. from the other side of the wires— which he "Hysterical cramp" is what Dr. Scze- "He's overreacting to the stimulant! Whaf's could have burst through by main force, panski diagnoses about his hand, She

happening. Jon?" but even in extremis he had no wish to doesn't believe whai I saw. Neither does there's no such "He's -fighting Death," I cried. "He's damage any part of his invention. 'Anyway, Swami Ananda. They know

caught Death, and he's fighting it!" he. isn't here. Not in this 'here.' He's still in thing as Death, and the videotape only Just then Ralph turned to face me — the reflection -and I've got him tight shows Ralph alone in the cage, then sud- scrabbling toward where he knew I must be. "De- there!" denly "jerking erect and at the

polarize! Trans uceiheg ass!" he shouted. Had he? Had he really? Or was the pain empty air. -

I tore myseif from the periscope hood, so deeply etched into his torn nerves and I'm alone with him now in the office. It's

found the switch, and hit it. Immediately all scoured finger bones that he only thought night. Many deaths occur at three o'clock of us could see through the cage. And of he had? Was he only feeling the ongoing in the morning: That's the dead point be-

course all of the reflection worlds had dis- fight in the way that an amputee still feels tween night and day, the hour of despair, appeared. intense pain from a severed phantom limb? the low point of the body rhythms. Right

But Ralph still wrestled- with thin air! His As he continued to clutch the air and bite now it's one-thirty Ralph sits slumped in his chair, kept awake by pain, his clenched hand resting on his desk.

"You saw. Jonathan," >

"I saw. Yes."

Mary Ann believes that I autohypnotized mysel! by staring through that periscope into the reduplicating mirror room too long.

My attention drifted away into the mirrors. I FOR FUTURE virtually in a state of sensory depriva- was

tion. I was hallucinating freely and grandi- osely when Ralph jerked upright and

began his phantom fight. I was seeing a

mote in my own eye. I gave it unreal life- REFERENCE just as Ralph, torn out of deepest trance, blood pounding through his heart, saw that Moving? We need 4-6 weeks notice of a Listing/Unlisting Service? Omni makes blood personalized in midair as the rooster, change Fill of address. in the attached form the names and addresses of its subscribers the bat, the moth of death. below. available to other publications and outside "You believe me now Jonathan." companies. The publications and com-

New Subscription or Renewal? One year "Believe? I know." panies selected are carefully screened for of Omni is $13 in the U.S., S24 in Canada So Ralph sits before me, holding Death (heir acceptability and quality of their offers. and overseas. Please enclose a check or at arm's length— though for how long? money order tor the appropriate amount and When Death at last escapes from him, does allow 6-8 weeks for delivery. Please check the appropriate bo* below. it win.g elsewhere, or does it come directly here? Homing in, to perch on the real hand

Attach mailing label below and send to: whose mirror image holds il a: bay, captive in the realm of reflections?

"It feels as if my bones are coming i Please remove my a Thi apart," Ralph groans. But maybe they from youi address: my new Farmingdale, N.Y. 11737 ! name aren't at all. "This hand's still solid. Oh, my i mailing list. address is below.

too, too solid flesh! But I can'l see them: the

other bones. I only feel, God, what I feel!" "Let him go. Open your hand."

"I cant, Jonathan. I can't."

It's a quarter to two. Outside, the city is

as still as a sepulcher. Silent night: Ralph is Payment must accompany order. too weary to scream. Together, we wait. DO FILM THE ARTS

ovedisernenls for Flash ^^^k three moticn-p ctuie send starring ; = s Buster charg-rig ihrougn hyper-paee o i

i M^^^Gordon . he 'ecently unveiled Crabbe. Since then, Flash has remained Diai i*l Moi'co. swimming through film # » epic, have dubbed its or-; display in a series of noveisand monster- nfos:od swairps, and battling p'oiagcnist the Greatest American Hero of long-running comic books, on television in the minionsof Ming the Merciless with All Time, It's an arguable claim; .certainly both live-action and cartoon programs, swords, whips, ray guns, and fists. the eclectic group of Superman, Popeye, and as a mainstay of toys, games, and "I took my lumps and onuses saving the : the and Lone Ranger— all of whom, like coloring books. Now he has surfaced in earth," Jones quips, "but when I'm cast for Flash Go'don arc currently represented nis higcesi and grandest incarnation, a a film,.'by..golly, I want to be a pari of the by big-budge! films— are no less great, no million picture motion I $30 produced bv ! m j sec: to gei rijno and our director, less redblooded. However, since heroic Dire Oe Lauren: s anc: scipled by Mike Hodges up:.ghi because Id be so Amencana enjoying is a renaissance, Lorenzo Sample, Jr., wilh a creative assist involved that I'd overdo things like the fignt there is at least one crown thai can be from Dune author Frank Herbert. Starring scenes and- end up getting hurt. They had placet; upon :he piatinum-blond locks of Flash, braving all the unearthly perils as tb settle me down before I killed myseli. the durable space, warrior. Having that money .and imagination can buy is Bui I warned lo and as much as possible engaged in unequal combat with more dashing film newcomer Sam.J. Jones. tornake the film work," in , a.ien creatures, more exotic lands, and Jones is a personable and enthusiastic So he did -or-ionihsoeforethe with more fan;as:-c weapons than any actor who, before Flash Gordon, was best other fictional heroes. Flash Gordon is known for his role as Bo Derek's husband surely the Greatest Science-Fiction in the movie 10. Appearing subsequently All Hero of Time. as a contestant on The Dating Game ("I Flash is the creation of artist Alex was low on money," he confesses). Jones. Raymond, who began publishing the caught Ihe eye of De Laurentiis. Though comic-strip of his athletic Yale escapades Ihe actor didn't win'a date, he was offered 3 who could fill man on January 7. 1934. Flash proved a screen test and. a week later landed one EensoftheFIa rema'

"However," Jones says quicJy. a: no time did we let this texture overwhelm Flash, reducing him to a musclebouno figure who does nothing more than crass

m : his irmi i pc" OLi.3ly and Ilex his muscles, while looking ai ihe sr/angs costumes and scenery," Jones says thai what was important to him and to the filmmaker; was to "na<.e

Flash as believable a ;:hc;racter a=- possible without changing Ihe look and foul ;jl :he property We sluo. close lo the

r comic ='.' p as la' as the se:s and s;u y went, and we retained most of the .original

'.'.>. .- Charade's '_n i Hew ourselves to

they're an inherited part of the legend.

People have ceriain expo -.-;. aliens aooU

Flash Gordon Vqu can't let them down, or ' they'll tear the thealer apart," Remaining faithful to source material is apparently a lesson De Lajrsniiis learnec when his brutalizations of King Kong and Hurricane flopped at the box office. Thus, booth, but I Ihink those camp, innocent capable fact of life that the more we ad-

the only fundaments! tinK.emg in Fihsfr elements help to balance the more serious. vance, the harder it becomes lo avoid cer- " Gordon is with Ihe framing story, wherein and intense scenes in the film tain risks. Films can help people adapt to

_._Flash, Dale Ardon i V'cloay Anderson), and At twenty-six. Jones is part of a genera- change, can explain things better than Dr. Zarkov (ChaimTopol) head info space tion that has becom^ sensitive to the radi- books can, better than Oliver Twist. I'm not to prevent Ming (Max Von Sydow) from de- cal changes in Ihe human condition, on pulling down Charles Dickens, but I've stroying Earth. The story has been updated screen and off, As hard as he and Melody seen audiences come out of movies about lo the 1980s, and as a result Flash is no Anderson worked lo make fhe relationship something currently topical, such as The

longer a polo player but a quarterback for between Flash and Dale credible, it still China Syndrome, and say, 'My God, I didn't the New York Jets. exists within the obviously sexist framework know anything aboul that.' What's wrong "Either way," Jones says, "he's a natural of the story. Yet Jones is thoroughly dedi- with people getting some of their informa- leader who doesn't like to oe beaten He cated to sexual equalily. tion on current events from the movies?" doesn't have any real knowledge- of "Flash is fairly traditional. He looks at Jones is typical of the new actors work- science— probably took RE. in college — Dale, and while she is attracted to his ing in this era of vast technological ad- and when he's thrust onto this planet warmth and courage, his first question is, vances and equally vast technological

Mongo, he's a bit uneasy aboul it. One Does she have a nice face and nice legs? upheavals in the film industry. "My under- would have to be uneasy on a world where To his credit, it's only when she opens her' standing of science is limited to the me-

the inhabitants spend most of their time mouth that he decides that this girl is for chanical and optical effects I see in

slitting, one another's throat. But if Flash him. I'm glad to see attitudes changing, movies, though I look upon new inventions

doesn'l have great intelligence, he has and I would love to see men and women on with interest and joy." He says he is familiar wisdom and experience, and he's not a a genuinely equal footing. with all the latest developments, from cable quitter. When his instincts start ticking, he "Despite my conditioning — the condi- television to video discs and recorders, becomes a character who is truly a hero in tioning most men my age went through." he and believes that his fellow actors were jus-

the classic sense of the word." He's ready adds, "I'm getting to a point where I can cut tified in striking last summer lo earn royal-

to risk life and limb for a cause he Ihinks off the old 'Well. I'm Ihe man of the house' ties from these proliferating new outlets.

is just. thing with my fiancee. I look forward !o "The producers are going to make some

I The Greatest American Hero? Jones more of ihese kinds of basic changes in our money, know that. Given this fact, I don't

smiles. "I don'l know about that. But he's future society, when men can talk about see why everyone wasted one another's the kind of hero America needs today, a more than 'Well, the Mets won today,' or, lime. I'm Ihe type of person who would have human hero, a man who is more than just 'How about deer hunting next weekend?' walked into those negotiations and said, macho. He doesn'l have any big, heavy, Boys in high school can take ballet class 'This is the way things are. They're new emotional scenes. He doesn't cry or any- and not be classified as effeminate. Which ways, but so what? Let's face them and thing like that. But he's vulnerable. When is all BS, as far as I'm concerned." workthemout.'l like to gel things done. I've

he's caught or hurt, ihe audience jump out If Jones is idealistic about where human always felt this way, even when I was driving of their seats. They care. When he saves relationships may be headed, he is far a truck or working as a dishwasher. I've

the life of a man who's been frying to kill more pragmatic about the film industry and learned to expect the unexpected on every

him, they admire Flash, If you have a hero where it is going. "I don't agree with what front, deal with it, and move on," . whose actions are totally familiar to you, most people are saying, that our 'fascina- Because he looks forward to the accel- who is two-dimensional or who can't be tion with television and movies is a bad erated importance of film and television in

slopped; if you have a story where the ex- thing. As a. society, were advancing and the future. Jones has formed his own pro- pectali.ons are obvious, then Where's the growing. Since you can't get rid of prog- duction company. He plans to be involved

power, where's Ihe surprise?" ress, you have to work with it, The nuclear- with filmmaking, not only as an actor, but The actor adds, tongue in cheek. "Flash powei plant that they tried unsuccessfully also overseeing all phases of film produc- is sometimes a little naive. For example, to shut down in Maine [Yankee Freedom] tion, including the marketing of video cas-

if Zarkov dupes him into entering the space and the Titan missile thai exploded in its settes. "And ultimately, I'm successful, I capsule by felling him that it's a phone silo are extreme cases, and it's an ines- want to give talented people a chance to share their experiences and insighis through film, the way Rod Serling did on

The Twilight Zone, a show that I watch

whenever I can. Talent shouldn't be ignored jusl because people don't have the proper contacts." Jones recalls an event that serves as a fitting comment on his ambitions. "A man walked up to me and said, 'I've been want-

ing to meet my son for a long time.' I looked

up, and there was Buster Crabbe. I said something dumb like. 'How ya doing, Pop?'

But it really was a thrill for me. You should see him! The man's seventy-three years old. and he has more energy than most

fit people my age. I was glad to see him so and happy." Jones admits that fhe future

might hold few greater rewards than if some kid recognizes him a half-century hence and feels that same jolt of excitement, Whether this ever happens, whether he follows in the footsteps of Buster Crabbe as one of the screen's great action stars or realizes his broader goals, one thing is cer- tain: For Sam J. Jones, Flash Gordon is a

,'.;..;, r Ftash Gordon Z.-i'r-Q-j : ~>c r:gh;: Iocks on Mplessly. giant first step.OO too OMNI — I EARTH

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iultur ild t

would reduce oeoerdence on ;:hem:;:.= l '"e^mzers anci lessen tne neec 'or pes- ticides, especially if utilized m poiycuitures Mankind has directed very little of its overabundant imagination to the develop- ment of new crops. We make use of less : man '.' percent of all "he known specie? o seed-producing plants, Fewer than a dozen species provide most of our food, Jackson an his c •jHyaguos a r e expen- menting wit Easte m gama grass. Tnp- sacum c/acf> '01065 a perennial relative ol corn whose protei percentage is three limes that ol d twice that of wheat What the e ads right now are fewer ingenious d more good ideas The best ideas t j'ese-vat-on are those that approx natural systems. The monoculture uals is not a natural idea. Neithe are th e biomass harvesters, who have b lit thei scheme on the false example of leaf-con sunling microbes, The computique rs. microbes become a component of the living soil by returning- large measures Of humus for # e heat -hs process ioera:es The closest analogue in nature for biomass

conversion i *i'e. which leaves ash tor she PROFESSIONAL DISCOUNTS forest that w come after. DO THE ARTS By Marc Kaplan and D, R. Bensen

oday, as never before, science Evans (Viking Press, $10.95) chance, feedback, modeling, prediction, books are breaking into ihe Dawnoi Modern Science, Thomas evidence, and theory Judson's clear best-seller lists, displacing Goldstein (Houghton Mifflin, $12.95) exposition of such thorny concepts as cookbooks and mysteries in bookstore Hans Bethe: The Prophet of Energy. particle physics and protein synthesis is windows. This oast year alone, for ex- Jeremy Bernstein (Basic Books, set forth with extraordinary grace, sim- ample, John W. Wiley & Sons, one of the $12.95) plicity, and sensitivity What emerges is not nation's most prominent science-book Freud: The Man and the Cause, Ronald only a history of the scientific method but, publishers, published 279 more science W Clark, (Random House, $19.95) Gardner says, "an appreciation for the titles than in 1979. To help readers assess greatest of all mysteries: how the human this rich flow ol science books, Omni has Four judges were impaneled to assess mind is able to know the structure of the assembled a panel of four-distinguished the past year's output of science titles: world in which it finds itself." judges to select the Ten Best Science Gregory Benford. professor of physics at That world expands to a universe of Books of 1980 Here are their choices: the On versity of California at Irvine; awesome possibilities in two recent for Solutions The Search , Horace Gilbert Cant, medical and military writer; releases, Silk's The Big Bang and Ferris's Freeland Judson (Holt, Rinehart & Brian Fagan. professor of anthropology at Galaxies. Dr. Benford describes Silk's Winston, $16.95) the University of California at Santa book as "a well-guided tour of cosmic

The Big Bang, Joseph Silk (W H. Barbara: and Martin Gardner science evolution," briskly piloting its readers

Freeman & Co.. S9) writer and mathematical columnist for through newly charted waters of galactic , Galaxies, Timothy Ferris (Sierra Club Scientific American. origins, stellar evolution, and the formation Books, £75} The panel's clear favorite is Horace of heavy elements. In lucid, but techno- Corridors ot Time, Ron Redfern (Times Freeland Judson's The Search for logical, language, Silk brings the physi- Books, S55) Solutions. It's not hard to see why. cal and chemical underpinnings of the The Panda's Thumb, Steven Jay Gould "Science." Judson says, "is our country's heavens within our grasp. (WW Norton, $12.95) art," and this book respectfully demystifies Ferris's Galaxies offers a more Hands, John Napier (Pantheon Books. exactly how scientists "do" science. Its insp rational approach to the same $13.95) eight chapters focus on particular aspects subject. The author invents an imaginary The Micro Millennium, Christopher of the scientific method: pattern, change, starship that conveys the reader to the center of the Milky Way, through intergalactic space, beyond galactic superclusters, and out to the edge of the universe. The text is informative and

accessible. Ferris is not shy about letting his imaginative metaphors reflect the beauty and wonder he observes. But the

book's real strength lies in its photo- graphs: our ember sun, ghostly whirlpools of spiral galaxies, starry pastures of nebulae. According to Professor Fagan, these powerful images, reinforced by Ferris's lyrical style, "set new sfandards in science publishing." Ron Redfern's Corridors of Time, a vivid photographic examination of the Grand Canyon, also draws upon the time-travel image. This journey, however, returns to the

earth of 1 .7 billion years ago. Geological upheavals and erosion in the terrain have left huge escarpments and deep troughs. These are the multihued corridors of time, ancient landscapes that date trom the

newly formed gaseo : is proioplanet that

would eventua y sjpocd organic life. For this project, Redfern developed a soeciai process of panoramic photogra- phy thai provides readers with distoriion- oruirui free views approach ng 360 degrees. rjext The writer begins in the Cenozoic Era; before the story of the Grand Canyon ends with the decimation of the Navajo tribe by Kit Carson, Redfern will have explained

continental d rifi. plate tectonics, mantle convection, atmospheric evolution, and the flora and fauna of the U.S. Southwest, The author, amazingly, is not a schooled scien-

tist. Carl Sagan, in his introduction, says

that Redfern is "an amateur in the best sense of the word. For more than a decade he has been reading aboul the [area],

exploring it himself, talking to old hands and scientists expert in the lore of the Grand Canyon." Corridors of Time should

make "amateurs" of all its readers. Steven Jay Gould's The Panda's Thumb explores the delightfully devious pathways of evolution. This series of essays, which originally appeared in Natural History magazine, touches on every conceivable aspect of natural history, from fossil fraud to Brontosaurus brains. The common bond of these essays — their "language of instruc- tion"— Gould's thesis states, "is evolution- ary theory." Gilbert Cant remarks that

Gould is comfortable in a variety of disci- plines and "is ready to grasp emerging fields of study beyond his own paleontol- ogy." With wit and erudition, Gould tackles his subject matter from the most unlikely angles. The meiotic dysfunction known as Down's syndrome triggers a discussion of MACROENGINE ER ING - opie who think really big racial bias and its role in scientific reason- ing. Even Mickey Mouse comes under Gould's ontogenetic scrutiny. The Panda's Thumb may help clarify the issues fueling the newly revived creationist/evolutionist dispute, though nonpartisans come out en- SPACE ADVOCATES lightened about both sides of the issue. Gould got the idea for his title from an anatomical misnomer. A panda's thumb is not a thumb at all, bul an overgrown wristbone. The opposable, flexible thumb

is what distinguishes the "human" hand, which grips, twists, and squeezes, from a

paw. There is a more comprehensive study of prehensility in John Napier'sHands. The

ability to hold objects is just the beginning of Napier's appreciation of what he feels is a much-maligned part of our anatomy. While the- structure and evolution of this versatile instrument will interest the lay an- thropologist, the book's real appeal comes

in the discussion ot right/left-handedness, fingerprints, and gestures. Napier puts these matters in their social and cultural contexts and adroitly outlines Ihe strengths and weaknesses of the right-handed world in which the majority of us function.

II is an easy semantic slide from digits to digitals. The late Christopher Evans's The Micro Millennium is a wide-ranging discus- sion ot the computer revolution, which al- ready is ushering in the dreams of past decades. Evans shows how science and technology are dependent on computers to the extent that the machine is introduc- ing new knowledge, and not the other way around v'e! as the computer reduces the ine be 'e! Ihai the same forces maniiested troversies But i: is me Hal podion of Bern- drudge work in offices and the physical -i nature also governed human behavior. stein's book that distinguishes it from con- labor in lactones, workers Will have more Modern psychoana vs.s is still engaged in ventional biography. Bethe in the past few

-:; and more lesuie nme and the number of applying Ihe nsighuvand methods ot the -,-ea'S nas dedicated h.-seii 'he ph y s os unemployed peools will soar Evans s oor>- natural sciences to Ihe conduct of human of energy. The energy problem, as Bethe juaiciouslv podrays both Ihe blessings and aflairs. Ronald W Clark's Freud- The Man sees it, Is more complex than the purely the penis of this microchip 'evolution and the Cause eh-onicles Freud's struggle technical feat of developing new energy Modem science did not begin only in the to quantify the mechanisms, of the- uncon- sources. Bernstein-says, "We are dealing in sixteenth or the seventeenth century, Even scious. Clark follows Freud's; association j-ur.si.i;.: estimates [of 'esources^ or- which

Isaac Newton arguably the greatest scien- with Wilhelm Fliess, Carl Jung, and Ernest . . . honest and informed people may dis- tist ot a " n-e -eeegnized that he stood "on Jones, the birth of psychoanalysis, the fa- agree. What is essential is to develop a the shoulders of giants who had gone be- mous case histories, the study ot dreams, sense of these limits and a genera! feeling fore.' Bur today. Gardner says, "the debt and Freud's use of cocaine Clark, who has for whaf is true and what is not." Bernstein modern science owes the Renaissance written on the lives of Einstein and Bertrand presents Belhe's analysis of future energy and the. Middle Ages is .so often down- Russell, utilizes his instincts as a biogra- sources with consummate impartiality, played or ignored coi-nplet pher instead of adopting those of a whether nuclear, solar, oil. or coal. Bethe psychoanalyst "Clark's biography is mer- sees his rple as- educating the public and cifully more concise than Ernes! Jones's the government so that they can make in- long-time standard work." Cant says. formed decisions. His viewpoint is particu- Hans Bethe has been called "the great larly valuable: As a physicist, he is able to craftsman of physics" Befhes careful, assess the scientific readies o' any chosen personal approach to tneory and policy. "This is a book," Benford thorough , energy experiment, and his wizardry with num- cautions, "that should be read by every " bers, placed him in fhe vortex of physics American history, and in 1967 he won the Nobel Prize With almost every passing week the ." for discovering "how the sun works Jer- world is becoming better understood, and emy Bernstein devotes the opening parts readers are impatient to have this world of Hans Seine The Prophet of Energy to explained- With clarity and precision, each Bethe s schoo- days in Germany, where he. of these Ten Best Bocks illuminates a pre- Linus Pauling, and Isidor Isaac Rabi ex- viously obscure corner of the world. Dr

changed ideas concerning the new sci- .-:-.-. = ~~~-"as ' '"is prelace "c Judsor's

1'iscra a: Cnartres and ihe tr i s'ic discov- ence. of physics. Later Bethe emigrated to boo* writes "We need pecpe who car :ell

! > is . ii is ery ot perspec ive benefited vidua- an Ihe the United States and became involved us how science done . why done

r -:: :-.. with the development of the A a -c ^ z :~z\ = -c/.'. distinguish among good saence. bad science anc nonsense "DO

The Dongeoirts Is Orag©n§*playerBee always ahead of the game

bufKEG^SWntetD. TSRHobbkS.il MASKS AND LASER

By David K. Lynch

; of different ^Astrophysics benefits from new any two oi those ixed energy states. suspected it belonging to a handling the atoms in just the right molecule altogether. They dubbed it /«^» technologies; it seldom con- By the same Mysterium. # % tributes to them. But in the way, it is possible to "pump" of Before long, however, the evidence was not-ioo-distant future the stars may teach amount of energy into a large number "excited" atoms clear: Mysterium was simply OH. But the us how to build devices that are now only them at once. But these had formed a natural maser. The physicists' dreams To see why let's go are highly unstable. When light of just the OH molecules were being pumped by infrared back a tew years. right energy passes through an excited to light from nearby gas clouds that were In the mid-Fifties the first successful gas, each photon can force an atom to form stars. Since then, maser was hailed as a dramatic tech- give up its energy in the form of an collapsing of interstellar OH masers have nological breakthrough. Physicist identical photon. The two photons trigger hundreds Charles Townes, of the University of other atoms, and before long an elec- been discovered. radio astronomers at MIT dis- California at Berkeley, eventually received tromagnetic avalanche is under way. The In 1968 covered a second type of OH maser, in the Nobel Prize in physics for the in- resulting light can be millions of times giant stars. With diameters vention. But by then, radio astronomers brighter than an incandescent lamp variable red several hundred times that of the sun, on the Berkeley campus found that burning at the same temperature. ' stars have burned their primary Townes had been scooped by someone In 1963 Harold Weaver and his radio these the nuclear fuels and are in their death throes. who didn't need a jungle ot coaxial cables, astronomers at Berkeley were studying tremble and quake, they eject gas • power supplies, and strip-chart recorders radio waves emitted by hydroxyl (OH) As they the nearest that forms a shell around the star. When to build a maser. Mother Nature had been groups in the Orion Nebula, the galaxy where stars are still this cools to a few hundred degrees doing it for billions of years. region in

it molecules that can Masers and lasers operate because of being formed. Hydroxyl emits some of the Kelvin, forms molecules. function asmasers. the way atoms within them absorb and brightest radiation of all the The next year brought the discovery of release energy. Atoms can't take in simply Weaver and his colleagues were to that one part of the Ihe stellar water maser Soon after came any amount of energy. They hold ii only in astounded find the strangest one of all: the silicon fixed amounts. So Ihey absorb and emit nebula showed a bizarre emission monoxide (SiO) maser. Unlike the only radio waves or light whose energy is spectrum. Its line intensities were all abundant oxygen and hydrogen of exactly equal to the difference. between wrong, and one was so strong that Weaver hydroxyl and water masers, silicon is relatively scarce. Stranger still, when aslronomers identified the exact molecular energy leveis in these masers, ihe SiO molecules proved to be between two highly excited states. Such stellar masers can exist only in regions of the

circumstellar shell that are at about 1 ,000 degrees Kelvin.

So far, only molecular masers have been observed. But in principle there is no reason to believe that Mother Nature has no! also built optical lasers, chemical lasers, free-electron lasers, and possibly even gamma-ray lasers, or grasers. They would probably form near hot stars, novas, and other violent objects that can emit high-energy radiation to pump the atoms and nuclei. Physicists all over the world are now working to build many of these devices. Learning how Nature accom-

plished it could do much to speed their success. And it's a pretty good bet that she is operating exotic lasers that we humans even thought of yet. (above! were ti human physicists. haven't DO 8. LICENSE TAG. If you took this bet, you BUY BACK didn't learn much from the birthday para- GMrUlES dox, The same sort of calculation is in- liljAMfy ;l-'iOF "i SOME OF THE volved. Actually the odds are 7 to 1 that, of 1. THE LOPSIDED COIN. To determine a 20 license plates, at leasl two will have the

FUTURE! binary digit, it is necessary only to flip the identical last two digits. coin twice. Since the coin is unfair, the out- annnji come heads-heans(HH) wi I not occur with 9. STRING THING. Follow the lace down SIM the same frequency as -ai s-lails (TT). But from the upper left and through the first the sequence HT is as likely as TH, no three intersections. Use capital letters to matter how biased the- coin may be. You designate passing over (ABC), small let- simply flip the coin twice for each' trial, re- ters for passing under (abc). There are jecting both HH and TT, then designate HT eight possible ways the lace can cross it- as "one" and TH as "zero," or vice versa. self, and of these only two (AbC and aBc) create knots. The probability of getting a 2. PENTAGON SPY. Imagine that the man- knot is one in four. has a doppelganger direc'iy opposite him on the other- side of the Pentagon's center 10. KIDS, Most people guess (1)two boys,

and the same distance away If either man two girls, but the correct answer is (2) three sees three Sides, his double must see only of one sex, one of the other. Of the 16 pos- two. Since the man may be at either spot sible combinations of four children, in eight with equal likelihood, the probability that he of them there is a three-one split, in only six will see three sides is 1/2 is there a two-two split.

3. VIGNETTE. One is tempted to say 1/2, 11. BIDS. Open the first bid and use it as a but this is wrong. Had the statistician said standard. Accept the first upcoming bid

that his older child is a boy, then the proba- that is less, or the last bid if none is less.

bility that the other is a boy is 1/2. But Four bids ranked 1 ,2,3,4 may be opened in

having said that one is a boy, there are three 24 possible permutations, and the above equally likely poss^bi-ilies boy-ooy. boy- strategy results in picking 1, the lowest bid,

girl, and girl-boy. In only the first case are 1 1/24 of the time. If a large number (N) of both children boys. Hence the probability bids is involved, the best strategy is to in this question is 1/3. compute N/e (e Is the transcendental

number 2.718 . . .), find the nearest integer, 4. PAIRADOX. The fact that you hold a pair open that number of bids, and accept the

actually increases the probability that your next one that is lower than any of those » opponent also holds a pair. Your pair re- bids. duces the. variety of cards remaining in the deck, which increases your opponent's 12 CARD MATCH. The probability that at

chances of drawing two matching cards. If least one card will be dealt as it is named is you hold four of a kind, the probability of greater than one might suppose— almost any opponent's holding a pair is about 10 2/3, in fact. Since most people assume the

percent higher than if you hold nothing. chances are about 50-50. this qualifies as an excellent "sucker bet."

5 BETCHA HALE Since I won as many

is times as I lost, the total of bets was an even 13 SIC TRANSIT, This dice game non- number On the average, out of each pair of transitive. Die A beats B (probability; 2/3)

bets, I lost one and won one. In the long and die B beats C (probability: 2/3), but die run, then, each pair of bets reduces my C beats A (probability. 5/9). The best bankroll by 1/4. This payoff is remarkably Jimmy the Greek can do is minimize his similar to that of some recent stock-market losses by choosing A. inyestments. 14 INAUGURAL BALL. The probability is

6. TWO STRAIGHT. If Junior is to win two zero. If nine hats are correct, the tenth must

I games in a row, he must win the second be correct as wel . OO

game; so it is to. his advantage to play that game against the weaker opponent. He PHOTO CREDITS" must also win at least once against the stronger opponent, his father, and his S^TPriSn' Age :-;. page

chances ot doing so are greatest if he plays NASA: paj 26. Ed* ro Soyka; page 3Q top, Jo his father twice. The first game should be. against his father. 31 left, Wi aoe 31 top right, David OCTOBE-1? SO NOVEMBER 80 Holl2/The Im. Please use codes wfien ordering. 2 top, M. 7. HAT TRICK. Junior's best strategy is to -:- page Back issues shown above $3.50 each. put a single $10 bill in one hat (A) and the 19 Prices include postage and handling. bottom, . nt:k. page 34 top, Not bills in (B). Rchard Chcv.'Pi-ior Send check or money order to: other the other hat The odds on page 35 top. drawing a $10 bill from hat A are 1/2 X1 = OMNI BACK ISSUES 1/2. The odds on drawing a $10 bill from hat P.O. BOX 358 x BELLEVILLI, N.J. 07109 B are 1/2 9/19, or 9/38. The sum of the ony .Guccione. Dnn Dixi two probabilities is 14/19. There is an al- Offer void after July, 19B1 oaaoi most 3/4 chance of Junior's picking a $10 right, Vc -.':Sinv,.,l bi-l and getting his allowance bonus. 1980 -roughly $150. million more.lhan the when the coming election put a premium POLITICS administration had planne.d. Researchers, on pledges to cut federal spending? he added, should be authored to gel mov- McCu'mack explains -hat "fusion has an

ing at once on the next big step, the. en- image that's the best ofbotfrworlds. It of- had foolishly restrained his program. gineering test facility. fers cheap and plentiful energy, and it's Hirsch scoffec a; me administration's plan McCo.'iracK kepi hammeinig at fit; idea clean and Utopian." to put a demon slration plan! into operation that fusion rapidly make the. transition from Fusion is one gf those -are items in na- by 2015 or 2020. In a harmonious duet with physic's to engineering and that Garter, tional poitics dai has managed to e ude MoCotmack. he : told a hearing in Decem- then reeling, under accusaaors o' iai.ee violent opposition. Amory Lovins. apostle ber 1979 that there was no reason to hold leadership, must take charge and not be of "soft energy" solutions., says that "fusion

back and every reason to get on with it, bound by lamii'earted. ocriypirching aci is a clever way to do somelhiny lhai we "The program in has reached, and many visers. Quoting from the Bible. "Where don'i really want to do to tine yel another cases surpassed, the goals publicly set there is no. vision, the people perish" capital-intensive, complex, centralized forth in past years," Hirsch declared. (Proverbs 29:1S), McCormack advised source ol largo blocks ol caseload electric M.-!y:-iF;iir: fusion icsearch has consistently Carter that the Hirsch panel included "the ity" But neither he nor any other influential been on schedule and very close to the finest scieHisls. engineers and industrial "•emboi c" I hf: pubiic-inteest movement cost estimates, even during recent infla- in the world." managers and asked. "May I found it worth a serious confrontation "he tionary times," he stressed, hoping to ease hear from you soon?" reason, McCormack says is simpiy that fears that yet another high-tech project Carter swiftly passed this hot potato Over fusion is- "still too far off to arouse public might produce catastrophic budget over- to DOE. which appointed yet another attention.'' runs and unmet deadlines, panel. This one was headed by S. J Touted as the ultimate solution to energy Hirsch emphatically asserted that his Buchsbaum. a vice-president of Bell Labo- problems, fusion has also begun to give off fell ihe fusion "panel magnetic energy ratories and a veteran of the advisory proc- the a-cma o~ goodies lo be Shared. High- program was, without a doubt, ready to ess. Of all the recent fusion panels, the lech industry: slwavs on the lookout for new proceed much more ina-i government contracts and industrial mar- jected." He called for a 51 billion-class. ex- kets, early last year formed Fusion Power perimental fusion-power system, "Ft was Associates to lobby for a '"aster develop- the view," panel's Hirsch continued, "that ment program. With 16 big firms in ihe chap- this step should be formally initiated in the ter group, the asscaai en set up Wash 6ln R&D, Johnny Foster was a near term _ , . because a delay would sub- ingtpn-area office and strongly backed stantially reduce the effectiveness of the known as a master McCormack's plan. ongoing program." of his profession, one who Meanwhile lusio-i ;= gathering a cons:t- An engineering test facility, he said, uency. Senator Howard Baker of Tennes- should be in operation by 1987, with a could sort winners see, for one. has suddenly emerged as a demonstration plant "on line before the- from losers early in the game, strong fusion supporter. He openly ac- 'ye&i 2000." knowledges that his interest is LigTiy inked next witness without wasting The was another true be- to DOE's big fusion project at the Oak liever Edwin Kintner. Hksch s successor a;. time or money through Ridge National Laboratory, in his home DOE's associate director for fusion energy. excessive caution 3 stale. Senator Paul Tsongas, of Massachu- Now McCormack went into rhetorical orbit setts, picked up the Buchsbaum theme. about the- virtues ot fusion. "The .develop- L.cjirc: a ias:e>" research p'ogram bul no! ment of fusion power will be clearly one of quite what Hirsch and McCormack had the most important events in the histcy of recommended. mankind," he said. The final bill calls lor a fusion budget of "her "ie askee Kir. ins?-. "Do you see any Buchsoaum group was wiceiy regarded as S1 billion by 1987. up from the $'4Q0 million reason why we should not compress the scientifically the most sophisticated. originally planned for 1981 . By 199.0 a Cen- schedule? Do you see any reason why we The panel listened to fusion specialists, ter for Fusion Engineering is to be in opera- take- our steps sequertia not must y? :s n visited the major research centers, and tion, with a wording esmonsiialion plant by realistic to try to take them somewhat in emerged with a verdict about midway be- the year 2000. The vote in the House was parallel, not wait until and therefore we have tween the earlier ones. Buchsbaum. 365to 7: the Senate then passed the bill by detail every from one project before we though optimistic, concluded that it was voice vote. start the next?" still a bif too early to start on an engineering Passage is. a declaration that the United Kintner picked up the melody: "That's a test facility. "Nevertheless." the report em- States intends to hurry its fusion program very unfair question you're asking. You phasized, "the- is panel firmly of the view along, but the money to pay for it must

know without asking — that is, I think you that the development of the requisite en- come through separate legisatien. Oiner know my position — we want very much to yineeung experience requires a broad projects have bogged down when the fund- proceed, absolutely. believe We we are program of engineering experimentation '.c .,-vas no: passed out there is not much dealing with the future of the [human] and analysis having at its focus a test chance of this happening when the votes race." device with a burning, even an ignited. are so. overwhelming, nor will McCormack "I apologize lor asking an unfair ques- plasma." hold still if the budget cutters attempt to

tion," replied. it McCormack "I should ask To the politicians, the answer was clear: abort his achievement. of the President, the secretary of Energy Fusion is looking good. So let's get on In fusion circles it is McCormack who is

and the director of 0MB. I with it. won't put you credited as the prime- mover in all this. Ed the under gun." By August 1980. when the Buchsbaum Frieman, Ihe Princeton fusion scientist who "Thank you," Kintner said. report was. circulating around the capital, succeeded Deutch as chief of energy re- Mc-Cormack's next step a direct was McCormack had acquired some 200 co- searchat DOE, says that McCormack is the challenge to Carter. Jimmy In a letter, he sponsors for the bill he wanted. It au- cenlral figure. urged the President to "declare the devel- thorized construction of the engineering As tor the congressman from Yakima, he ... opment of magnetic fusion energy as a test facility by 19.87 and an operating dem- greeted the bill's passage by saying only. major national priority." McCormack re- onstration plant "before the end of the "I'm elated." Then he pointed out that Han- quested a fusion budget of $500 million for century"— just as" the Hirsch panel had ford is the ideal site for that $1 billion Center the fiscal year starting on October 1, recommended. Why were they signing up fo' I- usier Engineering. OO

109 — LIFE »:': I5K3IWI 5

donor could be "tie only ril-ernative. So far scientists have not had to confront this problem directly. Bui the science of em-

bryonic implantation is rapidly expanding. The same principles that apply to the treatment of brain lesions may be used in restoring other cyans, particularly eyes. Two years ago Richard Wyall received a strange phone call from two of his cowork- ers al NIMH. "We know that you. as a psy- chiatrist, are interested in introspection," they said. "What would you give to be able THE MIND OF MAN to peer around inside the mind?" Wyatt couldn't imagine what they were

up to. Yet colleagues William Freed and . . .The still unexplored region Mark Perlow were referring to an experi- ment Wyatt himself had dreamed up. As he soon discovered, they had transplanted a From the gigantic pyramids of ancient Egypt to rat's embryonic eye, including the optic the soaring rockets of space—the mind of man has stalk, into the brain of an adult rat. Skin, been the driving force behind all achievement. muscle, and bone over the implantation site had been removed. There, sitting in the Every plan begins within the recesses of mind, middle of the brain, was a tiny eye staring with a subtle mysterious element and idea. What out at him What's more, it appeared par- is consciousness by which you are aware of self tially functional! and your world? What causes the welling up of Freed had Hashed light stimuli into the ideas, the surge of inspiration? What are the grafted eye and iound its nerve impulses varied with the intensity of the light. How psychic faculties that cause a feeling of right and can an eye. so far astray from its home wrong. . .that tug and play upon your reason and territory, still see 7 emotions? Though the mind of man has pushed One possibility is that the optical stalk back the boundaries of the universe, revealing had somehow managed to hook up with the wonders—yet the greatest mystery of all is mind lateral geniculate body, a relay station for, visual signals in the brain. Wyatt and Freed itself. are working together to determine exactly The Rosicrucians, a worldwide brotherhood (not a religion) have what happened. Instead of cutting open the rat's head, they are planning to insert devoted themselves for centuries to the fascinating exploration of fiber optics through a tiny hole in the skull to mind. They have shown how certain understanding of your powers of see whether the eye can be stimulated by self can make the difference between full and joyful living and an external source. mediocrity. Even with fiber optics; an eye inside the brain would nol seem useful either to rat or Free Booklet man. But if an eye can grow where it's not supposed to, then why not where nature Write today for a free copy of the Mastery of Life. It will point out the saw fit? facts about you —your dormant powers of mind. Address: Scribe akv "It is one thing to graft an eye and achieve some electrical activity," Hoffer

says, "and quite another to get it to grow The Rosicrucians into the eye socket, with optical stalk wired up to the visual cortex." Nevertheless, he is (AMORC) greatly encouraged by the degree to which San Jose, California 95191, U.S.A. embryonic tissues are preprogrammed to recognize, and link up with, the proper targets in the host To grow a functioning eye for a blind person, the fetal graft would Scribe AKV have to establish interconnecting links with thousands of nerves arranged in a fantasti- Rosicrucian Order, AMORC cally intricate network. But, according to Jose, California U.S.A. San 95191, Hoffer, the prospects of doing so may be no

more farfetched "than if ten years ago you Please send me a free copy of the Mastery of Life. said we could treat Parkinson's disease by transplanting embryonic pieces of brain." Name Should Hoffer's research or that of his colleagues reach fruition, "the right to life" may take on even more complex ethical overtones: the right to whose life— thai of the unborn child or an adult suffering from severe physical impairment? OO '

An invitation to photograph the definitive Omni cover PHDTD CDRJT By Geoffrey Golson

The overwhelming response and scape created en" rely ;n the studio superior quality of submissions to by Turner. the Omni Phenomena Photo • February 1980, "Broken Hearts," a Contest (see page 78 for results) prompt sculpture by American artist Nick us lo announce the next in a series of Aristovulos, fashioned from polyester photography invifationals. Only three resin and several other substances. photographic images have found Iheir way Photographer Shig Ikeda captured the onto Omni's cover since the magazine's sculpture on film. inception 27 issues ago. This reflects Ihe We're looking for interpretive graphic difficulty we face in finding appropriale imagery th.-il person 'fie; Ihe Omni cover photography. Our unique editorial viewpoint; science and the imagination focus defies easy categorization. After all. applied to a more brilliant future. Think of how can the frontiers of space, the yourself as a photographer in the year promise of technology, or even the fantasy 2081. Whatsub'ec: best captures the age of visionary fiction combine to form one in which you are living? Color quality simple photograph? We can give you a should be of the highest caliber and it's clue, however. There is an undercurrent important that the subject be concen- flowing through Omni, a view shared by trated in the bottom two thirds of the writers, artists, editors, and readers: We photo, to allow space for the Omni logo are all optimistic futurists. In view of what and cover copy. our readers can accomplish when they put For this contest we will be awarding their minds and lenses to a subject, we Special prizes: "Broken Hearts." Shig Ikeda, February 1980. thought it appropriate to plumb the depths The First Prize winner will receive a by of their creativity for help. The photo- gold-embossed ccrti'icaie iron Omni. graphic covers we've published thus far; $500 in cash, and guarantee of If your photo is chosen for publication, we • Premier issue, October 1978, "Road publication. will contact you to obtain the original.

Song," by Pete Turner, it was shot at dusk The Second Prize winner will be 7. In order to allow extra time for you to along a deserted and eerie road. presented a silver certificate. The Third shoot, process, and reproduce your Prize winner will receive a bronze pictures, the deadline for this contest is certificate. extended one month beyond the usual Here are Ihe rules; closing date for Omni competitions. 1. Photographs must be original, pre- 8. Finalists will oochosor by the Compe- viously unpublished, and solely your fitions editor, Scot Morris, Omni Art property. Director Frank DeVino, and Omni Editor, 2. You may enter more than once, but each Publisher, and Design Director Bob entry must be submitted separately. Guccione. 3. The competition is open to everyone 9. Omni will have the right to reproduce all except employees of Omni Publications entries in Omni, its advertising, promotion, International, Ltd., and their families. and displays, and in shows and exhibits, 4. Color slides: Print your name and ad- without limitation. Omni will pay its stan- dress on the slide's border as well as on dard fees for editorial use of any entries an accompanying letter explaining the for purposes not connected with the subject of the photo and how the photo photography contest, was made. 10. Prizewinning contestants may not 5. Prints; Print your name and address on permit publication or display of prize-

a small slip of paper, and tape it to the winning photographs without the prior back of the print. Put your name and written consent of Omni.

address on the accompanying letter. If 11. Entries must be postmarked no later

possible, enclose the negative as well. than March 1, 1981 (or March 15 for entries 6. We cannot return any photos. So send mailed from outside the United States).

us something you can par! with. If you Pack them carefully and send them to: wish to keep the original, have a duplicate Omni Photo Contest, 909 Third Avenue, "Road Song." by Pete Turner, October 1i of your slide or print made, and send that. New York. NY 10022. DO 112 OMNI .

simple. Both the author and the editor of "Easy Points " were women. A good writer FDRURTI inof- chooses words, not because they are iJC'r.NUEOFprv.i fs.GI. i. fensive or because they are in vogue, but any evidence a! all other than a book because they will have the desired effect.

written by man, were offered. I would The line in question was used for charac- 62 Main St., Lynchburg, TN 37352

certainly consider it. terization, in fact for a kind of double Keith Held characterization of both Henry arid Dano. Syracuse, N.Y If you leave behind both your 19S0 and your 1980. notions of sex and politics and

I am writing in response to Mr. Bova's arti- consider that a writeroan write about same-

cle on creationism [October 1980]. I was thing other than her own beliefs, you might happy to see Omni deal with the subject, enjoy the fiction more. — Ed

but as I read the piece, my enthusiasm was dampened. Mr. Bova treated creationism Perfectly Clear

r the same way religionisms l eat evolution. If I don't know what the article "Torrents of evolution is the logical conclusion drawn Babel" [October 1980] means JACK DANIEL from the evidence, why not give the Based on integral-subsystems consid- creationists equal time? Surely, the truth of erations, any associated supporting ele- SQUARE GLASS SET the conclusion would be apparent, Why ment presents extremely interesting chal- Mr. Jack Daniel was the originator of the can't we lay aside our personal doctrines lenges to the philosophy of commonality square bottle for his whiskey and always

and open an honest debate? Are we more and standardization. In particular, a large wanted to have a matching square glass. Well, concerned with defending our assump- portion of tfie interface coordination Com- here it is! This hefty square glass (each tions than with seeking the truth? munication must utilize, and be functionally weighs 14 ounces) is the perfect companion Bill Hathaway interwoven wilh, sophisticated speech to a bottle of Mr. Jack's finest. The inside is Upland. Ind, anomalies. Conversely, a constant flow of rounded to make drinking a pleasure and the effecfive information maximizes the proba- original design is Fired on for good looks and Ben Bova replies: In any argument over bility of communication success and mini- durability. My S15.00 price for a set of 4 ideas, if is prudent to seek out the evidence mizes lingual compatibility subsystem test- glasses oz. capacity) includes that can be examined, weighed, and ing. Similarly, initiation of critical-subsys- (8 postage. tested Smce before Darwin's time, the evi- tems development necessitates that urgent Send check, money order, or use American Express, Visa or Master Charge, including all dence of evolution has been found in fes- consideration be applied to the structural numbers and signature. s.'Va in lining organisms, and in the devel- framework of a given linguistic feedback (Tennessee residenls add 6% sales taxi For a color opment of all life on Earth Creationists, in I periec'ty apparatus. Have been clear? catalog full of r;id Tennessee il^nTi ami jjcn D,]n:e 's Jheir attempt to use reiigr..'- - itffioftjg] as AlCoco ^ meno-ar-ii-i s;-J SI 0E In above address. ^ a substitute- for evidence, do a disservice to New York. N.Y both religion and science. Genesis is a

powerful and moving moral tale, But It is not Games People Play biology and was never intended by Us au- Question 3 of the "Which Lasts Longer" 'hO'S to be useo a-, a bioiogv te>,'. "Pence' Quiz [Games, September i960] compares

. 1 unto Caesar " is an apt principle for the the longevity of human blood and sper^ 1 in debate between Cr&atior-ism and Evolution preservation outside of the body) The an- swer states that blood is stored only Bwee Sexist? weeks under refrigeration and sperm lasts

I realize that Omni s a science magazine, for years. Human blood can be preserved bu! your fiction stories are ridiculous. in CPDA-1 for about 35 days or frozen in The sexist viewpoints thai repeatedly glycerol for as long as three years. Pernaps come across in these stones are so out- a better comparison would be between ". dated Trie awkward inclusion of . sperm and blood in the same state. Henry thought, efficient breasts, Sparse, Pam Marmillton. M T tASCP) It-j'c: i'-Me knockers" ["Easy Points." Oc- Siidell. La, tober 1980] is so contrived and out of

Lne -A

I realize that SF writers tend to lead At long last we can announce the winner of somewhat socially and sexually isolated bur Ultra-short Story Contest, sponsored

ives ''.:>' east, -h s sreroctvpicol tno o- .-oa- by the European edition of Omni. The re- soning seems to be justified by the sample sponse was overwhelming: More than 750

of short siories I find in Omni), but, please, stories were received by the closing date, this is 1980, not 1950. Some of us have July 31 The judges of the competition were progressed Devon c such b;aiant attempts Dr. Bernard Dixon, Qmni's European editor; at sexual titillation during the last 30 years. science-fiction writer Christopher Priest; Do you want crossover readership from Patrick Moore, O.B.E.; and Andie Burland, Heavy Metal magazine, or do you want to Qmni's European editorial assistant. be a respected science magazine'7 Ruari John McCaiiion, of Baldock, Jeannette Lee Wynne Hertfordshire. England, is the winner of Richmond, Va. £500 for his story "The Smith and the Stranger." The nine runners-up were K. J. Language need not be as simple or Barnes,. James Byrne, Rob Carter (two en- Clip And Mail Coupon Today To:

.-:lr;-ui-:.; S~ io- "i+i-:v ! :".i2 straightforward as careless readers make it tries), David Cleden. Les Isbister, A. Kersh, Co. uepi. 30 1 6 K.\ Edscorp Blclg„ Barrington. out to be- The fact that a line in a story may Angus McAllister, Charlotte McDonaugh, N.J. 08007 reflect a sexist attitude does no! mean that and Julie McNaughion. Each will receive a the author or editor of the line is sexist or one-year subscription to Omni- Ed. DO PHEnjoruiEruA

ig the nigl components not of outer space but of inner fragment, viewed through Space Age optical technology, gives scientists clues to the structure of primitive tools during tl

Bronze Age. This polished specimen i magnified 100 times by Nicholas Hartmann, of the Applied Science Center of Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. A thermosetting resin (red portion of the photo) fuses the granular bronze (black portion) to a mounting medium. The ar etched with structures relating to the original use of the ore. Occasionally a common fpati irp such as corrosion (blue portion), can

?**!**ppaa Take a chance on these — a probability paradox potpourri

By Scot Morris

Interviewer: If you had it all to do over, persons, from (coincidence impossible) also holds a pair greater, less, or the same would you change anything? to 1 (coincidence absolutely certain). The as it would be if you held nothing?

Winston Churchill: Yes. I wish I had played graph crosses the .5 mark when there are the black instead of the red at Cannes and 23 persons; at that point the chance of 5. BETCHA HALF I bet half the money in Monte Carlo. matching birthdays is slightly above 1/2. my pocket on the flip of a coin. Heads you

Note Ihat our graph stops once there are pay me. tails I pay you. We toss the coin,

Imagine, if you will, a party for Ihe Omni 60 persons, because the probability hand over the money, and play again. editorial department. All ot the people grows so close to certainty that it Each time the bet is for half the money in listed in the editorial section of our mast- becomes impossible to distinguish the my possession, Afier a number of rounds I head are there, 24 in all (not counting the curve from Ihe line at the top of the graph. tally my score and find that Ihe number of contributing editors, who are out of lown For 100 people, the odds on a coincidence times I lost was equal to the number of on assignment). If you learned tha! among are about 3,300,000 to 1. Absolute cer- times I won. Did I win, lose, or break even, Ihose 24 people in the room, 2 had the tainty is not reached, of course, until there and by how much? same birthday (monlh and day), would are 366 people in the room. you be surprised? How unusual do you This month we present a potpourri of 6. TWO STRAIGHT. Leo Moser, of the think such a coincidence is? How many probability paradoxes. With each, try your University of Alberta, in Edmonton, con- other such 24-person parties would you intuition first, your logic second. You may tributed this probability puzzle to Martin t have to go to, on the average, before you be surprised at the difference. Some Gardner's Scientific American column, found another birthday match-up? questions may at first seem unanswerable "Mathematical Games": Amazingly, the chances are better than in probability terms; approach them from a Junior asks Dad whether he can have 50-50 there will be such a coincidence. different angle, and an 'Aha!" experience the car for a Saturday night date. His How can this be? Note that we tend awaits you. Educated guessing is en- father agrees, with one condition: "Today intuitively to analyze this problem by couraged; exhaustive computations is Wednesday. You will play a game of asking how likely we are to find someone are for mathematical masochists, chess tonight, another tomorrow, and a with the same birthday as our own, but this third on Friday. Your mother and I will is an entirely different question. The 1. THE LOPSIDED COIN. You have a coin alternate as opponents. If you win two chance that any two persons, chosen at that you have reason to suspect is games in a row, you may take the caron random, have the same birthday is- 1 in unfair— that is, it is biased toward heads Saturday." In the past Junior has won and 365. (This ignores February 29 and the. or tails, and a long series of flips won't lost games against both parents but fact ihat birth probabilities are not evenly come out 50-50. You want to generate a knows ihat his father is the better player of distributed throughout the year. Ignoring series of random binary digits — ones and the two. Which parent should he play first leap day lowers the probability of a coin- zeros, Can you do it with this coin? How? to maximize his chances of winning two cidence; the uneven distribution raises games in succession? Should he play it.) But the chance of a coincidence among 2. PENTAGON SPY A man is standing at a father-mother-father, or mother- father- 24 persons is much higher because random spot several kilometers from the mother?

. . = at the building there are 1 + 2 + 3 + . + 22 + 23 276 Pentagon. He looks possible matching pairs. through binoculars. What is the probability 7. HAT TRICK. After the chess challenge thathe will see three of its sides? in the above puzzle. Dad felt guilty about holding out on the car; so he offered 3. VIGNETTE. Junior a bonus on his allowance. Dad was Census taker; How many children do you a crafty mathematician, however, and his have'' offer had a twist. He had ten $10 bills, ten Statistician: Two. $1 bills, and two hats. Junior was to put the Census taker: And their sexes? 20 bills into the two hats any way he

Statistician: At least one of them is a boy. wanted. He would then be blindfolded, What is the probability that the other would randomly pick one of the two hats,

cmio also is a boy? and randomly draw a bill out of it. "If it's a

ten, you can keep it," Dad said, "but if it's a

4. PAIRADOX. If you play poker, you one"— and here his guilt was overcome by probably have a rough idea of the his craftiness — "if it's a one, yo.u'll wash likelihood that your opponent is holding Ihe car two Saturdays in a row with no The graph shows how the probability hands of various value. Suppose you hold complaints." What strategy maximizes curve rises with an increasing number of a'pair. Is the probabiliiy that your opponent Junior's chances of drawing a $10 bill? 116 OMNI .

8. LICENSE TAG. While you are standing named, would you take it? $100 prize has been awarded to Charles at stop, a bus a gambler offers to wager Kluepfel, of New York City. The solution is; you that, ot the license plate numbers on 13. SIC TRANSIT. Odds are often com- the next 20 cars to pass you, the last two puted by considering past perform- = 0.621505. digits on at least two of the plates will be ance and assuming the obvious transi- identical. gambler, The apparently tive relationship that if A beats B and Shine received 26 solutions in a few inebriated, somewhat offers to pay $2 to B beats C. then A beats C. If the weeks after the June issue came out, and your$1. Should you take the bet? Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Washington several of them had the correct answer. Redskins last week, and if the Redskins Kluepfel's was the first received. 9. STRING THING. One morning as the beat the San Diego Chargers this week, Congratulations. probability theorist awoke he saw a then, knowing nothing more, the odds Another runner-up prize went to Glenn shoelace on the floor in the pattern shown makers would tell you that the Steelers Jenkins, of Kent, Washington, who asked below but his eyes were too bleary to see should beat the Chargers next week Here for a self-contained and self-sustaining how the lace crossed itself at points A. B, is a gambling game we offer to play with environment of living things, plant and and C. What is the probability that if he Jimmy the Greek. We use three fair dice, animal, that would last long enough to picked the lace its tips, up by he would eacrrwith an unusual number of spots on prove that a life cycle had developed We find it tied into a knot? its six faces; learned later that this goal has already been reached. Roger James Malyk, a Die A has these faces: 1,1,4,4,4,4. teacher at Centennial Regional High Die B has these faces: 3,3,3,3,3,3. School, in Greenfield Park, Quebec, wrote Die C has these faces: 2,2,2,2,5,5. to say that his school has four such

Jimmy the Greek picks one die, I pick ecosystems that are air- and watertight

another, and we roll for $1 ,000 bills. The and totally self-supporting. The oldest is

higher number wins. I let Jimmy pick first, eight years old. "They contain abundant fair enough? Which die should he pick? plant life and a variety of insect species,"

Malyk writes. "Sunlight is the only form of 10. KIDS. If a couple plans to have four 14, INAUGURAL BALL. Ten senators, all direct energy input, and the plants and children, which is more likely: (1) two boys wearing top hats, as they were walking to animals reproduce themselves and have and two girls, or (2) three of one sex and the President's inauguration, were hit by balanced themselves in terms of popu- one of the other? a barrage of snowballs from a heckling lation size and food supply." We have de- crowd, and all their hats were knocked off cided to let Jenkins keep his $25 11 BIDS. In the strange land of Ultima A helpful young page retrieved them and, A suggeslion that got an honorable reverence is given to the last of everything. without asking which hat belonged to mention for Charley Lineweaver, of The Ultimans' law says, for example, that a whom, gave each senator a hat. What is Providence, Rhode Island, was "For a contractor who has a sequence of sealed the probability that exactly nine senators solar-powered ball that will not roll down a bids before him must accept, not the low- received their own hats? hill of 20 degrees or more incline as long est bid, but the last bid he opens. He is as the sun is shining." TihamerToth-Fegel, not required to open all the envelopes. Answers e10. of Sanla Clara, California, now claims to Assume that there are four bids, all dif- OLD BUSINESS have cracked this pressing problem. He ferent, and that the contractor would like sent pictures of a silvery ball, apparently to accept the lowest of them. What would Our plea for prizeworthy achievements made out of two colanders, resting on an be his best strategy? in the article "Prizes" and Competition #10 inclined plane. Nice going, Tihamer. (December 1979) brought several unique 12. CARD MATCH. Shuffle a deck of suggestions that we summarized in the THE FIVE HOUSES. Many readers wrote cards and deal them faceup one at a time June 1980 issue. Daniel P Shine, of to say thai they had found another valid while you recite aloud the names of all Cincinnati, imagined a square containing solution to this puzzle, which appeared cards in a predetermined order, for randomly placed points and asked, "What in the October issue. When we cross- example, ace through king of clubs, is the probability that any randomly checked , we found at least 1 1 legitimate followed by the same sequence for chosen point is the nearest neighbor to its solutions and a few illegitimate ones. For a diamonds, hearts, and spades. If you had nearest neighbor?" He offered a $100 prize summary of the response to this problem, the opportunity to bet even money that in for the solution, and he got a $25 runner- write to: Five Houses, Omni, 909 Third run through one the deck at least one card up prize from us for doing it. Avenue, New York, NY 10022, and enclose will be turned up precisely as it is being The problem has been solved, and the a stamped, self-addressed envelope.DQ 1 : ine oiliietis of Bio Sa ulatro-n 1.022). none. is William C. Lucas who .mg ago on NBC-TV N.:

• Reporter Bob atthat point. Howeve', NBC a

/ laughed at Fuitcn ana Ibat one of irs Staff present at

1 not tenoning at Bill siia'ion '.vas an onginee! bee

Lucas had oeen switching some gsa-e. sxplamoa. NSC nan powered IS TV light 7 order N rotated ano maoe appropriate from ;i. whar else do you need ,..i,.|...i. ,, ,, i grinding anc! hissing raises, but it would \r u r, a k

1' cui their Here's what 1 saw: A ha -.horsepower goneness "echanrca: engineer electi ic motor was run by house current to,see the machine "No way thai tiling's

v;a a-" 1 un berg rout un sable. It turned the shaft oi n "gravity wheel" of Lucas's own : wheel operating ver.icai : dcc'idcd*tha hed oeber ask tor a demen LAST design. This y. each With a cernent-anr!-iren weight lines shewing, anc the provision made k weighing 200 oounbs ina; slid aiong Hie sirnpiy pui-ing the main pewer switch LAJDRD spoke. The weights won.; cashed to the end of Ihe spoke or brawn oack 10 Ihe hub trapt.on would keep on going. By James Randi "invention." by means of pneumatic cy^nders 1. ookinc a; ihe Lucas wo

: f'lggereo bv a cam on The w-hee : ax e as it discover thai he has reinvented Ihe 67/ie delusion of /es When a flywheel, the unbalanced wheel, and aa. Surely ho loses the perpetual motion is long spoke leached s straight-down position, compressed the weigh' was drawn up to the hub. and a majority of the power that be pu-s into A. and complicated. Yet moment rater ine weigh;, now beginning tb'Oi.ioh Transference and through bictior such notions are suddenly t? downward inp ,vas shot cv to inn one If ^s 5 percent efficient, I'll be surprised.

of its spoke Thus the whee< robiied unde Aad-ci greater inieies;- 1 fiitd toa' en brought to Earth by both the force ot the motor and ihe action examination of his palen! pending oaper calculation and experiments ol the weights providing torque. Bu! where shows that no provision is made for

moved the weights'7 Web :he gravity poweii^eerr.gwe.Ghtsouliotbeenoc wheei was connected to an old Toyota spekes to cause a wheel to turn provide: transmission, which turned a 500-pounc no advantage a: a:: Yet a oatenl attorney flywheel, which ran a 4.000-wati in Washington. DC. accepted hucas's Generator, which put 220 vobs ulo a mottey to nave these papers n'ieo. perpetual motion transformer wnlcn spirt it in!o Two 110-voi- :-hehsto:y of :he circutis. one of which- ran ihe air com deiusion is long anc complicated. pressor. See? Machines similar io the Lucas

i < i r Ann the other 1 fO-vol; line'? It ran ihe asse'"-bl,-;. b. . half-horsepower motor, once the patems ever a!riCe the Paler;! Olbce arranoemenrwasiu motion. Lucas opei ieo hr business. Every amateur has claimed that he ceoouiieoied 'ho bouse figured that running a generator fro™, a cjrient that was usee; in van the action, motor run by tngt same generator would and the small motor then ran on the be a dandy idee Ye; such notions ate vo'taqe that came from the oeneiaio-' em oy The flywheel, ex experiment. Bu: that coesn t slop Ihe

!he:"c the geaonq was not Quite right, he NBC-TV News ran the Lucas story the EE : ss=d. Bti'lherehad been an "engineer" a-restec; a foxes citizen named Amor.i

: I 00' .. U..I = of wheel he had na

io* reasons tea! ' wit

soever Burke was ft: -tall motor to "help"!