Features News SPECIAL REPORT 27 Does Time Really Precede Existence? 13 Develop the Amazon! AReflection on Prigoginism Brazilian Senator Asks: 'Why Dino De Paoli Should Brazilians Go Hungry to The distinguishing characteristic of life can best be seen in Please the Queen of England?' man's unique capability to create a culture that fosters'the continuing creative breakthroughs necessary for moving civilization NUCLEAR REPORT forward. It cannot be understood from the lower standpoint 20 South Africa Plans to Mass Produce of physical processes. Pebble-Bed HTR Nuclear Reactors Jonathan Te nnenbaum 36 A Note on Nonlinearity Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. 1999 INDEX 67 Subject Author 46 The Growing Evidence of Planets 68 Beyond Our Solar System BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE Marsha Freeman 70 Promising Cancer Vaccines The discovery of 28 probable extrasolar planets, over the past Move from Lab to Clinic five years, has thrown conventional theories of planet formation Colin Lowry into turmoil. WASHINGTON REPORT 58 INTERVIEW WITH PROF. VLADIMIR VOEIKOV 72 Clinton Ups Budgets A Russian Biologist Comments on For Science, Space What Distinguishes Living Systems Marsha Freeman A leading researcher discusses the breaking frontiers of biophysics presented at the Second International A.G. Gurwitsch Conference, Dep'artments held in Moscow in September 1999. 2 EDITORIAL 3 LETTERS 5 RESEARCH COMMUNICATIONS Discovery of H2 in Space Explains Dark Matter and Redshift Paul Marmet 8 VIEWPOINT U.S. Uranium Enrichment Privatized to Death? Richard Freeman 10 NEWS BRIEFS Before During 74 BOOKS Th ese diagrams represent mathematical portraits of three hard bodies colliding, ac­ cording to Prigogine's extended fo rmalism of quantum mechanics, Classical physics On the cover: A three-body collision cannot predict the behavior of three bodies interacting, In the Prigogine quantum me­ modeled using Dr. lIya Prigogine's quan­ chanical portrait, only the probability of a certain relative speed between bodies can tum mechanics, which may be able to de­ be predicted. The colors in the plot (on the cover) represent the probability of meas­ scribe systems that are time-irreversible. Illustration courtesy of the lIya Prigogine uring a certa'in value of relative speed. Prigogine's fo rmalism is unique in producing Center for Studies in Statistical Mechan­ the horizontal bar of probability plots, which appears in the "during" model, shown ics and Complex Systems, University of on the front cover. Texas at Austin. Cover design by Rose­ Source: © Matthew Trump, courtesy of the lIya Prigogine Center mary Moak. EDITORIAL

Time ...and Philosophical Illiteracy

n one way or another, an unresolved Newton, that this time, or this space, I philosophical question seems to lurk has anything other than an ideal exis­ behind the consideraQle responses we tence, is to indulge a prejudice. received to our last editorial ("Science: The matter was resolved already, To Be or Not to Be, or, How I Discov­ nearly 300 years ago, in the published ered the Swindle of Special Relativity"). correspondence between Gottfried If one criticizes Special Relativity, it is Leibniz ahd Samuel Clarke (the transla­ usually assumed that one thus supports tor of Newton's Optickst who served as the Gali leo-Newton conception of space proxy for the neurotic mathematician­ and time. If one criticizes Maxwell's magician in the debat e). As Leibniz conception of electromagnetic propaga­ stated his position: tion, it is assumed that one supports the "As for my own opinion, I have said concept of action-at-a-distance. more than once that I hold space to be The matter reminds us somewhat of something merely relative, as time is, some recent election campaigns we've that I hold it to be an order of coexis­ seen. Someone says: tences, as time is an order of succes­ "Gore ' or Bush- make your choice." sions." [Third letter, section 4J "But they're both bozos," you might And further: reply. "I have demonstrated that space is "Come on, be realistic. Those are nothing else but an order of the exis­ your choices: pick one," they retort. tence of things observed as existing to­ For myself I have the same answer on gether, and therefore the fiction of a ma­ all of the above choices: "Neither of the terial finite universe moving forward in two. I pick LaRouche." an infin ite empty space cannot be ad­ As we are a science magazine, we mitted. It is altogether unreasonable and will focus on the approach taken by impracticable. For besides the fact that Lyndon LaRouche, and his friends, in­ there is no real space out of the material cluding Gottfried Leibniz, on the ques­ universe, such an action would be with- . tion as it relates to the scientific matters. out any design in it; it would be work­ Let us confine ourselves in this short ing without doing anything, in acting space to a brief consideration of the as­ nothing would be done by the action. sumptions underlying the conceptiori of There would happen no change which time, which also relates to items raised could be observed by any person what­ in this issue's cover story and some re­ soever. These are the i magi nations of lated articles. philosophers who have incomplete no­ Time, as it is conceived by most peo­ tions, who make space an absolute real­ ple (especially those trained in the phys­ ity. Mere mathematicians who are only ical sciences), is a product of the human taken up with the conceits of imagina­ imagination, not of nature. It is, in a tion are apt to forge such notions, but word, a prejudice. When we divide the they are destroyed by superior reasons." passage of time into homogeneous [Fifth letter, section 29J parts, as by a mechanical clock or other Although Immanuel Kant famously device, we make an assumption, just as attempted to restore the discredited no­ we do when we picture space, as tions of an absolute space and time arranged along three mutually orthogo­ (through the back door of an alleged nal axes, along which we make homo­ built-in intuition of same) to respectabil­ geneous divisions to measure length. To ity in Germany, a towering figure in the assume, with Paolo Sarpi, Gali leo, and sciences, Carl Friedrich Gauss, was

2 Spring 2000 21 st CENTURY EDITORIAL Gau ss was the first to pose the problem :«bE. II " of the curvature. of space, recognizing that there is no reasol'l , other than preju ­ dice, to assume a Eu clidean space. His prized student, Bernhard Riemann, ad­ dressed the problem more openly in the closing portion of his famous Habilita­ Letters tion dissertation, "On the .Hypotheses Which Lie at the Foundations of Geom­ ;ii etry." Riemann wrote: On Understanding "The qu estion of the validity of the The Fraud of postu lates of geometry in the indefi­ nitely small is involved in the qu estion James Clerk Maxwell concerning the ultimate basis of rela­ tions of size in space ....A decision To the Editor: upon these qu estions can be fou nd only Among the criticisms of James Clerk by starting from the structu re of phe­ Maxwell in the editorial of you r Winter nomena that has been approved in ex­ 1999-2000 issue [" Science: To Be, or perience hitherto .... Not to Be, Or, How I Discovered the "This p.ath leads ou t into the domain Swindle of Special Relativity"] the only ' of another science, into the realm of specific one was his "introducing the physics, into which the n.atu re of this concept of a magnetic field." According present occasion forbids us to pene­ to my oid college texts, it was Faraday trate." (born 40 years b.efore him, in 1791 ) Lost Ground who first conceived of magnetic and Unfortunately, because of the condi­ electric fields and their (imaginary) lines tion of almost perfect philosophical illit­ of force. And how would you disprove eracy that has overtaken us today, we su ch fields? have mostly lost ground in respect to An electrical engineer, I forced myself the investigation of so important a qu es­ to read Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity tion as this. and Magnetism all the way through, The pendulum clock (ca. 7658) de­ We are thus pleased to present in ou r about 20 years ago. The man took the ex­ signed by Leibniz's collaborator Christi­ cover story a thought-provoking exam­ perimental researches of others (giving aan Huygens. The pendulum is sus­ ination of the work of Nobel laureate them credit), i:md, making some assump­ pended by a flexible band which wraps Ilya Prigogine, which we hope will tions (which he admitted), assembled a around a segment of a cycloid curve as serve as partial antidote to the refer­ textbook of clear explanations and the it swings. Because the cycloid curve is enced unlettered ness, that so pervades mathematics involved. Without Maxwell, its own evolute, and is isochronic, the and enmires ou r cu lture today. There, electrical engineering wou ld not have clock keeps equal time regardless of the au thor De Paoli contrasts LaRouche's advanced as rapidly. Maybe the man was amplitude of swing. totally unique conception of "the si­ wrong here and there, maybe the elec­ mu ltaneity of eternity," conceived in tron theory of electricity is not entirel. y among those who opposed him, even if part in reflection upon the notions of right, bu t Maxwell's work is internally too qu ietly. time-reversibility taken up by Andrei consistent and checks experimentally. The assumption, made by the propo­ Sakharov, as opposed to the linear There is hardly a modern theoretical nents of an ideal time, is that there ex­ "time" of Prigogine. We also call the electrical engineering paper that does ists, ou tside of us, some clock, perhaps reader's attention to the comments of not cite Maxwell's fou r basic equations. only an "ideal" one, beating like a per­ Moscow biologist Vladimir Voeikov, Maxwell was practical too: I was su r­ fect pendu lu m to divide the hou rs, min­ concerning the groundbreaking work of prised to find that methods of calcula­ utes, and seconds. The analogou s as­ Ru ssian physicist Simon Shnoll: "Shnoll's tion for networks and for electrostatic su mption with respect to space, work shows that time is heterogenous. indu ction among an array of wires, that pr esumes the ex istence of an absolute It's not a Newtonian time. Each moment I had been using, were exact ly those "something," a container of sorts, ex­ in time is different from another, and described in his book. tended in three linear dimensions, infi­ this can be seen in any physical Maxwell's electromagnetic theory of nitely divisible, and in which objects processes which you study. His resu lts light is apparently still accepted. To ex­ have an existence independent of posi­ show that there is information, cosmic plain this, he used the concept of the tion- in a word, Eu clidean space. information, which is affecting all the ether (conceived by Hu ygens in 1678); Carl Friedrich Gauss was probably processes on Earth." this has never been disproved and is the first to su ggest that the qu estion as to We expect to be hearing more about coming back into favor. the true nature of space and time be this interesting work. ...in du e time. In an age when many scientists su bjected to experimental investigation. -Laurence Hecht doubted the possibility of "action at a

EDITORIAL 21st CENTURY Spring 2000 3 distance," Maxwell predicted wh at is engineering is usually th e working for­ Fusion for the now called radio, and provided th e mula. Th at IS wh y we argue: "th row out mathematics for both th e radiated field th e textbooks.". Real education begins Millennium! and th e nearby induction field. wh en th e student, of wh atever age, de­ It is hard for me to see any justifica­ velops th e intellectual passion, th e love To the Editor: tion for your editorial calling Maxwell " for truth (wh ich Plato and St. Paul called I just wanted to let you know how ...th e great British faker.... " And agape), to relive th e original discover­ much I appreciated th e report on fusion wh at is th e evidence for If •••Br itish ies. Th is brings with it a concentration energy in th e Winter 1999-2000 issue political-military hegemony at th e time span and perseverance th at need not be ["Fusion Energy-20 Years Later" by ..." imposing Maxwell's views on re­ forced, for such effort, one soon discov­ Marsha Freeman, p. 8]. luctant opponents? ers, is a joy, perhaps th e greatest we can I heard and read so many prophecies Benson Boss know, and not a ch ore. about th e new century and new millen­ Deming, N.M. Maxwell devoted much of his life to nium, but not one word about energy coming up with an alternative mathe­ from fusion. I do not know how many matical formulation of th e electrody­ billions of doll ars we spend importing The Editor Replies namical discoveries th at had been oil every year; we are terrified about th e If you want to understand th e fraud, made by Ampere and We ber, to put pollution it causes; we fret about global start by looking at wh at Maxwell (and th em in a mathematical form consis­ warming; we spend hundreds of billions before him Faraday) were so intent on tent with Faraday's field-line concep­ a year for alcohol, tobacco, and other resisting-th at is, th e electrodynamics tion. He justified th e effort, much like a substances th at actuallyhu rt us-but we of Ampere, Gauss, Weber, and Rie­ modern-day pluralist, by arguing th at are. not willing to spend $1 billion a year mann.1 I would venture to guess th at th ere is no harm in trying an alternative for developing fusion power. you have never read th eir original representation. (It seems th at practice Don't people have any imagination? work. Yet, th ese were th e discoveries­ is so prevalent in so-called th eoretical Can th ey not see wh at we could do th e real, exciting, and hard-won break­ ph ysics today, th at most fail even to with an unlimited, non-polluting sup­ th roughs-upon wh ich Maxwell bases see th at th ere is anything wrong with ply of energy? Of course, it will take his mathematical reformulations. it.) But, as th e work of Riemann sh ows some time to get going, but look at all If you do not know th em, you will not most clearly, th ere is a fu ndamental th e rest of tech nology we have already understand, among other th ings, wh y ph ilosophical difference between th e th at could be used. We know how to th e replacement of th e Ampere-Gauss­ two approaches th at is not addressed distill water for drinking and irrigation, Weber-Riemann approach by Maxwell's by th e pseudo-dichotomy, affirmed by to eliminate all hunger. We have raw formulations, greatly slowed down Maxwell, between field versus fa r­ materials for different metals and other progress in all science, including elec­ action th eories. building materials in unlimited supply, trical engineering, and more important, On th e brutal imposition of Maxwell's to fu lfill all basic needs from pl anet in our understanding of th e microphysi­ ideas in Germany, aft�r th e death of Kir­ Earth . All we need is th e energy for fab­ cal domain. ch off, see th e autobiography of Serbian­ ricating. Th ere is an essential matter of method American ph ysiCist Michael Pupin, Even if we cannot use fusion for involved here wh ich you, among many wh ich was popular in th e 1930s. Max propulsion of spaceships right away, it others, are fa iling to see. Th at is, th at a Planck also makes reference to th e mat­ still would give space travel and colo­ fu ndamental discovery concerning nat­ ter, as do many others of his generation. nization a very big boost. ural processes in th e universe is not th e In France, th ere was also a battle. In Th ank you so much for th e work you same as th e algebraic formula, or verbal America, E.H. Hall put up an interesting do to promote th ese two fields of re­ formalization, by wh ich it is later repre­ fight against th e hegemony of Maxwell, search so important to th e future of hu­ sented. Until you understand and re-ex­ wh ich led to his famous discovery of th e manity. perience for yourself, th e difficulties, Hall Effect (1879). Earlier, American As­ Hans Petri uncertainties, and passionate excite­ sociation of Science founder Joseph Wood Dale, III. ment-wh ich th e discoverer has gone Henry had had to straighten th e record th rough to arrive at his breakth rough­ concerning some of Faraday's undue you cannot claim to understand it. And, claims. Abiogenesis of Oil since all human knowledge of th e uni­ Notes ------Questioned verse is necessarily partial and incom­ 1. For an introduction to the Ampere-Gauss­ plete, you will also be in no position to Weber electrodynamics, and reference to origi­ contribute to th e advancement of nal sources, see Laurence Hecht, "The Atomic . To the Editor: Science Textbooks Don't Te ach: The Signifi­ knowledge, if all you know is th e end cance of the 1845 Gauss-Weber Correspon­ I enjoy reading your magazine for its result, but not th e subtleties, th e real dence," 21st Century, Fall 1996, pp. 21-43; and breadth of perspective and willingness Jonathan Te nnenbaum, "An Introduction to 'The to describe.deep ph ysics in terms th at I "ins and outs," of th e process of discov­ Significance of the 1845 Gauss-Weber Corre­ ery th at came before. spondence,' " ibid, pp. 2-5. (a geologist) can comprehend .... Most textbook writers today pass over For English translation of some of Riemann's Concerning th e review of Th omas works, and an introductory overviewby Lyndon The Deep Hot Bio­ th is part with a gloss, in order to get to H. LaRouche, see "Riemann Refutes Euler," Gold's 1999 book, th e "bottom line," wh ich in science and 21st Century, Winter 1995-1996, pp. 36-62. (Continued on page 12)

4 Spring 2000 21 st CENTURY LETTERS RESEARCH COMMUNICATIONS Discovery of H2 in Space Explains Dark Matter and Redshift by Pau I Marmet

n papers published about a solve the problem of the missing I decade ago, the author and col­ mass of spiral galaxies." They con­ leagues predicted the widespread clude that the galaxy contains 5 to presence of hydrogen in the mo­ 15 times more molecular than lecular (H2) form in space (Marmet atomic hydrogen. and Reber 1989; Marmet 1990a, It is generally accepted that b). Although hydrogen in the atomic hydrogen is by far the most atomic form is easily detected abundant particle in the universe. through radioastronomy, the mo­ It is also well established that lecular form is difficult to detect. about 10 times as much molecular We showed that the presence of hydrogen as atomic hydrogen this missing mass would explain solves the missing mass problem. the anomalous rotational motion Finally, Va lentijn adds: "The halo observed in galaxies, which is oth­ culture that has grown up around erwise explained by exotic- hy­ the dark matter problem might potheses, such as swarms of invisi­ never have arisen if the ISO results ble brown or white dwarfs, or had been known earlier." weird atomic particles called Two months after the publica­ WIMPs or axions, and "quark tion of this discovery, in a piece nuggets." published in Nature, Nov. 25, We also showed that the pres­ 1999, P. Richter, et al. reported the ence of large amounts of the hard­ discovery of the absorption lines of to-detect molecular hydrogen in molecular hydrogen in a high-ve­ interstellar space could provide an locity cloud of the Milky Way halo alternative explanation to the Big (Richter et al. 1999). Bang theory, by explaining the ob­ European Space Agency Nature of Molecular Hydrogen served redsh ift as a resu It of the New data from the European Space Agency's Molecular hydrogen is rarely delayed propagation of light Infrared Space Observatory (IS O), show huge looked for in space. In most papers through space, caused by the col­ amounts of molecular hydrogen in space-as pre­ in astrophysics, the word hydrogen lision of photons with interstellar dicted by this author a decade ago. Here, an artist's is mentioned without distinguishing matter. illustration of the ISO. whether it is atomic or molecular. The more commonly held view Yet it is a well-known fact of basic explains the observed shift in frequency of hydrogen and ofthe astronomical ob­ chemistry that atomic hydrogen is ex­ of the spectral lines detected from dis­ servation of atomic hydrogen in space. tremely unstable, and that it reacts vio­ tant galaxies as arising from a Doppler However, the astrophysicists preferred lently to produce molecular hydrogen, shift (a shift in the frequency of a wave to ignore H2, and instead to hypothesize which is extremely stable. Given a bottle caused by the relative motion of the the existence of weird objects. of pure atomic hydrogen, one would ex­ emitting object and the observer). The Using the European Space Agency's pect an immediate energetic explosion, downshift in the frequency, toward the Infrared Space Observatory, E. A. producing molecular hydrogen at a very red end of the spectrum, is taken to Va lentijn and P. P. van der We rf recently high temperature. mean that distant galaxies are receding detected huge amounts of molecular Atomic hydrogen (H), composed of a from us, thus implying an expanding hydrogen (H2) in NGC 891, an edge-on single proton and electron, is the sim­ universe. galaxy 30 million light-years away in plest existing stable atom. Because of Our prediction, based on a critique of Andromeda (Valentijn and van der Werf the spin structure of the particle, it is many of the commonly held assump­ 1999). In their report, published in Sep­ easily detectable using a high frequency tions of cosmology, was the resu It of a tember 1999, they state that their result radio Signal at 21-cm wavelength. serious study of the molecular structure "matches well, the mass required to Atomic hydrogen in galaxies and in in-

RESEARCH COMMUNICAT IONS 21st CENTURY Spring 2000 5 tergalactic space can be detected very 10-8 seconds. By comparison, the Why the Surprise easily, because the atomic hydrogen spontaneous emission of light from the The extreme transparency of molecu­ can change its spin (which changes its first rotational state of molecular hy­ lar hydrogen in different quantum states energy). . drogen is practically impossible. A may also be examined (Marmet 1992). Electromagnetic radiation is emitted transition from the second rotational Compared with all other known gases, at the wavelength of 21 cm, or an ab­ state (producing a photon of light) is molecular hydrogen is the most trans­ sorption line is observed (in the back­ relatively much more probable, but oc­ parent in the universe. Yet, this well­ ground radiation) at that wavelength. curs only once in about every 1,000 known fact, should have led to the ex­ However, when two atoms of atomic years. One must reach the sixth state pectation of finding molecular hydrogen combine, forming molecular before the probability of the transition hydrogen, because atomic hydrogen hydrogen (H2), their spins are coupled occurring becomes once a year. These had already been observed. It is difficult and completely cancel each other. The so-called fo rbidden transitions are so to understand why it was ignored, when radio-frequency spectral line at 21 cm improbable that we cannot hope to de­ so many experimental observations re­ no longer exists, and the molecular hy­ tect cold molecular hydrogen in space. quire the presence of missing mass in drogen becomes totally invisible at that Because the universe has an average the universe. wavelength. temperature of 3°K, the detection of There are many misleading state­ The possible vibrational and rota­ most of the molecular hydrogen still re­ ments concerning the detection of hy­ tional states for the two hydrogen nuclei mains unlikely. drogen in the universe. Without making in the diatomic hydrogen any distinction between molecule are well known atoms and molecules, (d. Herzberg 1950). How­ most papers in astro­ ever, the only two elec­ physics state that the trons are so tightly cou­ amount of hydrogen in pled, that they form a pair the universe is well in which the electric field known because it is easily and the spin of the elec­ detectable out to consid­ trons are completely can­ erable distances. The celled. presence of an enormous Molecular hydrogen amount of molecular hy­ possesses no permanent drogen certainly makes dipole. Such a perfect cou­ this statement erroneous. pling is unusual among di­ However, it is well atomic molecules. For ex­ known that atomic hydro­ ample, in the cases of gen in space was certai nl y nitrogen and oxygen, there naturally transformed into are seven and eight elec­ H2 . Over billions of years, . . trons per atom, so that d' ust, three-body interac­ when combined, it is not tions, and even photon possible to fulfill such a emission have produced perfect coupling of spins H2 . Once molecular hy­ (with zero permanent di­ drogen is formed, it is so pole) for all seven or eight stable that it has litt le pairs of electrons. probability of dissocia­ When light passes tion. It cannot be argued through normal molecular that H2 does not exist in gases, such as oxygen, ni­ space because it could be trogen, and others, radia­ ionized or dissociated by tion excites the resulting ultraviolet radiation. If electric dipole in the mol­ there were enough ultra­ ecule, and some energy is Paul Marmet, shown with the electron spectrometer that he pio­ violet radiation to ionize scattered or absorbed. neered, at the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics. The spectrometer H2 , that same radiation However, in the case of produces a low-energy, monoenergetic electron beam, which is would also ionize atomic molecular hydrogen, there used to study aspects of the electron structure of atoms and mole­ hydrogen. This is not the is no dipole moment, so cules, such as their energy levels. case, because non-ion­ that no radiation can be The electron beam is fired into a beam of atoms or molecules, ized atomic hydrogen is absorbed or emitted. directed at right angles to it. The number of ions produced in the observed, even though it Most excited molecules resulting interactions provides the information about the electron requires less energy to possess an electric or configurations in the atoms and molecules. Marmet has studied ionize the atomic than the magnetic dipole, and emit atoms of helium and argon and molecules of molecular nitrogen, molecular form of hydro- photons (light) after about molecular oxygen, carbon monoxide, and methane, among others. gen.

6 Spring 2000 21st CENTURY RESEARCH COMMUNICATIONS Th ese considerations sh ow, th at as a sh own th at th e passage of light th rough H 2 has been ignored for so long. As result of th e large amount of atomic hy­ hydrogen, either atomic or molecular, is noted by one of th e recent discoverers, drogen already observed in space, and always (slightly) inelastic. It is also E.A. Va lentijn, th e missing mass prob­ th e extreme stability of molecular hy­ known th at th e energy loss is compati­ lem might never have arisen if th e In­ drogen, th e ch emical equilibrium giving ble with th e relationship BA/A= constant. frared Space Observatory results (or pre­ th e relative abundance between atomic Consequently, th e redsh ift fo llowing th e dictions of H 2) had been known earlier. hydrogen and molecular hydrogen in collision of a ph oton with H2 is indistin­ It is also true th at th e problem would space, strongly favors th e formation of gu ishable from th e .phenomenoncaused not have arisen, if th e arguments pre­ th e diatomic form (H2) over th e by th e Doppler effect. sented by th is author and otherS" for th e . monoatomic form. We must th us con­ Only th e warmest molecular hydro­ necessary presence of H 2 had been clude th at th e recent discovery of H 2 is gen (involving high er vibration and ro­ heeded. no surprise, and sh ould have been ex­ tation quantum numbers) is detectable With th e new discovery, science can pected from th e known facts concerning now. Wh en th e technology develops to nowha ve a logical and realistic descrip­ th e natural equilibrium between H2 and th e point th at we can detect th e colder tion of natu re, because we no longer H. It is expected th at much more colder H2 in th e universe, a larger quantity of have to speculate with such exotic hy­ H2 will also be discovered. H2, coming from colder molecular hy­ potheses as WIMPs and "quark nuggets" Dark Matter and the Redshift drogen in galaxies, will certainly be dis­ to explain th e missing matter in th e uni­ Th e presence of H 2 also has impor­ covered. verse. tant consequences regarding th e origin Or. Paul Marmet recently retired from of th e universe and th e interpretation of "The poppler interpretation the Physics Fa culty at the University of th e cosmological redsh ift. Th is author of the redshift is a variation Ottawa. He was fo rmerly a senior re­ has been arguing for several years th at of the Creationist theory, searcher at the Herzberg Institute of As­ th is huge amount of transparent H 2 in trophysics of the National Research space is interacting with ligh t received since it claims that the Council of Canada, in Ottawa, and from from th e cosmos (Marmet 1988, 1990a, universe was created from 7967 to 7982, he was director of the b). Th e essential argument is summa­ nothing, 15 billion years ago� l?Jboratory fo r Atomic and Molecular rized as follows: Physics at Laval University in Quebec. with a sudden Big Bang." " Even wh en H2 is not excited to spe­ A past president of the Canadian Associ­ cific quantum states, th ere i's another ation of Physicists, Marmet also served kind of interaction th at perturbs and We know th at th e H 2 molecule pro­ as a member of the executive commit­ slows down th e moving ph oton. We duces about th e same (non-Doppler) tee fo r the Atomic Energy Commission know th at ligh t interacts with a transpar­ redsh ift as monoatomic hydrogen, but of Canada from 7979 to 7984. ent medium, because its velocity is "r e­ th e number of H 2 molecules is much He is the author of Einstein's Th eory duced, without scattering, as calculated larger. Because atomic and molecular of Relativity vs. Classical Mechan ics, and observed using th e simple index of hydrogen have an approximately ho­ published by Newton Physics Books refraction of gases. Cosmic I ight, mov­ mogenous distribution in th e universe, in Gloucester, Ontario. Marmet can be ing across billion of light years, suffers th is induces a non-Doppler redsh ift, reached by e-mail at Paul.Marmet@ an almost unimaginable number of col­ wh ich is proportional to th e distance of ottawa. com. lisions with th ose transparent molecules th e ligh t source (just as for an appar­ of hydrogen in th e universe. ently expanding universe, assumed with References ------G. Herzberg, 1950. Spectra of Diatomic Molecules Ligh t is a wave-train of electromag­ a Doppler interpretation). (Second edition,) D. van Nostrand Co. netic radiation. As a result of its coh er­ Th e recent discovery of an enormous P. Marmet, 1988. "A New Non-Doppler Effect," ence, wh ich is maintained during a time quantity of molecular hydrogen not only Physics Essays, Vol. 1 p. 24. --, 1990a. "Big Bang Cosmology Meets an As­ span (known as th e time or length of co­ solves th e problem of missing mass; it tronomical Death," 21st Century Science and herence), th e ph ase of th e electromag­ also solves th e problem of th e redsh ift, Technology, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring), pp. 52-59.

netic field progresses regularly in time. in a non-expanding unlimited universe. --, 1990b. "The Deceptive Illusion of the Big Using th e Fourier transform, we can cal­ Th e Doppler interpretation of th e red­ Bang Cosmology," Physics in Canada, Vol. 46, No. 5, pp. 97-101. culate th at an electromagnetic wave sh ift is a variation of th e Creationist th e­ --, 1992. "The Cosmological Constant and the train (which never can last an infinite ory, since it claims th at th e universe was Redshift of Quasars," IEEE, Transactions on time), always possesses two· frequency created from nothing, 15 billion years Plasma Science, Vol. 20, NO. 6 (Dec.), pp. 958- 964. components: th e usual high-frequency ago, with a sudden Big Bang. Since a P. Marmet and G. Reber, 1989. "Cosmic Matter component, but also a very low fre­ much larger amount of molecular hy­ and the Non-Expanding Universe," IEEE, Trans­ quency component, wh ich depends on drogen th an preViously admitted has actions on Plasma Science, Vol. 17, No. 2 th e time of coherence. been observed in th e universe, we can (Dec.), pp. 264-269. From th e electron-proton structure of P. Richter, P. Richter, K. S. de Boer, N. Widmann, now see how th is hydrogen is responsi­ N. Kappelmann, W. Gringel, M. Grawing, J. hydrogen, it can be calculated th at some ble for th e redsh ift observed. Th at mo­ Barnstadt, 1999. Nature, Vol. 402 (Nov. 25), p. energy is lost (scattered) during th e in­ lecular hydrogen is responsible for th e 386. teraction of light with hydrogen, wh ich redsh ift wh ich is erroneously bel ieved E. A. Valentijn and P. P. van der Wert, 1999. "First Extragalactic Direct Detection of Large-Scale depends on th at low-frequency compo­ to have a cosmological Doppler origin. Molecular Hydrogen," Astrophysical Journal nent (time of coherence). We have It is unfortunate th at th e existence of Letters, Vol. 522, No. f (Sept. 1), pp. L29-35.

RESEARCH COMMUNICATIONS 21 st CENTURY Spring 2000 7 VIEWPOINT

u.s. Uranium Enrichment Privatized to Death? by Richard Freeman

n Feb. 4, 2000, Standard and ern me nt's enrichm�nt plants, and run O Poor's rating agency downgraded them on a for-profit basis. The claim the credit rating of the United States En­ was that this would be more "efficient." richment Corporation (USEC) to "below In reality, the privatizers had their in.vestment grade"-that is, to junk­ eyes fixed on the profitable income bond status. USEC i� the largest com­ stream, which already existed, and mercial enricher of uranium in the which they hoped to make their own­ world, enriching three-quarters of an income stream that resulted from America's uranium, and one-third of the government's investment of signifi­ the world's. cant sums for plant and equipment for The process of enrichment concen­ 40 years. trates uranium material to a level at Finally, in July 1997, USEC was pri­ which it can be used as fuel in a nu­ vatized, and on July 28, 1998, an Ini­ clear reactor. Without it, nuclear power tial Public Offering was made, bringing is impossible-and nuclear power is Stuart LewisiEIRNS in $1.9 billion. indispensable for America to power its . Once they had gotten it privatized, homes and its factories, now supplying sighted cost-accounting that goes USEC's privatizers had to run a com­ about 20 percent of America's electric­ hand-in-hand with "privatizing.") pany. One of the matters USEC had to ity. At its two plants at Paducah, Ken­ confront was a 1993 agreement be­ The downgrading of USEC could tucky, and Portsmouth, Ohio, USEC tween the governments of Russia and . place it in financial danger, and hence employs the gaseous diffusion method, the United States, under which Russia jeopardy overall-and with it, our en­ which makes use of the mass differ­ would take down nearly 20,000 nuclear tire economy. ences between U-235 and· U-238. The warheads. Because the nuclear material Intensifying this crisis is the fact that converted form of uranium, uranium in a nuclear warhead is in a much more USEC, which once functioned rela­ hexafluoride, which has been heated highly enriched state than is the ura­ tively efficiently as a part of the U.S. to a gas, is passed through a semi­ nium used in fuel assemblies in a nu­ Department of Energy, was privatized porous membrane, separating out the clear reactor, the agreement stipul ated by the financial pirates of the Conserv­ lighter U- 235 from the heavier U-238. that the Russians would convert 500 ative Revolution and George Bush's It once was the case-for severa I metric tons of highly enriched uranium administration, turning soluble·prob- , decades-that the U.S. government (HEU) from dismantled warheads into lems into intractable ones. owned and operated the Paducah and low enriched uranium (LEU), to be used The Enrichment Process Portsmouth plants, both of which were as fuel to generate electricity. Uranium is a naturally occurring ele­ built in the 1950s. Until 1969, the In 1994, the implementation of this ment containing U- 235 and U- 238 iso­ plants operated almost exclusively for agreement led to a 20-year contract, topes; only U-235 is fissionable in a national defense purposes. At that whereby the U.S. federal organization power plant. Just after it has been point, they began to enrich uranium for that was the predecessor to the USEC mined, natural uranium contains only the commercial nuclear power sector agreed that it would buy LEU fuel from about 0.7 percent U-235; to make the as well. They operated on an efficient Russia, after the Russians had con­ uranium usable as fission fuel, the con­ and profitable basis, which profit was verted it from HEU, and then wo uld centration of U-235 must be increased turned over to the U.S. government. sell the LEU to util ities as fuel for nu­ to 4 percent to 5 percent. Privatization clear power plants. Rather than allow­ There are two main commercial But then, in 1992, the privateers, fo l­ ing the LEU to be stolen from them for technologies for enrichment: gaseous lowing the political lead of British a song, the Russians sold it at fa ir mar­ diffusion and the gas centrifuge. (The Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, ket price. This agreement, in addition use of lasers for isotope separation, in pushed through Congress the Energy to its pol.itical aspects, meant that the particular the Atomic Vapor Laser Iso­ Policy Act of 1992, which President Russians did not suddenly sell off large tope Separation system, known as Bush signed into law. This created the quantities of LEU, which would have AV LlS, was explored in the 1980s, and United States Enrichment Corporation collapsed the price. was expected to cut the total .costs of as a government corporation, and set For a variety of reasons, the price of the enrichment process by two thirds, out a process and timetable by which LEU has fallen. The privatized USEC is but the development of this technology the USEC would go private. A priva­ now complaining that it must pay the was dropped, as part of the short- tized USEC would lease out the gov- Russians $89 per separative work unit

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c-: 1-$7.95 3-$21.95 8-$39.95 Blnclera: 1-$9.95 3-$27.95 8-$52.95 ------I ��:�j���� I���I;�:�':p�.n�\� y I 499 Easl Erie Ave .. Philadelphia. PA 19134 Enclosed for __ I 18$ Cases;e -po-sf-age-:i=��:��� ��casel I binder funds onl ). PA residents add 6% sales I lax. (US y I Prinl I NMM'______I Address I --7.��P�.O�.��N=um��=��P����--- ______DOE I Cny' I The Gaseous Diffusion Plant at Oak Ridge, Te nn., was constructed in 7943 and I Slale/Zlp.______began producing enriched uranium fo r the Manhattan Project two years later. Its I' ������g�s��d"n�.��E�.�� FREE days.24 hours initial power consumption equalled that of the entire Soviet Union in 79391 I CALL1-800-825-6690 TOLL 7 I ___ SATISFACTION GUARANTEED __ _ (th e separative wark unit is th e level af strang. It has spent hundreds af mil­ effart required to' increase th e cancen­ lians in a stack buy-back plan to' sup­ tratian af U-235 in natural uranium). part its stack price. Starting fram scratch with uranium Th is is directly th e appasite state af hexafluoride, th e cast af praductian affairs th at wauld exist, if th e United per separative wark unit is anly $7 9 in States had pursued th e Atams far Peace th e United States. program, wh ich envisianed 2,000 nu­ Th e USEe claims th' at it is trying to' clear plants warldwide, by th e year renegatiate th e price an th e Russian 2000. Th e implementatian af th at pra­ deal, wh ich is either lasing th e USEe gram wauld have greatly increased th e maney, ar nat making it as much as it demand far LEU, and wauld have wauld like. braught an line th e mare advanced Hawever, based an its ather wark, AVLlS laser separatian enrichment th e USEe is still prafitable. Far th e six process, as well as advanced nuclear manths end i ng Dec. 31, 1999, th e plants. USEe made $48 million-which , al­ TO' recapitulate: USEe enriches fuel th augh just half af wh at it made far th e for th ree-faurths af America's 100-plus same peri ad in 1998, wauld give it an­ nuclear pawer plants. Th e dawngrad­ nual ized profits af mare th an $100 mi 1- ing af USEC's credit rating to' "belaw lian. Were th e USEe still awned and investment grade" jeapard izes th e run by th e U.S. gavernment, th e campany. Th at, in turn, cauld lead to' a ch imera af tatal profit size wauld nat gavernment bailaut, ar-wh at wauld drive everyth ing. Th e aperatian wauld be far mare seriaus-th reats to' Amer­ still be run an a healthy, efficient basis. ica's nuclear cycle, and aur ecanamy But USEe is private. Its lawered averall. earnings have caused a drap in its Th at's th e magic af privatizatian: an Infinite Energy Magazine stack price by 60 percent. Wh en it was aut-and-aut swindle. Cold Fusion Technology, Inc. P.O. Box 2816 - TF farmed, USEe fired 500 warkers; th en, Richard Freeman is an economics Concord, NH 03302-2816 an Jan. 4, 2000, it fired an ather 850 writer fo r Executive I ntellig ence Ph: 603·228-4516 Fx: 603-224-5975 warkers, fram a warkfarce ance 5,000 Review. http://www.infinite-energy.com

VIEWPOINT 21st CENTURY Spring 2000 9 NEWS BRIEFS

MODEL OF LARYNX REVEALS 'SMOKE RINGS' IN HUMAN VOICE Engineers at Purdue. University in Indiana are using plastic and mathematical models to re-create and analyze the voice production process, which depends on turbulent air flow through the glottis, an opening in the larynx (voice box). As air flows through the model, its rubbery walls are rapidly adjusted by sn'iall rods to sim­ ulate how the tissue responds during speech. This strategy is differen t from the con­ velltional approach to speech synthesis, which ignores human physiology, says Luc Mongeau, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue. The voice process begins when the lungs exert air pressure and the vocal cords open, releasing successive, pulsing jets of air, he explains. Each jet of air is attached to a leading vortex, which resembles a smoke ring that eventually detaches from the jet. The time it takes for the ring to detach from the jet-about one thousandt� of a second-is critical to the formation of speech. "Think about smoking a cigarette and making smoke rings. If you make them very slowly, the rings have time to go away, and you can watch them dissipate. But you could also puff them in close succes­ sion, and that's when you get what I call a vortex train, one vortex fo llowing an­ other, and it looks like "a caterpillar," said Mongeau. "We looked at that process with a magnifying glass in a big computer �imula­ tion," Mongeau said. "What we want to know is, how much jet development you have during that period · of time, and is that sufficient for a single vortex to fo rm and detach, or would it stay att" ached until the formation of another one?" Recent find­ ings of this study are reported in a paper in the March issue of the journal Physics David Umberger/Purdue News Service of Fluids. Luc Mongeau (right) and doctora l stu­ dent Zhaoyan Zhang work on a model EPIDEMIOLOGIST SHOWS THAT WA RMING WON'T INCREASE MALARIA designed fo r studying the aerodynamics Malaria was a widespread killer and crippler in England and other European na­ of human speech. tions during the coldest years of the Little Ice Age, in the late 1 500s, reports epi­ demiologist Paul Reiter, chief of the Entomology Section Dengue Branch of the u.S. Centers for Disease Control. Reiter documents this through epidemiological and other historical records, as well as the literature of Shakespeare and Defoe, in an ar­ ticle in the Jan. -Feb. 2000 journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. Reiter's point, directed against the global warming publicists, is that the mosquito vectors for malaria can, and did, live and transmit disease in coid and temperate cli­ mates, but, over time, swamps were drained, window screens were used, and pesti­ cides, especially DDT, were able to drive down or eliminate the mosquito popula­ tions: The English word for malaria was "ague," which remained in common usage through the 19th century. "The strongest evidence that ague was indeed malaria," Reiter says, "is the identity of its cure": an extract of cinchona powder, made from the bark of several native South American trees, which has as its principal ingredient quinine. This effective use for malaria therapy, he says, was first developed with ague patients living in the salt marshes of Essex, less than 50 km from the center of London ...." The increase in the incidence of malaria today, Reiter notes, stems from the dete­ rioration of public health services and of mosquito control, increased international travel, and natural disasters and civil strife. "Public concern should focus on ways to deal with the realities of malaria transmission, rather than on the weather," Reiter says.

IRRADIATED BEEF AND CHICKEN CELEBRATED ON CAPITOL HILL Freshly grilled irradiated beef and chicken were served to members of the Agri­ culture Committees of the House and Senate, as well as the press, Feb. 17, in cele­ © John Harrington/Shandwick International bration of the final approval of red meat irradiation regulations, issued Feb. 22 by Grilled irradiated beef and chicken: sal­ the u.S. Department of Agriculture. The burger event was sponsored by Food Te ch­ monella free. Ask fo r irradiated products nology Services, Inc. of Mulberry, Florida (formerly called Vi ndicator), and MDS at your local supermarket this spring. Nordion, an international supplier of irradiation technology.

10 Spring 2000 21st CENTURY NEWS BRIEFS NASA PLANET-HUNTING CONTRACTS AWARDED BY JPL Four industrial-academic teams were awarded contracts in March by th e jet Propulsion Laboratory, to design th e Te rrestrial Planet Finder, a mission th at will look for possible planets around other stars. "The ch allenge is like trying to locate a . firefly next to th e beam of a brilliant searchlight," said Dr. Ch arles A. Beichman of JPL, wh o is th e project scientist for th e mission. Th e mission is planned to launch in 2012, and to look at 250 stars over a five­ year period, making th ousands of images with a sh arpness th at is 10 to 100 times brighter th an th ose of th e Hubble Space Te lescope. Th e teams will be led by Ball Aerospace, Lockh eed Martin Space Systems, TRW, and SVS; th ey represent about 75 scientists from 30 universities and research institutions, and 16 industrial firms. For more on NASA's overall planet-finding project, see "The Growing Evidence of Jet PropulSion Laboratory/NASA Planets Beyond Our Solar System," p. 46. One design fo r the Te rrestrial Planet Finder. The mission requires develop­ REPORT PLAYS DOWN FEARS OF GLOBAL WARMING HEALTH EFFECTS ment of many challenging technologies, A 12-member blue ribbon scientific panel, headed by jonathan Patz of th e including those necessary to fly several johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, examined th e po­ 3.5 meter (737-inch) telescopes in pre­ tential impacts on health of "climate variability," and concluded th at: "The levels cise fo rmation, down to a fra ction of a of uncertainty preclude any definitive statement on th e direction of potential fu­ centimeter, even though the telescopes ture ch ange ...." Th e report further states th at flat present most of th e U.S. pop­ will be a distance of several fo otball­ ulation is protected against adverse health outcom�s associated with weather fi elds apart. and/or climate ...." Th e report was part of a congressionally mandated study of climate ch ange in th e United States, and th e team of authors included experts from academia, government, and th e private sector, wh o were selected by th e U.S. Environmenta l Protection Agency's Global Ch ange Research Program. Th e report is published in th e April 2000 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives.

THE ONLY GOOD ARGUMENT YET PRESENTED AGAINST DDT Th e letters column of Invention & Te chnology magazine (Spring 2000) prints th e only good argument we have yet seen against DDT. We quote in full th e letter, writ­ ten by Sh ell Reinish of Westlake Village, Calif., under th e heading "The Perils of Pesticide." "Just as a point of information, in your article 'The Sh ort-Lived Miracle of DDT' (by Darwin H. Stapleton, Winter 2000) th ere is a picture of Mrs. Gee Goldstein of Brooklyn spraying her Brooklyn apartment with Army DDT in 1945. Th e caption says, 'Her young son is present to demonstrate its safety.' [A small boy is pictured in a ch ild's bed, wh ile th e mother sprays.] "It may not have been so safe. Th at baby grew up to be th e porn mogul AI Gold­ stein, publisher of th e newspaper Screw."

NEURAL DEVICE MAY ALLOW PROSTHETICS TO FUNCTION NATURALLY Animal models of a neural interface th at links th e nervous system to th e electronic hardware of a prosthetic limb are under testing at th e New York Institute of Tech nol­ ogy, and testing of a human model is planned in th e next th ree to five years. Th e de­ vice is being developed by Dr. Michael We lls, a professor of biomechanics and bio­ engineering at th e Institute. It connects disrupted nerves in th e amputated limb to small muscle segments, using electrodes th at amplify control signals by a power of 10. Th e prosthetic device will th en be able to carry out th e brain's commands in a more natural manner. Th e research project is funded in part by th e National Science Foundation.

ELECTRIFICAT ION GREATEST 20TH CENTURY ENGINEERING PROJECT New York Institute of Te chnology Electrification topped th e National Academy of Engineering's list of th e 20 engi­ Or. Michael We lls, who is working on neering achievements in th e last century th at had th e greatest impact on th e health, the development of a neural interface safety, productivity, and overall standard of living of people th roughout th e world device to allow prosthetics to fu nction (Continued on page 72) naturally.

NEWS BRIEFS 21st CENTURY Spring 2000 11 letters minerals in the rocks, and the tempera­ biomass. Coal is a result of the bacter­ ture-pressure regime it finds on the ial addition of carbon that is derived Continued from page 4 way. " Thus, no mention is made by from methane to peat. sphere (Reviewed by Paul Sheridan, Gold to the end of 1998 or any rework­ The term shameless is a good descrip­ Fall 1999, p. 67): You probably know ing by biology of inorganic, abiogeni­ tion for Gold's blatant plagiarism of my that Thomas C;old published a theory cally-originating, geologic product to theory. of "abiogenesis" of oil in 1987 (Power create petroleum .. C. Warren Hunt fr om the Earth). He regarded petroleum How Thomas Gold could undergo Calgary, Alberta, Canada as part of the makeup of the planetesi­ such a conversion between the end of ' mals that accreted to form the Earth. the 1998 conference and the 1999 Gold's theory in 12 subsequent years publication date of Oeep Hot Bios­ Paul Sheridan Replies in his publications, up to and including phere is puzzling-unless one knows his contribution in December 1998 of that next to Gold's paper in the Kazan Nowhere in The Oeep Hot Biosphere a poster at a conference on Petroleum conference was another paper that does Dr. Thomas Gold proclaim that Potentials in the Crystalline Basement, specifically advances an entirely new there is a direct conversion of geologi­ held in Kazan, Tatarstan, never concept: the anhydride theory, cal materials into "petroleum" by bio­ changed. The petro leum was of pri­ whereby, petroleum is created by bac­ logical means. Mr. Hunt does not offer mordial origin. teria acting on methane that effuses the page reference that confirms his al­ The Tatarstan paper was titled "Metal from Earth's interior. The paper was legation. Ores and Hydrocarbons," and its theme, mine: "Anhydride Theory: A New The­ Dr. Gold's earlier book, Power from in Gold's words, was that " ...hyd ro­ ory of Petroleum and Coal Genera­ the Earth, goes into great detai I about carbon flow, on the way up [from Earth's tion." It sets forth the proposition that the interaction between biology and interior] will make a large array of mol­ petroleum is a mixture of "an-hydrides" deep-source hydrocarbons, but never ecules, in detail depending on such of methane, and that these are created does Gold "undergo such a conver­ things as the carbon-hydrogen ratio, the by the progressive stripping of hydro­ sion," as alleged by Hunt. ratio to other elements like nitrogen and gen from methane by microorganisms, Mr. Hunt shou ld read Chapter 9, of oxygen, the catalytic action of specific either with or without associated fossi I Power from the Ea rth.

News Briefs during the past century. The achievements were nominated by 29 professional Continued fr om page 11 engineering societies and ranked by a panel of the nation's most distinguished en­ gineers. Presenting the list Feb. 22, at the National Press Club, was former astronaut Neil Armstrong, a member of Academy and the'first man to walk on the Moon. The panel noted that the impact of electrification has been vast, and a prerequisite for economic development and for most-if not all-of the other achievements on the list. Also in the top 10 were the automobile, the airplane, water supply and distribution, agricul­ tural mechanization, and air-conditioning and refrigeration. As Armstrong read the list, he reported that space exploration was number 12 out of 20. He described space flight as "perhaps the greatest engineering achievement of the century," but said that it ranked behind the others in direct impact on the quality of life.

PRINCE CHARLES LAUNCHES ECOLOGICAL RESERVE-AND TROUBLE England's Prince Charles visited the former British colony of Guyana Feb. 26-27, to inaugurate a 400,000 km ecological "reserve on the border with Brazil. The new Iwokrama reserve is in the Guyanese region of Rupununi, which borders the Brazil­ ian state of Roraima, and the Raposa/Serra do Sol area, 1.6 million hectares of which is slated to be demarcated as an Indian reserve by the Brazilian agency in charge of Indian affairs. The visit set off alarm bells in Brazil, as indicated by coverage in the Brasil Norte newspaper, which notes that a leading non-governmental group supporting this demar­ cation is the British-run Wo rldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), "which has the Prince as its primary spokesman." The paper also points out that, as in the case of the Yanomami reserve, a cross-border indigenous region in both Ve nezuela and Brazil, the newly des­ ©C. Risdon ignated reserve "could become a free-transit area for the Macuxi Indians living in Brazil Astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man and in Guyana, despite the international border separating both countries." to walk on the Moon, announces the Brazi I ian patriots have criticized the ecological reserve movement as a sub­ top 20 engineering achievements of the terfuge for the destruction of national sovereignty and an aid to the looting of natu­ 20th century, as selected by a blue­ ral resources, including strategic minerals, by international conglomerates. (See this ribbon panel of u.s. engineers. issue's Special Report, p. 13.)

12 Spring 2000 21 st CENTURY LETTERS SPECIAL REPORT Develop the Amazon! Brazilian Senator asks: 'Why should Brazilians go hungry to please the Queen of England?'

EDITOR'S NOTE Brazilian patriots from all walks of life have launched a renewed campaign in defense of Brazil's right to develop the entirety of its national territory, includ­ ing the Amazon. Campaigns carried out under the banner of environm·entalism, "indigenous rights, " and other fra uds have already succeeded in banning most human activity throughout the enormous Amazon region, largely on the basis of lies and deliberate misinfor­ mation. The Brazilian government, headed by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, has proven itself an eager in­ strument of the international interests running the campaigns of lies, in order to better grab the riches of the Amazon fo r themselves. (Cardoso, it should be noted, as President, kneeled before the Queen of England in 1997, in order to re ceive a British knighthood.) On Nov. 10, 1999, the Brazilian Sen­ ate's National Defense and Foreign Re­ lations Committee held extraordinary EIRNS hearings on "The Amazon-Threatened Sen. Gilberta Mestrinho, who represents Brazil's state ofAm azonas: "My ecological Patrimony, " chaired by fo rmer President standpoint is a profoundly Christian one, because I learned as a child . . . that Jose Sarney (n ow a Senator). One of the Christ came to save man-I don't recall any chapter or verse which says that He two speakers who testified was Senator came to save the trees and the crocodiles" (from a 1992 interview with Executive Gilberto Mestrinho, who represents the Intelligence Review). state of Amazonas. Mestrinho, who served three terms as defender of the proposition that the ficial record of the Brazilian Senate, Governor of Amazonas before being Amazon, like the rest of the Earth, is have been excerpted and translated elected to the Senate, is an outspoken there fo r Man's development. Further, from the Portuguese by Gretchen Small that the right to the ben­ fo r 21 st Centu ry. Subheads and fo ot­ efits ofprogress extends notes have been added; translator's to all human beings, and comments are in brackets. that Brazil's Indians, like * * * all other Brazilians, are Excerpts from Speech of human beings. Sen. Gilberto Mestrinho, Ami)zonas Proud that his own o better understand the Amazon, let grandmother was an In­ Tus make a mental regression to the dian, Mestrinho has time in which we studied geography, pointed out that if to­ and visualize, in a virtual image, the po­ day's racist "p rotectors sition of the Amazon on the map of of the Indians" had dom- Brazil, and its position in relation to the inated politics when he countries which border it. It is a vast was growing up, he area. The Brazilian Amazon covers 550 never could have be­ million hectares; there are 220 million come Governor. His re­ hectares more in the bordering coun­ ) marks, taken from the of- tries, which form what is known as the SPECIAL REPORT 21st CENTURY Spring 2000 13 "Amazon SheiL" These are, precisely: forest, the largest forest also existent on the analysts and researchers, as simply, the region of the Pando and the Beni in the face of the Earth, the Amazon, which the greatest mineral region on the Bolivia, the Department of Loreto, in has 550 hectares in Brazil and 200 mil­ Earth,l The mineral potential of the re­ Peru, the Department of Amazonas in lion hectares in neighboring countries gion was estimated at $6 trillion. And Colombia, the Department of Amazonas .... In certain areas, the Amazon kept further, [there were] precious and strate­ in the Venezuelan savannah, and the that original characteristic. For example, gic metals, such as gold, platinum, nio­ border areas of the Republic of Guyana, in the valley between .Madeira and Pu­ bium, uranium, cassiterite, tantalum; in the Republic of Surinam, and French rus, are the prairies of Puciari, 2.2 mil- addition to other minerals of great eco­ Guyana, the only one which sti ll has not lion hectares of grasslands ...imm ense nomic value: iron, copper, titanium, acquired the status of an independent prairies typical of the region .... When that was discovered in the re­ country. That is the characteristic of the re- gion, it coincided also with the discov­ This. region, wh'ich forms a border­ : gion: forests, natural prairies, and a fan­ ery that, despite the fact that the Ama­ in part delimited by rivers, in part by ge­ tastic hydrographic potential of rivers zon forest was highly heterogeneous, odesic lines, some lakes-;-is greater than and lakes, capable of generating more there are more or less homogeneous ar­ 6,000 kilometers long, separating the energy than the total amount produced eas: In Para, for example, of mahogany; -Brazilian part from the part of the'coun­ in the country, if alr the hydroelectric in Alto Solimoes, mahogany; in the re­ tries which make up what is c.al led the potential of the region were util ized. gion of Alto Jurua, also cedar and ma­ International Amazon. [This energy is] sufficient, in a minute hogany. How Did the Amazon Arise? and a half, to supply the whole popula­ Enter the Environmentalist liars And how did that Amazon arise? That tion of the Earth, when we reach 6 bi I­ We ll, with these two discoveries­ Amazon, in the distant past, formed a lion people, 150 liters of water each. mineral wealth and wealth of vegeta7 great sea which, with the first alluvial . The Amazon river sends 6 million liters tion-the international markets were ' inundation from the Parima-Roraima of water into the ocean per second. panic-stricken. It was necessary to stop, mountain system, and later, the alluvion A Dazzling Array of Resources at any price and any cost, the develop­ from the Andes-the most recent histor­ And what exists in that Amazon? For ment of the Amazon, and international ' ically-created the greatest sedimentary a long time, it was argued that it was protectors began to appear. A great basin existing on the planet. The sea impossible for mineral deposits to exist many organizations assembled to pro­ was expelled, and, in its place, a great in the Amazon, bec<;luse, geologically, it tect the Amazon .... quantity of sediments came to form . was very new soi I, a sedimentary area; And, suddenly, terrible incidents re­ what is known as the Amazon Plain, therefore, there had not been enough I ated to the Amazon began to be re­ which was bounded on the north, by time for the.formation of minerals in the ported, especially after international aid the Parima or the Roraima mountai'n region, programs fonhe region were drawn up. ' ranges; on the west, by the foothills of However, not· long ago, Man, with his These organizations came here, and the Andes; and on the south and south­ creativity, invented the satellite, ultra­ adqpted the principle of brainwashing east, by the foothi lis of the central Brazi I sound technology, satellite depth-imag­ of the theoreticians of the Tavistock In­ range, the central Brazil ridge. ing, and was suddenly dazzled, stitute:2 the pri nciple that it is necessary, In this region, with that alluvion of in order to achieve its objectives, to poi­ earth, the sedimentary basin alone, the "When someone opts to give son the mind of society so that it be­ alluvial strata, in some areas reaches a more importance to animals lieves unreal facts, depth of more than 3 kilometers. At the than to human beings, next, The campaigns began, all at the serv­ beginning, this was a semi-desert re­ ice of the Establishment, this Anglo­ he will treat human beings as gion. According to the experts, it was a . Dutch-French Establ ishment which ex­ large savannah .... animals." ploits and dominates these markets, At the time of the last glaciation, a lit­ especially the world mineral and timber tle more than 10,000 years ago ...the The world believed that there was no markets. greatest concentration of carbon gas ex­ possibility that region possessed miner­ Those organizations came here, were istent over the earth was located exactly als in its bowels, and had even previ­ set up here, and they did not develop over the Amazon. That concentration of ously come up with the idea, without any identification with Brazilian reality, carbon dioxide, through the conditions anyone protesting-except we of the nor with the environmental question, of climate, Sun, and humidity, trans­ Amazon, at the time-of flooding the when they speak about the Amazon. formed that carbon dioxide into a gas Amazon fo rest, through the creation of a Why? Because the most important natu­ battery-which is what trees are. Trees lake dreamed up by the Hudson Insti­ ral resource existing on Earth is Man­ are nothing more nor less than a carbon tute, The supposition, at that time, was this is the most important of all. The day dioxide battery transformed into wood. also that the mineral deposits would be in which we disappear, the Earth will From this came the great forest in the located in the foothills of the Andean have no importance. This is the proper Amazon region. and Parima ranges, It wou ld be easier, view. So, the Amazon is the only region in flooding the forest, to bring transporta­ And Mankind with intelligence, with the world-contradicting many theo­ tion there. At the time, the world ap­ knowledge, is going to use the environ­ ries-which was initially a semi-desert, plauded, .., ment to its benefit. Because, when or almost desert, and which became a That Amazon was then appraised by someone opts to give more i.mportance

14 Spring 2000 21 st CENTURY SPECIAL REPORT for all this timber? This is so that we see what the news reported is like .... Once NASA, which is a most serious international institution, publicized on televisions around the world, the conse­ quences of the deforestation of the Ama­ zon, the burnings in the Amazon, and showed the prairies of Puciari. This was loudly publicized throughout the world. But, when she [NASA] saw the error and retracted the story, the retraction was re­ leased discretely and no one knew any­ thing about it. ... Those are the news stories reported about the Amazon, raising that scandal and frightening people with alarming news of the Amazon's destruction. To give you an example, the whole Legal Amazon had, at the beginning of the century, 732,000 inhabitants. Today, it has 20 million .... In my state [Amazonas], we had a bit more than 400,000 inhabitants in the decade of the 1940s; today, we have 3 ©BiII Gentile/CORBIS million! Manaus, [the capital of Ama­ "Keeping [the Amazon] untouched does not benefit anyone. The Indian remains zonas, and] cities and roads in the inte­ miserable. I have seen it. It is painful. " Here, Ya nomami Indian tribesmen at their rior were built, and so on, and the de­ communal huts in the rainforest of Ve nezuela, bordering Brazil. forestation does not eve.n reach 2 percent of the original jungle. In the en­ to animals than to human beings, next, or iliegal timber taken from the Ama­ tire Amazon, not 11 percent of the origi­ he will treat human beings as animals. zon, be careful. Make some calcula­ nal forest has been affected, despite the This is what Hitler did. He was the first tions, reflect. errors which occurred .... head of state who fo unded environmen­ A few days ago, one of the most im­ Yet, every day, you can see the news, tal policy and protection of the animals, portant newspapers in the country, a se­ and, what is worse, the Brazilian govern­ and the human beings who survived rious, thorough analyst of the economy, ment's environmental policy, totally con­ know what happened .... wrote the fo llowing: Last year, "40 mil­ trary to the Amazon's interests, because It is these principles, almost all lion cubic meters of timber left the Ama­ its objective is not to attend to the desires premised on fascist principles, which zon, of which only 20 percent was le­ of the Amazon population which lives oriented that false environmental pol­ gal." And it added, that according to there; its objective is to expel Man from icy's obsession with the Amazon. There some, [this figure was] 28 million [cubic the Amazon, creating conditions which is no degradation of the Amazon. Fran­ meters] . make life impossible in the region. cisco Orenalla descended the Amazon When you read a news story like Yanomamis As Pawns River in 1546; from 1546 until 1999, al­ that, for your clarification, do the fo l­ And why is that? Because it is neces­ most 500 years [have passed]. Yes, we lowing calculation: A ship, the largest sary to empty the Amazon; it is neces­ made some mistakes in the region, insti­ ship which can negotiate the Amazon­ sary that Brazilians leave the Amazon gated by those who today think differ­ ian rivers, is able to transport only so that its domination or control is eas­ ently-because the mistaken projects 5,000 cubic meters of wood at a time. ier, which is what they are already then carried out in the Amazon were in­ Therefore, to transport 40 million cu­ achieving. And how? Besides environ­ spired and financed by the World Bank, bic meters, 8,000 ships per year would mental policy, there is the ind igenist and the large landowners were foreign be necessary: [That is] 666.6 ships per policy .... companies, not national ones. The proj­ month, 22.2 ships per day, 2.2 ships A policy of occupying the Amazon ects in the Para were all by Mercedes, per hour, would make 40 million. If it border areas was adopted abroad, under Vo lkswagen, companies like that, in the were 28 million: 466 ships per month, the pretext of defending the Indian popu­ south of Para.3 15.5 ships per day, and 1 ship every lations. There was a meeting in Britain, Use Your Head! 90 minutes. after the British observed our country and That principle leads us to reflect upon Imagine what would happen to the did a fu ll survey of their interests, in and examine something: When you traffic on the Amazonian rivers if this which the necessity was discussed of im­ read news stories-and I am going to were true. And the time to load the posing upon the Brazilian government­ give you some concrete examples­ boats? How to load the boats? Where to this discussion was carried out in the about the deforestation of the Amazon load the boats? And the world market presence of the Queen, the Duke of Ed-

SPECIAL REPORT 21 st CENTURY Spring 2000 15 Symbol Resource Au Gold AI Alumina Asb Asbestos Be Berylliumlberyl Bx Bauxite C Coal Cb Columbium Cu Copper Cr Chromite Dm Diamond Ds Dolomite FA Ferroalloys Fe Iron ore � Iron and steel Gr Graphite Gyp Gypsum Kao Kaolin Mn Manganese Nb Niobium NG Natural gas Ni Nickel P Phosphate Qtz Quartz or quartzite Sn Tin Ti Titanium U Uranium W Tungsten Zr Zircon

BRAZIL'S MINERAL WEALTH Brazil has one of the world's largest reserves of mineral and natural resources. Half of its territory is located in the Ama­ zon rainforest region, much of whose mineral-rich area remains unexplored, and its resources untapped. The symbols on the map show where specific resources are being mined, and where there are beneficiation plants or wells. Symbols in parentheses indicate significant sites of undeveloped resources. Underlined symbols are where there is a processing plant or oil refinery, including smelters and metal refineries. The hatched areas are where there are major holdings of the Companhia Va le do Rui Doce (CVRD), the fo rmerly na­ tional government company, which the government privatized in May 1997. The CVRD is the world's largest producer of iron ore, and holds concessions on the largest and most promising areas of mineral exploitation in the country.

Source: Executive Intelligence Review

inburgh, and the British Minister of For­ demarcation of their lands, very justifi­ no longer do this-the killing of female eign Relations-the demarcation of the ably. But the Yanomamis are four differ­ babies who were born. There was, Park, Yanomami Reserve.4 ent groups. All of them are Yanomami, therefore, a great shortage of women, They discovered that these Indians had but they are different. They even speak which even today still exists in the existed there for more than 20,000 years. different dialects, and live constantly Yanomami villages. They fought to rob Accord ing to the Yanomamis, with fighting among themselves. The women from the other groups who had whom I have lived . . they wanted the Yanomamis had as a custom-now they escaped that initial killing.

16 Spring 2000 21 st CENTURY SPECIAL REPORT They wanted a demarcation. There Orinoco rivers offers the opportunity of Venezuela. The same thing [was also] are 150 settlements, called islands, or linking navigation flows of great interest obtained from the Ve nezuelan Govern­ groups where the villages are located. to the country, an outlet for Brazilian ment of Carlos Andres Perez, through Under the Sarney Government, the de­ production. So, it was necessary to the biosphere reserve in the Yanomami crees had been drawn up to give 1,724 make the demarcation cover continuous area of the Orinoco-Casiquiari region of million hectares to the 150 settlements areas. Claudia Andujar, a Swede at the Venezuela. desired by the Yanomamis. They wanted service of those organizations, and of Bankers' 'Nations' Created this division. The Sarney Government the British headquarters which domi­ The future Yanomami nation, so­ carried out a study, and was going to do nates the minerals market, drew up a called, was ready. Only, the Indians did this demarcation. blueprint of all the area where precious not want that. ... But, while that interested the Indi­ metals are located, and which should So, let us visualize our initial image: ans, it did not interest their protectors. be delimited as a reserve. Continuing along the border of Whoever has heard speak of the There was a first meeting in London, a Venezuela, Colombia begins. A new re­ Guyana Shield, knows that this is a re­ second one in Brazil, and, at the third, serve of 8.2 million hectares. There, it gion hungered after for a long time. It in 1990 or 1991 , the Brazilian Govern­ was discovered that there were Tu cano extends from the Orinoco, Casiquiare, ment, through the President of the Re­ Indians, nearly 18,000, almost all illiter­ and Rio Negro rivers to the Atlantic, public, signed the demarcation of 9.2 ate .... and is extremely rich in minerals. [See million hectares of lands for the 4,000 Still, the encirclement of the borders figure, page 18.] Yanomamis who live in that area along was not finished; it was necessary to The linking of the Casiquiare and the border between Brazil and close off the lower part. Thus, they be-

THE AMAZON RIVER flOOD PLAINS: A HUGE AGRICULTURAL POTENTIAL Senator Mestrinho estimates that the Amazon could be a home to 50 million people, if scientific flood plain agriculture were employed. The Amazon River fluctuates between 8 and 70 meters, which allows large areas to be flooded fo r ap­ proximately six months of the year. The floodplains that fo rm when the Amazon and its tributaries overflow are extremely fe rtile, and available fo r cultivation fo r the other six months each year. Th e approximate.area of the fe rtile floodplains is estimated at 780,000 square kilometers (44.5 million acres). About 80 percent of these floodplains are in the state of Amazonas, which Senator Mestrinho represents. To develop this huge potential requires the appropriate technology-special wide-wheel tractors, fo r example-and scientific research to de­ termine the best types of crops and seeds.

SPECIAL REPORT 21 st CENTURY Spring 2000 17 gan to consider the Javari reserve. No more than 600 Indians live in the Javari reserve, 8 million hectares on the Brazil­ ' North ian side. These are the Gaceteiros or Cu­ Atlantic rubas Indians, who live in Brazil in the Ocean dry [Iow .water] season, and another part of the time in Peru. - THE 'GUYANA ISLAND' But that is the cradle of future nations. I saw already in Europe, a map of Brazil in which the Yanomami nation is de­ picted as if it were a diffe rent nation, another nation. It is known that Indian ·,Ceara . Para leaders are studying in international Amazonas Piaui universities, preparing themselves to be the future leaders of those so-called na­ THE 'GUYANA SHIELD' INITIATIVE tions. They believe that they can do in The "Guyana Shield" Initiative mentioned by Senator Mestrinho is financed Brazil what has been done to Africa .... and controlled by the Wo rld Wide Fund fo r Nature (WWF) and its sister or­ All these reserves were created in the ganization, the International Union fo r the Conservation of Nature (JUCN), region. And more than that, bordering with other NGO participation. Its alleged objective is to "p rotect" the fl ora on' the reserves, the Brazi lian Govern­ and fa una of the Shield area. ment created the so-called national Th is geographical area, which encompasses the area known as the Guyana parks and ecological reserves. And now Island, the area delimited by the Orinoco, Casiquiare, Negro, and Amazon they want to create the s,o-called-this rivers, has histol'ically been the geopolitical target of the Anglo-french-Dutch also was dictated by the Wo rld Bank oligarchy, as the preferred entry point fo r establishing a fo othold in the Ama­ and the Grol!p of Seven-"e.cological zon. (This objective was partially achieved with the establishment of their re­ corridors." They did not even take into spective colonies-the French, Dutch, and British Guyanas.) account the surface area, in as much as, At. the center of the "Sh ield" is the state of Roraima, which, as a result of for e.xample, in my State, the Amazonas, the NGO activities, now has 44 percent of its territory either in Indian re­ five ecological corridors are envisioned. serves or nature conservation areas-and therefore unable to be developed. These corridors would be 140 kilome­ ters long,' with neighbori ng areas pro­ tected also. In those ecological corri­ Amazon. Three hundred and twenty or­ lion U.S. dollars' worth of forest prod­ dors, nothing can be done. ganizations, speaking of NGOs, dealing ucts are exported from the region. Fin­ Then, calculate that five times 140 is with the Amazon. And they carried out land, in forest products alone, exports 700 kilometers. Yet, in the Amazonas, that campaign of stickers, [which read] more than $10 billion a year from a some regions are not more than 800 "Burn a Brazilian and· Save the Ama­ forest which is frozen six months a kilometers long, from north to south. So, zon!" ... year, and where a pinetree takes 80 , how can anyone live there, if everything Earth Created for Man years to grow. is prohibited? .. God, when he made the world-all [In contrast], the samauma miratinga, The NGO Army religions teach this-made Man and the the viro/�, in the Amazon plain, pro­ What props this up? The so-called non­ environment, so that Man, with the duce, in 10 years, at least 8 cubic me­ governmental organizations (NGOs). sweat of his brow, draws his sustenance, ters of wood [each], and the timber of There are good NGOs, which do work, and that of his family, from the environ­ the region could be taken advantage of but almost all of those who say they are ment. This is a Christian prinCiple. He without any environmental damage. dedicated to the environmental or the conceived the world to save Man, ac­ I am going to give but one example: Indian question, defend other interests cording to the teachings of all the reli­ For 50 years, all the energy generated in which are not the interests of Brazil, are gious books. Every prophet, of whatever the Amazon-for electricity, for pump­ not the Amazon's interests, are not the religion, conceives of the world to save ing water, for urban transport- ... interests of our people, because none of Man, who is what is most important on was taken from the forest. There were them propose a way to generate em­ Earth. many boats which went up and down ployment. ... Have you, gentlemen, ever thought, the river, creating a great river traffic at Do they produce bread for anyone? that' our surface area is 550 million that time, and all the energy was taken Generate any economic activity? Better hectares, of which 369 million hectares from the forest. It was firewood, which the quality of life of the people? No. are covered with forests?-A country was taken from the forest. It was the era This, unfortunately, is the painful reality. like Finland, in the Amazon, would be of the steam engine. And there are an enormous number of a lar.ge backyard because of its small I remember, when I was a boy, I wan­ organizations which work in the Ama­ size, replete with lakes.-That we, with dered on the boats, and there were zon.... A book was published, recently, this immensity of timber and fo rests, ports fo r firewood, where the boats discussing these organizations ....There practically do not participate in the in­ would stop to pick up firewood. They are 320 organizations looking after the ternational market? Not even 500 mil- would go a bit further, and, once again,

18 Spring 2000 21st CENTURY SPECIAL REPORT stop to pick up firewood. But, if we try today to find where this firewood was taken from the forest, we find no sign of it. Why? Because the forest renovates it­ self.... So, my friends, if we wish to effectively carry out a policy of improving the at­ mosphere in carbon dioxide, CO , con­ 2 serving and improving the Amazon jun­ gle, giving better conditions of life to those people, the best way would be by managing the forest. First of all, because Man, cutting wood, betters his quality of life; second, because, cutting down an old tree, a new tree is born, which will absorb more CO from the atmosphere, 2 creating a cycle of improvement of the environment and of wealth for Man. That would be the correct philosophy to apply in the region. The scientific and technical knowledge for this exists today. If the Brazilian government, if the non­ EIRNS governmental organ izations, really The Grande Carajas Project: The Carajas iron mine, which is in the middle of the wished to contribute to the development Amazon rain fo rest, in hills 2,000 fe et above sea level, has an estimated 78 billion of the region, they would take this sug­ tons of iron ore, with an average purity more than twice that of most u.s. iron mines. gestion, this idea, this work, this teach­ Initial plans called fo r an agro-industrial city of 20,000 people, but the dictates of the ing, and not accost us with accusations international banking groups turned the project into one of ra w materials export only. such as, "you are destroyers", "you are amateurs," "I'm going to close this As for extractive reserves,s they are technology, those resources which we sawmill, I am going to close this, that." are ·a romantic dream: very pretty, but have, and to better the conditions of life From what are men going to live? they preserve misery. If seeing pitiful, of our people? ..This is what our po­ How are they going to feed their chil­ poor, miserable, children with dis­ sition should be. Thank you. dren? In exchange for what? To please tended bellies is beautifu l, you defend Notes ------the Queen of England? To please the that activity. But we do not want that! 1. See "Oligarchy Wants to Grab the Amazon," in Duke of Edinburgh? No, not that! No! ... Executive Intelligence Reviews Jan. 22, 1993 It's Man That Is Endangered Keeping [the Amazon] untouched feature on "The Real Amazon: Why Brazil Will Defend It." Also, "London's Policy of 'Africaniza­ I know that there are people who does not benefit anyone. The Indian re­ tion': The Next Ta rget Is Brazil," and "British think that I am an enemy of the ecolo­ mains miserable. I have seen it. It is Cartels Break Up Brazil's CVRD, Ta rget Conti­ nent's Raw Materials," in in ''The True Story Be­ gists and the environmentalists, but I painful. ...I saw, a month ago, an In­ hind the Fall of the House of Windsor," Execu­ have never been so .... I am opposed dian chief, and three Yanomami tribal tive Intelligence Review Special Report, Sept. to farces, to disinformation, the other in­ leaders of different ages because they 1997. terests behind the environmental or in­ were from different groLJps.... They 2. See ''Tavistock's Impe.rial Brainwashing Projecf' by L. Wolfe, a report on the Tavistock Institute's digenist policy.... I distrust those who told me: [the women] walk six hours brainwashing plan to control the world via "the come here to save trees. They are not from the hut to the mountain to look for empires of the mind," in "The True Story Behind endangered . It is Man who is endan­ bananas. Six hours to get there, without the Fall of the House of Windsor," Ex ecutive In­ telligence Review Special Report, Sept. 1997. gered in the Amazon, with this govern­ stopping, and six hours to return. So, 3. Such errors include an attempt (which failed) by ment's erroneous policy and interna­ they have to go on one day, sleep there, foreign interests to establish a meat-producing tional pressure. and then return. center for export to Europe in Para, when meat was already scarce in that area, and the World The animals of the Amazon are not The women can't stand this any Bank-financed project in the 1970s, to send endangered; it is the poor Brazilian In­ longer: [walking] kilometers with that poor peasants to colonize the states of Rondo­ dian who lives there, obstinately keep­ immense weight, and sometimes with a nia and Acre. ing the region within the national terri­ child to carry. The Indian doesn't want 4. Executive Intelligence Review published a chronology of the British Crown's 2S-year proj­ tory, who is endangered .... that anymore. He cannot tolerate that ect to set up the Yanomami reserve, "The As for rubber ...[eve n] producing any more. It is inhuman, and unjust. ... Yanomamis: The British Royal Family's Per­ sonal 'Noble Savages, '" in the Nov. 11, 1994 is­ with all our might, if there were still Bring the Indian real support, the bene­ sue. rubber-tappers in the Amazon, we fits of civilization, respecting certain of 5. The so-called "extractive reserves" promoted by would only preserve misery.... This is his customs .... the environmentalists and indigenists, would an activity of misery. We do not want to Why do we not have the right to ex­ "permif' native populations to live within conser­ vation areas, provided that they employ only the preserve misery in the Amazon; we ploit, with much more intelligence, with most primitive technologies, such as rubber tap­ want development. much more rationality, with much more ping, harvesting nuts, and so on.

SPECIAL REPORT 21st CENTURY Spring 2000 19 NUCLEAR REPORT

South Africa Plans to Mass Produce Pebble- Bed HTR Nuclear ·Reactors by Jonathan Te nnenbaum

outh Africa's electric­ Sity company, Eskom, has drawn up plans for an ambitious program to develop and produce small, standardized, high-temperature nuclear reactor modules both for domestic use and for ex­ port. The detailed design is projected to be com­ pleted around the end of this year, with the first module to go into opera­ tion by the year 2005. Core conditioning Eventually, Eskom i n­ system tends to produce as many Bypass valve as 30 modu les per year, both for domestic use and export. The South African Reactor Interrupt project wa's begun dur­ pressure valve vessel ing the early 1990s, to conditioning pursue the possibility of system applying the technology of the High-Te mperature CUTAWAY VIEW OF THE PEBBLE-BED Gas-Cooled Reactor, HIGH-TEMPERATURE MODULAR HTR, as a nuclear alter­ REACTOR (PBMR) native to coal power in The reactor vessel (left) in Eskom 's PBMR meeting the country's 114-MW reactor design is 18 meters long, rapidly expanding elec­ and contains 310,000 fu el balls ("peb­ tricity requirements.' bles"), plus 130,000 graphite balls fo r The project has special moderation of the reaction. In its continu­ importance because the ous refueling process, fu el balls are added modular HTR has unique at the top of the vessel and removed at the featu res that make it fu nnel-shaped reactor bottom. Each fu el ball contains about 9 grams of uranium. ideal for use as a power Electricity is generated by a direct-cycle helium turbine (right). Helium gas is heated in source for economic de­ the reactor core to 900°C, and passes directly to the turbine, where its thermal expansion is velopment around the transformed into rota tional motion fo r electricity generation. The expanded helium is recy­ world, and particularly cled into the reactor core by two turbocompressors (center). in the developing sector. The small size, simplicity, and efficiency of the PBMR are what promises to make it the These include small size, "work horse reactor" fo r widespread use around the word in the next 20 years.

low cost and high effi­ Source: Courtesy of Eskom ciency; robust and inher­ ently safe design; sim- .

20 Spring 2000 21 st CENTURY NUCLEAR REPORT Fuel sphere Half section Coated particle 1 mm 60 mm

Pyrolytic carbon Silicon carbide barrier coating Inner pyrolytit carbon Porous carbon buffer

' Uranium • dioxide 5 mm graphite layer . Coated particles O.5 mm imbedded in graphite matrix

PEBBLE-BED FUEl PEllETS The fu el pellets fo r the PBMR are coated particles (p ioneered by General Atomic:;s in the United States). Each fu el pel- · Iet has uranium dioxide at the center, surrounded by several concentric layers of temp'erature-resistant materials; in­ cluding silicon carbide. The coatings "contain" the fission reaction of the uranium, even at very high temperatures. ' ' Th ousands of these particles are embedded in a graphite matrix,' to make up a tennis-ball-size sphere. In the pebble­ bed design, the fu el balls fi ll the reactor vessel.. (In the General Atomics HTR design, the fu el particles are fo rmed into a rod-shaped graphite matrix.}

Source: Courtesy of Eskom plicity of operation; and potential appli­ Thanks to a major electrification pro­ bles"), about the size of tennis balls, in­ cation as a heat source for desalination, gram, according to Eskom, access to stead of the familiar fuel rods of stan­ chemical industry and other industrial electricity has risen from only 30 per­ dard light water reactors. Accordingly, processes. as well as cheap· generation cent of the South African population in the South Africans call their new reactor of electricity. For this reaSOR, the HTR the early 1 990s, to more than 60 per­ the Pebble-Bed Modular Reactor or figures prominently .inthe "Eurasian cent today. At present, more than 93 PMBR. Landbridge" development concept pro­ percent of South Africa's electricity Background of the HTR moted by Lyndon LaRouche and his col­ comes from coal, and is produced The HTR, or HTGR, is an alternative laborators.2 mainly by large-scale coal-burning line of nuclear reactor- technology, Although the basic HTR design em­ plants built near two large coal fields. which differs in important respects from ployed in the South African project is These are located far inland, in the the light water reactor (LWR) and heavy the so-called pebble-bed reactor devel­ northeast of the country, far away from water reactor (HWR) technologies, oped in Germany, the South Africans the coastal centers of electricity con­ which are used in nearly all commercial are not simply taking over existing tech­ sumption. The pro-spectof avoiding the nuclear power generation in the world nology, but are carrying out ambitious enormous costs of transporting large today. Early experience included the new technological developments of amounts of coal, or of electricity, over Dragon reactor in Great Britain, the their own. This includes development of distances of 1,000 kilometers, is a major Peach Bottom, and Ft. St. Vrain reactors a helium turbine for direct-cycle gener­ factor favoring the. use of nuclear en­ in the United States, and the AVR Reac­ ation of electricity. In fact, the South ergy. tor in Julich, Germany. African HTR project is an excellent South Africa, which is rich in ura­ The AVR reactor demonstrated the means to make highly productive use of nium, has a single pressurized water re­ pebble bed concept invented by the late the highly qualified scientific and tech­ actor, located near Capetown, which Prof. Rudolf Schulten. It operated suc­ nical manpower and industrial infra­ produces 4.5 percent of the country's cessfu lly from 1967 to 1988, at outlet structure, which already exists in that electricity. However, for various rea­ temperatures of 900° to 950° (compared nation. In addition, as a developing sons, Eskom has decided against con­ to typical outlet temperatures of 280°-to country itself, South Africa is in an ex­ structing more large-scale nuclear 330° in LWR reactors). Development cellent position to act as a springboard plants, and instead has pursued the con­ work on the Julich reactor demonstrated for the HTR technology to the entire de­ cept of much smaller sized modular re­ not only the feasibility of "inherently veloping sector. actors, based on Germany's pebble-bed safe" operation (see below), but also the South Africa's Requirements HTR technology. The term pebble-bed potential to use the HTR as a heat­ South Africa currently accounts for derives from the fact, that the reactor source for a variety of industrial more than half of the electricity con­ core in this reactor type consists of a processes, such as generation of synthe­ sumed on the entire African continent. pile of spherical fuel elements ("peb- sis gas, coal gasification, and produc-

NUCLEAR REPORT 21 st CENT.URY Spring 2000 21 ries-produced, modular reactor units, rather than the giant (1 ,000-MWe or more) reactor blocks commonly used in commercial LWR and HWR nuclear power stations. To reach higher powers, Eskom plans to install as many as 10 HTR modules at a Single site, with a common control room. This approach replaces the economy of scale-individual reactors of very large capacity-exploited until now by the nuclear industry, by the economy of mass-production of a large nu mber of standardized smaller units. A big addi­ tional advantage, especially for devel­ oping-sector countries, which should become a major export market for South Africa's new HTR industry, is the flexi­ bility inherent in the low cost and sinall size of the individual modules. Thereby, the intrinsic advantages of nuclear en­ ergy wi II become avai lable to nations and regions having limited long-term capital, and where existing electricity grids are fartoo small for the huge LWR EIRNS plants built in industrial countries. The author (third from left), visiting the Chinese research center that is testing tech­ With the modular HTR system, a nologies fo r the HTR at Qinghua University, near Beijing. power station could be set up initially with just one ora few modules; addi­ tion of synthetic fuels, including hydro­ peri mental HTR module, based on the tional modules would then be added, gen; oil refining and heavy oil recovery; German pebble-bed concepti has been gradually, as the grid capacity and elec­ bauxite processing; ammonia produc­ built in China by Qinghua University's tricity demand grow. tion; desalination; and cogeneration of Institute of Nuclear Energy Te chnology Small size and standardized design district heat. near Beijing. This reactor is scheduled will permit greatly reduced construction In the mid-1 980s, a large-scale, 500- to go critical later this year. times. Once routine production has MW HTR power plant was operated for (2) A 30-MWt High Te �perature Te st been establ ished, it is anticipated that several years in Germany, only to be Reactor, built by the japan Atomic En­ the lead time from decision to commis­ shut down for political reasons. Signifi­ ergy Research Institute (jAERI), is now sioning of a reactor will be only three cant development work continued, operating at jAERI's Oarai Research Es­ years, including a two-year construction however, both in Germany and in the tablishment. This reactor, which has phase. (Naturally, construction and in­ United States, where the HTR technol­ prism-shaped fuel blocks, will be used stallation of multiple modules can be ogy was pioneered by the General (among other things) to test HTR carried out in parallel.) Atomics Company in San Diego. process-heat applications. Eskom expects to reach a production Despite the remarkable successes of (3) A cooperative program is now on- level of about 30 HTR units per year by the jOlich HTR, in particular, HTR tech­ . going with General Atomics, France's the end of this decade, of which 10 nology has so far failed to establish itself Framatome, japan's Fuji Electric Com­ would be destined for domestic use, in commercial power generation. Apart pany and the Russian Minatom, to de­ and 20 for export. Eskom counts main­ from various technical hurdles, which velop a 600-MWt modular plant, which land China and Ta iwan, South Korea, largely have been overcome, the "back­ would be used to burn up weapons plu­ India, and other Asian nations among seat" status of the HTR is not least of all tonium and produce cheap electricity at the most promising potential buyers of connected to theopposition of sections the same time. the HTR modules. of the nuclear power industry, which (4) Last but not least, is the ambitious The Cost Savings fear competition to the established LWR PBMR program lau nched by South The development costs for the first re­ technology, and, generally, to the efforts Africa's Eskom, which promises a near­ actor units are estimated to be about of the anti-nuclear lobby. During the term breakthrough of the HTR technol­ $72 million. The construction cost for 1990s, however, the prospects for HTR ogy into commercial· electricity produc- the first unit should be about $100 mil­ technology have dramatically im­ tion. lion, with the unit price subsequently proved, thanks to a wave of new proj­ The Eskom PBMR Concept going down to about $90 million for ects in several countries: A key feature of Eskom's strategy is each of the next 10 units. (1 ) A 10-megawatt-thermal (MWt) ex- the flexible use of small (11 O-MWe), se- Taking account of the economies

22 Spring 2000 21st CENTURY NUCLEAR REPORT achieved by series .pr.oduction of stan­ first priority for Eskom, the inherent flex­ coated particles, is that nearly all the ra­ dardized HTR modules, it is estimated ibility of the system recommends it also dioactive fission products, which are that the total cost of generated electric­ for other applications. For example, created by the fission of the uranium in ity can be brought down to below 1.6 South African experts have pointed to the particle, remain trapped inside the cents per kilowatt-hour-a very com­ the fact, the PBMR could lend itself par­ particle, even at very high temperatures. petitive level, indeed! ticularly well as a heat source for desqli­ In the German pebble-bed design, the This remarkably low figure, which nation, by exploiting its waste heat tem­ actual fuel elements are spheres ("peb­ would make PBMR-produced electricity perature of up to 90°C. Negotiations bles") the size of tennis-balls, in which considerably cheaper than existing nu­ have reportedly already have been initi­ thousands bf coated particles are em­ clear or fossil-fuel plants, has raised ated, on this theme, with the Interna­ bedded in a graphite matrix. If desired, some eyebrows in the international tional Atomic Energy Agency and further outside coatings can be added to power business, particularly among African countries such as Morocco. the fuel pebbles, reducing diffusion those not familiar with the unique ad­ Also, the ability to locate PBMRs vir­ even more, and rendering the pebbles vantages of this type of reactor. But the tually anywhere (once licenses have impervious to oxidation and' corrosion'. Eskom estimates have a solid basis. been 'issued), means that this reactor (The latter is also relevant for the option, By far the most significant cost-reduc­ could become readily available as an as pointed out by Prof. Schulten, for us­ tion factor-and a very substantial one, industrial energy source for production ing water instead of helium as a coolant indeed-derives from the inherent, pas­ of synthetic fuels, chemical products for lower-temperature. pebble-bed reac- sive safety characteristics designed into etc. The PBMR is also seen as a viable tors.) the PBMR system: The complex, ex­ source of energy supply in remote areas, The core of a pebble-bed reactor con­ tremely costly active safety systems, such as for mining regions located far sists of a pile of hundreds of thousands which are needed to guarantee the away from existing transmission lines. of spherical fuel elements, fi lling a cylin­ safety of conventional nuclear reactors, Pebble-bed Technology Basics drical vessel with a funnel-shaped coni­ are rendered superfluous by the natural The German High Te mperature Reac­ cal lower end. In fu ll operation, each physical properties of the PBMR, which tor (HTR) development group very early fuel "pebble" typically generates around rule out a dangerous overheating or re­ adopted the goal, to create "from 500 watts of heat. Unlike the large light lease of radioactivity under all condi­ scratch" (that is, not as an adaptation of water reactors, wh ich have to be shut tions (see below). a pre-existing design) a basic reactor down for severa l weeks for refueling, Second, because of their neutronic type which could be not only inher­ the pebble-bed HTR is continuously re­ characteristics, the PBMRs have a very ently safe, but also highly economical. fu eled: Fuel balls are withdrawn at the high burn-up ratio, permitting extremely The idea was to realize a fo rm of nu­ end of the "funnel" at the bottom of the cost-effective util ization of the nuclear clear energy that not only would be reactor, and replacement balls are intro­ fuel. Additional cost-reduction factors good for generating electricity, but also duced at the top. include, of course, the savings in con­ cou Id be used as a heat sou rce for a By this combination of introducing struction time and expense by manufac­ wide range of chemical and other in­ fresh balls and recycling partially turing many standardized units. dustri a I processes; a reactor wh i ch "burnt" old ones, the reactivity of the Although Eskom is taking on the lion's could be realized in a variety of sizes core is maintained at a relatively con­ share of development work on the and would be simple, robust, and safe stant level-generally speaking, only as PBMR, the company will also be able to enough to be built and operated in in­ is required to maintain the chain reac­ profit from a high level of international dustrial and population centers any­ tion. cooperation and participation. In addi­ where in the world, including the de­ The South African PBMR, with an 18- tion to a long-standing cooperation with veloping nations. meter-long pressure vessel, is planned Germany, where the pebble-bed tech­ The result, reached in decades of to operate with approximately 300,000 nology originated, the South Africans work, is the German pebble-bed HTR; fuel balls, plus an additional 130,000 are cooperating, among others, with and two related designs with somewhat graphite balls for additional moderation Russia's Kurchatov Institute (where a different, "prism-shaped" fuel elements, of the reaction. In the course of the con­ test core for the fuel elements has been developed in the United States and tinuous refueling, a total of 10 to 15 fuel set up), with the United Kingdom's AEA, Japan. loads will be consumed during the de­ with NRG in Holland, and with the Chi­ Key to many of the inherent safety sign lifetime of the reactor. The level of nese HTR group at INET. and many other advantages of these re­ enrichment of the uranium fuel will be Benefits for Industry actors is a U.S. invention called "coated initially 4 percent at startup, and then 8 The PBMR project can have consider­ particles." Instead of arranging the ura­ 'percent for equilibrium operation. Each able benefits for South Africa's domestic nium fuel in the form of cylindrical pel­ fuel ball will contain about 9 grams of industry. The PBMRs built for South lets stacked inside metallic rods (fuel uranium. African domestic use, for example, wi II rods), the HTR fuel elements are built Because the fuel balls are not built have 81 percent local (South African) from tiny, sand-corn-sized uranium par­ into housings, there is no possibility of content. For exported PBMRs, it is esti­ ticles, which are encapsulated in con­ distorting, or jamming, inside the reac­ mated that the stations will have 50 per­ centric layers of temperature-resistant tor-a potential problem for the fuel rod cent South African content. materials, including, especially, silicon assemblies of conventional reactors. Although electricity production is the carbide. A major advantage of these The control rods do not go through the

NUCLEAR REPORT 21 st CENTURY Spring 2000 23 The small size and simplicity of the helium turbine add to the attractiveness of the �BMR. The helium turbine has many advantages. It is much more effi­ cient than a steam-cycle turbine; helium has an excellent heat transfer capacity, which leads to high thermal efficien­ cies. Second, the speed of sound in he­ lium is five times higher than it is in air, which translates into the possibility of higher rotational speeds, permitting the turbine units to be made much smaller and more compact. A third advantage is that helium is chemically and radiologi­ cally inert. The PBMR operates with a single he­ lium gas coolant cycle, without the costly heat exchangers and secondary cycles used in' ordinary light water reac­ tors. Helium gas is heated in the reactor Eskom core to a temperature of 900°, and South Africa 's Koeberg Nuclear Power Plant, built by the French company Framatome, passes directly to a turbine, where its has two conventional 922-MW reactors that have been in commercial operation since thermal expansion is transformed ·i nto 7984 and 7985. Nuclear now supplies 4.5 percent of South Africa 's electricity. rotational motion for electricity genera­ tion. The expanded helium is then recy­ core, but are located in channels'sur­ tures in excess of the maximum temper­ cled into the reactor core by means of rounding it. ature which could be reached in any two turbocompressors, entering at an Through continual testing and devel­ conceivable accident, error, or even a inlet temperature of 569°. With its opment, the release of radioactive prod­ deliberate mishandling of the reactor. higher operating temperature, the South ucts from HTR fuel elements was Together with the smaller "pebble bed" African HTR realizes a net efficiency of brought down to extremely low levels­ HTR project in China, the South Africa 45 percent (compared to 30 to 35 per­ far lower than LWRs in normal opera­ PBMR can provide an invaluable test cent for standard LWRs). tion at much lower temperatures. The bed for further improvements of the Waste heat can be removed either by encapsulation of radioactive fission spherical fuel elements. water cooling or air cooling, thus pro­ products within the HTR fuel elements The drastic reduction of radioactivity viding important additional flexibility in is ensured up to temperatures of 1,600°. release from fuel elements under all the choice of sites. (Use of air cooling Thus, HTR fuel elements can easily conditions permits major simplifications was demonstrated on the 500-MW HTR withstand temperatures at which the in the design and maintenance of peb­ in Germany.) normal metallic fuels rods of LWRs ble-bed HTR reactors. In particular, the Achieving 'Inherent Safety' would weaken and fa il, releasing large option of direct-cycle generation of A very important feature of the South amounts of radioactive substances. electricity-by placing a turbine directly African PBMR is its inherent safety, The level of radioactivity released to in the reactor cooling cycles-becomes which at the same time permits unique the coolant gas (helium) in the 500-MW far simpler, than is realized, for exam­ economies' in construction and opera­ pebble-bed reactor in Schmeehausen, ple, in the standard boi ling water reac­ tion. To appreciate the significance of Germany, for example was so low, that a tors, where significant levels of radioac­ this feature, one must take a brief look person could theoretically inhale'it with­ tivity in the coolant water necessitate at the two different, basic approaches to out risking dangerous radioactive expo­ special measures for containment and the nuclear safety problem, which have sure. This translates into much lower ra­ maintenance. emerged in the course of development diation doses to the personnel, than in The Helium Tu rbine of nuclear energy. conventional nuclear power plants The South African PBMR will include The main approach, which has been (where doses are already very low). a major innovation vis-a-vis earlier HTR followed in the development and design In fact, the "cleanness" of HTRs can designs: exploitation of direct-cycle of nearly all the commercial reactors now be improved even further, thanks generation of electricity by a helium tur­ operating around the world, is to reduce to a breakthrough by Prof. Schulten and bine-its first use in commercial power the estimated probability of an accident his co-workers, in creating the advanced production. Here, the South Africans involving a dangerous release of ra­ silicon-carbide-based ceramic material will make use of some of their experi­ dioactivity to the outside, to such a low "Siamant." With the help of Siamant, it ence in aircraft technology, and in the level, that it is judged "acceptable" or becomes feasible to construct fuel "peb­ ultracentrifuge-bearing technology de­ even practically insignificant in compar­ bles" in such a way, that essentially no veloped in the country's former military ison with the countless other risks of in­ reactivity is released-up to tempera- nuclear program. dustrial society, 'and the average risks

24 Spring 2000 21 st CENTURY NUCLEAR REPORT which any reasonabl.eperson accepts in cessfu Ily confi ned with i n the reactor count for a significant percentage (on his daily life. building, and there was absolutely no the order of 30 to 50 percent) of the cost According to this approach, the de­ significant health danger to the popula­ of a nuclear power plant. Furthermore, signers do not attempt to completely tion outside the plant. The plant itself, the modern plants are extremely com­ eliminate the possibility of a major acci­ however, had to be permanently shut plex, requiring very high skill levels in dent-indeed, this is nearly impossible down and dismantled at great expense. construction and in operation, which with the LWR technology-but only to The fi rst type of problem is compl i­ alone has tended to restrict their use render it extremely unlikely. This goal is cated by the fact, that the LWRs are re­ mainly to advanced industrial nations. achieved with the help of a high redun­ fueled only from time to time, rather Designs for light water reactors do ex­ dancy of crucial components and exten­ than continuously; thus, a new "charge" ist, in which the possibility of the two sive safety systems. of fuel rods must have a sufficiently major types of accidents, indicated The second approach, followed in the large excess of reactivity, to maintain above, is virtually eliminated, without German development of the HTR, and the criticality of the reactor for many depending on complex active cooling adopted by the South African PBMR, is months, in spite of a substantial amount and safety systems. This can be done by to design the reactor in such a way, that of "burnup" until the next scheduled re­ reducing the amount of excess reactiv­ a major accident involving a dangerous fueling. In the event that all the control ity, and placing reservoirs of coolant release of radioactivity is excluded un­ rods were, for some reason, suddenly water above the reactor core, so that a der all imaginable conditions, by the withdrawn from the reactor, the chain sufficient flow of coolant is ensured by physical characteristics of the reactor it­ reaction would rapidly grow out of con­ gravity alone. However, these designs self-without depending on additional trol, with possibly disastrous conse­ are very far removed from the present safety systems. (This is also the ap­ quences. In practice, the likelihood of a commercial LWRs, and have been re­ proach, it should be noted, adopted by "runaway" reaction is rendered ex­ jected on the grounds of too high costs. other advanced reactor designs.) tremely remote, by a combination of au­ The principal difficulty lies in the physi­ Obviously, common sense would nat­ tomatic control, emergency shutdown, cal basics of the LWR technology, which urally prefer the second approach. and other safety systems. was originally developed for military However, for various reasons, con­ The second problem is exacerbated use (U.S. nuclear submarines), under nected in part with the specific history by the fact, that during its normal opera­ circumstances where safety considera­ of the development of nuclear energy, tion, a fission reactor accumulates a tions were much less stringent than for the fi rst approach has predominated. large inventory of heat-generating ra­ commercial nuclear power today. This is connected with the fact, that in­ dioactive fission products. As a resu It, The HTR in general, and particularly herent safety is very difficult, or even even after a successful "shutdown" of a the pebble-bed design, was conceived impossible, to achieve at an economi­ reactor (that is, ending the chain reac­ from very early on with a view toward cally acceptable cost, for the light water tion), the radioactive substances in the inherent safety, based on physical prin­ reactor designs which have dominated core continue to produce large amounts ciples, without the need for any special commercial nuclear energy generation of heat. In the case of modern LWRs, safety systems or exotic design features. until now. this amount of heat is so large, that reac­ Rather than contributing to increased The basic physical characteristics of tor components would be severely dam­ costs, the inherent safety features greatly the standard, large-size LWRs now in aged, and eventually would melt, unless improve the economic viability of the use are such, that two basic sorts of seri­ the heat-buildup were speedily removed reactor. ous accidents are possible, in principle: by active cooling systems. To prevent Two Features of Inherent Safety

• A reactivity accident-an uncon­ such an eventuality, modern LWRs are Tw o basic features are key to the "in­ trolled, "runaway" chain reaction, re­ built with several back-up cooling sys­ herent safety" realized by modular peb­ sulting, for example, from a fa ilure of tems, so that the likelihood of a simulta­ ble-bed reactors like the PBMR: control systems, improper operation, neous failure of all of them is extremely First, HTRs are generally character­ sabotage, and so on. remote. ized by a strongly negative temperature • An overheating, or even "melt­ coefficient. This means that the effi­ down, " of the reactor core, with rupture "The total cost of generated ciency of the chain reaction-the aver­ of fuel elements and large-scale release electricity can be brought age number of fission reactions triggered of radioactive substances from the core, down to below 1.6 cents per by a given neutron in the reactor-de­ which could conceivably result from creases very rapidly with temperature. fa ilure of cooling systems, or their inad­ kilowatt-hour--a very This is achieved by the choice of core vertent or deliberate switching-off. competitive level, indeed!" geometry and the moderator material In fact, a serious accident of the first (mainly graphite). As a result, a signifi­ sort did occur once, namely, in Cher­ The state-of-the-art LWR reactors are, cant increase of temperature above the nobyl, leading also to an explosion and without doubt, extremely safe. How­ designed operating temperature (ca. fire with massive release of radioactivity ever, that safety is ensured only by in­ 900°) immediately causes the reactor to to a large area. A relatively serious acci­ vestment in complex safety and control become subcritical; in other words, the dent of the second type occurred in systems, as well as special quality stan­ chain reaction stops by itself, without Three Mile Island. In the latter case, the dards of manufacture of components any outside intervention. dangerous levels of radioactive were suc- ("nuclear grade"), which together ac- This "automatic shutdown," which

NUCLEAR REPORT 21 st CENTURY Spring 2000 25 occurs within fractions of a second by a As a result of these two main proper­ ter the plant has been shut down, the natural physical process, was demon­ ties, a reactivity accident and the re­ spent fuel can be stored on site for an­ strated repeatedly on the AVR test reac­ lease of significant amounts of radioac­ other 40 years before being sent to a fi­ tor in JOlich. For example, at maximum tivity are both excluded under all nal repository (as with other spent nu­ power, the control rods were suddenly conditions, including deliberate sabo­ clear fuell. withdrawn and the cooling systems tage of the reactor. No special safety The properties of the PBMR's spheri­ turned off-a suicidal act in a normal systems are required! This means an cal fuel elements make spent fuel ele­ reactor! With the AVR, nothing hap­ enormous cost reduction as well as ma­ ments much easier to store than fuel pened; the chain reaction immediately jor simplifications in the design, con­ rods from a PWR. Thanks to the encap­ ceased, and the reactor temperature re­ struction, and operation of the reactor. sulation of the fuel particles by silicon mained within the tolerance of the fuel Waste Handling carbide coatings, the radioactive fission elements. The PBMR system has been designed products are fu lly retained inside the Second, the dimensions of the PBMR to make the handling of nuclear waste fuel elements. The extraordinary stabil­ reactor and its relatively low power den­ particularly efficient and safe. Provision ity and corrosion resistance of the sili­ sity are chosen so that the natural diffu­ is made in the design of the PBMR for con carbide material, ensures the long­ sion of heat through the reactor vessel the storage of spent fuel. There is term isolation of the radioactive provides sufficient "passive cooling" to enough room for it to be stored in dry products for approximately a million keep the maximum core temperature, af­ storage tanks for the 40-year lifetime of years, which is longer than the activity ter a reactor shutdown, well within the the plant, during which time no spent even of plutonium. Thus, a final storage 1,600° tolerances of the fuel elements. fuel need be removed from the site. Af- of spent fuel elements in intact form, ex­ ploiting their built-in encapsulation properties, becomes a feasible and cost­ In the March 31 issue of effective option. The Demonstration PBMR Expected shortly is the final "green light" from the South African govern­ ment, to go ahead with the first, demon­ stration PBMR. Preliminary construction activities could commence in the first Executive Intelligence Review half of 2001 . Completion of construc­ tion and first critical ity of the reactor should occur about three years later, to NEW ACCOUNTING STANDARDS ARE IMPERATIVE be followed by one year of commission­ ing activities. The plant, therefore, could go into commercial operation in 2005. The Becoming Death of The decision on the location of the demonstration PBMR is also expected to Systems Analysis be made th is year, and Eskom has ac­ quired various sites along the South by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. African coast for future siting of nuclear power stations. The demonstration On the day on which, existing money goes out PBMR will probably be built at an exist­ of existence, as in We imar Germany 1923, what do ing, registered nuclear site such as Koe­ the existing accountants do? berg, where Eskom has sufficient ground and more than adequate infrastructure An epoch-making 64-page study by the world's leading to accommodate the plant. physical economist. Jonathan Te nnenbaum is the editor­ in-chief of the German-language Fusion Why the previously used, linear, "connect the dots" tactics, of magazine, and works closely with the both financial accounting and of systems analysis, must be Schiller Institute and economist Lyndon abandoned, and replaced. LaRouche on development programs.

Available for $10, postage paid, from: Notes ------1. See "South Africa Plans Advanced High­ temperature Nuclear Reactor," an interview with Em News Service, Inc. Eskom Project Manager David Nicholls, 21st P.O. Box 17390, Wa shington, D.C. 20041-0390. Century. Spring 1997, p. 26. 2. A 290-page report on the Eurasian Land-Bridge, 'The New Silk Road'-Locomotive for Wo rld­ For subscription information, phone (toll free): 888-EIR-3258. wide Economic Development, was published in 1997 by Executive Intelligence Review, P. O. Box 17390, Washington, D.C. 20041 -0390.

26 Spring 2000 21 st CENTURY NUCLEAR REPORT NASA The Earth in motion, one of a series of time-lapse images taken by the Calileo spacecraft, about 1.3 million miles away.

lya Prigogine is a vyorld-renowned scientist, who won the tion of determinism contains a specifically Western dichotomy Nobel Prize, in 1977, for his theory of dissipative structures, between nature and mind, according to Prigogine. His solu­ I and who, in 1989, was awarded hereditary nobility and the tion for that alleged problem, is to look for a new unity of the title of Viscount by the King of Belgium. He is part of a wide world, through a combination of thermodynamics (which tra­ group of scientists who are seeking a new global paradigm for ditionally handles irreversible time), and chaos-theory. Since science. This includes trying to fi nd solutions to problems in the 1970s, Prigogine has produced an impressive list of popu- many domains of science simultaneously. In Prigogine's case, this new paradigm also means a war I would like to dedicate this article to the memory of Dr. against determinism, which he thInks has infected all of West­ Robert Moon, a scientist and a man who lived in eternal time, ern science through the concept of "reversible time." This no- and who admired Henri Bergson.

21 st CENTURY Spring 2000 27 lar books, and has formed what might be regarded as a school so that one sometimes feels like simply letting oneself float of thought.1 with the current flow, like a rubber ball on a river. But is it re­ I have followed Prigogine's evolution, more or less directly ally so simple? Does time mean the same to a man and an an­ and critically, since the 1970s; but, I think it is useful to have imal? What is it that we experience as "freedom" from this a fresh look at some of his most recent books.2 Here, I wi II flow? Can we swim against the current? If yes, how? limit analysis to two features of his work, his philosophical To measure, to know, to meditate, we seem to require a premises, and his sociological conclusions, while including a moment of rest. All three activities, in some way or another, brief and, hopefully, objective picture of his actual scientific try "to stop time," but their means are not really the same. The contributions. Although I would have liked to include more ancients started to measure time using the visible "spatial" cy­ on economics, I have only some sporadic remarks on that as­ cles of the Moon and Sun. Whoever tries to measure always pect of the matter here. hopes that something, if not everything, does not change. It is I admit, from the beginning, that I look skeptically upon well known that to clean your shoes, it is best to stop running! any attempt to study human nature from the standpoint of me­ The ancients tried to limit measure to "static" events. But, chanics, no matter how much claim to express the nonlinear things did not improve with the inclusion of motions and the is put into that effort. Historically we have seen various at­ invention of "dynamics." On the contrary, Prigogine tells us: tempts to base societies on some physical theory, most re­ cently the so-called Social Darwinism, whose political per­ [I1ndeed, it was the incorporation of time into the version by the Nazis still lingers in our memory. Ecologism is conceptual scheme of Galilean physics that was the also an ideology which tries to define societies on the basis of starting point of We stern science. Surely this starting point the holistic equation: Man = biology = nature. was a triumph for human thinking, but it is also the origin I think that the contrary approach is more useful. We may of the problem which forms the theme of this book learn from this, that there is a reason why, after 2,500 years, [Prigogine 1996, pp. 9-1 01. we can still learn about the human mind by studying Plato,. who did not use any type of mechanics. Time is the theme of most of his books, but Prigogine's love of time reaches deep into his soul in a way that arouses my PART 1: TIME AND DETERMINISM compassion: Prigogine has tried to get at an old and difficult problem, that classical paradox of human experience: the dichotomy As an adolescent, I was fascinated by archaeology, between freedom and necessity, two realities which can be philosophy, and music. My·mother used to say that I very difficult to reconcile. He thinks he can solve the contra­ learned to read musical scores before I could read letters. diction, by making "time" into an absolute reference: At the university, I spent more time playing the piano than attending lessons! The subjects that interested me were al­ ... [T1 here are original elements in the relationship of ways those in which time played an essential role, be it life to matter, and of consciousness to life. But they need a the emergence of ciyil izations, ethical problems common element: All must develop in a common associated with human freedom, or the temporal temporal direction. Time is what establishes both the organization of musical sounds. But because of the th�eat unity and diversity of the universe [Spire, p. 761 . of war, it seemed more rational for \lle to start a career in the hard sciences [Prigogine 1996, p. 661. I agree that a piece of metal and a man, both age according to some temporal law; but, is this enough evidence to' con­ Of the other influence on his life, he writes: clude that time makes the difference between metal and man? Prigogine writes that he learned about the importance of Since my adolescence, I have read many philosophical time from process-philosophy, and speCifically from the texts, and I still remember the spell L'Evolution Creatrice philosopher Henri Bergson; but does he mean that "time" i;;a [Crea tive Evolution1 cast on me .... I felt that some essen­ determinant of Bergson's elan vital, or some type of creative tial message was embedded in Bergson [Prigogine 19771. causality? He must be more explicit. He must also show how "time" itself can be susceptible to qualitative changes that re­ Prigogine says, that after Bergson, he also followed White­ flect Bergson's assumption (which I think is valid), that there is. head, Popper, and Heidegger. It is probably from these .latter something unique in human nature. But now let's look at time figures that he transformed his view of the issue of time into a bit more minutely. the classical pair: Being-Becoming. One of the first of his Our life, our activity in the world, all indicate to us the "popular" books, in 1980, was From Being to Becoming, passing of time. We get older, but never younger, we try to whose title alone already tells us Prigogine's side in the de­ plan our own and other's future, but we have no means to bate. In his more recent books he stresses, instead, that he change our past. The Germans express it nicely, "It is snow s.eeks the reconcil iation of the two terms, and, for once, he from yesterday!" It is gone ! But not all the past is gone; mem­ even quotes Plato in a positive light: ories are affecting our present, even as we already imagine the future, although all seems to move only in one direction, [F1or Plato ...we need Being and Becoming, because if truth is linked to Being, to a stable reality, we can

1. See Prigogine's works listed in the bibliography. conceive neither life nor thought, if we disregard 2. See Prigogine 1996 and Prigogine and Stengers. Becoming [Prigogine 1996, p. 191.

28 Spring 2000 21st CENTURY He argues, that with modern sci­ ence things became worse:

The duality of Being and Becoming has haunted Western thinking from its beginnings ....The formulation of the laws of nature brought a crucial element into the ancient debate. In fact, the laws enunciated by physics do not have as their aim to negate Becoming in favor of Being. On the contrary, they want to describe motions .... Nevertheless, their formulation constitutes a triumph of Being over Becoming [Prigogine 1996, p. 19].

Classical mechanics, whose origin is commonly mis-attributed to Galileo, adopted a form of "no-time," even while studying and using time, by as­ suming that time has no recognizable Courtesy of the lIya Prigogine Center for Studies in directionality. If a planet were to ro­ Statistical Mechanics and Complex Systems, University of Te xas at Austin tate in the opposite direction, the laws lIya Prigogine: "The duality of Being and Becoming has haunted Western thinking describing its motion would be the from its beginnings.... The fo rmulation of the laws of nature brought a crucial ele­ same, and so would be our measure ment into the ancient debate. " ' ; I. " .... } of time based on its cycle. A pendu­ lum marks the same time, whether it swings right-to-Ieft or side he brought his reader nearer to the divine left-to-right; mechanical reversibility seems to make time im­ conscience-the future is already here; on the other potent. This indiffe rence to real changes, seems to render na­ side, he justified the idea of a well-ruled, hierarchical, ture determined and predictable: Once one knows the present and submissive society.... Scienc e had been a configuration of the planets, one can reconstruct their config­ Promethean enterprise. But, with determinism, it became uration for 40,000 B.C. or for 40,000 A.D.-pending no de­ a sad enterprise, where man found himself a bit outside struction or creation in the meantime! the universe [Spire, p. 80]. But Newtonianism has made a global law out of this, so that not only the positions of the planets, but everything else Normally after encountering such a series of misstatements, in nature as well, seems to be determinable. This is the basis I wou ld stop readlng'a ·book, for they are the recognizable sig­ of that "determinism" which conceives of Nature as fu lly pre­ nature of "New Age" varieties of "holism," an anti-Western ordered. It presumes, consequently, either that we are pre-or­ banality which blames Christianity for having pushed man to dered too, or that what we do has no real physical signifi­ destroy Nature, and so on. One always has to wonder: By cance or influence. what miracle did Prigogine save himself from the virus of Thus, Prigogine makes scientific "determinism" his main such a terrible Western culture? Yet, Prigogine assures us that enemy; but he cannot restrain himself from trying to get at he is not a "New Ager," that he is against post-modernism. something else: And so we restrain our impulses. Did he not sign the Heidel­ berg resolution, circulated at the 1992 United Nations Earth Many historians underline the essential role played by Summit, which asserted the importance of science and tech­ the Christian God ... in such [deterministic] formulations nology in bettering the condition of mankind? Rather than of the laws of Nature ....The conception of a passive pass over the subject of Prigogine's confused argument, let us Nature, submitted to deterministic laws, is a try to see if the alternative of "Eastern" monism is really the distinguishing characteristic of the West [Prigogine 1996, solution to all our problems. p. 20]. Are We 'a Bit Outside of the Universe?' Obviously, such an impotent Western culture, built around In reality, both Western and Eastern philosophies run into an uncreative God, could produce only static societies, and difficulty, not in proposing some kind of unity of man and na­ the typical exponent of such a culture, according to Pri­ ture, but in explaining the differences inside that unity; that is, gogine's fruitful imagination, would be not Newton, but Leib­ man's specificity. In my opinion, the path out of "determin­ niz!: ism" must lead past the paradox which seems to scare Pri­ gogine. One must clarify what is meant by that feared "out­ If Leibniz has achieved the success that we all know, it side of the universe." is due to the fact that he combined two ideas: on one Prigogine himself, recognizes that:

21 st CENTURY Spring 2000 29 We observe the emergence of a science which ... fi nal analysis, Man would be the ultimate reason for the confronts us with -thecomplexity of the real world, a entire organization of life on our planet [Bergson, pp. science which allows human creativity to unfo ld itself as 184, 1 86)' a singular expression of a basic trait common to all levels of nature [Prigogine 1996, p. 16]. Man masters, and humanizes nature, through creative acts which bring us ab.Qvethe present horizon, sustained by a What does "s'ingular" mean here? Can we specify it a bit technological evolution which is never conceived as an aim more, and draw out the consequences? in itself. Before we see if, and how, Prigogine answers these ques­ Bergson here seems to be much closer to the Oratorians (a tions, I think it is useful to bring into the picture Henri Berg­ French Catholic teaching order founded in th 17th century son's 1907 book, L'Evolution Creatrice. This is an admitted and influenced by Leibniz) and Lazare Carnot (another among key reference for Prigogine; so, it cann'ot be suspected of suf- . Prigogine's adopted enemies), than to some of Bergson's own, fering 'from the terrible "Western-Leibnizian-Christian" virus. modern romantic followers! How to communicate and de­ Nevertneless, Bergson, although limited by his u.nsatisfying in­ scribe this process of elevation of oneself and nature in gen­ tuitionism, touches upon precisely what Prigogine seems to eral? How to communicate creative ideas? Bergson recog­ want to run away from. Specifically, in this book, Bergson re­ nizes the limit of descriptive intelligence: acts against the reductionism and Social Darwinism·of his time, and introduces the standpoint of a living universe, If science is to help us to expand our capability for which brings him to differentiate between duration (duree, action over things, and if we cannot act without inorganic that is, lived'or experienced time) and the spatialized time of matter as instrument, science can and will continue to science, measured by clocks. treat the living as it treated .the inorganic. But it will then To get at Bergson's idea of duration, one has to start from become clear, that the more science reaches to the depth his concept of existence: of life, the more the knowledge it provides us with becomes symbolic [Bergson, p. 200] . [Flor a conscious being, to exist means to thange; to change means to mature oneself; to mature oneself means We can, nevertheless, arrive at the goal: to re-create oneself, without end [Bergson, p. 7] . In the Absolute, we exist, move, and live ....Thr ough This process of existence is the duration, the elan vital (life the combined and progressive development of science force, or consciousness), which is visual ized as evolutionary and philosophy, we reach to the depth of Being itself.... nature. But the process of evolution is not a simple continu­ By renouncing the artificial unity which understanding . ous line. As Bergson stresses, against Darwin: imposes from the outside ...we will perhaps find the true inner and living unity. For the effort we exert in From this standpoint, it is not only consciousness which overcoming the pure understanding, brings us into some appears as the motive power of evolution, but even more, much wider realm [Bergson, p. 200] . among the conscious beings themselves, man comes to occupy a privileged place. Between man and the animals, There, where the real lasting moments are: the difference is not merely one of degree, but of their ' very nature [Bergson, p. 183). We then re-enter into the pure duration, where the past, always in motion, becomes continuously larger out of a In man, consciousness, splits into two forms: an intuition present which is absolutely new. ...By our sense of the which is related to the life-instinct, and an intelligence. Berg­ duration, I mean the coincidence of our Self with itself. .. son thinks that intelligence, the visible expression of the activ­ [Bergson, p. 201 ]. ities of Homo Faber, creates measure, geometry, tools, sci­ ence, and so on; but that the real power lies somewhere else: This moment is not just a dead instant:

. Intelligence ...seeks, first of all, to fabricate. But does The more we become conscious of our progress into it fabricate just to fabricate, or could it be pursuing, the pure duration, the more we feel the different parts of involuntarily and unconsciously, a different aim? To our being entering one into the other, and our entire fabricate means to give form to matter, to soften and to personality concentrating itself into a point, or'better into bend it, to convert it into an instrument, so as to master it. a tip, that inserts itself into the yet-to-come, prodding it It is this mastering which profits humanity, much more ceaselessly. In this consists life and free action [Bergson, than the immediate material invention itself. If we derive p. 202]. an immediate advantage from the fabricated object, as an intelligent animal could do, even if this advantage is all We can now leave the subject of Bergson's differences with that the inventor has sought, this is but a small thing in Prigogine. But let us keep in our memory that there is "time" comparison to the new ideas, the new thoughts, that the and "time": the dead instant of a bad photo, and the infinite invention can give rise to, as if it had achieved, as its moment caught by a classical painting, moments whose essential effect, our elevation above ourselves, and, with traces are left even on the face of a just-deceased person. The that, the expansion of our horizons ....So that, in the consciousness of such "moments," which at once expand the

30 Spring 2000 21st CENTURY link create a difference between past and future. The reality of the Becoming is a condition sine qua non for our dialogue with nature [Prigogine 1996, p. 1;;:7].

Precisely! But we, rather than "the link," create, or do not create the difference! One must inject a little personality into th� .categories and relations of a process! A process which, ac­ cording to the results we have achieved up to now, could be so summarized: To exist one must know, and to know one must be able to create differences. In the next section we will try to find out how to add that, to be able to cre'ate changes one has to avoid .introducing absolutes into nature.

A Changeable Nature Bergson notes that in certain moments, "we live in the ab­ solute," and this is the source of our free actions. Contrary to Prigogine's statements on the subje�t, Christianity, in order to safegL!ard mali's moral freedom, warned us, through St. Paul, against the tendency to enslave ourse!ves either to some for­ mal construction, or to an unchangeable divinity located in nature:

Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature art;! no gods. 'But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? The Granger Collection Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years Henri Bergson (1905 photograph): "The more we become [Galatians, 4,8-1 OJ . conscious of our progress into the pure duration, the more we fe el ... our entire personality concentrating itself into ...a St. Paul's arguments are the same as those which led Plato, tip, that inserts itself into the yet-to-come, prodding it cease­ in the Timaeus, to conclude the existence of a created time lessly." horizon and place us outside of, and undetermined by, any given, is what fi lls human existence and makes it endure. From the Upanishads, to Plato, to St. Paul, to St. Augustine, to Cusa, to Pascal (to mention only few "Western" thinkers), all tell us the key to the paradox of the "outside," which Pas­ cal sums up so poetically in the Pensee:

It is not in space that I must seek my dignity, but from the ordering of my thinking ....As space, the universe grasps me and swallows me up like a point; as Reason, I grasp the universe [Pensee, n. 348J.

Note how, in the process of measuring, we often experi­ ence the tendency to exclude real time, in favor of the spatial cycles. Whereas in the process of knowing, in confronting truth, one seems also to want to escape time-but now in a different direction. As Pascal hints, when we really think, we rise above the objects of experience. Thinking is real, its effect is lasting, if and only if it changes the simple flow of present events, as if from outside that flow. Thus, Prigogine comes nearer to what I want to express, when he writes : Blaise Pascal: "It is not in space that I must seek my dignity, but fr om the ordering of my thinking.... As space, the uni­ But, knowledge does not merely presuppose a link verse grasps me and swallows me up like a point; as Reason, I between the knower and the known; it demands that this grasp the universe. "

21 st CENTURY Spring 2000 31 Gottfried Leibniz: /II have demonstrated that space is nothing Georg Cantor: /II join Leibniz in calling the simple element of else but an order of the existence of things observed as exist­ nature ... out of which matter is composed, Monads or Uni­ ing together ...besides that there is no real space outside of ties. /I the material universe ..../I and space. These are also the same reasons for Leibniz's re­ universe has an age, but time has no beginning and no jection of Newton's absolute space and absolute time, as ex­ end [Prigogine 1996, p. 193]. pressed in the fo Jlowing: One could simply reply: If time precedes existence, then I have demonstrated that space is nothing else but an time does not exist! order of the existence of things observed as existing A logical contradiction must always reveal something more together ...besides .thatthere is no real space outside of than a contradiction as such. Here, that something more is the the material universe . ...3 ambiguity of the term "time" in Prigogine. This ambiguity thus leads to the introduction of his Sophist's type of subjectivism. and, When human knowledge hits against some unchangeable physical reality, then truth disappears in favor of opinions, Time is the order of existence of not-simultaneous and creativity becomes a game without responsibilities. things .... [T] hus time is the universaJ order of changes.4 There is a tradition in the West (which Prigogine has cho­ sen to ignore), running from Plato through Kepler to Leibniz, This is not a subjectivist approach, for which Prigogine which seeks to unite Man with his creative nature, without seems to reproach Leibniz in some of his books. It is a subjec­ nullifying his moral freedom. This tradition rejects not only tive science, whose meaning is best understood from the absolute space and time, but also the absolutely dead, fixed standpoint of Bergson's locating man in the absolute: We are atoms. Leibniz's concept of an elementary quantum of action, the subjective form of a real process. the monad, is the most modern and elaborated form of this It is Prigogine who appears subjectivist, locating an ab­ school. Following Leibniz, Ampere derived experimenta lly solute time outside of us, when he writes, his asymmetric and charged atoms, which anticipated some of the present images of elementary atoms.s Georg Cantor, in Timeprecedes existence [Prigogine 1996, p. 189]. 1885, summarized the Leibniz-Ampere connection in this way: And, The Hypothesis forming the basis for most theoretical In this perspective time is eternal. We have an age, our investigations of natural phenomena has never satisfied

32 Spring 2000 21st CENTURY me very much .... [T] he theoreticians ...either allow a sense of a uniquely serial advance.... The actual complete indeterminacy to govern the ultimate elements occasions are the creatures which become, and they of matter; or ...they take them to be so-called atoms of constitute a continuously extensive world ....Thus the' indeed very small but still existent extension in space. I ultimate metaphysical truth is atomism [Whitehead had no doubt that a satisfactory explanation of nature 1978, p: 35]. implies that the ...elements of matter must be assumed as actual infinite and without extension ... I was Atomism derived from Leibniz, but with a distincti

This describes a form of becoming, but it needs some spec­ 3. Gottfried Leibniz. in his fifth letter to Samuel Clarke. in Loemker (ed.). p. 700. paragraph 29. ification: 4. Gottfried Leibniz. "The Metaphysical Foundations of Mathematics." in Loemker (ed.). p. 666. 5. See L.P. Williams in Vol. 4 (1962). p. 121; and C. There is a prevalent misconception that "becoming" ContemporaryPhysics. Blondel. Ampere et la Creation de I'Electrodynamique (Paris: Editions involves the notion of a unique seriality for its advance Biblioteque Nationale. 1982). p. 122. into novelty. This is the classical notion of "time," which 6. Georg Cantor. Gesammelte Abhandlungen (Collected Treatises). Ed. Ernst Zermelo (Berlin. 1932). p. 275 philosophy took over from common sense.... [T] he 7. See Whitehead 1979 in the bibliography. On the issue of materialism and term "creative advance" is not to be constructed in the evolution. see also De Paoli 1997b in the bibliography.

21 st CENTURY Spring 2000 33 It is this "extramundane," which seems to scare Prigogine away from Leibniz, not realizing that Bergson and Whitehead, and Plato and Leibniz are after the same issue: The necessary existence of an "above ness," which can guarantee the neces­ sary reason for the existence of human moral freedom. The. world can be made intelligible without fa lling into de­ terminism, if we are able to get at a causality outside the sim­ ple mechanical time-series. Outside, means that one can op­ erate on the total characteristic of the series. We are "Singular" precisely because our potential to participate in this "eternal" reason, in what, for example, Lyndon LaRouche called the "Simultaneity of eternity."lD This and only this conscious and willful act, characterizes an adult creative discovery as an or­ dered transformation of the world of becoming. Only from that standpoint, arid we will come back to this at the end, it is possible to define a "value" and a directionality for man's transformation of nature. Simple creative impulses, are necessary but not sufficient to define human societies in relation to the rest of nature. We have to include the fact that human existence, reflecting the divine in nature, is sacred be­ cause it has a reason. Thus the necessity of its conservation, the humanization of nature, is a form of natural law. We have analyzed man and time. Now, after some consid­ erations respecti ng technology, we wi II fo llow Prigogi ne's own theory of physics. Then we will try to see, if he will be The Granger Collection able to find his way back from physics to the minimum condi­ Alfred North Whitehead: "{Elternal objects, as in God's pri­ tions for existence, as this requirement is posed by his own mordial nature, constitute the Platonic world of ideas. II references: Bergson and Whitehead.

Newton could have accepted a molecular theory as PART 2 : DISSYMMETRIES IN NAT URE easily as Plato, but there is this diffe rence between them: Mechanics11 Newton would have been surprised at the modern The model of the world which comes out of Newton's phi­ quantum theory.... Plato would have expected it losophy of nature, could be easily exemplified by a perpetual [Whitehead 1978, p. 94]. pendulum in an ideal fluid. We know that its axioms are based on materialism, which Whitehead correctly had called It is precisely Plato's solution to the relation between the an abstract logical construction, and, as such, always clashes "two sets," in the form of "participation," which makes his with reality. It was proved during Newton's life, that even a method and ideas so modern. Whitehead in his own "recon­ bird could not fly in a Newtonian ideal fluid, but birds do ciliation," echoes Plato a bit: seem to fly! And Leonardo da Vi nci, had shown already in 1580 that vortices were crucial to establish the lift necessary The corresponding element in God's nature is not for flying.12 temporal actuality, but is the transmutation of that Leibniz not only rejected Newton's philosophy, but showed temporal actuality into a living ever-present fact the necessity of introducing notions such as "work," or [Whitehead 1978, p. 350] . "fatigue," and vorticity, into any theory of nature. Such events, generally named friction or attrition, can play a local.ly con­ It is interesting to note here, that Georg Cantor had already structive role, as in Leonardo's lift theory. Otherwise, their given a bit of help on this issue of the "one-many," while usual effect is to bring a mechanical system to a halt. There­ Whitehead's sometime associate, Bertrand Russe" , had fu lly fore, one can assume that there is no mechanical perpetual fa iled, and decided, instead, that it was better to drop "the pendulum whose permanence could be assured indefinitely, one" so as to save the "the many."B unless one introduces the "demons" of J. Clerk Maxwell to Leibniz's "theological" version of the solution, should now push the pendulum when needed. become clearer: Leibniz, who, contrary to Newton, was neither a magician nor an alchemist,13 introduced the role of a vis viva as base For a sufficient reason for existence cannot be found for the "duration" of the world in continuous transformation. merely in any one individual thing, or even in the whole Vis viva meant the same as "monad." Here lies the essential aggregate and series of things ....The reason fo r the difference between Kepler's revolutionary definition of p'lane­ world therefore lies in something extramundane, different tary orbits, which he associated with "Mind" of the planet (in from the chains of states, or series of things whose his book The New Astronomy), and the mechanistic schema aggregate constitute the world.9 of empiricists Galileo, Newton, et al. This is the same anti­ empiricist notion of solar orbits proven by the later work of

34 Spring 2000 21 st CENTURY Carl Gauss. We see the role such non-entropic processes were made to play in respect to atoms, life, and cognition. And although Leibniz is not a vitalist, his vis viva comes nearer to Bergson's elan vital than to the "energy conserva­ tion" into which Hermann Helmholtz mistranslated it during the 19th century. Following Leibniz's ideas, Lazare Carnot, a great French en­ gineer, but not the mechanist Prigogine libelously made him out to be, 14 developed the science of technology. In short: Carnot calculated the effects of friction in limiting the life and efficiency of all type of machines; and he supplied a scientific basis for the already suspected impossibility of the perpetuity of a motion of the same type. A machine, not only cannot create surplus energy, but also cannot even maintain itself in a stable equilibrium. With time and activity, any me­ chanical system tends increasingly, and "nonlinearly," to lose power, so that its socially useful output is constantly reduced, and the costs incurred even to maintain the same output, would increase exponentially. Hence the necessity of devel­ oping "better" technologies. Any human society which tries to maintain the same technological horizon, not only will really destroy nature, but will ultimately collapse by reducing its power for survival. However, if machines cannot create energy-surplus, whence came the increased power which allowed Homo Faber, with up and downs, to augment his own survival po­ tentials? Carnot answers that we cannot apply to a human society, the ecological models appropriate to animal behavior. In the latter case, the determination of the energy flows is suffi cient The Granger Collection to define conditions for equilibrium and survival; but in the Lazare Carnot: ·"The discovery of a new motive power in Na­ first instance, it is man's potential to positively change the en­ ture is always a precious development ...es pecially when it ergy flows which define the necessary and sufficient condi­ is used to help the action of man ...." tion for survival! Carnot writes: only exists in conjunction with creative cognition. This mis­ The discovery of a new motive power in Nature is emphasis led to the two so-called laws of thermodynamics by always a precious development ...espe cially when it is Rudolf Clausius, which set general limits for the conversion of used to help the action of man ....The ancients knew one form of energy (for example, heat or chemical energy, to only few of such motive powers: ...water , wind, animal another (for example, mechanical work). This led also to power, etc. ... [Tl he mechanical theory can help in the Clausius's celebrated, universal, and pessimistic formulation. evaluation of their effects ....But machines can only It is worth seeing how Clausius arrived at this "universaliza­ transmit energy they cannot increase it. The key lies in the tion." motive powers. We have discovered new motive powers, In 1850, Clausius had written a first version of his laws, or better we have created them, because although the ele­ without any universalism. Then, in 1852, Clausius's associate ments are already pre-existing in nature, their low density make them not useful to man. Only artificially do they ac­ quire the quality of motive powers, as in the cases of 8. See De Paoli 1997a. 15 9. Leibniz, "On the Radical Origination of Things" in Loemker (ed.), pp. 486- steam engines, black powder.... 87. 10. See LaRouche 1996, 1997, 1999 in the bibliography. Thermodynamics 11. See De Paoli 1999 in the bibliography. 12. See De Paoli 1986 in the bibliography. With the steam engine, a new complication appeared: All 13. That Newton was a magician is known. What is new is that Prigogine's physical changes produce some amount of heat. But heat is a close associate I. Stengers seems now to defend New10n now precisely specific form of "friction." It tends naturally to radiate, to dif­ because of that fact. See I. Stengers and J. Schlanger, Les Concepts Scientifiques, Invention et Pouvoir (PariS: La Decouverte, 1989), pp. fuse or dissipate itself homogeneously, without the possibility 124-132 of being reconverted into work. The study of such heat en­ 14. See, for example, I. Prigogine and I. Stengers, La Nouvelle Alliance (Paris: Gallimard, 1979), or the English-language version, gines, in which heat is converted to mechanical energy, is Order Out of Chaos (New York: Bantam, 1984). ca lled "thermodynamics," and Lazare Carnot's son, Sadi, 15. For more on Carnot, see the author's articles "Carnot's Theory of Tech­ made the first contribution to this branch of science. nology: The Basis for the Science of Physical Economy," Executive Intel­ ligence Review, June 8, 1999, p. 65; and "Lazare Carnot's Grand Strat­ Subsequently, the focus of attention became more and egy for Political Victory," Executive Intelligence Review, Sept. 20, 1996, more the dissipation, forgetting Carnot's lesson that a machine p. 14.

21st CENTURY Spring 2000 35 A Note 0'0 Nonlinearity

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

Ib , n its strict use, tAe term nonlinear should be understood I to 'signify, a physical-space-time geometry from which we exclude any mathematits which <;:onnects tAe dots wJth" straight lin " he simple"st example of thirdistinctidrJ�iS< provided b fforts to maj!lsphe�ical surfaces on to pla,rie surf es. Thus, the transcendental nature of pi, as fi rst de-" curvatures which correspond to ah . fin ' < af�inar . i�8�l�: bf c ,'j.such lp�tion� Jn in��:pathV\la¥:�0! ��i9�r�, j�� I�� " ant/a,; typifies th rmal defimtion, 'vanl' manifold off) experimental ." " universal epistemolog lIy strict use of the term nonlinear. Cusa physical pfinciples: Thus, the deterrrii�ation of the path- lower Johannes Kepler, was the first to apply this notion'to way orleast action, is a matter of specially defitled experi­ asttophysl(:s. ,Jb{jlotion of a multiRly-connected manifot?� mental proof of,universal'principJ�i hot a question to be or hypergeo.metry, as defined by Carl Gauss and his fbl� relegated to the mathematician's'b l ackboaro or digital ' lower Bernhard Riemann, sets the standard for a literate use computer. of the term non)inear today. From my discoveries afjd related'vvork in the, science of the popular misuse 6f nonlinear, as by John von Neu"- " physical economy, it can be gener�Uy said, that t:he only mann and Prigogine after him, defines the term from tfie epistemologically literate use of the term nonlinear, is situ­ axiomatically deductive, fo rmal-mathematical standpoint ated within the domain of a genE;ralized notion of Rie- '" of a mathematics which assumes that the efficient connec" mannian manifolds. tion am'ang the dots of sense-perception can, and musf'be The fallacy inhering in the vulgar,us� of nonlinear, as hy defined frofT! the axiomatically linear standpOint of Pa:olo a von Neumann or Prigogine, is that it perceives what may, , Sarpi's lacke,y Gal i leo Gal i lei, and therefqre from t.be or may not be 'a nonl.inear. pattern am9ng observed, or ' ' , sta.QdR9 ijlt. ��!{lmontp , NewtoQ Oescarte Ey,I,er, , mer�y conjectl!red, dots' ..fr()m th �,dP9i f, a fo rmal ' L s!/ grange, Laplace, Callchy, Cauchy,,,, Hermite, B,ertrand'R mathematics whid'i assumes that s < " -tirh� \ t'rinsically/' sell, John v.' Neumann, .et al. " Iineaf�deductive in the ver}' smalL hl reality, as in Kepler- " Ty pical of tpe difference is the f�ct, that although N�vv- , Gauss astrophysics, it is precisely i9J�at verx, very small. ton's definitio,n of gra",itation is, mathematically, a simple .that the cruCial elements of lawful exp'ressions' of nonlinear , derivation of Kepler's earlier first 'discovery of a measur,a� curvature of the 'relevant manifolds are lodged. ble form of universal gravitation, as in Kepler s The New Economist Lyndon H. LaRouchet }t: is a member of the Astronomy, Newton's doctri ne is ,shown to be ,axiom��- Scientific Advisory Board of 21st Century Science & :re�h- ' cally fallaciousll by virtue of the so-called three-body para'! nology magazine, ' dox, whereas, as Gauss later demonstrated, Kepler's origi- nal discovery of universal gravitation incurs no such paradox, Notably! Newton's approach was derived from the empiricist, axiomatically linear method of Galileo. )I

liThe onlx, epistemo'ogical'y literate use Qf . the term' nonlinear, is 'situated Yfithiq t domain of a generalized notion of ' i< " ' : . Riemannian manifolds. "�' , ':',;;-), ,; , ,. : ,, " .-"" ./ . �, �, "

Formally, the only ge,nerally known, competent ge'ner�1'._ . �\_ defil!ition of a nonlinear geometry, is that first stated by Bernhard Riemann in his 1854 babilitation dissertation, On the Hypotheses Which Underlie Geometry. Tw o fea� tures of that dissertation are of outstanding relevance for making that definition. First, that all a priori, axiomatic presumptions respecting space, time! and physical action must be purged from' mathematical phYSiCS, and these're­ placed by experimentally proven universal physical princi­ Chris LeWisINSIPS ples, instead. This defines the meaning of the term physical LaRouche speaking at a seminCjrOf) Africqn develop­ space�time; and also defines the significance of the term ment, sponsored by the �chiller Ins�itute in Ai?riI 199l).

36 Spring 2000 21st CENTURY AlP Emilio Segrs Visual Archives Library of Congress Rudolf Clausius: "There is at present in the material world a Hermann Helmholtz: "The entropy of the universe tends universal tendency to the dissipation of mechanical energy II towa rds a maximum."

Lord Kelvin, without any added·experiment, wrote the fp llow­ irreversible processes, which produce entropy. The ing in the Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine: growth of entropy designates the direction of the future, both at the level of a local system and of the universe as a There is at present in the material world a universal ten­ whole. This is the reason why A. Eddington associates it dency to the dissipation of mechanical energy.... [A)ny with the Arrow of Time [Prigogine 1996, pp. 26-27). restoration is impossible.... [W) ithin a fin ite period of time to come the Earth must ...be unfit fo r the habitation Death and Life of man. If the universe is nothing but a big rush to die, how could Life exist? The great biologist Louis Pasteur answered radi­ Four years later, in 1854, Hermann Helmholtz, a German cally: mechanist friend of Kelvin, published a similar thesis. In 1865, after meeting Helmholtz, Clausius, in the second edi­ Yo u put matter before life, and you make matter tion of his book, r.ewrote hi� now-famous two laws: eternal. How do you know that the progress of science will not fo rce you to affi rm that life is eternal, and not (1 ) the energy of the universe is constant; matter. You go from matter to life, because your present (2) the entropy of the universe tends towards a knowledge tells you that you cannot understand things in maximum. a diffe rent way. Who can assure me that in 10,000 years, we will not say that it is impossible notto go from life to Thus, the "second law" of thermodynamics, now means matter?16 that irreversibility, or entropy, is an index for the death of our universe, and not simply for that of an isolated machine. In Pasteur indicates a necessary condition: other words, in this thermodynamics, irreversible time indi­ cates the road to the cemetery. The universe is a dissymmetric totality. I tend to think Prigogine describes that situation in the fo llowing way: that life, in the form we observe it, must be a function of the dissymmetry of the universeY The distinction between reversible and irreversible processes is introduced in thermodynamics through the Erwin Schroedinger, one of the founders of quantum me­ concept of entropy, which Clausius associated, in 1865, chanics, intervened in this debate in 1945, with his book with the second principle of thermodynamics ... Wh at /s Life ? He assumed that Life is possible because living Contrary to energy which is conserved, entropy allows us

to establish a distinction between the reversible 16. Louis Pasteur, Pa ges Choisies (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1970), p. 56 processes, in which entropy remains constant, and the 17. Ibid, p. 62

21 st CENTURY Spring 2000 37 organisms consume energy, perform work, excrete waste, and give off heat, while conserving life itself. Life thus represents what is called a stationary, steady-state, or open systE;m. The Sun feeds life with its photons (visible light), which are ab­ sorbed by plants, give off their energy, and are re-radiated at lower energy (infrared). In Schroedinger's model, Life lives by eating non-entropy, or order, from the rest of the universe, like a parasite. Through such egoistic. consumption, it conserves itself, but it also increases the total entropy of the universe and so accelerates its own death. By this order of logic, to be nasty, one could add to Schroedinger that active brains con­ sume a lot of energy, so the more one thinks, the quicker the world will die! Prigogine mentions his own debt to Schroedinger:

I have also been influenced by the beautiful book of Erwin Schroedinger, What Is life? Schroedinger discusses there, the metabolism of the living organism in·terms of production and flux of entropy.... Life, concluded Schroedinger, feeds itself upon a "flux of negative entropy," but one· can also say, and that was most important for me, that life is associated with entropy production, and so ·with the irreversible processes [Prigogine 1996, p. 721.

The research on how the irreversible flux of radiation which a Sun produces can eventually form complex molecular or­ ganic structures is crucial; but, there remains an unsolved question. Although we have now observed organic structures in the galaxy, we have no knowledge of how they are formed. ·Library of Congress L. Onsanger, who won a Nobel Prize in chemistry· in 1968, louis Pasteur: "The universe is a dissymmetric totality. I tend studied irreversible processes, but limited himself to near­ to think that life, in the fo rm we observe it, must be a fu nction equilibrium conditions. Prigogine explains why he expanded of the dissymmetry of the universe. " on Onsanger's researches: "dissipative structures" to stress that they only exist in From the very start, I always attributed to these conjunction with their environment. The most well­ [irreversible1 processes a constructive role; in opposition known dissipative structure is perhaps the so-called to the standard approach, which only saw in these Bernard instability [observed in 19001. This is formed phenomena degradation and loss of useful work. Was it when a layer of liquid is heated from below. At a given the influence of Bergson's L'Evolution Creatrice, or the temperature, heat conduction starts to occur presence in Brussels of a working school of theoretical predominantly through convecti.on, and it can be biology? The fact is tnat it appeared to me that living observed that regularly spaced, hexagonal convection things provided us with striking examples of systems cells are formed in the layer of liquid. This structure is which were highly organized, and in which irreversible wholly dependent on the supply of heat, and disappears phenomena played an essential role. Such intellectual when this ceases. Quite generally it is possible in connections ...contrib uted to the elaboration, in 1945, principle to distinguish between two types of structures: of the theorem of minimum entropy production, equilibrium structures, which can exist as isolated systems applicable to non-equilibrium stationary states. This (for example crystals), and dissipative structures, which theorem gives a clear explanation of the analogy which can only exist in symbiosis with their surroundings. related the stability of equilibrium thermodynamical states Dissipative structures display two types of behavior: Close and the stability of biological systems, such as that to equilibrium, their order tends to be destroyed; but, far expressed in the concept of "homeostasy" proposed by from equilibrium, order can be maintained and new Claude Bernard [Prigogine Autobiography 19771 . structures be formed [Prigogi ne Autobiography 19771.

Also usefu l in this connection, is the description of Pri­ Here are some particularities of the dissipative structures, in gogine's work given by the Nobel Prize committee in 1977: Prigogine's own words:

Prigogine has demonstrated that a new form of ordered [Slystems far from equilibrium do not lead anymore to structures can exist under such conditions [far from an extremum of a function such as free energy, or the equilibrium], and he has given them the name production of entropy. Consequently, it is no longer

38 Spring 2000 21 st CENTURY thermodynamic equilibrium state and to the maximum entropy. This solution can be extended into the domain of non-equilibrium ....But the unexpected result is that the stationary states become, in general, unstable, starting at a critical distance from equilibrium. Beyond the first bifurcation point, a set of new events is produced: ... oscillating chemical reactions, non-equilibrium spatial structures, chemical waves. We called these new forms of spatio-temporal organization "dissipative structures" [Prigogine 1996, pp. 75-761.

If the term "nonlinearity" is loosely defined, it is typified, in a non-equilibrium condition, by the fact that it seems to avoid pre-established "Ieast action" paths, and instead goes through "bifurcation points," where it is not possible to foresee which of the two possible paths the reaction will "choose." Bifurca­ tion points are similar to the familiar "critical points," where, for example, water assumes different physical states (ice, liquid, vapor), depending on conditions of temperature and pressure. The discovery of such conditions for the existence of dissi­ pative structures, brought Prigogine the Nobel Prize in 1977. But for him this was only·the starting point to get at the ques­ tion of the necessary condition for the existence of life, as he mentions here:

Without the coherence of the irreversible processes of non-equilibrium, the appearance of life on Earth would be inconceivable [Prigogine 1996, p. 12].

But even the understanding of life is not the fi nal aim. He writes: Courtesy of the lIya Prigogine Center for Studies in Statistical Mechanics and Complex Systems, University of Texas at Austin Can't the bifurcations help us to understand the process Prigogine: "Without the coherence of the irreversible of innovation and diversification in other domains, apart processes of non-equilibrium the appearance of life on Earth from physics and chemistry? How to resist the temptation would be inconceivable. 1/ to apply these notions to problems regarding biology, sociology, or economy? [Prigogine 1996, p. 811 certain that the fluctuations are cancelled. It is only possible to formulate the sufficient conditions for stability, Generalizations which we have baptized "general criteria of evolution." ... Since the 1970s, not only did Prigogine not resist such While at equilibrium and near equilibrium, the laws of temptations; on the contrary, although more and more by use nature are universal, far from equilibrium they become of analogies, he has sought a general "Bergsonian" physics, specific; they depend on the type of the irreversible able to bring man back into nature, inverting what he calls the processes [Prigogine 1996, pp. 74-75]. marginalization of man accomplished by Copernicus, Dar­ win, and Freud: Prigogine transformed the studied conditions into a new ki­ netical model, called the "Brusselator." But, he writes that: It seems to me that the physics far from equilibrium inverts this perspective. Human activity, creative 'and After the discovery of experimental OSCillating chemical innovating, is not foreign to nature. One can consider it reactions, such as the Beloussev-Zhabotinsky reaction, as an amplification and an intensification of traits already the attention of scientists was attracted to coherent non­ present in the physical world, and which the discovery of equilibrium structures [Prigogine Autobiography 19771. the processes far from equilibrium taught us to decipher [Prigogine 1996, p. 821. The B-Z reactions, as they are called, observed in Russia in 1964, made visible a property here summarized: But if man's activity is merely a quantitative intensification or amplification of material processes, then man will be fu lly de­ Chemical reactions are, in general, nonlinear. ... termined by matter alone, despite any apparent nonlinearity! [Tl herefore, many possible solutions exist. ...Among As on the question of time, Prigogine here again fa lls into those solutions, only one corresponds to the the Darwinian trap of a simple monism, based on material-

21 st CENTURY Spring 2000 39 ism. Bergsan and Whitehead must be very upset to' see their In such cases, farecasting be'cames either very difficult, ar pupil, at least in the abave passage, fall so.far away from his nearly impassible. The difficulty in lang-term weather predic­ stated intentians, replaying the drama af the yaung Icarus, tians, is the usual example af such a system. We do. nat repli­ who.far excess af "creativity, " fargat to.fa llaw the advice af cate here Prigagine's adventures in the realm af chaas. "Chaas his father, the scientist Daedalus: theary" is very glabalist in its appetites, gripped by a campul­ Yet, Prigagine seems to. find a helpful mament af self-daubt, sian to.mix a bit af everything; hence, its canvalutiqns tend to. when he adds: throw narmal readers into. a spin af wild, mare ar less psyche� delic impressians. These rmpressians are af the type: "we But we are anly at the beginning. There is still a· very have salved all ...al mast all ...we ll,'in any case, same.... " great distance between the mast complex structures Then, in ane single pag'e, appears the salution. valid far sex which we can produce in chemistry, even under the and black hales, for mushraams and galaxies! canditian af nan-equilibrium, and the camplexity af the Prigagine daes nat fully .escape that tendency taward the structures which we encaunter in bialagy [Prigagine psychedelically bizarre: althaugh he limits his "salutians" to. 1996, p. 821. casmalagy-chaas and quantum-chaas. I hape he has salved all that he S(jysh� has salved; in my mast generaus maments, . And, later, he adds anather impartant distinctian: I am able to. adapt an attitude af "wait-and-see." In casmalagy, where he admits his use af a Spielmodel, Inside thermadynamics itself ...additianal canditians (Prigagine and Stengers, p. 303), his main cri.ticism is fa­ are necessary to.abser ve the emergence af the dissipative c�ssed against the standard theary, which leads to. the identifi­ structures ....And such farms af self-arganizatian in catio.n 6f a "big bang," ar "beginning" af aur warld, seen as a physics are themselves necessary, but nat sufficient, "Singularity," that is a paint at which aur custamary natian af canditians for the emergence af the self-organizatian space-time lases its meaning. typical af life. The distinctian between necessary and His alternative to. that "big bang" is the fallaw�ng: . sufficient conditians, is essential to. describe the narrative dimensian af nature [Prigagine 1996, p. 1501 . As we are gaing to. shaw, taday we can canceive the big bang as an event assaciated with an instability, which What Prigagine tell us here, has the saathing effect af a re­ implies that it is the paint af departure af aur universe, but freshing shawer. If his thermadynamics cannat establish suffi­ nat af time. While aur universe has an age, the milieu cient canditians far bialagy, then ane wauld assume that this whase instability has proauced this universe wauld nat is even mare the case far human sacieties, where, withaut the have ane age. In this canceptian, time has no.be ginning intraductian af same farm af value to. the necessary canditian and probably no.end! [Prigagine 1996, p. 141 far transitian, ane cannat differentiate between "fally" and creative acts-from his standpaint, bath are nanlinear! As to. quantum mechanics, Prigagine recognizes that chaas But Prigagine wants to. get to. the sacial madels. And he has failed so. badly here that, "many writer have drawn the daes so. by adding Chaas Theary to. thermadynamics. canclusian that there is no. quantum-chaas." (Prigagine and Stengers, p. 265). But, he also. thinks he has a salutian to.this. Enter Chaos I cannat judge, and therefare I limit myself to.repa rting the Prigagine's aim is to. let "the arraw af time" be the unique, camment af a scientist, nat generally unfriendly to.Prigagine, universal abjective reality. For him, it alane is able to' simulta­ and quated in a baak favarable to. him: neausly define transitians and their directians. He th inks he has salved this far thermadynamics; but there is still all the rest T1he problem ...between Prigagine and quantum af physics cavered by classical, relativ.istic, and quantum me­ mechanics is a real ane. In his La Fin des certitudes, he chanics. To. include thase areas within thermadynamics, he affirms that he is able to. re-arrive at quantum mechanics. thinks he needs to.use the sa-called "chaas theary" af the radi­ I must say that an this issue, I am very reticent. ... I am cal empiricists and pasitivists, so. as to. reunify concepts like ir­ waiting for the praafs ....And it seems to. me, thatthe reversibility and instabil ity, entropy and unpredictability. reasan why it daes nat functian, is that Prigagine has a "Chaas theary" is a recently intraduced, fancier name far problem to. salve with quantum mechanics: He daes nat the mechanistic, percussive-attractive-interactian systems af see any discontinuity between the physics he has dane, the Paala Sarpi schaol af empiricists and pasitivists, such as and quantum mechanics [Spire, pp. 133-1 34]. Galilea, Galilea's student Thamas Habbes, Bernard de Man­ deville, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, Thamas Malthus, I thus canclude treatment af Prigagine's physics, in which I Charles Darwin, and Thamas Huxley. Madern "chaas theary, " have tried to. be as abjective as passible. I turn naw to. judge which is traced mare immediately fram Bertrand Russell its applicatian to. the field which is actually the amega af his devatee Jahn van Neumann, is a simple extensian af the effarts: human sacieties. same axiamatic assumptians an which earlier farms af em­ piricism were premised. Otherwise, the systems studied by ta­ PART 3: A SOCIAL MAT HEMATICS? day's sa-called "Chaas Theary," are a specific mathematical It is knawn that the Malthusian Club af Rame, during the type af unstable systems, in which attentian is facussed an 1970s, fi nanced many studies in nanlinear systems-analysis, cases where a small perturbatian can create farms af appar­ in arder to. push its idealagically mativated canceptians af ently nanlinear amplificatian (the butterfly effect). papulatian cantrol..Ta achieve this, it used the wark af fa-

40 . Spring 2000 21 st GENTURY mous scientists. The results of each study, always promoted The research conducted with my friend R. Herman on by big headlines in the media, usually became short-term the theory of car traffic confirmed for me the supposition intellectual fads. I will give two examples: that even human behavior, with all its complexity, would

• Rene Thom, a famous French mathematician of the eventually be susceptible to mathematical formulation .... 1970s, produced one such systems-analysis study that came [Prigogine Autobiography 1977J. to be called "catastrophe theory." Twenty years later, Thom had the honesty to admit: How much of human behavior Prigogine believes can be so "predetermined," he tell us in an interview: There is not a specific domain where, one could say that, catastrophe-theory facilitated the discovery of a tech­ I think that this type of modelling contains very nique, a tool, or a means to solve a concrete problem .... important elements applicable to how a society behaves. To return to the applications, people proposed a The activity of each individual in society has a considerable number of them: the aggressivity of dogs, repercussion on the others. In mathematical terms, it is a stock-market crashes, prison riots, the manic-depression, highly nonlinear system which is able to manifest certain pulsations of the heart, etc. ... In 1974, the media coherent behavior: habits, schema, or work.... Such headlines were considerable ... [but todayJ it is true that, schema have to be thought of as an average. But there are in a sense, the ambitions of the theory have collapsed. always in a society elements which behave diffe rently.... This leads necessarily to the idea of a dialectic

• David Ruelle, one of the fathers of chaos-theory in mechanism based on the appearance of contradictions, France, wrote in 1992: and on the idea of qualitative changes due to the contradictions produced by the preceding system. If one In 1975, a new paradigm appeared and it was baptized considers a model of systems of human behavior, one "chaos," ... [AJ few years later, chaos became a fashion sees that it has aspects which appear very similar to those and the theme for international conferences. Soon after, which can be established for certain societies of insects chaos was elevated to the dign ity of nonlinear. science...... but that there are also specific elements, such as the . The success of chaos took the form of a media event. ... Imagination [Spire, p. 24, emphasis addedJ. In the physics of chaos, unfortunately, increasing fame has gone hand in hand with a decline in the production Prigogine and G. Nicolis had previously constructed such of interesting results, no matter the triumphal models for insect and for human societies, with the fo llowing announcements of Earth-shattering results. conclusions: One must see that in many domains (ecology, economy, social sciences), even if one succeeds in Humans develop permanently individual projects and writing some equations of time evolution, these equations desires. In fact, certain of these, are the result of would have to change slowly with time, because the expectations as to what the future may look like ....The system learns from nature and changes with it. For such difference between the wished for and the actual systems, then, the impact of chaos is limited more to the behaviors act, then, as a constraint of a new type, which, level of scientific philosophy than to quantitative science. together with the environment, shapes the dynamic. One can then ask oneself whether, under such circumstances, Prigogine's Social Mathematics the outcome can lead to a global optimum or if, on the Prigogine bases his own social mathematics on the assump­ contrary, each human system constitutes a unique realiza­ tion derived from chaos-theory, that "uncertainty," which for tion of a complex stochastic process whose rules can in him characterizes social forecasting, is not the result of our no way be designated in advance. In other words, is past lack of knowledge, but an essential property of nature: experience sufficient to predict the future, or, on the contrary, is the limited capacity of forecasting the future ... [TJhe fundamental objects of physics are no longer itself the essence of the human adventure? [Prigogine and the trajectories ...but probabilities .... [TJ he simplest Nicolis, p. 305J probabilistic processes are oriented in time [Prigogine 1996, pp. 85-86J. The authors answer:

But this indeterminism, is supposed to be controllable. He The essential message of dynamical modelling ...is writes: that the ability of societies to adapt is what allows their long-term survival and innovation [Prigogine and Nicolis, The indeterminism defended by Whitehead, Bergson, p. 310J. or Popper ...has already imposed itself in physics. But it must not be confused with the absence of predictability, In the same interview cited above, Prigogine derives his which would render illusory any human action. The issue theorem as an alternative to the economic theory of equilibrium: is the limit to predictability [Prigogine 1996, p. 127]. I think that now we have to take in consideration the The belief that his work on chemistry could be applied to character of the uncertain ...and, with the uncertainty, social theory dates from the 1970s: the idea of risk, the idea of choice introduces itself. This

21st CENTURY Spring 2000 41 uncertainty is an integral part of the structure of the Darwin showed that it is the study, not of individuals, universe [Spire, p. 25]. but of populations over long periods of time, which allows us to understand how individual variability, Ruelle had mentioned that chaos theory, at best, is a "scien­ submitted to a selective process, produces variation. tific philosophy." We have that same impression from Pri­ Boltzmann, likewise, argued that one cannot understand gogine's models, which I synthesize as follows: the Second Law, and the spontaneous increase of Imagination is the human fo rm of an evolutionary or "verti­ entropy that it predicts, if one sticks to the description of ca/" fe edback (the fu ture in the present). This type of fe ed­ individual dynamical trajectories. It is the innumerable back, makes impossible any deterministic (mechanical) fo re­ collisions inside of a population of particles which casting, and establishes societies as "uncertain" (chaotic), a produce the global variation described by the increase of property of the human subsystem which reflects a universal entropy [Prigogine 1996, pp. 27-28]. characteristic (universe). In such subsystems, adaptation by some risk-filled choice is Those are Prigogine's ideas and explanations. After all is the rule fo r survival. said and done, there remains at least the hope that his work Or, using Prigogine's thermodynamics, one can conceive of in chemistry will contribute to the solution of physical "imagination" as a dissipative structure produced by the "ar­ problems, such that we might not merely issue forecasts, row of time" (entropy). One feels impelled to sympathize with but actually make our uncertain future a bit better for more the striking university students in 1968 when they screamed, people. "power to imagination!"

Yet, although it sounds nice, this is of limited help to man­ Conclusion 19 agers or governments who have, indeed, to take risks and In conclusion, I return to the crucial issue of the interplay make choices. Prigogine's alternative to the theory of eco­ between "vertical" and "horizontal" processes, addressed nomic equilibrium seems to me not even to match Joseph A. with different names by almost all the authors here analyzed. Schumpeter's theory of "innovation," although here I have to Whether it be by a "world line," or an "arrow of time," all are admit my ignorance of other economic texts by Prigogine.18 seeking a generalization and reunification of the paradoxical But even if one were to add the term "innovation," this would form of human knowledge, which includes three simultane­ not te ll us much more. ous sets of experiences: What type of innovation? Beyond imagining, can we also (1) The process of extension in space and time ("horizontal" judge the effect of our actions on the future? Or are our projection) of our "present" knowledge. choices valueless? Can we steer our "creative impulse" a bit, (2) The power, both outside and inside us, which changes or are we simply carried away by it, like happy babies? Can the "present" manifold, creating a direction vaguely named, we foresee future catastrophes (no matter in how limited a "time's arrow," "absolute time," "duration," "world-line," and way), and, more important, can we avoid them? so on. (That this process is both "outside" and "inside," gener­ What can the proper organization of society contribute to ates an additional need for unification, and raises the ques­ the innovative drives-or can it? For me, these are some of tions: who directs whom; who measures whom; who judges the issues involved in "forecasting," and Prigogine tells us that whom; who is the real one, and so on? he can forecast: (3) At each moment we actually have a unity of both processes, or better, each moment is actually an infinite unity What I wanted to show [in La Fin des Certitudes] , is of an "ensemble" of clearer or bigger unities of "past-present­ that if you think, not just about a situation, but about the future." This process can provoke either the joy or the terror set of situations, then you can all fo resee [emphasis of the imagined moment when it will seem that we know all added] . To get the answer, then, one needs to generalize . and have nothing more to do. ..the way in which one confronts the problem ....The Within the above bounds, all agree that there is a specificity central point of my book is this: In the extension of the in human societies, but it is nevertheless necessary to empha­ notion of lawfu lness, there arise many situations where size, that although it is the "species" which is conserved, its one can only describe their history in terms of ensembles. survival depends upon the activation of the inner, sovereign This means that history is a global problem ....The cognitive power residing within each individual among its future is not totally unpredictable, but neither is it certain members. [Spire, pp. 78-79). This individual process of validated discovery, because it is able to ensure a continuing and growing existence for society, Interesting, but, where are some examples of the theorems reveals our participation in the underlying reality of the or policies that such a "global" approach produces? In Pri­ world. The act of discovery not only transcends the individ­ gogine's book, we fi nd only a methodological analogy with ual's momentary biological existence, but the more universal "population theory." He writes: the act is, the more such a simple moment makes explicit the individual's participation in eternity, unveiling and giving value to the same presence in all human beings. This process 18. We have followed the work of Georgescu Roegen, who uses Prigogine, of objectifying our subjective existence, or of humanization of but who arrives, in the end, at a pure ecologist economy! the world, locates us "above" any given ecosystem, and can 19. I have used here some of the concepts of Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., which can be found in referenced works in the bibliography, and in the ongoing be named "Platonic realism." publication of his works in the weekly Executive Intelligence Revie w. Some chimpanzees make use of tools, either singly or in

42 Spring 2000 21st CENTURY combination, and some can even transmit this acqqired be­ havior. They try to rise, culturally, above the limits of the "ecosystem." But neither in the laboratory nor in nature, are they able to shape tools, or change behavior in such a way as to solve any imagined future problem. They only operate and respond to the present, sense-perception manifold; a fe­ male only transmits the acquired behavior to her young showing him how to " take this to do that." As Prigogine also recognizes, all animal species lack the peculiar sense of the "future acting upon the present." But the too-quick conclu­ sion, that both cognition and imagination are equivalent kinds of action of the "future u pon the .present," can lead to a mistake, when applied to the study of the necessary condi­ tion for evolution. To clarify this difference, we have to go back to Plato. From the example of the chimps, one should easily grasp why Plato stressed that an "idea " is never "this or that"; but to go deeper into the relation between "Platonic ideas" and the "future," let me quote Lyndon LaRouche:

[T] he relevant expression of human intent tis] a desired change in the axiomatic characteristic of some referenced pattern of human behavior.... What is desired is not a mere event, nor a mere change in opinion, but, rather either a change in hypothesis, or theorem. The change which distinguishes characteristically human ideas of the future... is always of the ontological quality designated by the connotatio'ns of the term EIRNS Platonic Idea, rather than mere contemplation of a real or Dino De Paoli: "We must have a dialogue with the past, by merely desired object of sense-perception [LaRouche reliving the cognitive acts of discovery of today's biologically 1996, p. 20]. dead, to rework their ideas; we must exchange ideas with our contemporaries, and must explain ourselves to the yet-to-be­ We imagine, but we must above aH ensure the future, born. " through "ideas" which are needed the first moment one fore­ sees a limiting paradox to a presently functioning hypothesis. discovery, from generation to generation. We must have a di­ Ideas are able to overcome the types of paradoxes which no alogue with the past, by reliving the cognitive acts of discov­ deductive or linear extrapolation of present knowledge can, ery of today's biologically dead, to rework their ideas; we and unsolved paradoxes mostly result in physical catastro­ must exchange ideas with our contemporaries, and must ex­ phes threatening the existence of entire societies. plain ourselves to the yet-to-be-born. The idea of constructing tools (and especially the mastery Ideas take the form of atomized discontinuities, a quantum, of fire) solved the first ecological "limit" our ancestors faced a monad: before and after. a real discovery, there is an eternity millions of years ago. For this reason, the power of an idea of distance, but if the "line" representing the conservation of can be measured in terms of "potential," or by the degree to our human world appears continuous, it is the result only of which the density of a population can rise above the limit de­ this possibility of being able to communicate ideas to each fined by an ecosystem. other. But, a materialized idea or hypothesis, as illustrated by LaRouche emphasizes that the power of a culture, lies in its Lazare Carnot's discoveries, is subject to entropy, which having developed a classical "artistic" education, the unique means that the potential cannot be maintained at any fixed instrument able to mediate a dialogue between minds. An ed­ value, as by recycling, deductive theorems, or any other ucation which evokes in the other, what is there, but still un­ purely quantitative increases. No such approach can avoid the used: the "Platonic ideas" needed to preserve and continue nullification of the "aboveness," and our thus falling back to a humanity's existence. There is no substitute for such educa­ level where physical nature is the only master. We have suf­ tion, based on the use of metaphor. If it is true that logiC, fered many such fa lls in our history, but also some recoveries. when confronted with "ideas," can produce only symbolism, The uniqueness of human culture is expressed then, not by it is also true that we cannot leave ideas to the hopes of an the production of one idea, but by the continuous generation unconscious intuition. of ideas which are able to conserve and increase the level of The Leonardos and Rembrandts of prehistoric times have the "aboveness." Only this "humanization" of nature reflects left on the walls of caves in southern France and Spain, splen­ the necessary condition of existence. The process is not me­ did examples of how to use humor and metaphor to educate­ chanical nor mechanizable. We must be able to communi­ a humor which makes us laugh after 30,000 years, without cate the inborn, internal capability for generating ·cognitive need of any explanation. This is never true of the symbolic

21 sf CENTURY Spring 2000 43 representation also present in artistic productions of. that same era. The internalized and the explicit representation of this "world line," this chain of monadic ideas, can now clearly become a general metric. From it, we can determine. the "values" by which to c�mpare choices and even "innovations"; not all i.nnovations are able to increase or even maintain the "above­ ness," the potential characteristic of the human so­ cieties. I wish to illustrate this with a concluding ex­ ample. We can "imagine" many futures, but let us select two cases based on present "hypothesis." , We know that there is x probabi I ity, that a mete­ orite could destroy the present form of life on Earth. Assume that our allowed reaction time, from the moment of discovery of such a threat, might be as short as two to five years. We have two possibil­ ities: Either, (a) we determine that we can solve (avoid) the problem, by application of present technical know-how, in which case :.ve must define policies, now, to ensure that the maximum potential will be· mobilizable when the strike comes. Or, (b) we determine that we cannot meet the threat using technologies presently available to us. Then we must start now to maximize the possibility of a "creative" breakthrough which can bring us to the next, higher level of technical know-how. Suppose that we now extend the timespan, but also the power of this example, as fo llows: In all probabil ity, our Earth will be destroyed by an explo­ sion of our Sun some 3 to 5 billion years from now. What are we already doing, to generate the idea

necessary to postpone, if not to avoid, that tragedy? J. Plassard, Rouffignac (Sluttgart: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1999) From the perspective of the above cited crises of "The Leonardos and Rembrandts of prehistoric times have left on the existence, I can conclude that: walls of caves in southern France and Spain, splendid examples of how (1) Prigogine's thesis essentially comes down to to use humor and metaphor to educate-a humor which makes us this: To be creative, one needs uncertainty. Knowing laugh after 30,000 years, without need of any explanation. II Here, a of a future crisis does not prevent creativity, how­ painting of a laughing horse or bison (ca. 14,000- 75,000 years before ever. On the contrary, it must stimulate us to find a present), from the Rouffignac cave in France. creative solution. (2) Innovations in windmill technology, for exam­ Nature," 21st Century Science & Technology, Summer 1997, p. 22. ple, are not valuable innovations today. --, 1997b. "Was Darwin an Evolutionist or, Just a Social Reformer?" 21st (Fall), p. 26. (3) We are the only element in the system Earth, with an in­ Century Science & Technology --, 1986. "L eonardo da Vin ci and Hypersonic Flig ht," Fusion (January), p. finitesimal chance of overcoming these indicated limits. Thus, 14. we are the only ones who bear the responsibility of helping Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., 1999. "How to Tell the Future," Executive Intelli­ life to survive. gence Review, Aug. 27, 1999. (4) All the above is true, if and only if, we accept a simple --, 1997. "Spaceless-Timeless Boundaries in Leibniz," 21st Century Sci­ ence & Technology (Fall), p. 46 axiom: Existence is not optional; it has a sufficient reason; it --, 1996. "How the Future Shapes the Present," Executive Intelligence must and can endure. Review, Oct. 11. Dino De Paoli, based in Hannover, Germany, has written lIya Prigogine, 1996. La Fin des Certitudes (Paris: Odile Jacob). widely on the history of science. Sponsored by the Schiller In­ --, 1977. Autobiography prepared for the Nobel Prize, translated from the stitute, he has recently presented a series of lectures to univer­ French text, www.nobel.se/laureates/chemistry-1977-1 -autobio.html --, 1977. "Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech," Oct. 11. sity audiences in Europe on the ideas in this article. lIya Prigogine and G. Nicolis, 1992. Ala Rencontre du Complexe (Paris: PUF). lIya Prigogine and I. Stengers, 1993. Das Paradox der Zeit (Munich: Piper). Blbllography ------­ Henri Bergson, 1981 . L'Evolution Creatrice (Paris: PUF). Arnaud Spire, 1999. La Pensee-Prigogine (Paris: Editions Desclee de Dino De Paoli, 1999. "Lazare Carnot," Nouvelle Solidarite, (Paris), March 12, Brouwer). 1999. Alfred North Whitehead, 1978. Process and Reality (New Yo rk: Free Press). --,19 97a. "Godel, Cantor, and Leibniz: Mathematics and the Paradoxical in --, 1979. La Scienza e ifMondo Modemo (Milan: Boringhieri).

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21st CENTURY Spring 2000 45 The Growing Evidence Of Planets Beyond Our Solar System

© Lynette R. Cook An artist's illustration of what the transit of a planet around star HD 209458 might look like. The planet, which was detected by astronomers Geoffrey Marcy and Paul Butler, is a Jupiter-like gas giant.

46 Spring 2000 215t CENTURY re there planets orbiting stars outsiae .our Solar System? 0.0001° Is it possible that life could have developed on any of A. these planets? Until just a few years ago, these age-old questions could be asked, but they could not be answered. Over the past five years, however, astronomers have detected what appear to be 28 plariets orbiting other stars. They appear so because they cannot be seen directly: At today's level of technology, they are too far away and too small, and are too overshadowed by the light of their host star, to have their pic­ ture taken. Their existence is inferred from indirect data, which measure the effect the planet has on its star.' But no one can ex­ plain how they formed and why they are where they are. So far, because of the limits of the instruments used, the planets that have been detected have been i riferred to be huge gas giants, similar in size to Jupiter. These gas giant plan­ ets seem to bear little resemblance to the organization of planets in our Solar System. In most cases, they orbit closer to their star than Mercury does to the Sun. Stranger still, they ap­ pear to be in markedly elliptical orbits, rather than the virtu­ ally circular ones with which we are familiar. These striking differences between what we can see in the Earth's neighborhood, and what we are finding in other plane­ Figure 1 tary systems, has directly challenged the conventional theo­ ASTROMETRIC DISPLACEMENT OF THE SUN ries of planet formation. Scientists had assumed that were Ifan observer viewed the Sun from about 30 light years they to find other solar systems, such systems would conform, from Earth, this is the pattern of motion he would see at least in basic parameters, to our own. Dr. Geoffrey Marcy, between the years 7 990 and 2020, the result ofJupiter' s one of the most successful and determined planet finders effecton the star. Th is "wobble" in a star's motion is the says, "there's been a dramatic sea change in our thinking object of study using the astrometric method of detect­ about the formation and the evolution of planetary systems." ing extrasolar planets. He describes the change as "dramatic, even philosophical.'" Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory/NASA To meet the scientific challenge of finding "new Earths," techniques are being developed for applications both with tel­ escopes on the ground and with those that will be placed into space. These will soon extend the abil ity of astronomers to companion planets, observable as a change in its velOCity, detect smaller planetary bodies, and to determine the compo­ that astronomers first set out to measure around other stars. sition and characteristics of the smaller planets, as well as This is known as the astrometric method of planetary detec­ those of the gas giants. Over the next decade, we may indeed tion. (See Figure 1.) actually find new Earths. The first attempts to detect such a solar wobble were in the mid-1 9th century. The most fruitful targets were thought to be Searching for a Wobble the brightest stars closest to the observer on Earth, because The search for companion bodies around other stars has a the effect being searched for was such an excruciatingly small long, and sometimes disappointing, history. Astronomers wel l deviation in the motion of the star. Within the limits of tele­ knew that it would not be possible. to see a planet orbiting a scopes, the observer could expect to find only large, Jupiter­ star. The visible light of a star would completely overwhelm like planets, which, if they fo llowed the pattern in our Solar any light the planet might reflect back into space, the star be­ System, would take at least a decade to complete their jour­ ing typically between 1 million and 10 billion times brighter ney around the star-as does Jupiter. Smaller-orbit planets than any companion. In addition, any planet would be so rel­ would not be observable, it was found, because the "noise" atively close to its star, that even with today's level of preci­ created by the Earth's own celestial motions would mask any sion observational technology, producing a separate image is tiny wobble that could be observed in the motion of the dis­ impossible. tant star. For centuries, scientists have known that bodies orbiting a This meant that decades of observations were required, in star will produce perturbations in the regular motion of that order to observe a fu ll rotation of a star as it was perturbed by star. In our Solar System, for example, not only do each of the the planet's orbit around it. Patience has been one of the pri­ planets orbit around the Sun, but the Sun is affected by the mary prerequisites in searching for extrasolar planets. presence of the planets, which cause it to orbit in a circle with Dr. Alan Boss, a research scientist at the Carnegie Institu­ a radius of approximately 432,300 miles around the center of tion in Washington, D.C. has presented an engrossing review mass of the Solar System. The planet Jupiter, which has the of the history of planetary searches,2 in which he reports that, largest mass among the planets-only 1,000 times less than in 1844, the German astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel that of the Sun-exerts the greatest perturbation on the mo­ found that Sirius exhibited a wobble, characteristic of a star tion of the Sun. It is that "wobble" in the Sun's orbit caused by with an unseen companion. This companion was later un-

21 st CENTURY Spring 2000 47 masked by American astronomer Alvan G. Clark in 1862, us­ ing the largest telescope ever built (quite a feat in the midst of the Civil War), and was found to be a faint star, giving off less than a thousandth the light emitted by what was known, from then on, as Sirius A. The next major advance came from Peter van de Kamp, an astronomy professor at Swarthmore College and Director of the college's Sproul Observatory, who dedicated decades of his life to fi nding unseen stars, and perhaps, extrasolar plan­ ets. In 1963, van de Kamp announced that he had found the first extrasolar body, orbiting Barnard's star. Edward Emerson Barnard (for whom the star is named) had noted that this bright star moved across the sky past its neighboring stars, in images taken during the 22-year interval between 1894 and 1916, indicating an unseen companion. Van de Kamp did a meticulous comparison between the 1916 images of the location of Barnard's star, and the years of observations he himself made, starting in 1938. Dr. Boss re­ Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor (left) and Didier Queloz ports that by taking about 100 photographs of Barnard's star stunned the world in 1995, with their announcement that each year, between 1938 and 1963, van de Kamp amassed an they had fo und the fi rst extrasolar planet. archive of more than 2,400 images, taken by 50 different as­ tronomers at the Sprou I Observatory. 1988, Dr. David Latham announced that there was evidence In 1963, van de Kamp announced to the scientific commu­ of a "planet" in orbit around the star HD11 4762. He did not nity his conclusion that Bernard's star was being orbited by an come to this conclusion using astrometric data of optical ob­ object with a mass that was 60 percent of the mass of Jupiter, servations of the position and movement of the star, but in­ leading him to believe that he had fo und the first extrasolar stead used the changes in the frequencies of the star's emitted planet. Careful analysis of the decades of data implied that light. This technique measures the radial velocity of the star, the planet orbited the star once every 24 years, twice the pe­ using spectroscopy to study its spectrum. riod of Jupiter's orbit. But that was not the end of the story. In 1842, Austrian physicist Christian Johann Doppler dis­ One disturbing feature of van de Kamp's discovery was covered that the frequency of sound waves, as perceived by that the orbit derived for the companion of Barnard's star was an observer, changes as the object emitting the sound changes highly elliptical, unlike any in our Solar System. In 1969, its velocity. The same effect is observed in light waves. The therefore, he offered an alternative explanation for his data, perceived shift in the frequency of the light is either toward stating that two planets in circular orbits could fit the obser­ the shorter wavelengths (blue shifts) or'longer wavelengths vations, just as well as one larger planet in a highly elliptical (red shifts), depending upon whether the object is moving orbit. closer to the observer or farther away. (See Figure 2.) Four years later, however, astronomer John L. Hershey, who Dr. Latham observed the change in the spectrum of the star, made observations of another star, over many years at the reflecting the velOCity of the star in its orbit. The spectrum of same Sproul Observatory, found the same perturbations in star HD11 4762 appeared to be alternatively red- and blue­ that star's orbit as were found in th� companion to Barnard's shifted by the same amount in each direction, periodically. star-an impossible coincidence. Carefu l investigation then This shift was interpreted as a result of the orbit of the star determined that the irregular motion of these stars could be moving toward and away from the observer on Earth, as attributed to adjustments in the lens of the telescope, and would be expected of a body that is in a regular orbit of con­ were simply artifacts of the hardware being used. stant velocity, where the angle of observation is as close to Even more damaging evidence came from another team of that of the planet as the star's orbit. astronomers, which was observing Barnard's star in order to The object that Dr. Latham found was inferred to have a try to confirm van de Kamp's extrasolar planets. This team ex­ mass equal to perhaps 11 Jupiter masses. He initially believed amined the photographic plates from different observatories, it to be a planet, but then recognized it to be in the category using a more precise astrometric analysis, and found that of a brown dwarf-a star that did not have enough mass to ig­ there were no planets orbiting the star. nite stellar thermonuclear reactions. Although van de Kamp's companion did not survive the It was not until the late 1980s, that the use of spectrometers scrutiny of more carefu l analysis and improved technique, its had reached the level of precision where such fractional initial announcement, and the activity that it generated, changes in the motion-induced frequency of a star's light-as helped propel into scientific view the possibility that ground­ small as 1 part in 100 million-could be measured. It quickly based astronomical techniques could be applied to search the became the preferred method of hunting for extrasolar planets heavens for other stars with companions, like our Sun. by teams of astronomers around the world, all of whom were anxious to be the fi rst to find such new Earths. The Shifting Light of Stars The breakthrough came in 1995. In the beginning of that As the hunt for extrasolar planets picked up speed, a new year, Dr. Geoffrey Marcy, a professor at San Francisco State technique was brought into the arsenal of the hunters. In University, sent an e-mail, indicating his optimism in fi nding

48 Spring 2000 21st CENTURY Jupiter-sized planets around other stars. Dr. Boss reports that Marcy, along with collaborator Paul Butler, had developed an improved spectroscopic technique, which Dr. Marcy was confident would allow them to detect Jupiter-sized planets. He reported to Dr. Boss that he was able to measure the ve­ locities of candidate stars within a few meters per second, the pace of a brisk walk. Because Jupiter's effect on the Sun clocked in at 13 meters per second, extrasolar planet detec­ tion on the Jupiter scale should be possible. (By comparison, the size and mass of the Earth introduces only a 9-centimeter­ per-second oscillation in the Sun's motion.) The spectroscopic method is best suited for the detection of Jupiter-type planets close to their star, where such planets would have the greatest effect on the star's velocity, most eas­ ily detected by Doppler shift. For greater distances, the astro­ metric method is better suited, because the farther away the planet is from the star, the greater is the wobble in the star's Figure 2 orbit. DETECTING THE DOPPLER SHIFT Planetary searches were also being carried out outside of FROM STElLAR VElOCITY the United States. In October 1995, Swiss astronomer Michel In addition to trying to measure -the motion of a star di­ Mayor stunned the scientific community by making the an­ rectly, the changes in the spectrum of a star's light nouncement at a scientific conference in Italy, that he and his (Doppler shift), caused by the effect of an unseen com­ colleague Didier Queloz had determined that the star 51 Pe­ panion, can be measured as it moves in an orbit. The gasi, a star similar to the Sun and about 45 light years away, spectrum of light emitted by the star when it is moving hosted a half-J upiter sized planet. (See Figure 3.) toward the observing telescope will compress the light As stunning to the astronomers as the first detection of an ex- waves and shift the light toward the blue end of the , trasolar planet, was the fact that the planet appeared to be so spectrum. As the star moves away from the observer, close to the star that it was orbiting once every 4.23 days-a far the wavelength decreases, and the light is shifted to­ cry from the nearly 12 years it takes Jupiter to orbit the Sun. ward the red. Such an orbital period would place the planet at a distance to Source: Courtesy of Geoffrey Marcy and Paul Buller its star that was 100 times closer than Jupiter is to the Sun, or closer than Mercury is to the Sun. No one had ever imagined that an icy gas giant could be created so close to a star. Considering the history of false starts and later-discarded 100 Period = 4.231 days claims of extrasolar planets, other teams of astronomers were f.. Orbital velocity changes (K) = 56.04 meters/sec anxious to see:if i\1ayor and Queloz's detection could be- con­ () firmed. As Dr. Boss describes it, "if the discovery could not be 50 . confirmed, the Swiss cla'im might have to be tossed onto the i i.w.�, heaping pile of previous failed dreams." .s , , That confirmation came within two weeks, from the team of Geoffrey Marcy and Paul Butler, who were soon to become � a \ the most prolific planet hunters in the world. It was the first £ � � � .'#, yI .•. . ' . time that two independent teams of astronomers had pro­ 4 .�:1 -50 fo �;J! {. '\�t\ '" . duced data from which they could conclude that a planet was �. orbiting around a solar-like star. Now that there was confi­ dence that extrasolar planets do indeed exist, the race was on , to survey the'most promising stars, and to determ ine how 0.0 0.5 1.0 ma'!yposs ible companion Jupiters there might be. Orbital phase , After all, if there were Jupiter-like planets around other Figure 3 stars, cou Id there not be other Earths? DOPPLER MEASUREMENTS FOR 51 PEGASUS Measurements made at the Lick Observatory by Michel A Solar System Unlike Our Own Mayor and Didier Queloz, between Oct. 77, 7995, and Between 1995 and 1998, 18' candidate extrasolar planets December 7996, revealed a periodic change in the ve­ ' were detected. Although 1999 would turn out to be a banner lOCity of the star. The period was determined to be year for firiding these stellar companions, the mystery of how 4.23 7 days, and the orbital velocity changes were de­ these planets formed, and why they appear to be so different termined to be about 56 meters per second. It was the than the family of planets that are so familiar, had deepened. fi rst detection of an extrasolar planet. In 1996, Drs. Marcy and Butler detected a planet orbiting Source: Courtesy of Geoffrey Marcy and Paul euller the star Upsilon Andromedae, which star is visible with the naked eye from the Northern Hemisphere, and is about 44

21 st CENTURY Spring 2000 49 light years from Earth. The planet was estimated to be approximately three quarters of the mass qf Jupiter, and a 2 distance from the star of only 5.5 mil­ lion miles, completing an orbit every "' ''' '''�"'" 4.6 days. -;,'" ... � " Then, three years later, a' stunning dis­ ' .£l /fP. ""'" " 'c .rr -- "Ij; coverY' was made. In April 1999, Marcy ::l \ 'iii and Butler announced that the further () c \ 'E analysis of data from 11 years of obser­ 0 c 0 vations of Upsilon Andromedae, taken e at the Lick Observatory near San Fran­ ti J « I cisco, revealed that there were two I more planets orbiting the same star. And I -1 "', >I in para-lIel,a team of astronomers from ,f % the Harvard-Smithsonian Center fo r As­ >, "' "': ""t#.At:"*�/ trophysics in Cambridge, Massachu­ setts, and the High Altitude Observatory -2 in Boulder, Colorado, also fo und the two outer planets around Upsilon An­ dromedae. The first extrasolar planetary -2 -1 0 2 3 4 system had been unveiled. (See Figure Astronomical units 4.) When the news of the discovery was Figure 4 THE FIRST MUlTI-PLANET SYSTEM: UPSILON ANDROMEDAE r.eleased on April 15, Debra Fischer, part of the Butler/Marcy team at San (a) The three planets detected around the star Upsilon Andromedae, ·desig­ nated as b, c, and d, are the firs t discovery of a multi-planet system outside Francisco State' University, remarked: the Solar System. The planets are in progressively more elliptical orbits as "This is an extraordinary finding and it their distance from the star increases. The orbits of Ve nus, Earth, and Mars in demands extraordinary evidence. Hav­ our Solar System are shown in dashed /ines, in order to highlight the eccen­ ing two completely independent sets of tricity of Upsilon Andromedae's planets. observations gives us confidence in this detection." The chance of two inde­ Sourc�; Courtesy of Geoffrey Marcy and Paul Butler pendent groups finding the trio of plan­ ets, "happening by accident are infin­ itesmal," she said. The discovery of three Jupiter-sized planets around one star baffled the sci­ entists who found them. "I am mystified at how such a system of Jupiter-like planets might have been created," co­ discoverer Geoffrey Marcy said at the time. Robert Noyes, a professor of as­ tronomy at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, commented: "This will shake up the theory of planet formation." Timothy Brown of the High Altitude Observatory explained that "the usual picture is that gas giant planets can only form at least four AU [Astronomical Units, the distance between the Earth and Sun, or about 93 million miles] away from a star, where temperatures (b) Another look at the three bodies orbiting the star Upsilon Andromedae are low enough for ice to condense and Most striking is the difference between these planets and those in our Solar begin the process of planet formation. System. The two smaller planets (b and c) are closer to their star than the Earth But all three giant planets around Up­ is to the Sun, and all are in the Jupiter-class in terms of mass. silon Andromedae now reside inside this theoretical ice boundary." Source; Adapted from i!lustration by A. Contos/Harvard.Smiths�nian Center for Astrophysics In a paper by members of both teams of observers submitted to the Astrophys-

50 Spring 2000 21 st CENTURY ----"'-- Distant star

+--- Planet

Lensing _--'\­ star

Observer

Courtesy of Paul Butler and Geoffrey Marcy Figure 5 Paul Butler and Geoffrey Marcy have been the most prolific THE METHOD OF GRAV ITATIONAL planet finders. Or. Butler is currently at the Carnegie Institution MICROlENSING Department of Te rrestrial Magnetism in Wa shington, o.c., and Using microlensing to indirectly detect a stellar com­ Or. Marcy is now at the University of Ca lifornia at Berkeley. panion depends upon the chance alignment of two stars, making the observation difficult to repeat or ver­ ical Journal, the scientists describe their precision Doppler ve­ ify. When a star with a companion aligns in the line of locity method as requiring a minimum of seven of the light sight of the observer with a more distant star, the light frequency shifts to describe the orbit of a planet, although 20 of the distant star is distorted because of the gravity of measurements, spread over more than one orbital period, are the nearer star. This can cause the light to be fo cussed, typically required to reliably determine the orbital parameters and the more distanf star to temporarily appear brighter. of the body. The fact that the orbital period of the outmost, If there is a planet around the star, this effect will be in­ "d" planet is about 3.5 years, requiring observations over that tensified. time period, indicates why it was not precisely located at the time the first 4.6-day period planet was determined. The authors point out that the fact that the two outer planets In this case, the gravity of the lensing star bends the light of of Upsilon Andromedae fo llow elliptical orbits is not entirely a more distant star, focussing the light and causing the more unexpected, because half of the approximately 20 extrasolar distant star to brighten. If the closer, lensing star is accompa­ planets that had been detected by that time, which were or­ nied by a planet, the lensing effect will be more pronounced. biting more than 0.2 AU from their stars, also had significant But unlike the measurements that can be taken with the astro­ eccentricities in their orbits. metric and spectrographic techniques (which result from reg­ Almost all theories of planetary formation developed before ular planetary motion, such as the orbit around the star, and the discoveries of extrasolar planets assumed that all planets can be repeated with each period of revolution), microlensing would be in near-circular orbits, similar to the architecture of depends more or less on a "chance" geometric relationship our Solar System. They also assumed that gas giant planets between a nearby and distant star. could reside only in the outer system of planets. Now, theory This creates a serious problem for using the microlensing was in turmoil. method to detect extrasolar planets. As Donald Goldsmith ex­ plains in his book, Wo rlds Unnumbered, "the geometrical re­ Finally, a Confirmation quirement that an object pass almost directly between our­ The confidence astronomers have had in their detections of selves and a star make gravitational microlensing extremely extrasolar planets has varied, because of the difficulty, and in­ unlikely."3 Astronomers have developed ways of extending directness, of the methods used in the search. Many of the their search for this unusual geometric line-up among celes­ finds are characterized as "candidates," awaiting more data tial objects, to the extent that many millions of stars could be and confirmation. Although the multi-planet system orbiting surveyed in one night. But there appears to be no solution for Upsilon Andromedae was calculated by two different teams the second problem of microlensing-repeatability. of astronomers, both used Doppler velocity measurements to On Nov. 3, 1999, the members of the Microlensing Planet come to their conclusions. Search project, led by David Bennett and Sun Hong Rhie at Are there other techniques that can be used to find these the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, re­ elusive planets? ported that using the microlensing technique, they may have One such proposed method is microlensing, or making use found evidence of the first known planet orbiting a pair of of the effect that one star has on another star's I ight when both stars. Because at least half of the stars nearest the Earth are bi­ are preCisely aligned in the line of Sight of the observer on nary stars, it was hoped that the possibility of finding extraso­ Earth (See Figure 5). lar planets would be greatly increased. The observations were

21 st CENTURY Spring 2000 51 . . . -.- ----. -- ,- - -.·e • 100 - : .. . . . e C/l C/l (J) c e 1: OJ e. � 98.42 e- - _.4!- -- -. •

2 3 4 5 6 Time of observations (hours)

. Figure 6 THE FIRST CONFIRMATION OF AN EXTRASOLAR PLANET Courtesy of Goddard Space Flight Center/NASA Photometric observations on Nov_ 7, 7999, measuring This series of X-ray images was recorded by the Soft X-ray the light emitted by a star, were used by astronomer Te lescope on board the Japanese Yo hkoh satellite in November Greg Henry to confirm the detection of an extrasolar 7999. It captures the transit of the planet Mercury across the planet, as it transited across the fa ce of star HD 209458_ fa ce of the Sun. The movement of the small planet can be seen At the onset of transit, a small but discernible dip of from top (just to right of center) to bottom, moving west to east. about 7.58 percent in the star's light, at the predicted The dark patch is a coronal hole near the s�/ar south pole. time of transit, confirmed the detection of the planet made previously by Marcy and Butler, using Doppler made at the Mount Stromlo Observatory in Australia, the radia l velocity data. Wise Observatory in Israel, and the Cerro-Tololo Inter-Ameri­ Source: Te nnessee State University can Observatory in Chile. When Bennett and his group announced their findings, other astronomers proposed that alternative models could The team notified another astronomer (a procedure they al­ also fit the data. Dr. Paul Butler stated in a recent interview, ways fo llowed), Greg Henry, of the Te nnessee State' University "There is little or no confidence in the interpretation of these Center of Excellence in Information Systems. Dr. Henry oper­ observations."4 Dr. Butler explained that while the group re­ ates a set of automated telescopes at Fairborn Observatory in porting the find "claimed they needed a planet and a binary Arizona. Dr. Marcy hoped that Dr. Henry Wou ld be able to star to fit the microlensing data, the competing microlensing observe a transit of the planet across the star, just as transits of group 'PLANET,' showed they could fit the data better with Mercury and Ve nus across the face of the Sun are visible peri­ just a binary star system that included the orbital motion of odically from Earth. No transits of extrasolar planets had been the two stars during the lensing event." previously observed. Ve ry little is revealed about the supposed planet detected In order for- a transit to be visible from Earth, the orbital through microlensing, and "we don't know what kind of a star plane of the planet would have to bring it between the Earth the planet was orbiting, because the star is never seen in a and the star. Until that point, none of the other 18 planets lensing event," Dr. Marcy explained in an interview. The star Marcy and Butler had detected and referred to Henry--or any that is being observed is extremely far away, he said, "thou­ of the planets discovered by others-apparently had had this sands of light years. The intervening planet between us and edge-on orientation toward the Earth. that star is also probably approximately 1,000 light years Dr. Henry trained one of his telescopes on the star at the away. As a result, our most powerful telescopes can't detect precise time that Drs. Marcy and Butler had predicted that the the planet at aiL" planet would transit the star, and, on Nov_ 7, Henry reported The fact that- once the two stars moved out of alignment the that he observed a 1.58 percent dip in the brightness of the observation could not be repeated made the finding a mys­ star, as the planet created a shadow when it passed across the tery; there is no way to verify an observation. "The challenge star. (See Figure 6.) Because the planet is in a 3.5-day orbit, in the microlensing technique," Dr. Marcy explained, "is to and, therefore, crosses in front of the star every few days, the provide detections that are so secure that a fo llow-up effort is transit was observed repeatedly over the next few weeks. This not necessary, and that is a difficult challenge in science." was the first independent confirmation of the existence of an Less than two days after the Microlensing Planet Search re­ extrasolar planet. port was made, a truly dramatic announcement was made­ Two more transits of the planet were also observed by an­ the fi rst confirmation of an extrasolar planet. On Nov. 5, other team of. astronomers-David Charbonneau of Harvard 1999, Geoff Marcy, Paul Butler, and Steve Vo gt discovered a University, and Timothy Brown of the National Center for At­ planet orbiting the star HD 209458, while observing at the mospheric Research's High Altitude Observatory. W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. HD 209458 is a Sun-like "The transit allows us to directly calculate the diameter of star, 153 light years from the Earth. From their velocity/ the planet, and to determine the 'sin i' the orbital inclination," Doppler data, the astronomers determined that the planet was Dr. Butler explained_ "We thus learned the true mass of the about five-eighths the mass of Jupiter, orbiting very close to planet, and the density of the planet. This is the fi rst time that the star, once every 3.5 days. the orbital inclination and the density have been determined

52 Spring 2000 21 st CENTURY for an extrasolar planet. The new info rmation is consistent maybe a little more about its size, and even the spin rate of with the planet having a 'Jupiter-like' composition, primarily the star." Determining the spin rate of the star will be possible ' hydrogen and helium." because of the blocking of some of the star's light by the tran­ In the case of star HD 209458, it is estimated that the planet siting planet. is only 63 percent of the mass of Jupiter, and its radius is 60 Dr. Marcy explained that because the star is spinning, when percent larger than that of Jupiter, making it a kind of the planet crosses in front of the star, the planet blocks off the "bloated" planet. With a density of about 0.2 grams per cubic light corning from one edge of the star, and when it crosses to centimeter, it is a Jupiter-like gas giant. the other side, it blocks off the I ight from the other side of the Dr. Butler viewed the transit confirmation as removing any star. Because the planet blocks off the light from the edge that of the "ambigu ity" that had existed about the reality of extra­ is moving toward Earth as it spins, the remaining light we ob­ solar planets. He also explained that when the planet moves serve is the normal light from the star, minus the portion of the in front of the star, some of the star's I ight passes through the light that would have been corning toward us, which is now planet's atmosphere on its. way to the observer on Earth. The blocked by the planet. star's light spectrum thus contains an imprint of the planetary Later, when the planet crosses the disk of the star, the other, companion. If, in the future; the researchers can "tease" that trailing edge of the star, that is moving away from us, is information from the light of the star, it would be possible to blocked by the transiting planet. At that point, "we'll see one determine what the planet is made of. edge with the Doppler effect due to the gas on' the surface of Dr. Marcy reported in February that the "star has set in the the star moving toward or away from us," he stated, "and that west, and is behind the Sun." The astronomers hope to do Doppler effect will tell us how fast the star is spinning, and more observations of HD 209458 when it reappears in the which d.irection it is spinning in, because we know which spring and summer. He hopes that the nevv setof observations edge of the star is moving away from us and which edge is ' "will tell us the chemical composition of the planet and moving toward us."

Ta uBoo HD187123 HD75289 HD209458 Ups And o • 0.73 MJ 51 Peg HD217107 HD130322 55Cnc GL86 HD.1 9501 9 HD192263 RhoCrB HD168443 HD114762 GL876 70Vir HD1237 HD37124 HD134987 lotaHor HD177830 -, HD21 0277 .. ' HD222582 16CygB

HD10697 .,.J , , 47UMa . , ;- 14Her

o 2 3 Orbital semimajor axis (AU)

Figure 7 CATALOGUE OF EXTRASOLAR PLANETS, AS OF DECEMBER 1999 The 28 extrasolar planets discovered, as of the end of 1999, are listed here in order of inferred mass and orbital size. Mass is given in comparison to the planet iLJpiter (M/

21st CENTURY Spring 2000 53 In the midst of the excitement over the first confirmation of an extrasolar planet, the Butler and Marcy team announced that they had also found six more extrasolar planets! At the end of 1999, the total cache of extrasolar planets stood at 28. (See Figure 7.) All of these orbiting bodies are many times the size of the Earth. They are presumed to be gas giants, without the sol id surface upon which life on Earth developed. The majority of them orbit so close to their host star, that no life as we know it could survive the searing temperatures. The one multi-planet system found so far, orbiting Upsilon Andromedae, "is about 10 times as massive as our Solar System. It's unlike anything we've ever seen before," confirmed Carnegie Institute theo­ retician Dr. Alan BOSS.5 Drs. Marcy and Butler are continuing their observations, to try to help answer some of the questions. "We need to find more planetary systems around Sun-like stars," fo llowing the Upsilon Andromedae discovery, Dr. Marcy stated. "We have a few candidates in our data, and we are continuing to get more data and look specifically for planetary systems. We hope that we wi ll have enough of them to do a real comparison with our own Solar System." Second, the astronomers "hope to find planets that are not just Jupiter-mass, which we've been doing so far, but lower mass planets. Paul Butler and I," he reported, "have a very concerted effort to find planets that are as Iow a mass as Sat­ urn, and even Neptune, the third biggest planet in our Solar System. That would be quite exciting, because we'd like to know if other planets elsewhere in the universe have the full Te nnessee State University range of masses, similar to the range that we have in our Solar Dr. Greg Henry used this 0.8 meter telescope to observe the System." planetary tra nsit of star HD 209458 in November 1999. He The team's third goal is to find planets that orbit "as far from was able to confirm the planet's existence, using the photo­ their star as Jupiter orbits the Sun. We've only found Jupiters metric dimming of the star as the planet crossed its fa ce. that are closer in. We want to find Jupiters that orbit far from their host star, because then those Jupiters will be directly adaptive optics, and thus enable them to begin to rival the comparable to the characteristic of our own Jupiter." They are performance of space-based telescopes that are placed above also looking for such planets in a circular orbit, similar to that the blurring effects of the Earth's atmosphere. Adaptive optics of Jupiter. Such a find could have an important impact on the have already been under development by the military over question of life outside the Earth, because scientists now be­ the past 20 years, one application being for ground-based lieve that a possible liquid ocean underneath the Jovian moon laser systems that would be used for a beam weapon defense Europa ·may contain the conditions for the development of life. system. Adaptive optics would remove the distortion in a star's (or a New 'Eyes' for Te lescopes planet's) light as it passes through the atmosphere, by measur­ Even while constrained by the limits of existing technology, ing the distortion in the wavefront of the light, and immedi­ astronomers have made the astonishing discovery of worlds ately compensating in real time by the superimposition of an around other stars. Now they are on the threshold of employ­ equal and opposite aberration. The correction is made before ing new and more precise techniques to refine the observa­ the light is brought to a focus, by reflecting it on a small mir­ tions already in hand, and expand the field of view that will ror, whose shape can be rapidly deformed, depending upon lead to new discoveries. the correction required. There has always been great interest in searching for Earth­ Dr. Angel has proposed that the sharp images possible us­ like planets outside of the Solar System, but the pace to de­ ing this method would allow the direct optical detection of velop the technology to do so has now quickened, since new Jupiter-sized planets, if· not those down to an Earth-sized Jupiter-sized planets have been found. planet around close stars. Dr. Roger Angel, an astronomer at the University of Arizona Dr. Angel, and his collaborator Neville J. Woolf, have re­ and an expert at building telescope mirrors,6 has developed a cently pointed out that "taking photographs, however, is not variety of proposals to enable ground-based planetary the best way to study distant planets." Certainly in the search searches with quality that is nearly space-based. (Dr. Boss re­ for Earth-like planets that might harbor life, no photographs marked in an interview, "If you could give Roger Angel $20 we can conceive of taking over such long distances will show million, he'd go out and build something really fantastic.") us living creatures. Aside from the artifacts we have built, One such proposal is to fit ground-based telescopes with there would be no evidence of life on Earth visible in photo-

54 Spring 2000 21 st CENTURY incide with the troughs in the second, interference will cancel the propagation of the light. This technique of "nulling interferometry" can be used to cancel the light being emitted from the star, while leaving the planet's radiation, which is emitted from a slightly different di­ rection, still intact. In 1990, Dr. Angel proposed that the re­ quired precision would become possible, if more than two telescopes were deployed in the search. His proposals for transforming the search for extrasolar planets are now being implemented in ground-based telescopes, and will be applied to the instruments NASA is designing fo r the next steps in space. The world's largest telescopes for optical and near-infrared Jet Propulsion Laboratory/NASA astronomy are the twin 1 O-meter Keck telescopes on top of The twin 7 O-meter telescopes at the Keck Observatory in Mauna Kea in Hawaii. By combining the images from the two Hawa ii, with the island of Maui seen in the background. large telescopes, in conjunction with four proposed outrigger These telescopes, along with fo ur accompanying smaller out­ telescopes on the same site, scientists should be able to detect rigger telescopes, are being prepared to make interferometric the wobble of a star of less than 1 inch at the distance of the measurements of the wobble in the motion of a star. The scale Moon, or 3,000 kilometers at the distance of the nearest star. will be comparable to detecting movement of 7 inch at the This would allow astronomers to detect planets as small as distance of the Moon. Observations will begin this summer. Uranus around a star that is 60 light years away, using the as­ trometric method of tracking the positions of the star. graphs taken from as close as Earth orbit. Life on Earth, how­ The Keck Interferometer will also be used to make direct ever, can be detected from space, through examination of the detections of infrared radiation from planets. The Interferome­ characteristics of the atmosphere, particularly the presence of ter will use simultaneous measurements at different wave­ oxygen, ozone, and methane. lengths to subtract the stronger signal of the star. With this To uncover the temperature, chemical composition, atmos­ method, astronomers would expect to find large planets near pheric pressure, and other vital characteristics of extrasolar their host stars, which have a high surface temperature. The planets, which will provide hints about the possibility of life, Interferometer will allow the detection of "hot" planets, about Dr. Angel proposes studying their reflected light using infrared the size of Jupiter, at a distance of 60 light years from Earth. spectroscopy, in the same way scientists learn about stars. The current schedule is for the first phase of the Keck Inter­ In 1986, Drs. Angel and Woolf proposed that the detection ferometer to go on line in July 2000, with the addition of two of signals at the mid-infrared wavelength, rather than that of outrigger telescopes. The second two outrigger telescopes will visible light, would be the best spectral region in which to be ready in the spring of 2002. The Keck telescopes serve as a find planets and search for extraterrestrial life.? "This type of testbed for the technologies that will be the foundation of the radiation-really the planet's radi ated heat-has a wave­ ambitious, space-based projects under development. length 10 to 20 times longer than that of visible light," they Other ground-based facilities, such as the Large Binocular explained. "At these wavelengths, a planet emits about 40 Te lescope, are also expected to greatly expand the existing times as many photons-particles of lig ht-as it does at base of knowledge of extrasolar planets, and lay the basis for shorter wavelengths. The nearby star wou ld outshine the the remarkably precise instruments that are planned over the planet 'only' 10 million times, a ratio 1,000 times more favor­ next decade. able than that which red light offers." But how do you magnify the emission of a planet to be able The Planet Search from Space to separate it, and obtain a measurement distinct from its star? To complement and extend the range of discoveries that Dr. Angel has proposed the use of interferometry-effec­ will be possible over the next few years with new and up­ tively, the combining of blurry images from two telescopes to graded ground-based observatories, NASA is planning a series produce one that has a higher resolution. The larger a tele­ of space-based missions as part of its Origins program. NASA scope's collecting area, the more precise an image it can pro­ Administrator Dan Goldin has challenged the scientific com­ duce. But rather than making telescope mirrors larger and munity to develop the techniques necessary to photograph an larger, it is possible to engage two telescopes (or more), sepa­ Earth-like planet around another star. Such an extremely diffi­ rated by some distance, collect data from each, and precisely cult goal will be reached through a series of successive mis­ combine them to greatly improve the quality of the resulting sions, over the next decade. image. One very challenging mission, which would greatly extend To increase the contrast between the bright star and less the transit method of extrasolar planetary detection, is the bright planet, Drs. Angel and Woolf proposed introducing a proposed Kepler Mission, developed at the NASA Ames Re­ method developed in the 1970s by Ronald Bracewell of Stan­ search Center in California. The Kepler Mission will use the ford University. With two telescopes focussed on the same method of photometry, measuring the light of stars. It wi ll star, Bracewell found that he could invert the light waves from continuously and simultaneously monitor the brightness of one, and then merge that inverted light with the light from the 100,000 stars, for the purpose of observing the dimming effect second telescope. If the peaks in the light wave precisely co- of planetary transits.

21 st CENTURY Spring 2000 55 missions, which are due in June 2000. The space agency will make its selections in November 2000. According to David Koch, at the Ames Research Center, the Kepler team has com­ pleted a working laboratory model to demonstrate that the technology can indeed be developed to monitor promising stars and detect Earth-sized extrasolar planets, and the team is planning to submit a proposal in the competition. Kepler is designed to mai ntai n a fixed stare at the same 100,000 stars throughout its four-year mission. It will, there­ fore, be looking largely at distant stars, deep into one part of the sky. The results from Kepler's watch could provide target systems that can be fo llowed up by the next dedicated planet mission that is planned, the Space Interferometry Mission, or SIM. The Space Interferometry Mission is currently scheduled for launch in 2006. It will be an optical interferometer, oper­ ating in the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum and designed for astrometric measurements. SIM will deter­ Jet Propulsion Laboratory/NASA mine both the distances of stars and their positions, hundreds An artist's illustration of the Space Interferometry Mission. of times more accurately than any previous measurements. Scheduled fo r launch in 2006, the SIM will combine the data This will be accomplished by two telescopes at a maximum fr om its set of space-based telescopes to allow astronomers to separation (basel ine) of 10 meters, to record images of stars detect multiple-Earth-sized planets around nearby stars, using at a resolution several times higher than that of the Hubble radial velocity measurements observed in the shift in wave­ Space Te lescope. The spacecraft will also include two pairs length of the star's light. In this rendering, the eight telescopes of telescopes for precision pointing and orientation, and two are seen on the top of the spacecraft. The long boom to the spares that can be used either for science or pointing if there r.ight contains small mirrors that reflect back laser beams from is a failure. the spacecraft, to measure the orientation of the telescopes. SIM will be able to detect large terrestrial planets (5 to 10 Earth masses) orbiting nearby stars. To accomplish this, over The sensitivity of the photometer wi ll be such that planets its five-year mission, SIM wi ll search 200 main-sequence as small as 0.8 Earth radii can be detected, in or near the stars. Once a planet is detected through the "wobble" motion "habitable zone" of a wide variety of stars. The current under­ of its star, the search wi II be extended for evidence of addi­ standing of the region in which a planet must lie to be able to tional planets in that system. support life is bounded by the range of distances from a star in SIM will also demonstrate, for the first time in space, the which liquid water could exist on its surface. In our Solar Sys­ technique of nulling. The interferometer can be tuned so that tem, this boundary is between 0.8 and 1.3 times the radius of the light from the exact center of the field of view is blanked the Earth. It is also estimated that for a planet to contain an out, leaving any light from surrounding bodies to be imaged. Earth-like atmosphere, the mass of the body would lie be­ The goal is to demonstrate this nulling capability, which will tween 0.5 and 2.0 Earth masses, large enough to maintain an be critical for future missions, to 1 part in 10,0000. atmosphere, but not so large that the atmosphere would be In order to receive continuous illumination and avoid inter­ dominated by the lightest elements of hydrogen and helium. ference, or occultation, when the Earth is between the space­ The very defi nition of a "habitable zone," however, has un­ craft and the Sun, SIM will be in a solar orbit, trailing the Earth dergone quite a bit of revision over the past few years. The an­ by about 95 million kilometers after 5.5 years. The accuracy nouncement that the ALH84001 meteorite from Mars may with which SIM will detect extremely small motions of stars is contai n evidence of past I ife there, and that the proposed described by the designers as being able to "see the grass ocean under Jupiter's moon Europa could possibly support grow in your yard every second, from as far away as 10 kilo­ the development of primitive life fo rms, has pushed the meters, or more than 6 miles." boundary for life considerably farther out than was previously In the second decade of this century, NASA is planning to believed. launch the next set of instruments to refine the search. The Scientists have proposed a hypothesis that the four-year Ke­ Te rrestrial Planet Finder (TPF), which is still in the conceptual pler Mission could be expected to detect about 175 Earth­ design phase, will challenge the scientific and engineering sized planets, about 425 large terrestrial detections; of these, communities not only to find terrestrial planets, but also to it is thought that about 70 cases (1 2 percent) of the total measure the relative proportions of the chemical markers for would be multi-planet systems. They estimate that there is a life-carbon dioxide, water, ozone, and methane-in their at­ 1/2 percent transit probabil ity per planet in or near the habit­ mospheres. able zone. The Terrestrial Planet finder will use the technique of The Kepler Mission is conceived as a Discovery-class mis­ nulling interferometry to reduce the interfering glare of a sion, which means that it would cost under $300 million, and planet's host star by a factor of more than 100,000, to reveal would be ready to launch fo ur years after it were selected. terrestrial-sized planets as far away as nearly 50 I ight years. NASA has solicited proposals for the next round of Discovery The very sensitive infrared-as opposed to optical-interfer-

56 Spring 2000 21st CENTURY promising new habitable planets. Over the next decade, we will have avail­ able an avalanche of new data concerning the formation and character of other solar systems, and the possibilities that they might be inhabited. Today, theorists cannot explain what astronomers believe they have found in planetary systems so.different from the one Kepler so eloquently described 400 years ago. Conventional theories rely on the pri­ macy of gravitational interactions in proto­ planetary disks, the formation of planetesi­ mals, and the accretion of solid-body and gaseous planets. The astonishing fi nding that multiple Jupiter-like planets can apparently reside close to their stars, in highly elliptical orbits, has led to the theory that planets can form at great distances from stars, and then migrate inward. On the way, some surmise, they "bang" into each other, creating a cer­ tain level of chaos, which we observe in Jet Proputsion Laboratory/NASA these unusual configurations today. NASA plans to deploy the Te rrestrial Planet Finder, shown here in an artist's il­ Other theories have been advanced in the lustration, in the second decade of this century. The TPF will use infrared in­ past. In the 1970s, Swedish physicist Hannes terferometry to search fo r evidence of terrestrial planets as fa r away as nearly Alfven, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 50 light years from Earth. A series of telescopes will be deployed, each on its 1970 for his work on the behavior of plasmas, own fr ee-flying space.craft, to fo rm a baseline between 70 and 200 meters. proposed that the magnetic field of the Sun played a critical role in the formation of plan­ ometer will be able to ·charac.terizethe numbers, sizes, loca­ ets, and that electromagnetic fields dominated this process. tions, and diversity of extrasolar planets. Plasma physicist Daniel Wells, professor emeritus at the TPF will also study the protoplanetary disks of material sur­ University of Miami, has noted the similarity of the formation rounding stars, in order to illuminate the process of planet for­ of force-free structures in a rotating plasma in the laboratory, mation, which is little understood, especially since massive to the geometric organization of planets in the Solar System, Jupiter-type stars have been detected near to their host stars, and has proposed that the process of formation is similar. (His in contrast to our Sol'ar System. By studying th'e infrared emis­ work on this subject appeared in 27 st Century in 1988.8) sion from dust, ices of water and carbon dioxide, and gases in As is the case in any fruitful field of scientific endeavor, the protoplanetary disks, information on the mass and tempera­ detection of extrasolar planets has posed more questions than ture distribution across the disk should provide clues as to it has answered. The combination of new data and unfettered, how solid and gaseous planets form. creative thinking, could soon shed light on the question of To reach the sensitivity projected for the Te rrestrial Planet how planets and solar systems form, and whether or not there Finder, a long baseline of telescopes is required, because the are habitable planets beyond the Earth. distance between the instruments determines 'the resolution of Marsha Freeman is an associate editor of 21 st Century and the measurements. Rather than construct larger and larger the author of How We Got to the Moon: The Story of the Ger­ space structures to house such a series of separate instruments man Space Pioneers. (such as the design for the Space Interferometry Mission), the Notes ------Te rrestrial Planet Finder is conceived as a set of four 3.5 meter 1. InteNiew with Geoffrey Marcy, Feb. 3, 2000. diameter telescopes, each on its own spacecraft, flying in for­ 2. Alan Boss's book, Looking for Earths: The Race to Find New Solar Sys­ mation, creating a baseline between 70 and 200 meters. tems, published by John Wiley & Sons in 1998, is an excellent introduction Other configurations involving four to six smaller telescopes to the history, technology, and science behind the search for extrasolar planets. Dr. Boss hopes to update this work, to include the most recent find­ are also under study, both by NASA and the European Space ings in this field. Agency. 3. Donald Goldsmith, Worlds Unnumbered: The Search for Extrasolar Plan- Like SIM, the Te rrestrial Planet Finder will be placed in an ets. (Sausalito, Calif: University Science Books, 1997). Earth-trailing orbit. The launch is projected for approximately 4. Interview with Paul Butler, Feb. 6, 2000. 5. Interview with Alan Boss, F.eb. 2, 2000. the year 201 0, and the mission is to be at least five years. It is 6. David Cherry, "Interview with Roger Angel: The New Telescope Mirrors: projected to cost in the range of $2 billion. In the fi rst year of Rigid Honeycombs with Deep Curvature." 21st Century Science & Technol­ its mission, TPF is to build on the results of the SIM mission ogy, Winter 1997, p. 73. and examine about 150 stars to characterize planets discov­ 7. "Searching for Life in Other Solar Systems," by Roger Angel and Neville J. ered by SIM, which will range in mass from that of Jupiter to Woolf. Scientific American Presents, Magnificent Cosmos Edition, Spring 1998, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 22-25. that a few times Earth's mass. In subsequent years, it will carry 8. "How the Solar System Was Formed," by Daniel R. Wells, 21st Century out its program of identifying and characterizing the most Science & Te chnology, July-August 1998, pp. 18-28.

21 st CENTURY Spring 2000 57 INTERVIEW WITH PROF. VLADIMIR VOEIKOV

A leading researche( discusses the breaking frontiers of biophysics presented at the Second International A.G. Gurwitsch Conference, held in Moscow in September 7999.

EDITOR'S NOTE Moscow University biologist Vladimir Vo eikov is one of the fo remost researchers in a school of scientific investigation al­ most unknown in the We st. Wh ile Western biology has taken the path of reductionism, in which living processes are re­ garded essentially as molecular machines, a completely dif­ fe rent approach, based on the pioneering ideas of.Vladimir Ve rnadsky, Alexander Gurwitsch, and Ervin Bauer, de veloped Photos courtesy of Vladimir Voeikov in the Soviet Union. The workers of this Soviet school recog­ Prof. Vo eikov in bis Moscow laboratory, with a device fo r sin­ nized the distinction between living and non-living processes gle photon counting. as fundamental and irreducible. According to Ve rnadsky, the existence and evolution of living processes on the Earth, and netic radiation-have an important biological function. There of human reason, as a fu rther, axiomatically distinct process are now many papers in the literature which show that this is within the living domain, are no mere isolated or accidental the case. Gurwitsch's idea of ultraweak light emission from phenomena, but constitute coherent expressions of a fu nda­ living cells is that this emission is not just a by-product of their mental developmental characteristic of the Universe as a activity, having nothing essential to do with that activity and whole-a characteristic incompatible with the assumption of having no effect on it. The ultraweak radiation is not like the universal entropy. noise produced by the workings of a machine, but represents Professor Vo eikov, a modern exponent of this line of an important biological function. It seems to me that this has thought, is Associate Professor and Vice Chairman of the been substantiated. Department of Bio-organic Chemistry, Faculty of Biology, at Second, the idea of the biological field. You have to take M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University in Moscow. the essence of his idea. He didn't specify what kind of field he VQ eikov was one of the organizers of the Second International was thinking about, whether for example it is electromag­ A.G. Gurwitsch Conference, held at the University in Septem­ netic, or chemical, or any other. But the idea was, that it was ber 1999, which he discusses here. He was interviewed in dynamic and heterogeneous in the holistic space of the living October 1999, by Jonathan Te nnenb-aum, who heads the Fu­ system. Because of this field, there are not only local interac­ sion Energy Foundation in Europe. tions between neighbori ng elements, but there is a general principle which unites the organism as a totality. So, it seems Question: Where do we stand today concerning the most im­ to me now, that without this idea of a total ity, many many portant questions raised by Gurwitsch and his school? things cannot be explained. A lot of work shows this. First, I think that the most important claim made by Gur­ Whether people are studying electromagnetic interactions, witsch is, that the weak light emissions-not only the mitoge- or mechanical interactions-such as mechanical forces in

58 Spring 2000 21st CENTURY embryonic development-you may still speak about chemical and mechanical fields, because these fields are oscillatory and have gradients. They are changing in time and space, and a change in one place in the gradient will immediately be re­ flected in some distant place. A spider's web just made by the spider, may serve as a good analogy for such a type of field. As soon as a mosquito gets caught on the web somewhere, its efforts to get out change the rhythmic patterns of the web itself, at all the points within its boundaries-remember that the web is usually under ten­ sion. It seems to me that much depends on what methods in­ vestigators use to study these fields. If you are studying phonon [sound] fields, you apply a certain specific method, and if you are .studying electromagnetic fields, you apply quite different approaches. Several of the participants at the Second International Gur­ Question: But isn't Gurwitsch's sense that in studying all of witsch Conference, held in Moscow in September 1999. Sci­ these phenomena, all of these physical manifestations, we entists attended fro m Germany, Russia, Israel, Georgia, are ultimately measuring one and the same entity, a single Kazhakstan, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Ukraine, Slovenia, total field? China, and India. Yes, you measure different m�nifestations of the same field. This field has as many different manifestations, as the number tion of some kind of field? You can call this a fractal field, of fields in physics that we know of. I am not talking about and there are a lot of examples in biology of this fractal na­ gravitation, but nevertheless, one may think of such a strange ture, and changes in fractal dimensions during the biological idea. process.

Question: So it's a kind of physical phase space or physical Question: But I think Gurwitsch had in particular the "idea, manifold? that investigations of mitogenetic radiation, revealed some Yes. To my mind Gurwitsch was wise enough not to spec­ phenomena which are not explicable from the standpoint of ify the nature of the field, because it depends on what you what was then known about biology. For example, some­ are looking at, and how you are studying it. All of these spe­ thing very simple, like the surprisingly strong emission of liv­ cific fields are, of course, interconnected, and coupled to ing tissue in the ultraviolet range, which is many orders of each other. Electromagnetic oscillations may" build up to magnitude larger than would be expected on the basis of sonic oscillations, and mechanical stress is converted into simple thermodynamics. Where do all these high-energy chemical gradients-and so, you see, there are very many photons come from? potentialities. It is very difficult to identify all of them. So, Yes, exactly. You see, he understood that the physics of his now we are at the stage where the basic ideas of Gurwitsch, day was not enough to explain what's going on, even on the which were put forward more than 70 years ago, have been physical level. A lot of explanations about photon intensity substantiated. Of course they are not acknowledged by the did not work at all. whole scientific community, but that is only a question of time. Question: Another specific area where Gurwitsch's results Gurwitsch wrote that the future development of science differed radically from conventional biology, is cancer. For wi ll show the relationship between the picture of living sys­ example, Gurwitsch's notion of the "cancer extinguisher." tems revealed by mitogenetic radiation, and the picture pre­ Concerning cancer, the mitogenetic work has virtually no sented by classical genetics and biochemistry. He bel ieved connections with classical oncology. In fact, in oncology we that the wall separating them would someday be broken have not progressed very far from what was done in Gur­ down. And we are presently at the point of bifurcation when witsch's time, because very few people understood or knew this wall is breaking down. about the phenomenon of the "cancer extinguisher. " If you talk to people who are working in oncology you will find no Question: Can you give some specific examples of this? one who knows this word or these investigations [by Gur­ My examples come from studies of complex systems, and witschl. It is not because this work was destroyed, or that he from some very new physics. It seems to me that, unfortu­ turned out to be wrong, but simply that nobody has worked nately, most molecular biologists and professionals in bio­ in his direction for deGades. logical chemistry, either forgot or did not study physics. Or, But now there are more data showing that something re­ the physics they studied at the universities was not enough ally changes in the organism as a whole, when malignancy to understand all these things. Physics is developing just occurs. Most wise oncologists understand that they are not now very quickly, in new directions. We did not know the dealing with some mere local deviation or change in the word fractal 15 to 20 years ago, and now we use it to tal k body. There is a change in the whole organism when a tu­ about the nature of blood, the nervous system, the cyto­ mor appears, which is like a phase transition. In fact, Gur­ plasm, and so on. And what is a fractal but a new manifesta- witsch, in talking about the cancer extinguisher, probably

21st CENTURY Spring 2000 59 didn't use that expression, but he meant the same thing: that · something changes in the organism as a whole. There are data which show that blood from those pati"ents with malignancy, changes drastically, as cpmpared to people without disease. These are no't very deep data, but there are many indications of this type. One of these was in the paper of Va leri Orel at our conference. Wo rking at the Institute of Oncology in Kiev, he studied the kinetic parameter? of mechano-Iuminescence of blood taken. from animals with Left Right very different malignancies, and also from patients with vari­ Normal ous different pathologies. H is long-term studies show that there is something in common in the blood of subjects with mal ignancies.

Question: With respect to the characteristics of their photon emission? The oscillatory pattern of photon emission, induced by me­ chanical pressure upon blood specimens of animals and hu­ Left Right mans with cancer, are characteristic only for them, and the Cancer patient pattern differs from the normal. THE KIRLIAN EFFECT Another direction of research is using the Kirlian effect, Patients with cancer have different emission patterns which was reported in a paper by Konstantin Korotkov at the detectable at their fi nger tips, a phenomenon that in ini­ Gurwitsch conference. Last week I met him, and he said there ' tial research in Georgia was used to diagnose cancer is a group in Tbilisi, Georgia, that is studying the dynamiC with a 95 percent accuracy rate, as reported at the Gur­ process of the Kirlian effect, using video cameras and process­ witsch conference. First fi ngers of both hands are com­ ing the data by computer-and they have fantastic results. Us­ pared here. ing this approach, they diagnose cancer in people with 95 percent reliability. There was a large screening of several hun­ dred people, in a hospital in Tbilisi. The persons conducting don't want this new era, for purely psychological reasons. I can these investigations were not told if the person tested had understand that. It is very inconvenient for most of them. Max cancer or not, so it was a blind test. They gave tbeir results to Planck once described how this happens in science. the doctors, who didn't beli'eve them: In 95 percent of the cases, they were correct in their diagnosis. Question: Gurwitsch spent much time studying the spec­ troscopy of mitogenetic radiation, and also the phenomenon Question: Is this published? he referred to as "degradative radiation," which is emitted Yes, their report has just appeared, but only in a local Geor­ when living tissue dies, or is subjected to various kinds of gian technical journal. These data are very fresh, only two or trauma. What has happened to these directions of research? three months old. Now, we cannot explain very well what Kir­ They have not been developed until now because, first, lian emission is, but to my mind, it involves a kind of amplifica­ Gurwitsch was working in the ultraviolet region, and most tion, like field emission. It is not just the corona discharge. It is people who are studying ultraweak light emission now are generated with a high frequency potential applied to a living working with much longer wavelengths. Nobody knows what system, which is not in equilibrium. That is different from apply­ the spectral distribution is there. Second, Gurwitsch used bio­ ing the same discharge to a non-living object. Here you have logical detectors, whereas today we are using photomultiplier something additional, which is some kind of nonequilibrium. detectors. Biological detectors are at least two orders of mag­ Now, when we are talking about Gurwitsch's extinguisher, nitude more sensitive than photomultiplier detectors. This dif­ it decreases this level of equilibricity. The· person having a ference may explain why we cannot see the same things he malignant tumor has a diffe rent level of nonequilibrium. This saw, using yeast cultures as biological detectors. is probably why it can be discovered using such approaches. To day, it is more obvious, that he was correct about the co­ In fact, Gurwitsch discovered it using his own approach of herence of this rad iation. A photomultiplier detector working mitogenetic radiation. Blood from cancer patients didn't emit in the mode of single photon counting, is not a phase detec­ mitogenetic radiation. Gurwitsch showed why it does 'not tor. It does not matter if the photons detected are packaged emit, because the extinguisher is a strong antioxidant. It does coherently or not. A biological detector is a phase detector, not allow the radicals to recombine and to build up an energy and it is sensitive in that way. That is possibly why using yeast potential. The sick person has a diffe rent energy potential detectors. it was possible to resolve the mitogenetic spectra of than a healthy person does. biological emitters, and even from chemical reactions, into So, when we look at this problem from very different an­ very narrow, down to 1 nm width, wavelength bands. Nonco­ gles, and unrelated approaches, we come to the same idea herent emission in other wavelengths was simply not efficient and discovery of Gurwitsch. in triggering the mitogenetic response. Thus, those who tried As with everything that concerns Gurwitsch, the problem is: to use the photomultiplier to either prove or disprove Gur­ He said his ideas would require a new era, but most researchers witsch, made a major mistake.

60 Spring 2000 21 st CENTURY Question: That is a very important point. trical impulse. As soon as you have a propagation of the nerve Among the most interesting of Gurwitsch's experiments, impulse, you have a Signal. But if you apply this same force to was when he placed a rotating disk with a sector-shaped [pie­ the nerve when it is in the refractory phase, it is pure damage. wedge] opening between two yeast cultures, and set the disk We should distinguish between damage and irritation. The to rotate at various frequencies. Then the effect of one yeast same signal which is informational under one specific condi­ culture upon the other, via photon emission, is much stronger tion, is damaging under another. Degradative radiation is just at certain rotation frequencies. There is an intermitte.nce in a reflection of a system that was in a non-equilibrium station­ the signal exchange. From the point of view of simple physics, ary state, that was pushed away from that stationary state, and the intensity of the interaction'should go down, because most now it is reacting. The reaction is a release of energy. It is po­ of the time these two objects are cut off from each other. They tential energy which becomes active energy, and some of this see each other only during tiny interv'als. So intensity be- is released from the system and we observe this as degrada­ comes lower, but the efficiency becomes higher. . tive radiation. The name is a bit unfortunate. That may be interpreted as a kind of time coherence. The objects see each other at specified times. The biological infor­ Question: Did Gurwitsch invent it because he was studying mation doesn't depend so much on intensity, as it does on fre­ systems that were dying or injured? quency and phase rela.tions. For Well, he induced degrada­ me it is very Simple. I can shout tive radiation with many differ­ on the telephone, or whisper ent kinds of factors, such as on -thephone within the range centrifugation and fast cooling. of your hearing sensitivity, and On the other hand, he could you get the same quantity of in­ look at the liver of a mouse in formation from me. My infor­ situ, while the mouse was mation does not depend on alive, and the liver was con­ how loud I speak, within a cer­ nected to its nerves and blood tain range. On the other hand, I supply. He injected glucose can increase the intensity so into the blood of the mouse, much that you get no informa­ and there was a release of tion at all. This is an idea that degradative radiation from the explains a lot of things. liver. So, each time we feed ourselves, there is a release of Question: What about the degradative radiation. It is just degradative radiation and its a manifestation of work being implications? done by a system. The phenomenon of "de­ layed luminescence," which Question: One aspect of Gur­ Fritz Popp [one of the leadin'g witsch's work, which you researchers in the field, who yourself have been fo llowing fo unded the International Insti­ up, is connected with so-called tute of Biophysics] studies all branching chain reactions. the time, with its hyperbolic de­ All of my work is based on cay and so on, is, to my mind , this idea of Gurwitsch, and I degradative radiation. He in­ From archives of L. Be!loussov have always acknowledged, duces this radiation by a light Alexander Cavrilovich Curwitsch (7874-1 954) that he was the first who talked flash, investigating the subse­ about chain reactions in the quent re-radiation-"delayed luminescence"-from the sam­ biosphere. These reactions may be described by the equations ple. The intensity of the light flash has nothing to do with the for chain reactions with delayed branching. For example, the intensity of the delayed luminescence. When he illuminates a process of microbes multiplying in a culture, can be de­ leaf, or something like this, the flash has so many photons, scribed by the same equations as any runaway chain reaction. that they cannot be counted. It is just an impu lse, which af­ But, Gurwitsch was talking about chain reactions in a very fects the nonequilibrium constellations in the system. In fact, specific sense, which involves the participation of free radi­ he can apply not only light, but also an electromagnetic cals. In the 19305, people thought these reactions could exist, pulse, or some other kind of disturbance, and he sees photon but nobody could measure them. Electron paramagnetic reso­ emission which decays by this hyperbolic law. That is nance, which was introduced much later, was needed in or­ degradative radiation. der to demonstrate that such chemical species really occur. But Gurwitsch was rea lly talking about these free radicals­ Question: Although, as I understood the degradative radiation, their existence and their participation in these chain reac­ Gurwitsch associated this with some kind of damage. . . . tions. I have written about this in the biophotonics book.' From the biological point of view, any irritation or signal Now we have very solid data that these reactions really can be like damage. Take the classical physiology of isolated take place in aqueous solutions of the most simple kinds of bi­ nerves. Applying a force can trigger a nerve impulse, an elec- ological molecules, like sugars and amino acids. I describe

21 st CENTURY Spring 2000 61 this in my paper in the biophotonics book. We see these reac­ tions taking place, and we have proofs of the presence of branched chain reactions, or runaway chain reactions in this system. Since this takes place in such a model system, I have no doubt that it takes place in the organism also. So, to my mind, Gurwitsch was not only correct, but he laid the founda­ tions for my investigations.

Question: Could you tell us about the conference which you just held in Moscow [the second International A.G. Gur­ witsch Conference]? It was organized by the International Institute of Biophysics, and Fritz Popp, its founder, was there as a leader in the field, with the active participation of the Moscow University Faculty of Biology, which had been mandated by the Rector of Moscow University to contribute to the holding of this conference.

Question: I spoke to Fritz Popp today, and he said he was very impressed by tl"\e interest and the commitment of Moscow University to this kind of research. What were the most important developments presented at the conference? I would say the most important development to report, was actually not closely connected to biophotonics or Gurwitsch's field: It was a paper of Simon Shnoll. It seems to me it may be very important, maybe the most important paper of the 20th Prof. J. Injushin, author of the bioplasma theory and the in­ century in this field. It was publishep in 1999, in Uspekhi ventor of the low-level laser irradiation technique fo r biomed- Fisicheskikh Nauk, one of our most respected journals in ' ical applications. ' physics. There were a lot of discussions with physicists here in Russia, before the paper could be published. Question: To the universe? Shnoll's work shows that time is heterogeneous. It is not a . Yes, to the information of the universe, because it has or­ Newtonian time. Each moment in time is different from an­ der. And this order is very complex, but nevertheless we re­ other, and this can be seen in any physical processes which ceive it at �ach moment of our lives. So it seems to me that it you study. His results show that there is information, cosmic is most important, because without it no biological fields information, which is affecting all the processes on Earth. That would exist. Some initial order comes from the outside. is most important. We are not just a system open to non-struc­ Nothing comes from nothing. Something was always or­ tured energy and matter from outside. We are an open system dered. So Shnoll shows that there exists such a thing. We relative to structured information. cannot now explain what it is, or where it comes from, but

PHOTON EMISSION 8000 c RECORD FROM 'E 6000 GLUCOSE AND GLYCIN � 4000 REACTION c A record of photon emis­ is 2000 sion from the reaction sys­ o tem where the BeloLissov­ Zhabotinsky-like reaction Time, hours between glucose and glycin is taking place. Regular oscillations are 8500 c gradually emerging in the 'E 8000 reaction without any ex­ � 7500 sg ternal interference, and 1: 7000 they continue fo r about :J one day. This type of re­ 8 6500 action was discovered in 6000 �------�------�------�the laboratory of 10 11 12 13 v. Vo eikov. Time, hours

62 Spring 2000 21st CENTURY we know it is not a local phenomenon, Question: How does this function? but a global one. If you have a reflective medium with a specific fractal parameter, it has such a Question: As I understand, Shnoll's work property. When we are talking about bio­ demonstrates similar sorts of temporal logical media, they are also highly reflec­ variations occurring in an extremely wide tive. You have a great number of bound­ variety of physical measurements, taken aries there. Some boundaries we can see; simultaneously at different locations on these are membranes. But there are a lot of the Earth. boundaries which cannot be seen because Yes exactly. Just recently, [Lev] Be­ of their dimensions. You take a protein so­ loussov [a grandson of Alexander Gur­ lution in water. Each protein molecule is witsch] and I tested this with photomulti­ hydrated, and just from ordinary physical plier measurements. Beloussov was in chemistry, hydration water is different from Fritz's laboratory [in Germany], and I was bulk water. So that means there are two here in Moscow. We switched on our pho­ phases of water, hydration water and bu I k tomultipliers and analyzed the dark signal. water. We gave this data to Shnoll, and he got Now, there is a boundary between these what he expected to get. two phases, and this boundary should reflect light. At this boundary there is a change in Question: What about the papers pre­ the dielectric constant between the two sented at the conference on biophysics phases, and there is a change in the light proper? speed as it passes the boundary. The light A very important paper was from Popp, Prof. Fritz-Albert Popp, fo under changes its wavelength, at the same fre­ returning to the subject of oncology, and of the International Institute of quency, and, under certain conditions, it talking about very special properties of Biophysics. can travel very slowly, and it can even stop. carcinogenic molecules. In fact, using What does it mean if it can stop? It means quite different approaches, he again proved what was shown that it is localized, and stored. And you can localize a lot of in Gurwitsch's laboratory by N.N. Kannegisser in the 1930s: light in this way-how much nobody knows, but that is a that carcinogenic substances are distinguished from chemi­ great energy, and you can extract some of this if you change cally very similar, but non-carcinogenic substances, by the the properties of the system. characteristics of their own light emission. Now, returning back to degradative radiation and coherent fields, Maksimenko's. work gives some plausible answers to Question: Are you talking about Popp's work on benzpyrene? some of the most difficult questions which arise from Gur­ Ye s. These results have shown that carcinogenic substances witsch's experiments. were very stable emitters of mitogenetic radiation, resulting from slow oxidation. Because of this property, they begin to Question: Is this theoretical work, or is he also experiment­ irritate or stimulate cell division continuously,- unlike the stim­ ing? ulation which is organized by the organism itself. They con­ He is a theoretician, but he works with experimenters, stantly tell the cells that they should divide. And because of and works with people who are not in biology, but in solid this constant signal, some cells break down, and some of state physics, with investigations on the anomalous reflec­ them of course die. The rest begin to behave in such a way, tion of light from certain kinds of dust. There is also a group and become deaf to the signals from the organism, forbidding in Holland, which has published a paper in Nature on light them from dividing. localization, so this idea is growing. But concerning the ap­ Fritz Popp did his early work before he knew anything at all plication to biology, we initiated Maksimenko's thinking in about Gurwitsch's work in this area. This is a very clean ex­ this direction, because he is a pure physicist, and he did not periment which shows that Gurwitsch was right. Popp did not imagine that his ideas could apply to biology. Now we see start out to prove or disprove Gurwitsch, but he came to the that they can. same conclusions as Gurwitsch in a very different way. Popp was thinking, if you remember, about the concept of Another very important paper was presented by V. v. Maksi­ "photon sucking," and exactly that is what is going on. If you menko, a physicist. The paper is about light localization, or, I have some cavity, with some photons stored in this cavity, would better describe it as light storage in reflecting media. and if you put a substance with these properties in this cavity, That is'a most important paper not only for biology, but also then light can go there' and be stored there. So it would be for physics. He showed that if you have a medium that does photon sucking. It's like a black hole. not convert light into heat, but is a completely reflective medium, then light can be stored in this medium. And nobody Question: It adjusts the phase of light in such a way that· it is knows how much light energy is stored there, because the localized. photons which get into such media, change their velocity, Yes. That is probably what photon sucking is, and that is down to zero. That means that they have the same frequency not the only explanation. There are other ways to suck pho­ as they had before, but no wavelength. How much light can tons, but this one works. be stored in this way in such a medium, nobody knows. Now, another very important work is by A.v. Budagovsky,

21 st CENTURY Spring 2000 63 25

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BEHAVIOR OF HUMAN BLOOD DURING SEDIMENTATION Detailed behavior of human blood during sedimentation of red blood cells in a standard ESR-test. The record is obtained using a special optoelectronic device designed by V. Vo eikov and colleagues. who demonstrated that coherent radiation has a very specific you go to lower doses, the probability of ionization goes effect upon living tissue. He also demonstrated that the sec­ down, and the probability of strong excitation goes up. ondary radiation discovered by Russian radiobiologist Alexan­ der Kuzin is coherent. Unfo rtunately, Kuzin died in July at the Question: Even though the quantum energy is high? age of 94, just three months after he had published his last Yes. Now, with regards to this quantum energy, it is best un­ book. derstood for beta particles, and can be explained for gamma particles from this point of view. As soon as you have a beta Question: What is this book? particle in water, or liquid, and as soon as the energy of the This book is about hormesis and secondary radiation. Kuzin beta particle exceeds 263 keV, it generates Cerenkov radia­ was one of the proponents of radiation hormesis. As a matter tion. It is very well known. What is Cerenkov radiation? It is of fact, a paper on this subject was published in the same is­ ultraviolet radiation. The energy of Cerenkov radiation quanta sue of 21st Century magazine that my article was.2 Kuzin had in aqueous solutions is about 4 to 5 eV. Now, if a beta particle a great amount of data which prove the beneficial and neces­ energy exceeds this threshold of several hundred eV, then as sary role of low-level radiation on living things. For quite a soon as it passes through water, it generates ultraviolet light. few years, he was trying to explain the mechanism of radia­ tion hormesis, and he came to the explanation that radiation Question: So such events would lead to a kind of mitogenetic hormesis is realized through mitogenetic radiation. effect? A Georgian biophysicist, A.A. Kozlov, presented the paper Exactly. Because the energy of the Cerenkov radiation is at the conference, containing a direct proof that background about the same: 4 to SeV. radioactivity is necessary for cell division. Now when we are talking about gamma radiation, gamma quanta are absorbed by nuclei. When they are absorbed by Question: Do you mean what is sometimes called ionizing nuclei, a beta particle, or other secondary radiation is dissi­ radiation? pated, generating several electron-volt quanta. Those several When we are talking about ionizing radiation, let's not for­ electron-volt quanta of electromagnetic energy are exactly get that we are usually talking about high doses. As soon as what is called mitogenetic radiation. So Kuzin has shown,

64 Spring 2000 21st CENTURY that as soon as you irradiate liv­ You cannot run the car using ing tissue-a leaf, or seed-with only the spark plugs. low-level gamma rays, these I compare this to the relation­ generate secondary radiation ship of mitogenetic radiation of that stimulates growth and de­ free radical reactions, to the gen­ velopment, and so forth. eral bioenergy of the organism. Kozlov examined the length The organism needs sparkplugs. of the mitotic cycles in a para­ That is the function of mitoge­ mecium culture exposed to nor­ netic radiation. That is the func­ mal background radiation. Then tion of these extra hig h-energy he shielded them with lead, to quanta of gamma rays. You need decrease the background radia­ only a few of these gamma rays tion, and the mitotic cycle in order to multiply them into length increased. He increased many ultraviolet quanta, and background radiation, and the these ultraviolet quanta are mul­ mitotic cycle length decreased. tiplied by several orders of mag­ He showed the phenomenon of nitude into biochemical reac­ saturation: For division we need tions, with much lower potential, some internal events, such as but an incomparably larger vol­ DNA replication. You cannot ume of energy released. stimulate a cell that has not completed the events needed Question: Are there other as­ for mitosis. There is some inter­ pects you wanted to mention re­ nal clock in the cell. It can wait garding the results of the confer­ for a long time, for some exter- ence? nal signal. Prof. Simon ShnoJ/, giving a presentation on the cos- I would like to say some things Kozlov found, that not only for mophysical fa ctor that affe cts the behavior of physical about the study of blood. Blood paramecia, but for very many or- processes. is not a soup of various compo- ganisms, that 10 times the back- nents. Blood is an organ. This is ground radiation is saturating. So if you take 20 times back­ the word I now use. We see this, espeCially, using our method ground or 40 times, you get nothing more, besides injury. of studying the erythrocyte sedimentation rate dynamics. This From this and some other approaches, he calculated that each is a tool to study the way blood reacts to environmental con­ cell has to receive 5eV to initiate mitosis. ditions, during the time it is put into a pipette. It is the reaction Now about this notion of energy here. Energy may be of a stressed living thing that wants to survive. It uses for its measured in joules or electron volts, and these are quite dif­ survival all of its energy resources. The graphs of sedimenta­ ferent things. You can have a glass of water heated to 100 tion rate show a strong oscillation in the rate over a period of degrees, which has a large energy difference with the envi­ many hours. I can compare it to descending steps. It is as if ronment at 20 degrees. It is a lot of energy. But the energy you have a ladder, you may stand on a step for some time, potential is zero point zero, zero, etc. [0.00. . .J electron and then if you move, you immediately fall down a step. volts-practically nothing, but you have a lot of energy. If There are a lot of new data we generated with this ap­ you take several photons of 5eV, and if you integrate this en­ proach. The presence of oscillations shows that this method, ergy, you get almost nothing. Yet it has an effect: It is infor­ which was used for almost 100 years, was not understood mation energy. completely until now. People were trying to explain erythro­ cyte sedimentation in terms of the standard mechanical laws Question: Or you may call it geometric energy. for sedimentation of particles in a viscous medium. What we Yes. So that is the diffe rence. It is not a problem how to get are observing here has nothing to do with this sort of physics. these high-energy photons into the organism. There are free It is completely a biological process. The blood is not sedi­ radical reactions going on constantly in the organism, and free menting. A three-dimensional network of red blood cells is radical recombinations always give energies in the range of formed as soon as blood is taken into a pipette for E5R meas­ electron volts. These radical reactions must be very rare from urements, and this network is compressing. Blood resists this the standpoint of classical bioenergetics and thermodynamics, compression, and it uses its energy against compression. It and yet, without these radical reactions a living system cannot can even retract. work. But why does the compression still go on? Because the sed­ I can make a superficial comparison with a car engine. imentation reflects oxygen consumption by white blood cells Why is the car running? Because a lot of energy is released from red blood cells. That is the oxygen-delivery process in during the combustion of the gas. OK, but you need spark blood. So it has nothing to do with viscous medium physics. plugs to get it to run. The energy released by the spark plugs is not comparable to the energy which is released from the Question: It's an organized biological process. burning of the gas. But there is a sizable energy potential at Yes. We see, for example, that it doesn't depend on viscos­ the spark plugs: There are several kilo-electron volts there. ity. Viscosity may be high, and sedimentation may be very

21st CENTURY Spring 2000 65 Question: My impression was, that the attempt to compare the biophoton emission with some kind of digital signal is very primitive. We ll, it is primitive, but it also makes some sense. That is another long story, because it may be digital or it may be analog. In fact, it is both.

Question: What I am referring to in the domain of what we call communication-and a similar problem plagues molec­ ular biology-namely, that you miss everything important when you just look at the mechanics of the form of commu­ nication, and forget the living processes which are the emitters and receivers. Signals have no meaning by them­ selves. Exactly. You see, I can have before me a book with Chi­ nese characters, and probably there is a lot of information there, but it is only strange pictures to me. It means nothing; no information.

Question: Well, we didn't get to all the questions I wanted to ask, but the time is limited. I want to thank you very Prof. Vladimir Vo eikov, opening the conference session de­ much. Have you been able to say most of what you had in voted to the memory of the late Prof. Alexander Kuzin, mind? renowned Russian radiobiologist and proponen t of the For me to say most of what I had in mind, I would need hormesis theory (shown in photo on table). one week.

high. Viscosity may be very low and sedimentation also very Notes low. Just completely opposite to what is expected from the 1. Biophotonics: Non-equilibrium and Coherent Sys tems in Biology, Bio­ standard laws of a viscous medium. I don't mean that these physics, Biotechnology (Moscow: Biolnform, 1995). This is the English­ language proceedings of the first International A.G. Gurwitsch Confer­ law are not correct, but only that they hold for nonliving sys­ ence, held Sept. 28-0ct. 2, 1994, in Moscow. tems, and their manifestation in living systems is serioLisly in­ 2. Voeikov's article, "The Scientific Basis of the New Biological Paradigm" fluenced by the living system's own activity. appeared in the Summer 1999 issue of 21st Century, (p. 18), as did "Ra­ diation Protection Policy: A Primer," by Dr. Theodore Rockwell, p. 13. Question: In closing, I would like to go back to one of the most basic questions in the whole field, which is to identify Collateral Reading from 21st Century Science & Te chnology the source of the biophoton emission. Summer 1998 issue: You see, the question is like asking: What is the source of GURWITSCH'S NON-REDUCTION 1ST BIOLOGY, Part 1: the light from a laser? The laser has to be pumped. Is the • Introduction: "Alexander Gurwitsch: Father of Biophysics" by Colin Lowry, p. 34 source of light the pumping system for the laser? For me it is • "Alexander Gurwitsch and the Concept of the Biological Field, Part 1," by just the same for biophoton emission. The biological system Michael Lipkind, p. 36

is the working body of the laser. It has to be pumped with an • "Remarks on Gurwitsch's Method," by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., p. 52 energy of rather high potential. The pumping comes from Fall 1998 issue: radical reactions, and a little from radioactivity. Now, the GURWITSCH'S NON-REDUCTION 1ST BIOLOGY, Part 2:

source of photons is the microlasers, which are these coher­ • "Alexander Gurwitsch and the Concept of the Biological Field, Part 2," by ent fields which exist all over the body. Michael Lipkind The best analogy is a laser. There is a pumping system, and • "Remarks on Gurwitsch's Method," Part 2, by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., p. 54 a system which can be organized and excited. After excita­ tion, there must be some kind of irritation which releases this Winter 1998/1 999 light. If irritations are small, then we have what we call spon­ • "A Dialogue on the Importance of Keeping People in a Healthy, Unbalanced State," by Jonathan Tennenbaum, p. 28 taneous light emission, which is usually very low. If it is sys­ • "On the Fate of Gurwitsch's Work," p. 30 temic, then we have what Gurwitsch called degradative radi­ • "Beyond Molecular Biology: The Biophoton Revolution," by Jonathan ation, and the particular light emitters are these Te nnenbaum, p. 38 nqnequilibrium systems, which are in a liquid state in the or­ ganism. Just very recently, we found that ordinary water is a Summer 1999 • "The Scientific Basis of the New Biological Paradigm," by Vladimir Voeikov, rather strong light emitter. Ph.D., p. 18

• "Introduction: What Western Scientists Can Learn from the Vernadsky­ Question: In what circumstances? Gurwitsch-Bauer School," by Jonathan Te nnenbaum, p. 19 You take ordinary water and put it into an effi cient photon Fall 1999 detector, and you can find emission up to 20 times the back­ • ''Twenty Years of Mitogenetic Radiation: Emergence, Development, and ground level. Perspectives," by Alexander G. Gurwitsch and Lydia D. Gurwitsch, p. 41

66 Spring 2000 21 st CENTURY AUTHOR INDEX Hecht, Laurence. "Return to the 'American' Richardson, Cloret. "Review of Treatments System of Calculus." Fall, 2 (editorial). for Sickle Cell Syndrome." Winter, 78. Apel, Rainer. "German Government Retreats Hecht, Laurence. "Science: To Be, or Not to Rockwell, Dr. Theodore. "Radiation Protec­ from Plans to Shut Down Nuclear Energy." Be-Or, How I Discovered the Swindle of tion Policy: A Primer." Summer, 13. Spring, 14. Special Relativity." Winter, 2 (editorial). Rommel, Sentiel, Ph.D. "Maui's Ta nawa: A Apel, Rainer. "Time Running Out for [Ger­ Hecht, Marjorie Mazel. "Eratosthenes' Instru­ To rquetum of 232 B.C." Spring, 75. man] 'Red-Green' Alliance?" Spring, 16. ments Guided Maui's 3rd Century B.C. Rubinstein, Phil. "Predictions Are Always Voyage." Spring, 74. Arp, Halton. "Gamma-Ray Bursts Not Local, Wrong." Fall, 62. But Not That Far Away!" Summer, 54. Hecht, Marjorie Mazel. "Scientific Answers to Sauers, Jack. "Global Cooling Is Under Way." Irradiation Bugaboos." Fall, 28. Blue, Linden. "Boron Neutron Capture Ther­ Spring, 6. apy: An Elegant Te chnology That May Hecht, Marjorie Mazel. "Ancient Civilizations Schapiro, Ernest. "The Real Calculus vs. Save Lives." Summer, 8. in Australia's Kimberleys." Fall, 80. What You Learned: How Leibniz's Original Calculus Has Been SUbverted." Fall, 30. Cornell, Frank, D.D.S., M. Sc. "The Foibles of Jaworowski, Zbigniew, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc. Air Pollution Research." Spring, 4. "Report on the 1999 UNSCEAR Meeting­ Shavin, David. "The Cranes of Jiahu: 7,700- 9,000 Year-Old Flutes Found in China." Edwards, Dr. J. Gordon. "The U.S. Food Radiation Dose and Infinity: Why Collective Winter, 84. Quality Protection Act Is Worse Than the Dose Is an Absurd Concept." Fall, 22. Delaney Clause." Fall, 5. Jaworowski, Zbigniew, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc. Soldano, Benedetto, Ph.D. "Space Probe Ac­ celeration Anomalies Suggest Nonequiva­ Edwards, J. Gordon. "Thomas H. Jukes "The Global Warming Folly." Winter, 64. lence." Summer, 66. (1906-1999): Scientist and Humanitarian." Komp, Lothar. "How Can Gamma-Ray Bursts Winter, 6. Be Explained?" Summer, 48. Steele, James H., D.V.M., M.P.H. "Food Irra­ diation: A P·ublic Health Measure Long Fell, Julian. "Barry Fell, Epigrapher: Biogra­ LaRouche, Lyndon H., Jr. "On Eratosthenes, Overdue!" Fall, 24. phy 01 a Renaissance Man." Winter, 40. Maui's Voyage of Discovery, and Reviving Stevens, Charles B. "Table-Top, Ultrashort Freeman, Marsha. "Eurasian Land-Bridge: the Principle of Discovery To day." Spring, 24. Pulse Laser Defines Frontier of Science." Key to Economic Recovery-Will the U.S. Liebig, Gabriele. "Homer's Odyssey, Long­ Summer, 64. Join in the Land-Bridge?" Spring, 18. distance Seafaring, and the Principle of Stevens, Charles B. "High Energy Gains Ex­ Freeman, Marsha. "The Mir Space Station: Colonization." Spring, 36. Lowry, Colin. "The Electric Embryo: How pected from NRL's Short-Pulse Laser." Man's Courage to Explore." Spring, 48. Winter, 11. Freeman, Marsha. "Russia's Real Problem Electric Fields Mold the Embryo's Growth Pattern and Shape." Spring, 56. Stevenson, Robert E., Ph.D. "A View from as a Space Power." Spring, 52. · Space: The Discovery of Nonlinear Waves Lowry, Colin. " 'Medical' Marijuana Is a Dan­ Freeman, Marsha. "Back to the Moon with in the Ocean's Near-Surface Layer." Sum­ gerous Fraud." Summer, 16. Nuclear Rockets." Summer, 56. mer, 34. Lowry, Colin. "AIDS Pandemic Raging World­ Freeman, Marsha. "In Memoriam: Rep. Stevenson, Robert E., Ph.D. "A Gallery of wide." Fall, 13. George E. Brown, Jr.-The Congressman Upper Ocean Waves." Summer, 38. Lowry, Colin. "AIDS Vaccine Update: Catch­ Who Loved Science." Fall, 11. Te nnenbaum, Jonathan. "What Western Sci­ ing HIV in the Act." Fall, 15. Freeman, Marsha. "Japan Pushes Forward in entists Can Learn from the Vernadsky­ Fusion Research." Fall, 64. Lowry, Colin. "Interview with Sandy Thurman, Gurwitsch-Bauer School." Summer, 19.- White House Office of Nat'l AIDS·Policy: Freeman, Marsha. "Fusion Energy-20 Years Thurman, Sandy. "Interviewwith Sandy Thur­ We Need an AIDS Vaccine Now." Fall, 17. Later." Winter, 8. man, White House Office of Nat'! AIDS Pol­ Freeman, Marsha. "Flying Arrows and Fire­ Pascali, Elisabeth. "Japan's To kamak, JT- icy: We Need an AIDS Vaccine Now." Breathing Dragons: A History of Rocketry 60U, Scores Advances." Fall, 65. (Colin Lowry) Fall, 17. in China from the 13th Century." Winter, Petroski, Henry. "Can Children of Cyberspace Vaughn, Col. Molloy. "Col. Molloy Vaughn's 82. Become Engineers?" Summer, 4. Plan to Save Africa." Fall, 12. Freeman, Richard. "Chinese Infrastructure Pradel, Jacques. "Let's Simplify the Concept Voeikov, Vladimir, Ph.D. 'The Scientific Basis Projects Looking for U.S. Technology." of Radiation 'Risk.' "Spring 12. of the New Biological Paradigm." Summer, Spring, 19. Rabinowitz, Mario, Ph.D. "Entropy of the Uni­ 18. Goldstein, Paul. "In Memoriam: Colonel Mol­ verse and Little Black Hole Manifestations." Weissbach, Muriel Mirak. "Jean Fran�ois loy Vaughn-A Man Whose Mission was Summer, 70. Champollion and the True Story of Egypt." Progress." Fall, 10. Richardson, Cloret. "Budget Cuts and Bad Winter, 26. Gurwitsch, Alexander G., and Lydia D. Gur­ Policy Threaten Sickle Cell Treatments." Wolfe, Kathy. 'The Singing Voice Demands a witsch. 'Twenty Years of Mitogenetic Radi­ Winter, 76. Scientific Middle C." Winter, 13. ation: Emergence, Development, and Per� Richardson, Cloret. "What Are Sickle Cell and Wolfe, Kathy. "Lyndon LaRouche and spectives." Fall, 41 . Beta Thalassemia Syndromes?" Winter, 77. C=256." Winter, 17.

INDEX 1999 21 st CENTURY Spring 2000 67 Xue, Jiaji. "A Call the No; 2 Bridge To Stevenson, Robert E., Ph.D. "A View from . for Biography and Obituary Progress Smoothly." Spring, 21. ,Space: The Discovery of Nonlinear Waves . News Brief. "Sam Whitney, Founder of· Food ' Zepp-LaRouche, Helga. "The LaRouche Eco- Irradiation Plant, Dies." Spring, 10. in the Ocean's Near-Surface Layer." Sum­ nomic Method and the Land-Bridge." Goldstein, Paul. "In Memoriam: Colonel Mol­ mer, 34. Sprjng, 22. Stevenson, Roberi E., Ph.D. "A Gallery of loy Vaughn-A Man Whose.. Mission was Zhou, Prof. Shu-wen. "Abnormal Physical Progress." Fall, 10. Upper Ocean Waves." Summer, 38. Phenomena Observed When the Sun, Freeman, Marsha. "In Memoriam: Rep. Jawowwski, Zbigni.ew, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc, Moon, and Earth Are Aligned." Fall, 55. George E. Brown, Jr.-The Congressman "The Global Warming Folly." Winter, 64. Who Loved Science." Fall, 11. Book Reviews Engineering News Brief. "Robert Holzknecht Dies; Anonymous. Origami: The Secret Life of Pa­ News Brief. "First Superconducting Electricity Founder of 'The Ozone Truth Squad.' " per. (Susan Welsh) Fall, 75. Storage System Shipped." Spring, 10. Winter, 5. Childress, David H. Ancient Micronesia & the Edwards, J. Gordon. "Thomas Jukes Lost City of Nan Madol: (Charles Hughes) H. Environment and Environmentalism Fall, 78. (1 906-1 999): Scientist and Humanitarian." Cornell, Frank, D.D.S., M. Sc. "The Foibles of Winter, 6. Air Pollution Research." Sprjng, 4. Farley, Gloria. In Plain Sight: Old World Records in Ancient America. (Allen Dou­ Weissbach, Muriel Mirak. "Jean Franyois News Brief. "New Study Shows that PCBs Do glas) Summer, 80'. Champollion and the True Story of Egypt." Not Increase Risk of Cancer." Spring, 9. Winter, 26. Gilmore, Donald Y.,and Linda S. McElroy, News Brief. "German Court Rules for Farm­ eds. Across Before Columbus: Evidence Fell, Julian. "Barry Fell, Epigrapher: Biogra­ ers, Against Green Wetland Plan." Spring, for Tra nsoceanic Contact with the AmEui­ phy of a Renaissance Man." Winter, 40. 10. cas Prior to 1492, (J. Huston McCulloch) Pradel, Jacques. "Let's Simplify .the Concept Biology Summer, 84. of Radiation 'Risk.' " Spring 12. Lowry, Colif). "The Electric Embryo: How Gold, Thomas. The Deep Hot Biosphere. Electric Fields Mold the Embryo's Growth Apel, Rainer, "German Government Retreats (Paul Sheridan) Fall, 67. Pattern and Shape." Spring, 56. from Plans to Shut Down Nuclear Energy." Harford, James. Korolev: How One Man Mas­ Spring, 14. Voeikov, Vladimir, Ph.D. "The Scientific Basis terminded the Soviet Drive to Beat Amer­ of the New Biological Paradigm." Summer, Apel, Rainer. "Time Running Out for [Ger­ ica to the Moon. (Marsha Freeman) Fall, 18. man) 'Red-Green' Alliance?" Spring, 16. 76. ' Tennenbaum, Jonathan. "What Western Sci­ News Brief. "S. David Freeman Wins Green Israel, Paul. Edison: A Life of Invention. (An­ entists Can Learn from the Vernadsky-Gur­ Booby Prize for 'Green LA' Program." Sum­ ton Chaitkin) Summer, 76. witsch-Bauer School." Summer, 19. mer, 6. Kozima, Hideo. Discovery of the Cold Fusion Gurwitsch, Alexander G., and Lydia D. Gur­ News Brief. "American Nuclear Society Is­ Phenomenon. (Dr. Edmund Storms) sues Policy Statement on LNT." Summer, witsch. "Twenty Years of Mitogenetic Radi­ Spring, 82. 7. ation: Emergence, Development, and Per­ Krupp, E.C. Astronomy and the Archaeology spectives." Fall, 41 . Rockwell, Dr. Theodore. "Radiation Protec­ of Power: Skywa tchers, Shamans & Kings. tion Policy: A Primer." Summer, 13. (Richard Sanders) Winter, 87. Development and Population Policy Edwards, Dr. J. Gordon. "The U.S. Food Lewis, John S. Worlds Without End: Th e Ex­ News Brief. "Kyrgyzstan President: 'The Quality Protection Act Is Worse Than the ploration of Planets Kn own and Unknown. Great Silk Road' Is Our Foreign Policy." Delaney Clause." Fall, 5. (Matthew Moriarty) Spring, 84. . Spring, 9. News Brief. "Sen. Domenici Requests GAO McElroy, Linda S., joint editor. See Donald Y. Freeman, Marsha. "Eurasian Land-Bridge: Study of Radiation Standards." Fall, 9. Gilmore. Key to Economic Recovery-Will the U.S. News Brief. " 'Would the Green Movement McMenamin, Mark. Phoenicians in America Join in the Land-Bridge?" Spring, 18. Have Pulled TVA's Plug?' " Fall, 9. 350 B.C. (Michael Skupin) Summer, 82. Freeman, Richard. "Chinese Infrastructure News Brief. "Medical Breakthroughs Jeopar­ Mizuno, Ta dahiko. Nuclear Transmutation: Projects Looking for U.S. Technology." dized by Animal Rights Te rrorists." Fall, 9. The Reality of Cold Fusion. Spring, 19. (Dr. Edmund Jaworowski, Zbigniew, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc. Storms) Spring, 82. Xue, Jiaji. "A Call for the No. 2 Bridge To "Report on the 1999 UNSCEAR Meeting­ Postel, Sandra. Pillar of Sand: Can the Irriga­ Progress Smoothly." Spring, 21. Radiation Dose and Infinity: Why Collective tion Mira cle Last? (Marcia Merry Baker) Zepp-LaRouche, Helga. ''The LaRouche Eco­ Dose Is an Absurd Concept." Fall, 22. Winter, 85. nomic Method and the Land-Bridge." Steele, James H., D.V.M., M.P.H. "Food Irra­ Principe, Lawrence. The Aspiring Adept: Spring, 22. diation: A Public Health Measure Long Robert Boyle and His Alchemical Quest. News Brief. "Build Bridges with China, Com­ Overdue!" Fall, 24. (David Shavin) Spring, 78. merce Official Says." Summer, 6. Hecht, Marjorie Mazel. "Scientific Answers to Richards, E.G. Mapping Time: The Calendar News Brief. "Kra Canal Feasibility Study Pro­ Irradiation Bugaboos." Fall, 28. and Its History. (Rick Sanders) Summer, 85. posed by Japan's GIF." Summer, 6. News Brief. "USDA Issues Regulations for Soyfer, Valery N. Lysenko and the Tragedy of News Brief. "Resolution on Peace Through Meat Irradiation-Finally." Winter, 5. 'SovietScience. (Denise Henderson) Fall, Development for the Balkans." Summer, 6. News Brief. "Robert Holzknecht Dies; 70. News Brief. "Pakistani Nuclear Scientist Founder of 'The Ozone Truth Squad.' " o SUBJECT INDEX Urges Muslim World t Go Nuclear." Sum­ Winter, 5. mer, 7. Edwards, J. Gordon. "Thomas H. Jukes Astronomy News Brief. "China's Nuclear-Generating In­ (1906-1999): Scientist and Humanitarian." Komp, Lothar. "How Can Gamma-Ray Bursts dustry Plans Rapid Growth."·Fall, 8. Winter, 6. Be Explained?" Summer, 48. Vaughn, Col. Molloy. "Col. Molloy Vaughn's Jaworowski, Zbigniew, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc. Arp, Halton. "Gamma-Ray Bursts Not Local, Plan to Save Africa." Fall, 12. "The Global Warming Folly." Winter, 64. But Not That Far Away!" Summer, 54. Rabinowitz, Mario, Ph.D. "Entropy of the Uni­ Earth Science Epistemology Editorial. "The Mind of the Discoverer." verse and Little Black Hole Manifestati. ons." Sauers, Jack. ·"Global Cooling Is Under Way." Summer, 70. Spring, 6. Spring, 2.

68 Spring 2000 21st CENTURY INDEX 1999 LaRouche, Lyndon H., Jr. "On Eratosthenes, News Brief. "Medical Breakthroughs Jeopar­ ation Dose and Infinity: Why Collective Dose Maui's Voyage of Discovery, and Reviving dized by Animal Rights Te rrorists." Fall, 9. Is an Absurd Concept." Fall, 22. the Principle of Discovery To day." Spring, 24. Lowry, Colin. "AIDS Pandemic Raging World­ Steele, James H., D.V.M., M.P.H. "Food Irradi­ Rubinstein, Phil. "Predictions Are Always wide." Fall, 13. ation: A Public Health Measure Long Over­ Wrong." Fall, 62. Lowry, Colin. "AIDS Vaccine Update: Catching due!" Fall, 24. HIV in the Act." Fall, 15. Hecht, Marjorie Mazel. "Scientific Answers to History of Science and Technology Lowry, Colin. "Interview with Sandy Thurman, Irradiation Bugaboos." Fall, 28. LaRouche, Lyndon H., Jr. "On Eratosthenes, White House Office of Nat'l AIDS Policy: We Maui's Voyage of Discovery, and Reviving Freeman, Marsha. "Japan Pushes Forward in Need an AIDS Vaccine Now." Fall, 17. the Principle of Discovery Today." Spring, 24. Fusion Research." Fall, 64. Jaworowski, Zbigniew, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc. "Re­ Liebig, Gabriele. "Homer's Odyssey, Long-dis­ Pascali, Elisabeth. "Japan's Tokamak, JT-60U, porton the 1999 UNSCEAR Meeting-Radi­ tance Seafaring, and the Principle of Colo­ Scores Advances." Fall, 65. ation Dose and Infinity: Why Collective Dose Freeman, Marsha. "Fusion Energy-20 Years nization." Spring, 36. Is an Absurd Concept." Fall, 22. Later." Winter, 8. Hecht, Marjorie Mazel. "Eratosthenes' Instru­ Richardson, Cloret. "Budget Cuts and Bad Pol­ ments Guided Maui's 3rd Century B.C. Voy­ icy Threaten Sickle Cell Treatments." Winter, Stevens, Charles B. "High Energy Gains Ex­ age." Spring, 74. 76. pected from NRL's Short-Pulse Laser." Win­ ter, 11. Rommel, Sentiel, Ph.D. "Maui's Ta nawa: A To r­ Richardson, Cloret. "What Are Sickle Cell and quetum of 232 B.C." Spring, 75. Beta Thalassemia Syndromes?" Winter, 77. Pedagogy News Brief. "Ancient Ruins in New England Richardson, Cloret. "Review of Treatments for News Brief. " 'If I Had a Hammer': Te aching Surveyed at NEARA Conference." Summer, Sickle Cell Syndrome." Winter, 78. Math by Building Houses." Fall, 8. 7. Hecht, Marjorie Mazel. "Ancient Civilizations in Music Physics Australia's Kimberleys." Fall, 80. Wolfe, Kathy. "The Singing Voice Demands a Stevens, Charles B. "Table-To p, Ultrashort Scientific Middle C." Winter, 13. Editorial. "Science: To Be, or Not to Be-Or, Pulse Laser Defines Frontier of Science." How I Discovered the Swindle of Special Wolfe, Kathy. "Lyndon LaRouche and C=256." Summer, 64. Relativity." Winter, 2. Winter, 17. Soldano, Benedetto, Ph.D. "Space Probe Ac­ Weissbach, Muriel Mirak. "Jean Franyois Shavin, David. "The Cranes of Jiahu: 7,700- celeration Anomalies Suggest Nonequiva­ 9,000 Year-Old Flutes Found in China." Win­ Champollion and the True Story of Egypt." lence." Summer, 66. Winter, 26. ter, 84. Rabinowitz, Mario, Ph.D. "Entropy of the Uni­ Fell, Julian. "Barry Fell, Epigrapher: Biography Nuclear Science and Nuclear Energy verse and Little Black Hole Manifestations." of a Renaissance Man." Winter, 40. News Brief. "NIF Ta rget Chamber Unveiled at Summer, 70. Freeman, Marsha. "Flying Arrows and Fire­ Lawrence Livermore National Lab." Sum­ Zhou, Prof. Shu-wen. '�Abnormal Physical Phe­ Breathing Dragons: A History of Rocketry in mer, 6. nomena Observed When the Sun, Moon, China from the 13th Century."Winter, 82. News Brief. "Sam Whitney, Founder of Food Ir­ and Earth Are Aligned." Fall, 55. Shavin, David. "The Cranes of Jiahu: 7,700- radiation Plant, Dies." Spring, 10. Editorial. "Science: To Be, or Not to Be-Or, 9,000 Year-Old Flutes Found in China." Win­ News Brief. "South Africa Plans to Produce 30 How I Discovered the Swindle of Special ter, 84. HTR Modules per Year." Spring, 11. Relativity." Winter, 2. Mathematics News Brief. 'Taiwan Approves Fourth Nuclear Science Policy Editorial. "Return to the 'American System' of Power Station Complex." Spring, 11 . . Editorial. "Science and National Security." Calculus." Fall, 2. News Brief. "New Fusion Experiment Begins Summer, 2. Schapiro, Ernest. 'The Real Calculus vs. What Operation at Princeton Lab." Spring, '11. You Learned: How Leibniz's .original Calcu­ News Brief. "DOE Film on Nuclear Power Petroski, Henry. "Can Children of Cyberspace lus Has Been Subverted." Fall, 30. Aimed at 6th Through 8th Graders." Spring, Become Engineers?" Summer, 4. 11. News Brief. "American Nuclear Society Issues Medicine Pradel, Jacques. "Let's Simplify the Concept of Policy Statement on LNT." Summer, 7. Cornell, Frank, D.D.S., M. Sc. 'The Foibles of Radiation 'Risk.' '' Spring 12. Editorial. "Return to the 'American System' of Air Pollution Research." Spring, 4. Apel, Rainer. "German Government Retreats Calculus." Fall, 2. News Brief. "New Study Shows that PCBs Do from Plans to Shut Down Nuclear Energy." Richardson, Cloret. "Budget Cuts and Bad Pol­ Not Increase Risk of Cancer." Spring, 9. Spring, 14. icy Threaten Sickle Cell Treatments." Winter, Pradel, Jacques. "Let's Simplify the Concept of News Brief. "NIF Ta rget Chamber Unveiled at 76. Radiation 'Risk'." Spring 12. Lawrence Livermore National Lab." Sum­ News Brief. "American Nuclear Society Issues mer, 6. Space Science Policy Statement on LNT." Summer, 7. News Brief. "Pakistani Nuclear Scientist Urges News Brief. "NASA Scientists Discover New Blue, Linden. "Boron Neutron Capture Ther­ Muslim World to Go Nuclear." Summer, 7. To ol to Predict Solar Storms." Spring, 9. apy: An Elegant Technology That May Save Blue, Linden. "Boron Neutron Capture Ther­ Freeman, Marsha. "The Mir Space Station: Lives." Summer, 8. apy: An Elegant Technology That May Save Man's Courage to Explore." Spring, 48. Rockwell, Dr. Theodore. "Radiation Protection Lives." Summer, 8. Freeman, Marsha. "Russia's Real Problem as Policy: A Primer." Summer, 13. News Brief. "China's Nuclear-Generating In­ a Space Power." Spring, 52. Edwards, Dr. J. Gordon. 'The U.S. Food Qual­ dustry Plans Rapid Growth." Fall, 8. Freeman, Marsha. "Back to the Moon with Nu­ ity Protection Act Is Worse Than the Delaney News Brief. " Transmutation: The Era of Nu­ clear Rockets." Summer, 56. Clause." Fall, 5. clear Energy is Just Beginning.' " Fall, 8. News Brief. "Chinese to Become Third Nation News Brief. "Sen. Domenici Requests GAO News Brief. "Tyson Foods Launches Plan to with a Manned Space Program." Winter, 5. Study of Radiation Standards." Fall, 9. Market Irradiated Chicken." Fall, 9. News Brief. "Apollo Program Was the Begin­ ' Lowry, Colin. " 'Medical' Marijuana Is a Dan­ News Brief. "Sen. Domenici Requests GAO ning, Not a 'Dead End,' Freeman Asserts." gerous Fraud." Summer, 16. Study of Radiation Standards." Fall, 9. Winter, 5. News Brief. "Transplanted Beta Cells Show Jaworowski, Zbigniew, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc. "Re-. News Brief. "Both Mars '98 Missions Lost; Promise as Cure for Diabetes." Fall, 8. porton the 1999 UNSCEAR Meeting-Radi- Policy to Be Reevaluated." Winter, 5.

INDEX 1999 215t CENTURY Spring 2000 69 BIOLOGY & MEDICINE Promising Cancer Vaccines Move Fro,m Lab to Clinic by Colin Lowry

y the time malignant cells immune system will target only B have proliferated to the cancer cells. Second, the vac­ point that a person. is diag­ cine must break the tolerance nosed as having cancer, these of the immune system to ,the cells have already evaded the cancer, by stimulating the pro­ body's own immune system duction of its T-cells and other defenses, Cancerous and dam­ cells that will attack the tumor. aged cells normally are de­ Th i rd, of the many different stroyed by the immune system, ways to present an antigen to but m'alignant cells that suc­ the immune system, re­ ceed in establishing tumors, searchers must find those have done so by fooling or ways, possibly only one or crippling an immune response two, that may work with a cer­ that normally would be di­ tain antigen. rected against them. In the clinical trial by Ben­ What if the immune system dandi and Kwak, the antigen could be "retrained" to recog­ for the vaccine was the spe­ nize and attack the tumor? cific type of B-cell receptor This is the idea behind cancer known as immunoglobulin (lg). vaccines, Unlike traditional Ig is a surface protein that has vaccines, the cancer vaccine a variable region which is is a therapy, delivered after the unique for each typl;! of B-cell. person already has the dis­ In this case, B-cell lymphomas ease, not before, Training the were isolated from each pa­ immune system to eradicate tient, and then the Ig protein mal ignant cells offers a non- ' from each patient was used as toxic way to treat cancer, and the target antigen. even to eliminate recurring tu­ However, Ig alone does not mors. induce a particularly strong For the first time, a cancer immune response. Therefore, vaccine therapy, which is spe­ in order to overcome this prob­ cific for a common lym­ lem, the protein was fused with phoma, has been approved by Tom Folks/NAIAD a highly antigenic carrier-pro­ the National Institutes of Normal T- cells. The production and activation of T- cells tein, called KLH, The KLH acts Health to start large-scale, that can destroy malignant cells is the goal of cancer as a flag, which is easi Iy seen phase-three clinical trials with vaccines. by respondi[1g immune cells, patients, The cancer vaccine and which guarantees that the against fo llicular lymphoma, was made mination of years of research in im­ target antigen Ig will also be seen, B-cell from a unique receptor-protein found munology, and of earlier clinical stud- lymphoma presents yet another chal­ on the surface of the malignant cells, ies. lenge: The B-cell is itself an immune ilnd ithas proven itself effective in keep­ Special Design Problems cell which normally produces antibod­ ing 90 percent of vaccinated patients in There are three central problems that ies, making it a special problem to try to complete remission for four years after the design of a cancer vaccine must direct other immune cells to see the treatment in the phase-two clinical trial. overcome, in order to be effective. First, B-cell as an "enemy" thC\t should be at­ The phase-two trial, led by Drs. Mau­ a specific target-antigen that is unique tacked. rizio Bendandi and Larry Kwak at the to the cancer cell must be used, such as The immune system naturally en­ National Cancer Institute, was the cul- a protein on the cell surface, so that the counters foreign antigens in two ways:

70 Spring 2000 21st CENTURY BIOLOGY & MEDICINE (1) antigens that are flowing freely in the course of the trial, and it was found that blood or lymph, and (2) antigens that on an average of 1 B months after vacci­ are on the surface of cells, often bound nation, B of these patients had totally to a receptor. In the case of antigens in cleared the malignant cells bearing this the lymph or blood, T-cells of the CD4 genetic marker from their blood. type bind the antigen, and then present The patients were fo llowed clinically it to B-cells, activating the production of for 2B to 53 months, and 1B of the 20 specific antibodie� that can then bind to remained in complete remission for an that antigen. The activated T- cell also average of 42 months after vaccina­ can secrete.chemicals called cytokines, tion-far beyond the average time that which can signal other immune cells FL usually recurs. In the 1B patients with and T- cells to divide and proliferate. complete remission, all have CD4 and Killing the Tumor. Cells COB T- cells that react specifically to the Antibodies alone do not kill path­ tumor antigen. It was also found that in ogens; they merely tag them for destruc­ 15 of the 20 patients, antibodies were tion by other immune cells, such as neu­ also generated against the Ig from the trophils 0( macrophages, which engulf tumor, but that the generation of these antibody-coated targets. This antibody­ NCI antibodies was not necessary for el imi­ directed response is known as humoral Cancer vaccine researcher Dr. Larry M. nation of the tumor cells; in fact, several immunity, hut it is not designed to elim­ Kwak: "Essentially what we have done patients with T-cell responses of both inate infected or malignant cells. is present a tumor protein to patients in types did not generate antibodies. Usually, infected or malignant cells such a way that their immune systems An interesting question arises from are recognized by antigens presented recognize it and then destroy. any cells the success of this vaccine formulation on a class of immune receptor called bearing that protein. " to stimulate COB T-cells specific to the MHC I, on the cell membrane. MHC I tumor. The antigen was delivered in sol­ receptors' contain protein fragments that eliminate the remaining malignant FL uble form, free flowing in the blood, so were generated inside the cell. A malig­ cells, and keep the patients in remis­ it should be picked up by CD4 T-cells, nant or infected cell will present differ­ sion-or permanently cured. and antibodies should likely be pro­ ent proteins on the MHC I receptor than Peripheral blood containing immune duced. Because the antigen is not pre­ does a neighboring healthy cell. T-cells cells was collected before vaccination, sented on a cell surface on the MHC I of the COB type can bind to MHC I, and and at several times after vaccination, to receptor, how then did the COB T-cells then ki II an unhealthy cell by Iysi ng it compare the immune response of T-celis become activated against this antigen? (chemically perforating the membrane, to the tumor antigen. These cells were Part of the answer comes from an im­ and exploding the cell). The COB T- cell then tested in vitro (in cultures) for their portant immune cell known as the den­ is also called a cytolytic T-cell, and it is response to tumor Ig, and to .the isolated dritic cell. Dendritic cells reside in this class of cell which must be acti­ tumor cells themselves. There was sig­ lymph nodes and mucous membranes, vated for a cancer vaccine to be effec­ nificant release of cytokines from 19 of and they sample the antigens present in tive. 20 patients' T- cells after vaccination, but the lymph. They are antigen-presenting In the cancer vaccine formulation of not before. Of 6 patients chosen at ran­ cells, and their·job is to feed foreign Bendandi and Kwak, another element dom, all had COB T- cells that could lyse antigens to both COB and CD4 T-cells. was added to activate the immune sys­ the native tumor cells in vitro. Dendritic cells have the special capabil­ tem in the form of a cytokine. From pre­ Bendandi and Kwak also wanted to ity of being able to present a single anti­ vious clinical trials, it was determined know if the remaining tumor cells were gen on both MHC I and MHC II recep­ that the cytokine granulocyte-monocyte being killed off after vaccination in the tors, priming both the cellular and colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) was patients. For this, they needed a specific humoral branches of the immune sys­ very effective in stimulating a COB T­ molecular marker to use to identify tem. cell response when combined with vac­ these cells in the body. FL tumors often Also, the vacCine uses GM-CSF, cine antigens. have a particular genetic rearrangement which causes the production of new Very Promising Results caused by the swapping of one chromo­ monocytes and the maturation of more In the phase-two trial, 20 patients some part onto another, called a translo­ dendritic cells, which may account for with fo llicular lymphoma (FL), all in cation. This can be identified geneti­ the success of this particular vaccine their first remission after chemotherapy, cally. Therefore, using polymerase chain formulation. were vaccinated with the Ig-KLH plus reaction (PCR) techniques on DNA sam­ Immune Stimulation: GM-CSF formulation developed from ples taken from the patients' blood, it The Future of Cancer Treatment? their own tumor cells. The most com­ was possible to detect malignant cells The entire idea of boosting and re­ mon problem with FL is that it recurs with this translocation, at a sensitivity of training the body's immune system to very frequently, because the standard 1 malignant cell in 100,000. fight cancer was ridiculed by many in chemotherapy treatment cannot specifi­ Of the 20 patients, 11 had tumor cells the medical establishment fo r years. cally eliminate all of the malignant cells. with this translocation. The blood of Now, the success of the cancer vaccine The goal was to see if- thevac cine could these 11 patients was studied over the (Continued on page 73)

BIOLOGY & MEDICINE 21 st CENTURY Spring 2000 71 WASHINGTON REPORT

Clinton Ups Budgets For Science, Space by Marsha Freeman

n his budget submission to the Con­ I gress on Feb. 7, President Bill Clinton requested significant increases in fu nds for the space program, basic science, and biomedical research. For the space agency, in particular, the higher level of fu nding is critically needed: Thanks to seven years of budget cuts, concerns about the safety of the manned Space Shuttle program have been growing. In his State of the Union address on Jan. 21, the President pointed out, cor­ rectly, that "science and technology have become the engine of America's economic growth." Although he cited the in-vogue "information technologies" as the leading edge of this progress, he did point out that the broader increase in life expectancy, and breakthroughs in understanding "the world around and beyond us" are "the result of govern­ ment investments in the 1960s and 1970s." The President announced a $1 billion increase for biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to support research in areas such as dia­ betes, brain disorders, cancer, genetic medicine, disease prevention, and de­ velopment of an AIDS vaccine. NASA The request for the National Science Vice President AI Core's "re-inventing government"scheme has reduced manpower Foundation represents an increase of at NASA to the point that the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel has warned that staff $675 million, or 17 percent, which is cutbacks, inexperience, work overload, and rising stress levels, have led to safety con­ double the largest dollar increase in the cernsat the Kennedy Space Center, where Space Shuttles are launched. Here, the En­ Foundation's history. The NSF accounts deavour takes offon Feb. 77, 2000, fo r a 7 a-day Radar To pography Shuttle Mission. fo r half of all non-health university­ based research in science and engineer­ space agency. Over the past five years, At his briefi ng on the fiscal year 2001 ing in the United States. The President NASA became the "poster child" of Vice budget request on Feb. 7, NASA Admin­ also announced a National Nanotech­ President AI Gore's "reinventing govern­ istrator Dan Goldin stated that the agency nology Initiative of $497 million, to be ment" scheme, which was an exercise was slated for its first increase in seven deployed through a number of agen­ in cutting federal employment and cut­ years. The $435 million increase, for a cies, including the Departments of En­ ting corners, to "save" money. Although total budget request of $14_035 billion, ergy and Defense, the NSF, the NIH, this may reduce office paperwork or will allow for critical technology up­ and NASA. "redundancy" in other government de­ grades and improvements in the nearly Sorely Needed Funds for Space partments, at NASA it led to increased 20-year-old Space Shuttle system. The most critical funding increase risk to the astronauts, and the vehicles Three days after the briefing, the inde­ that the President requested is for the that carry them into space. pendent Aerospace Safety Advisory

72 Spring 2000 21 st CENTURY WASHINGTON REPORT Panel released its annual report, restat­ year for science, by explaining that the Te st Reactor, along with waste clean-up ing its concern that manpower cutbacks money fo r that mission has been di­ costs, the actual research programs are in the Shuttle program, particularly at rected toward the manpower deficit and actually down 3 percent to $224.5 mil­ the Kennedy Space Center, where the the Shuttle upgrades. Rep. Hall pledged lion. . orbiters, fuel tank, sol id rocket boosters, to work with NASA to find the funds to After a workshop held in the Wash­ and payloads are prepared for launch, carry out science Shuttle missions while ington area Jan. 27-28, 2000, the United were threatening the safety of the sys­ the space station is under construction. States, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, tem. Fusion Funding Disappointing France, Japan, South Africa, South Ko­ The Panel, which was established in One disappointing aspect of the Ad­ rea, and the United Kingdom pledged 1967 after the Apollo launch pad fire, in ministration's budget request is a paltry international cooperation to develop which three astronauts were killed,. cited 1 percent increase in funding for mag­ advanced fission reactors. staff cutbacks, employee inexperience, netic fusion energy research, even Fission energy also received a small rising stress levels from work overload, though numerous r,eviews over the past boost. The nuclear fission budget re­ and obsolete equipment as some of the year have been favorable and urged quested by the Administration includes safety concerns. more support. an increase from $22.4 to $35 million The proposed budget for next year will However, if one takes into account for the Nuclear Energy Research Ihitia­ start to remedy this situation, by support­ the fact that the budget for the Office of tive, to explore innovative new tech­ ing the hiring of 1,850 new employees, Fusion Energy Sciences includes an in­ nologies in nuclear power production, for a net gain of 550 employees for the crease of $9.34 million for decommis­ domestically and through international agency. NASA has been under a hiring sioning the Princeton To kamak Fusion efforts. freeze for years, and has eliminated about 7,000 jobs to "re-invent" itself. Kennedy Space Center di rector Roy Bridges announced ·that the budget immune-stimulating cytokines, which would allow the center to increase its Promising Cancer are intended- to get the tumor recog­ government workforce for the first time nized as a target by T-cells and other since 1994, and hire 158 engineers and Vaccines .' , immune cells. This approach has been technicians to work on the Space Shut­ (Continued from page 77) demonstrated with prostate cancer in a tle. Richard Bloomberg, chairman of the small trial at Johns Hopkins University, safety panel, applauded the increase, in clinical trials has brought about a re­ led by Dr. Jonathan Simons. Simons's repeating that the center was under­ thinking of how to go after cancer. After team removed prostate tumors, and then staffed. "In the general government cut­ all, the immune system is really,the genetically engineered the cells to pro­ backs," he stated, "things may have body's best defense against disease, and duce the cytokine GM-CSF. The cells gone too far." standard chemotherapy does just as were then irradiated to stop them from Administrator Goldin also reported much damage to the cells of the im­ growing further, and injected back into that the budget increase would allow 15 mune system as it does to cancer cells. the patients. Immune responses and tu­ new starts in science ·programs over the Fortunately, there are sE;!veral. ca.ncer mor shrinkage occurred in 8 of 11 pa­ ne�t five years, and would increase vaccine approaches currently in clini­ tients in this trial. fu nding for studies on a next-generation cal trials. There have been many small There are many questions to be an­ launch vehicle, which will be required trials, mostly phase one, that have swered, and many more. clinical trials to replace the Shuttle fleet over the next shown the potential of this approach. will be needed before cancer vaccines 10 to 20 years. One of the more successful small trials will be used and accepted as a treat­ The fiscal year 2001 b.udget includes was finished in 1996, using dendritic ment. However, what was once only a an increase from $274.7 million to cells themselves as a sort of vaccine. In concept treated as "quackery" has now $302.4 million for the life and micro­ this study, led by F. Hsu and R. Levy of proven itself to be.an effective and non­ gravity sciences and applications pro­ Stanford University Medical Center, toxic way to treat cancer. grams. Equipment to outfit the laborato­ specific tumor antigens from B-cell ries in the International Space Station lymphomas were fed to the patient's References ---...,.------wi ll require a ramp-up in funding in M. Bendandi, L. Kwak, et al. 1999. "Complete Mol­ own dendritic cells, which had been ecular Remissions Induced by Patient-Specific these two critical science areas, as wiII grown in culture. These dendritic cells Vaccination Plus Granulocyte-Monocyte support for scientists who fly experi­ were then injected back into the pa­ Colony-Stimulating Factor Against Lymphoma," Nature Medicine (Oct.) Vol. 5, No. 10, pp. 1171- ments on the station. tient, and a booster shot of the antigen 1177. Nevertheless, there are still serious was given again. F. Hsu, R. Levy, et al. 1996. "Vaccination of Pa­ constraints in the budget. At a hearing All of the patients mounted a measur­ tients With B-cell Lymphoma Using Autologous Antigen-Pulsed Dendritic Cells," before the Space Science & Applica­ able immune response against their tu­ Nature Medi­ cine, (Jan.), Vol. No. 1, pp. 52-58. tions subcommittee of the House Com­ 2, mors, and two patients demonstrated J.w. Simons, et al. 1999. "Induction of Immunity to mittee on Science on Feb. 16, Adminis­ complete remission. Prostate Cancer Antigens: Results of a Clinical trator Goldin answered a question by Another approach that has been used Trial with Irradiated Autologous Prostate Tumor Cells Engineered to Secrete GM-CSF Using Rep. Ralph Hall (D-Tex.) about adding a for cancer vaccines, is to genetically Ex-vivo Gene Transfer," Cancer Research (Oct. dedicated Space Shuttle mission next modify tumor cells in vitro to produce 15), Vol. 59, No. 20, pp. 5160-5168.

WAS HINGTON REPORT 21 st CENTURY Spring 2000 73 BOOKS

KRIMSKY'S KAOS: The Hormonal Bias of. a Bioethicist by Stephen H. Safe

Hormonal Chaos: The Scientific and tal Health Program at the Environmental Social Origins of the Environmental Defense Fund, and a preeminent envi­ Endocrine Hypothesis ronmental scientist and spokesperson, Sheldon Krimsky was also invited to the meeting. Sil­ Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999 bergeld told me that she was "so dis­ Hardcover, 304 pp., $35.9'5 turbed by the lack of balance and non­ scientific nature of the proceed ings," that she discarded her original presenta­ he endocrine disruptor hypothesis tion on heavy metals and proceeded to Tbecame news in the mid-1 990s, with provide a more balanced overview on scare headlines about how chemical what she called "a hypothesis that's run­ pollutants, which mimic the molecular ning far ahead of the data." shape of some hormones, were causing The endocrine disruptor hypothesis is sexual dysfunction in the wild (for exam­ supported by some environmental find­ ple, the shri nking of alligator penises in ings, laboratory animals studies, and hu­ the Florida swamps), lowered sperm man data obtained for women treated individuals mentioned in this section counts, and increased male 'reproductive during pregnancy with the highly potent are Drs. Sharpe and Skakkebaek, who tract problems. estrogenic drug, diethylstilbestrol (DES).' proposed the endocrine disruptor hy­ The book Hormonal Chaos by Shel­ Based on these data and a 1992 study re­ pothesis,3 and Dr. Swan, who supports don Krimsky provides an interesting but porting a global decline in sperm counts thei r analysis.5 limited background on the origins of the during the last 50 years? it was hypothe­ In 1996, Harry Fisch, a highly re­ environmental endocrine disruptor hy­ sized 'that decreased male reproductive spected urologist, and his colleagues pothesis and some of the cast of charac­ capacity may be associated with in­ published a study in Fertility and Steril­ ters involved in this issue. In his discus­ creased dietary exposure to estrogenic ity 6 showing that geographical location sion of almost every controversial issue, compounds, and possibly to other was an important variable in sperm Dr. Krimsky clearly favors the so-called endocrine disruptors such as dioxins and counts. For example: New York is high, "hormonal chaos" theory, which holds the pesticide metabolite DDE (an anti­ at 131.5 x106/ml; Minnesota is interme­ that synthetic industrial compounds, androgen).3A diate at 1 00.8x 1 06/ml, and California is acting as hormone mimics, are the latest In Chapter 1, Dr. Krimsky outlines sci­ low at 72.7 x 1 06/m l. Fisch is quoted environmental disaster. entific developments associated'with (but not named) as 'saying, "1 can ex­ Dr. Krimsky interviewed me in Boston the endocrine disruptor hypothesis and plain all the declines in sperm counts by after a symposium at Tufts University, the scientists involved; however, when geographical variabil ity." regard ing my opposition to the en­ hormonal chaos is challenged by new Krimsky then goes on to say, "Yet sup­ docrine disruptor hypothesis, and he data, or by scientists who disagree with porters of the sperm decline theory fo und subsequently invited me to speak at a the hypothesis, Krimsky becomes defen­ strength in numbers," and he quotes ex­ symposium he organized at the Annual sive and is reluctant to modify his bias. tensively from 19 scientists who co­ Meeting (1998) of the American Associ­ This is an unusual approach by an aca­ authored a report from Denmark and a ation for the Advancement of Science in demic who is a recognized and quoted summary review of this report in the jour­ ? Philadelphia. The symposium, titled authority on bioethics. nal Environmental Health Perspectives. "Environmental Chemicals as Endocrine I discuss here just a few of the contro­ However, science progresses and, since Disrupters: Scientific Evidence and Pub­ versial issues and how Dr. Krimsky deals 1997, several papers from clinics lic Policy, " was one of the most one­ with them in his book. throughout the world have reported that sided scientific/policy meetings that I Sperm Count Decline have attended, and my disappointment On pages 26-38, Dr. Krimsky outlines Steven H. Safe, Ph.D., is on the fa c­ was communicated to Dr. Krimsky at the sperm count issue that originated ulty at Te xas A&M University. His major the conclusion of the meeting. from a study on the meta-analysis of 61 areas of research are toxicology and en­ Dr. Ellen Silbergeld, a professor at the selected studies, which showed a 50 docrinology, with particular fo cus on University of Maryland. School of Medi­ percent global decline in sperm counts understanding the genes that are impor­ cine, former director of the Environmen- over the period 1940-1 990.2 The only tant in breast cancer growth.

74 Spri ng 2000 21 st CENTURY BOOKS A REPORTER AT LAR.GE SILENT SPER.M The Great Impostors How "rious artthe rtports of the inmose in mal. inftrtility?.And ifthe environment isthe problem, art Do chemical companies produce substances any men anywhtr. saft? The author consults inttrnationalexpms on a growingscientific controvtrsy. that dangerously mimic human hormones? ijiiSJlfL-iiMn, ENVIRONMENT . ThatFe minine 1buch FROM SILENT SPRING TO BARREN SPRING? ..A new booksays pesticides threatenmay human reproduction k)10tl£ Aremen suffering fromprenatal "" �,," "'N " _·" ·�·'·"'W" ··" '��· � " ...... w �."-"�.·_�m' • .... � , .. .,.�. " '" �" h ' � .. •• .ww ....A� ".·. .*tf ·, . . .� or childhood exposures to "hormonal" toxicants? 1 Masculinity at risk

,.",; The discovery that the major metabolite of DDT may '. damage male reproduction deserves attention.

The  The Estrogen Complex Gender �e n d er$' Science: SJWo""counts dO\\l1't P('nis(',$ ,htlvc!cdv 1 h.-y. Ilm:,ll. dtln" hbnH: if on fe minists. It may br.tT()tn chf!mi(";

The headlines in the national press, as well as the scientific press, in the mid- 7 990s went wild with speculations about the emasculating effects of pollutants. Newsweek, March 27, 7994, heralded shrinking alligator penises and lowered testosterone levels, and wa rned t�at man could not be fa r behind.

over the past 10 to 25 years, there have sperm cO\jnts in five different groups, re­ 1995, sperm counts increased from

been minimal declines/increases, or no cruited from 1987-1994 for five studies 53 x 1 06 to 72.7 x 1 06/ml. Although declines in sperm counts in countries at the University of Sydney (Australia), motility in the "excelle.nt" category de­

such as Denmark (in Odense and varied from 63 x 1 06 to 142 x 1 06/m l! clined, this study shows, the sum of per­ Copenhagen), 8,9 Canada,l 0 northeast­ This variabil ity was far in excess of the centages "having excel lent or good ern Spain," Slovenia,12 Venezuela,13 50 percent decline observed in the motility did not decline through the and Australia (Sydney).14 meta-analysis paper.2 Dr. Handelsman study period." Because this study was Thus, most recent studies do not show concluded, "This highlights the invalid­ coauthored by many of the same scien­ declines; moreover, the importance of ity of extrapolating similar findings on tists (including Dr. Skakkebaek) who geographical location within both large sperm output of self-selected volunteers published the meta-analysis paper in countries (United States and Canada) to the general male community or in us­ 1992, we now appear to have gone fu ll and smaller countries (Denmark and ing such study groups to characterize circle. This report should at least assure France), and sperm count variability, sperm output in supposedly 'normal' Dr. Krimsky that "all is not rotten in the

has been demonstrated.61, 10, 15, 16 For men." state of Denmark." example, among 11 fertility centers in In science, hypotheses are proposed Testicular Cancer and Other Male Canada,10 mean sperm counts in 1996 and are not considered to be fact until Reproductive Tract Problems varied from 43 xl06/ml to 137 x 1 06/ml, they have been tested. Most of the data Dr. Krimsky points out that testicular whereas environmental levels of per­ noted above were generated, in part, to cancer and other developmental deficits sistent organochlorine contaminants test the validity of one component of the that may be hormonally related (which are the prime suspect endocrine endocrine disruptor hypothesis, namely, (hypospadias and cryptorchidism) may disruptors) are similar throughout decreased sperm quality/counts, and yet be increasing, but again he fails to cite Canada. Krimsky primarily quotes articles co­ newer scientific developments in these In a critical review of the sperm count authored by those who initiated or sup­ areas. For example, the incidence of tes­ issue by Saidi and co-workers,17 the port the hypothesis, and he does not re­ ticular cancer is high in Denmark (1 4.5 authors state, "When accounting for this port new scientific developments in the per 10S) but low in Finland (3.6 per geographic difference and examining all chapter of his book which is aptly 105). It was suggested by Sharpe4 that available data, there appears to be no named "Scientific Developments." the environmental contaminant DOE Significant change in sperm counts in Dr. Krimsky, and readers of his book, (identified as an anti-androgen and the U.S. during the last 60 years." In ad­ should also note that in a recent study weak estrogen)18 might play a role in dition to the uncertainties regarding de­ on changes in sperm counts in men this disease. Ekbom and co-workers mography, and many other factors that from Copenhagen,9 it was reported that from the University of Uppsala ad­ can influence sperm counts and quality, there was some seasonal variability in dressed this issue, and reported in the Dr. David Handelsman 14 reported that sperm counts; moreover, from 1977 to Scientific journal Nature that: (a) since

BOOKS 21 st CENTURY Spring 2000 75 the mid-1 960s, DDE levels in breast estrone (2-0HE1 )/1 6a-OHE1 .24 estrogenic overactivity leading to an in­ milk have been similar in all Scandina­ My involvement in the endocrine dis­ crease in estrogen-dependent formation vian countries; ruptor controversy was triggered by the of mammary or endometrial tumors is (b) the increase in testicular cancer is xenoestrogen-breast cancer hypothesis, not supported by the existing in vitro/ paralleled by a 80 to 90 percent de­ because my research has been focussed animal and epidemiological evi­ crease in DDE levels.19 on organochlorine pollutants and phy­ dence."27 This review of the literature The authors concluded: "Hence, the tochemicals in ,vegetables that exhibit (published in 1995) was also supported persistent diffe rences in the Scandina­ antiestrogenic activity in breast can­ by the CMA. vian countries in testicular cancer inci­ cer. 25 My opposing views were pub­ Subsequent studies28, 29 have also dence rates in the age-groups exposed lished and presented at the Society of seriously questioned the utility of the in utero in the mid-1 960s to early 1970s Tox icology meeting in Dallas (spring 2-0HE1/1 6aOHE1 metabolite ratio. challenge Sharpe's theory. Furthermore, 1994), and this resulted in subsequent For example, a study reported in the the alleged increase in cryptorchidism, financial support (1994-1 996) from the prestigious Journalof the National Can­ hypospadias, and other urogenital mal­ Chemical Manufacturers Association cer Institute in 1999 by Ursin and co­ formations cannot be linked to p,p'­ (CMA) to pursue research in this area. workers on estrogen metabol ite ratios DDE since the concentrations have de­ In contrast to results by Bradlow and in postmenopausal women, concluded, creased during the past 20 years." co-workers,24 we showed that the "This study does not support the hy­ Although some reports indicate that 2-0HE1/1 6a-OHE1 ratio was not a pothesis that the ratio of the two hy­ hypospadias (displaced urethral open­ predictive assay for mammary carcino­ droxylated metabolite (2-0HE1/1 6a­ ing) and cryptorchidism (undescended gens in MCF-7 breast cancer cells.26 OHE1) is an important risk fa ctor for testicles) may be increasing, a more re­ However, Krimsky's comments on our breast cancer." This conclusion comes cent study by Pauiozzi2D on worldwide work typify his approach to most data from members of a highly eminent and trends showed that prior to 1985, there that do not support Hormonal Chaos. experienced epidemiology group at the were both increases and decreases in First, he states, "Such evidence was Comprehensive Cancer Center, Univer­ these defects, and there were large dif­ purported to have been put forth in a sity of Southern California. Again, Dr. ferences in the incidence of these de­ study by Safe and McDougal"; then, he Krimsky fa ils to present new scientific fects in various geographical locations says, not surprisingly, "Bradlow con­ developments that were initially re­ (a familiar refrain). sidered the Safe and MCDougal paper ported in 1997.28 It is my impression that Dr. Krimsky fu ndamentally fl awed." Krimsky fo l­ Organochlorine Pollutants deals with most of this new scientific lows this by a disclosure of my funding My final example concerns the role data by not referring to it at all, or by in­ source for this work (the Chemical of organochlorine pollutants (DDE and dicating that it can be found on the Manufacturers Association), with the PCBs) in breast cancer, in which Krim­ home page of an industry trade group implied assumption that the results sky discusses my editorial comments in (pp. 100-1 01 ). This is a convenient, but could not be trusted. the New England Journal of Medi­ dishonest way to downplay the impact He then states, "Safe's role in disput­ cine/3D not in terms of interpretation of of scientific developments that do not fit ing different components of the hypoth­ scientific data (that is, that there are no his preconceived notions. His constant esis has also raised eyebrows among increased levels of DDE/PCBs in breast failure to report significant new findings some of his colleagues, who consider cancer patients compared with con­ is more consistent with Krimsky's Kaos his industrial funding sources as a mat­ trols), but in terms of my failure to dis­ than Hormonal Chaos. ter of dishonor in these sensitive areas close prior CMA fu nding! The journal Xenoestrogens and of science." In fact, to the contrary, does not ask for prior fu nding sources, Breast Cancer many of my colleagues have been dis­ and at the time of writing the editorial Dr. Krimsky deals with the breast gusted by the unfo unded accusations "Safe's funding had stopped," Krimsky cancer-xenoestrogen hypothesis (pp. and have supported and encouraged my says. True to form, he uses a so-called 38-45) by correctly pointing out that a speaking out on this issue. As Dr. Krim­ controversy and implied innuendo to woman's lifetime exposure to estrogens sky wel l knows, my views on this sub­ dispense with providing the reader is a major risk factor for this disease. In ject have not changed prior to, duri ng, with scientific developments on studies 1993, Drs. Davis, Bradlow, and co­ or since the loss of my funding from the that have investigated DDE/PCB levels workers hypothesized that xenoestro­ CMA, and his insinuations are untrue in breast cancer patients vs. controls. gens were a preventable cause of breast and very disappointing. Results from large patient groups in cancer in women (p. 40),21 and this was Moreover, Krimsky failed to mention San Francisco, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico based not only on the additional burden a lengthy review of the xenoestrogen­ City, five countries in Europe, several of estrogen exposure but also (a) on ob­ breast cancer hypothesis by a team of states in the northeastern U.S., and servations that PCBs or DDE (synthetic eminent scientists from the University of Copenhagen* have not shown increased organochlorine pollutants) levels were Uppsala, the Karolinska Institute, Dart­ levels of DDE and/or PCBs in breast higher in breast cancer patients com­ mouth Medical School, and Harvard cancer patients vs. controls.31-38 One of pared with controls22, 23; and (b) the ef­ University School of Public Health, these studies concludes: "Results from fects of organochlorine poll utants and which concluded, "The hypothesis that this prospective, community-based other estrogenic compounds on ratios of human exposure to environmental lev­ nested case-control study are reassur­ the estrogen metabolites 2-hydroxy- els of organochlorines would favor an ing. Even after 20 years of fo llow-up,

76 Spring 2000 21 st CENTURY BOOKS exposure to relatively high concentra­ Notes ------­ 16. Y. Zheng, J.P.E. Bonde, E. Ernst, J.T. . • This study showed higher levels of dieldrin in Mortensen, and J. Egense, 1997. "Is semen tions of DOE .or PCBssh owed no evi­ breast cancer patients. quality related to the year of birth among Dan­ dence of contributing to an increased ish infertility clients?" Int. J. Epidemiol., Vol. 26, pp. 1289-1297. risk of breast cancer."37 References ------1. T. Colborn, F.S. Vom Soal, and A.M. Soto, 17. J.A. Saidi, D.T. Chang, E.T. 'Goluboff, E. It is possible that some pestiddes, in 1993. "Developmental effects of endocrine­ Bagiella, G. Olsen, and H. Fisch, 1999. "De­ combination with other factors such as disrupting chemicals in wildlife and humans." clining sperm counts in the United States: A critical review." Vol. 161, pp. 460-462. polymorph isms of some. gene?, may Environ. Health Perspect, Vol. 101, pp. 378- J. Urol., 384. 18. W.R. Kelce, C.R. Stone, S.C. Laws, and L.E. play a role in development of, or pro­ 2. E. Carlsen, A. Giwercman, N. Keiding, and Gray, 1995. "Persistent DDT metabolite p,p'­ tection from, breast cancer, and this N.E. Skakkebaek, 1992. "Evidence for the de­ DDE is a potent androgen receptor antago­ creasing quality of semen during the past 50 nist." Nature, Vol. 375, pp' 581-586. should be further investigated. , Ail Unbalanced P·icture years." Br. Med. J., Vol. 305, pp. 609-612. 19. A. Ekbom, A. Wicklund-Glynn, and H.O. 3. R.M. Sharpe, and N.F. Skakkebaek, 1993. "Are Adami, 1996. "DDT and testicular cancer." Na­ In summary, Krimsky has clearly not oestrogens involved in falling sperm counts ture, Vol. 347, pp. 553-554. presented a balanced or updated review and disorders of the male reproductive tract." 20. L.J. Paulozzi, 1999. "International trends in of scientific developments oFl the en­ The Lancet, Vol. 341 , pp. 1392-1395. rates of hypospadias and cryptorchidism." En­ Vol. 107, pp. 297-302. docrine.disr uptor hypothesis with re­ 4. R. M. Sharpe, 1995. "Reproductive biology. An­ viron. Health Persp., other DDT connection." Nature, Vol. 375, pp. 21. D.L. Davis, H.L. Bradlow, M. Wolff, T. spect to impacts on male reproductive 538-539. Woodruff, D.G. Hoel, and H. Anton-Culver, capacity or breast cancer in women. 5. S.H. Swan, E.P. Elkin, and L. Fenster, 1998. 1993. "Medical hypothesis: Xenoestrogens as The pattern of subtle innuendoes and "Have sperm densities declined? A reanalysis preventable causes of breast cancer." Envi­ of global trend data." Environ. Health Perspect, ron. Health Perspect., Vol. 101, pp. 372-377. obfuscation is unfortunate, and his fail� Vol. 105, pp. 1228-1232. 22. F. Falck, A. Ricci, M.S. Wolff, J. Godbold, and ure to .update himself and the reader on 6. H. Fisch, E.T. Goluboff, J.H. Olson, J. Feld­ P. Deckers, 1992. "Pesticides and polychlori­ ' current scientific developments impairs shuh, S.J. Broder, and D.H. Barad, 1996. nated biphenyl residues in human breast lipids and their relation to breast cancer." his ability to discuss uncertainty values, "Semen analyses in 1,283 men from the Arch. Env­ United States over a 25-year period: No de­ iron. Health, Vol. 47, pp. 143-146. scientific responsibility, and policy is­ cline in quality." Fertil. Steril., Vol. 65, pp. 23. M.S. Wolff, P.G. To niolo, E.W. Leel, M. Rivera, sues in subsequent chapters. 1009-1014. and N. Dubin, 1993. "Blood levels of organ­ ochlorine residues and risk of breast cancer." I'agree with Dr. Krimsky that this is an 7. J. Toppari, J.C. Larsen, P. Christiansen, A. Gi­ wercman, P. Grandjean, L.J.J. Guillette, B. Je­ J. Nail. Cancer Inst. , Vol. 85, pp. 648-652. interesting hypothesis that requires test­ gou, T.K. Jensen, P. Jouannet, N. Keiding, H. 24. H.L Bradlow, D.L Davis, G. Lin, D. Sepkovic, ing, and while scientists may disagree Leffers, J.A. McLachlan, O. Meyer, J. Muller, and R. Tiwari, 1995:"Effects of pesticides on on some of the data, there are several ·is­ M.E. Rajpert-De, T. Scheike, R. Sharpe, J. the ratio of 16a/2-hydroxyestrone: A biologic Sumpter, an� N.E. Skak�ebaek, 1996·."Male marker of breast cancer risk." Environ. Health sues that need to be resolved. For exam­ reproductive health and environmental xenoe­ Perspect., Vol. 103, pp. 147-150. in utero strogens." Environ: Health Perspect., Vol. 104, ple, exposure to DES provides 25. T. Zacharewski, and S. Safe, 1998. "Antiestro­ an important underpinning for the en­ Suppl. 4, pp. 741 -803. genic activity of TCDD and related com­ 8. P.E. Rasmussen, K. Erb, and L.G . .wester­ docrine disruptor hypothesis, and yet, in pounds," In Reproductive and Developmental gaard, 1997. "No evidence for decreasing se­ To xicology, K.S. Korach, Ed. (New York: Mar­ utero exposure to high doses of steroidal men quality in four birth cohorts of 1 ,055 Dan­ cel Dekker, Inc.), pp. 431-448. estrogenic drugs does not result in the ish men born between 1950 and 1970." Fertil. 26. A. McDougal, and S. Safe, 1998. "Induction of Steri/., Vol. 68, pp. 1059-1 069. serious DES-like effects in the offspring. 16a-/2-hydroxyestrone metabolite ratios in 9. J. Gyllenborg, N.E. Skakkebaek, N.C. Nielsen, MCF-7 cells by pestiCides, carcinogens and Further, it has been reported that afterin N. Keiding, and A. Giwercman, 1999. "Secular antiestrogens does not predict mammary car­ utero exposure, neither DES nor estro­ and seasonal changes in semen quality cinogens." Environ. Health Persp., Vol. 106, among young Danish men: A statistical analy­ genic drugs decrease fertility of the off­ pp. 203-206. sis of semen samples from 1927 donor candi­ 27. U.G. Ahlborg, L. Lipworth, L. Titusernstoff, spri ng. 39, 40 dates during 1977-1995." Vol. Int. J. Androl. , C.C. Hsieh, A. Hanberg, J. Baron, D. Tri­ 22, pp. 28-36. Te sticular cancer is increasing, and chopoulos, and H.O. Adami, 1995. the environmental (diet, occupation, 10. E.V. Younglai, JA Collins, and W.G. Foster, "Qrganochlorine compounds in relation to 1998. "Canadian semen quality: an analysis of breast cancer, endometrial cancer, and en­ chemicals, lifestyle), genetic, and demo­ sperm density among eleven academic fertility dometriosis: An assessment of the biological graphic inputs to this disease are un­ centers." Ferti/. Steri/. , Vol. 70, pp. 76-80. and epidemiological evidence." Crit. Rev. To x­ clear. Theo Colborn and Bram Brouwer 11. P. Andolz, M.A. Bielsa, and J. Vila, 1999'. "Evo­ icol. Vol. 25, pp. 463-531 . lution of semen quality in north-eastern Spain: have raised the issue of thyrOid hor­ 28. G. Ursin, S. London, F.Z. Stanczyk, E. A study of 22,759 infertile men over a 36 year Gentzschein, A. Paganini-Hill, RX Ross, and mone mimics and their developmental period." Hum. Reprod., Vol. 14, pp. 731-735. M.C. Pike, 1997. "A pilot study of urinary es­ impacts; differences in neurodevelop­ 12. B. Zorn, I. Virant-Klun, I. Verdenik, and H. trogen metabolites (16a-OHE1 and 2-0HE1) mental deficits in various locations and Meden-Vrtovec, 1999. "Semen quality changes in postmenopausal women with and without among 2,343 healthy Siovenian men included breast cancer." Environ. Health Perspect. , Vol. their correlation with timing of chemi­ in an IVF-ET programme from 1983 to 1996." 105S, pp. 601 -605. cal exposure and different chemical Int. J. Androl. , Vol. 22, pp. 178-183. 29. G. Ursin, S. London, FZ. Stanczyk, E. classes require further study. 13. I. To rtolero, A.G. Bellabarba, R. Lozano, C. Gentzschein, A. Paganini-Hill, R.K. Ross, and Bellabarba, I Cruz, and JA Osuna, 1999. "Se­ M.C. Pike, 1999. "Urinary 2-hydroxyestronel This is only a partial list of scientific men analysis in men from Merida, Venezuela, 16a-hydroxyestrone ratio and risk of breast problems associated with the endocrine over a 15-year period." Arch. Androl., Vol. 42, cancer in postmenopausal women." J. Nat/. disruptor hypothesis; however, the latest pp. 29-34. Cancer Inst., Vol. 91 , pp. 1067-1072. scientific developments on these issues 14. D.J. Handelsman, 1997. "Sperm output of 30. S. Safe, 1997. "Xenoestrogens and breast healthy men in Australia: magnitude of bias cancer" (editorial). N. Engl. J. Med., Vol. 337, have not been adequately 'addressed by due to self-selected volunteers." Human Re­ pp. 1 303-1304. Sheldon Krimsky in ' his book Hormonal prod., Vol. 12, pp. 101-105. 31 . N. Krieger, M.S. Wolff, R.A. Hiatt, M. Rivera, J. Chaos. I suspect he is now hard at work 15. J. Auger, and P. Jouannet, 1997. "Evidence for Vogel man, and N. Orentreich, 1994. "Breast regional differences of semen quality among cancer and serum organochlorines: A prospec­ on new bioethical issues for his latest fertile French men." Hum. Reprod., Vol. 12, pp. tive stuay among white, black, and Asian book. 740-745. Continued on page 80

BOOKS 21 st CENTURY Spring 2000 77 Is There Life on Mats? The Quest Continues by Marsha Freeman

The Search for Life on Mars: Proceedings of the 1st UK Conference Julian A. Hiscox , Ed. London: British Interplanetary Society, 1999 Paperback, 112 pp., $46.00 The Search for Life on Mars Malcolm Walter Cambridge, Mass: Perseus Books, 1999 Hardcover, 170 pp., $25.00

ne of the most profound questions Oto be answered in the 21 st cen­ tury is whether life has developed anywhere else in the Solar System, or the observable universe. Although it has been recently discovered that wa­ characteristics of the planet were avail­ ter can be harbored in meteorites, and able during the first half of the 20th many planetary scientists believe that century, Percival Lowell's intell igent life there is a water ocean under the sur­ thesis was dealt a serious blow. But the face of Jupiter's moon Europa, for cen­ real shock was to come when the first turies'Mars has been viewed as the close-up of Mars emerged, during· the most likely place where we will fin'd vanni Schiaparelli described the dark space age. life. banded features that he saw on Mars as Mars Seen from Space These two excellent books review the "canali." On the evening of July 14, 1965, the history of the search for the answer to Mistranslated as "canals," rather than Mariner 4 spacecraft flew by Mars, this question, the missions and experi­ "channels," Schiaparelli's canali be­ passing over the equator and then the ments planned for the future, and the came, in the mind of American as­ southern hemisphere of the planet. Not re-evaluation of the boundary condi­ tronomer Percival Lowell, the great ar­ only were· there no artifacts from a pre­ tions for life, in light of the claims that chitectural works of an intelligent vious advanced civilization, but the have been made concerning life on civilization. Most scientists did not planet below was a combinatior]of Mars. doubt there was life on Mars, but life bright and featureless desert regions, The notion that there is, or has been, with human inte lligence was a fantas­ and heavily cratered terrain. This Mars life on Mars has waxed and waned for tic-and disputed-claim. appeared to resemble not the Earth, but hundreds of years. In his presentation In the second book reviewed here, the dead Moon. Suddenly, from a Solar to the British Interplanetary Society's Malcolm Walter describes this extrapo­ System oasis, Mars turned into a great Symposium, held in November 1998, lation-from what one could actually disappointment. Richard Ta ylor reprised this history. In observe, to a truly fantastic conclu­ Later, however, robotic fly-bys of the mid-1 9th century, he reports, the sion-w ith sympathy. After all, the spirit Mars began to reveal some of the dra­ popular view of Mars was that it is a that moved these earl ier astronomers matic detail or the planet that had been miniature Earth. It had been established not only to observe but also to try to ex­ obscured by the earlier lower-resolu­ 300 years before, for example, that plain, is what moves scientists today. tion imaging. These included the largest Mars has a day that in length is not un­ Wa lter quotes from Lowell's 1906 volcano in the Solar System, a 3,000- like our own. book, Mars and its Canals, in which mile-long canyon that would stretch Surface features, and polar caps that Lowell says: "From time immemorial from New York to California, and water grew and receded with the seasons, travel and discovery have called with ice and frozen carbon dioxide poles were seen in telescopic observations of strange insistence to him who, wonder­ that change with the seasons. Outflow the red planet. That life existed beyond ing on the world, felt adventure in his channels that could only have been Earth was accepted by a majority of sci-' veins.... To observe Mars is to embark made by vast quantities of flowing wa­ entists by the end of the 19th century, upon this enterprise; not in body but in ter were photographed by spa·cecraft. . Taylor reports. Then, in 1877, the first mind." Now, Mars again became a planet with great controversy about life on Mars As more precise data on the hosti le a geologic and hydraulic history, which arose, when Italian astronomer Gio- temperature, atmosphere, and other could have hosted at least prim itive life

78 Spring 2000 21 st CENTURY BOOKS of terrestrial and extraterrestrial life. The Search Has Barely Begun Malcolm Walter, a paleobiologist, has studied fossilized microbes from the earliest of Earth's geological epochs. In his book, he presents an absorbing discussion of the recent revolutionary changes in thinking about the history of the development of I ife on Earth, and he cautions that "the search for life on Mars has barely begun." He also warns that "this is not a field for the timid, the pessimistic, or the cynical," pointing out that advances "have been won as a result of optimism, vision, and determi­ nation." Walter reprises various theories of the history of the development of life on Earth, pointing put how theories re­ garding the "tree of life," which indi­ NASA cates a common "ancestor" and then This tiny, segmented worm-like structure, fo und inside Martian meteorite ALH branching off to form major groups and 8400 7, is highly suggestive of life. Diffe ring interpretations of the evidence that species, had to be changed and dis­ these are the fo ssil remains of living organisms have spurred lively and heated carded as new discoveries were made. debate, and pushed fo rward the field of discovering life in extreme environments. This is not a purely academic endeavor, since the life forms we would expect to eons ago, under more benign climactic clear, concise, non hysterical summary find on Mars or elsewhere in the Solar circumstances than exist today. of the data, pro and con, and points to­ System would most likely resemble the With the view that Mars could harbor ward the paths of research that should primitive start that life had on this life, the two Vi king landers, which be fo llowed. planet. Only microbes, Wa lter reports, touched down on the red planet in In his discussion of Mars meteorite existed on Earth at the time that the sur­ 1976, carried three different experi­ Alan Hills 84001 , although Malcolm face of Mars was habitable. ments to try to test for the presence of Walter reaches the conclusion that the Both of these books review the cur­ life. Because the results were negative, "evidence is unconvincing" that the rent and future missions to Mars that inconclusive, or disputed by different rock contains fossil remains of life on space agencies around the world are scientists, the first landing of a space­ Mars, he presents "both sides" of the now planning, to ultimately lead to the craft on the surface did not answer the story, in terms of the observations and human exploration that will finally an­ question of whether there is, or has explanations by various scientific swer the question of whether or not life been, life on Mars. teams. And while he is not sanguine developed on Mars. One fruitful mis­ The Antarctica Evidence about fossil remains in meteorites, Wa i­ sion approach has been to study re­ Perhaps the most recent controversy ter states that "if there ever was I ife on gions of the Earth that are analogous to over evidence for life on Mars has pro­ Mars, fhere is a good chance it is sti ll Mars-particularly in Antarctica. Un­ duced the greatest boon yet to science. there." derstanding how life can flourish in a In the summer of 1996, a team of scien­ One of the criticisms of the team that cold, dry region such as the South Pole, tists led by Dr. David McKay an­ had proposed meteorite ALH84001 had will shed light on the conditions under nounced that they believed that a mete­ fossil remains was that there were no which life could potentially still exist, orite from Mars (AlH 84001), found in known living organism on Earth that are perhaps under the surface, of dry, the Alan Hills region of Antarctica, con­ so small-only billionths of a meter. frozen Mars. tained the fossil remains of a primitive This challenge has led to the search, Malcolm Walter ends his book with a organism. and discovery, of forms in the nanobac­ quote from Pope John Paul II, in 1998, For the past three years, teams of sci­ teria range, with the dispute now broad­ " ...it is necessary not to abandon the entists around the world have been ened . to a debate on what "living" passion for ultimate truth, the eagerness studying the processes by which the means. to search for it or the audacity to forge specific features of this meteorite could Likewise, over the past few years, life new paths in the search ...." have formed, debating back and forth has been found to thrive in extreme en­ These two excellent publications whether the primary cause was life, or vironments, such as extreme cold, ex­ present a clear and thoughtfu l summary inorganic. The informative paper on the treme heat, high levels of radiation, and of the major questions requiring an­ Allan Hills meteorite at the British Inter­ so on. The British Interplanetary Society swers, while we continue to develop planetary Society Symposium, included proceedings include material on this the tools that will allow us to continue in the book of proceedings, presents a important new contribution to the study the search for life on Mars.

BOOKS 21st CENTURY Spring 2000 79 Looking Through the Sloppy Technology of Glass Presentation of by Elisabeth Pascali Space Scienc�

Glass: From the First Mirror to Fiber The last third of the book, however, is All About the Moon Optics: The Story of the Substance simply a hymn to modern art and its use All About the Earth That Changed the World of glass, and .can be skipped without All About the Planets William S. Ellis missing much. New York: Avon Books, 1999 All About the Sun Paperback, 306 pp., $14.00 William' Ellis has worked as 'an assis­ All About the Stars tant editor and editorial staff member of Leesburg, Va.: Schlessinger Media, 1999, the National Geographic for 27 years, Videos, 23 min. each, $29.95 each he first two parts of this book are and it shows. Despite its fascinating de­ Tchock fu ll of fascinating technolog­ tails of the technology of glass, the book oth.ing is more exciting to young ical advances in the glass is definitely written as a N ch i Idren than to learn about the industry: from the ribbon "coffeetable book." This planet they live on, anq the Moon, plan­ machine to create I ight­ paperback has one short ets, and stars they see at night. This se­ bulbs, to the method of section of color photo­ ries of video tapes, while making good creating everyday plate graphs. The hardcover ver­ use of NASA footage and animation, glass (do you know how sion, publ ished last year, and of young windows are made?), to hopefully has more color people carry­ SPAC E the various uses of fiber photographs to accom­ ing out exper­ SCIENC optics. For those, like pany the rambl i ng, vacu­ i ments to ex­ forChildren� this reviewer, who grew ous writing style. plain basic up technologically igno­ It is possible that Corn­ concepts, suf­ All About The Moon rant of how common, ing Glass, or some other fers from an everyday items made of industrial source, has a apparent inat­ glass are brought into be­ more in-depth version of tention to de­ ing, it is very worth read­ the truly exciting techno­ tail which ing the first 11 chapters (I would, how­ logical breakthroughs and potential ap­ mars the pres­ ever, recommend that impressionable plications of glass, both past and future. entation. minds avoid Chapter 10, which is full Unfortunately, most of the references for Each video of environmentalist cultural pes­ further reading given by Ellis concen­ tape in this se­ simism). trated on the artistry section of the book. ries i ncl udes factual errors menopausal breast cancer risk." Cancer Epi­ that wi con- Hormonal Bias II demiol. Biomarkers. Prev.,Vol. 7, pp. 181-188. fuse the attentive viewer. For example, Continued from page 77 36. A.P. Hoyer, P. Grandjean, T. Jorgensen, J.W. the Moon is described as having a "dark Brock, and H.B. Hartvig, 1998. "Organochlorine women." J. Nat!. Cancer Inst., Vol. 86, pp. side." Although one side of the Moon is 589-599. exposure and risk of breast cancer." The Lancet, Vol. 352, pp. 181 6-1820. 32. L. L6pez-Carrillo, A. Blair, M. L6pez-Cervantes, always facing toward Earth, the other is M. Cebrian, C. Rueda, R. Reyes, A. Mohar, and 37. K.J. Helzlsouer, A.J. Alberg, H.Y. Huang, S.C. the "far" side, which is not dark, but al­ Hoffman, P.T. Strickland, J.W. Brock, V.W. J. Bravo, 1997. "Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane ternates between night and day, just as serum levels and breast cancer risk: A case­ Burse, L.L. Needham, D.A. Bell, J.A. Lavigne, control study from Mexico." Cancer Res., Vol. J.D. Yager, and G.W. Comstock, 1999. "Serum the face we see does. 57, pp. 3728-3732. concentrations of organochlorine compounds Similarly, the statement is made in and the subsequent development of breast 33. P. Van't Veer, I.R. Lobbezoo, J.M. Martin­ cancer." the video on the planets that the mis­ Moreno, F. Guallar, J. Gomez-Aracena, A.FM. Cancer Epidemiol. Biomarkers. Pre v. , Vol. 8, pp. 525-532. sion operations team cou Id not easi Iy Kardinaal, L. Kohlmeier, B.C. Martin, J.J. Strain, M. Thumm, P. Van Zoonen, B.A. Baumann, J.K. 38. GAS. Mendonca, J. Eluf-Neto, M. J. Andrada­ communicate with the Sojourner rover Huttunen, and F.J. Kok. "DDT (dicophane) and Serpa, PAO. Carma, H.H.C. Barreto, O.N.K. on Mars because of the long communi­ postmenopausal breast cancer in Europe: Case Inomata, and T.A. Kussumi, 1999. "Organ­ cation time. Although it is true that Mars control study." Br. J. Med., Vol. 315, pp. 81-85. ochlorines and breast cancer: A case-control study in Brazil." Vol. 83, pp. 596- 34. D.J. Hunter, S.E. Hankinson, F. Laden, G. Int. J. Cancer, is millions of miles from Earth, the com­ 600. Colditz, J.E. Munson, W.C. Willett, FE. Speizer, munications time is actually only about 39. E. Hemminki, M. Gissler, and J. Merilainen, and M.S. Wolff, 1997. "Plasma organochlorine 14 minutes. levels and the �sk of breast cancer." New Engl. 1998. "Reproductive effects of in utero expo­ J. Med., Vol. 337, pp. 1253-1258. sure to estrogen and progestin drugs." Fe rtil. It is unfortunate that the producers of 35. K.B. Moysich, C.B. Ambrosone, J.E. Vena, P.G. Steri/. , Vol. 71, pp. 1092-1098. this series of tapes did not take more Shields, P. Mendola, P. Kostyniak, H. Greizer­ 40. A.J. Wilcox, D.D. Baird, C.R. Weinberg, P.P. care in the accuracy of what is pre­ stein, S. Graham, J.R. Marshall, E.F. Schister­ Hornsby, and A. L. Herbst, 1995. "Fertility in man, and J.L. Freudenheim, 1998. "Environ­ men exposed prenatally to diethylstilbestrol." sented. mental organochlorine exposure and post- N. Engl. J. Med., Vol. 332, pp. 1411-141 6. -Marsha Freeman

80 Spring 2000 21st CENTURY BOOKS