CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE Of TECHNOLOGY E N GI N E E Volume LX I, N II1llber 3, I 9 9 8 IN THIS ISSUE • Prosecuting Science Simulating Molecules Observing Anniversaries London Bridge? The Manhattan skyline? No, it's an oil refinery. figuring out how to squeeze more gasoline rrom a barrel or crude is just one project a group or theoretical chemists at Caltech have taken on in a series or academic­ industrial collaborations. for more on this partner­ sh ip, see the story on page 20. Photo courtesy or Chevron Corporation. \ California Inst i tute of Technology 2 Random Wa l k 10 Scie ntific Fraud and Misconduct in American Po litica l Cu lture : Reflections on the Baltimore Case - by Dan ie l J. Kevles Excessive zeal on the part of legislators and the media hyped public suspicion of scientists' behavior. 20 " H ave Method , Wi ll T rave l" - by Douglas L. Smi t h Computational chemistry ventures into the Real World as Cal tech theorists tackle industrial problems. 30 Tw o A s tronomical Anniv ers aries : Palomar at 50 Still going strong , the hale and hearty Hale Telescope hits the half century mark. 36 ... and OVRO at 40 Radio astronomers parry, too. On t he Cover: The six IO.4·meter antennas (one 42 Boo ks - The Earth in Tf{rmoil by Kerr y Si eh a n d S i mon LeVay is hidden behind the others here) of the Owe ns 43 Faculty Fil e Valley Radio Observat ory millimeter· wave array can receive signals from up t o Engineering & Science (ISSN 0013-7812) is published Warren G. Goda billi on light years away. 10 quarterly at the Califo rnia Institute ofTcchnology, 1200 President of the Alumni AHociatioll Designed by the late 80b East California Boulevard, Pasadena, CA 9 1125. Annual J. Ernest N unnally subscription $10.00 domestic, $20.00 foreig n air mai l; Leighton (8S '41 , MS '44, Vice Presidelll for /mlilute Relations single copies $3.00. Send subscriptions to Cal tech 1-7 1, Robert 1. O 'Rourke PhD '47), t he millimeter· Pasadena, CA 91125. T hird class postage paid at Pasade­ A ssociate Vice P' -esideI1 J!o rlmtilllte Relatiom wave array· is t he latest na, CA. All rights reserved. Reproduction of m aterial co n~ tained herei n forbidden wi thout authorizat ion. © 1998, STAFF: Editor - J ane D ietrich addition to OVRO, which California Instit ure of Technology. Published by Ca ltcch M allagillg Editor - Douglas Smith celebrated its 40th and the Alumni Association. Telep hone: 626· 395-3630. Copy Editors - Sabra Akmal, Michael Farquhar, anniversary in October. PlcruRE CREDITS; Cover, 36--10 - Jane Dieu ich; 2 - Al J ulie H akewill Forster; 2- 3,6--7 - JPL; 4,7, 9, 31 - Doug Smith; 5 - Frank COl1tribJltillg \f1ritm - Ryan Poquette, Robert Tindol Palomar Observatory also Monzon; Erika Oller; 9.30,43,44 - Bob Paz; 12 - Bettyann BJlsillesJ M anager - Debbie Bradbury celebrated its 50th; t he Kevles; 14 - Ken Heinen; AP/Widc World Phoros; 17 - Seth Circulation iHtlllager - Susan Lee Resnick; 22 - Chevro n Corp.; 22-25 - Mario Blanco; 26-29- Photographer - Robert Paz two stories begin on Jason Perry; 3 1 - Moore Montgomery; 32 - J im McClanahan; page 30. 36-38 - J ohn Dohan; 39 - Curtis Phillips Visit Caltech on the Web at http://www.caltcch.edu Random Walk S URV E YIN G M ARS Ri ght, top: Mars's largest volcano, BROAD BUILDING ANNOUNCED Olympus Mons, is as big as Arizona and taller than three Everest s. A "shield" volcano, form ed by the gentle oozing of very fluid lava, Olympus Mons is very nearly as flat as a pancake-once one surmounts the cliffs ringing t he volcano, typical slopes are 2- S degrees. Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) took this enhanced-color image on a cool, crisp, Martian- winter morning. Note the clouds lapping against the mountain's fl a nks on the east (top) side. Bottom: Martian volcanoes come in all sizes. This is the first-ever close-up view of one of the small Eli Broad, one of Southern California's most prominent shield volcanoes that dot the civic and business leaders, has donated $18 million to create rhe Broad Center for the Biological Sciences, which will provide planet. This one has a two­ 100,000 square feet of space fo r 10 research groups char will kilometer-long, ISO-met er.deep, work at rhe cutting edge of the biological sciences. The new paramecium-shaped caldera at its building, shown above in a preLiminary re ndering. will be located in the northwest quadrant of campus near the Beckman summit, and t he whole volcano Institute. As rhe corn erstone capital p roject of the Biological would fit unnoticed in Olympus Sciences Initiative, the build ing will provide crucial infra­ Mons's 7S-kilometer-diameter structure underpinning [he Ins titute's new capabilities fo r caldera. magnetic imaging, s[(uctllcal chemistry, and genetics. Broad's gift is [he largest donation so fa r in Cal tech's new Biological Sciences Iniciative, which aims to raise $100 million for new filCultyand resources. A cotal of $56 million has been raised since the initiative was announced this past May. 2 ENGINE£KING & S(IENCE No. 3 Left: Mars's north polar cap as seen by MGS on September 12, early in the Martian spring. The permanent cap, believed to be water ice mixed with dust, has a scalloped, layered look due to channels eroded on its surface. (It actually has layers, but they're far too fine to be seen here.) The ground throughout this image is covered with carbon dioxide frost, Mars may not have life, but it does which appears pink rather than have fossils of a kind-the six~ white-probably for the same kilometer crater in the MGS image reason that springtime snow on at right used to be buried under Earth is often a dirty brown. about three kilometers of Martian bedrock, part of which is still visi ~ ble in the upper left. The crater reemerged when catastrophic floods carved the gargantuan channel system called Kasei Vallis more than a billion years ago. (A similar flood carved the Ares Valles, where Pathfinder landed.) The crater survived because its rim stuck up above the flood, which didn't last long enough to erode a breach. The other two images, Above: This MGS close~up of • which show ever larger regions of Stickney, Phobos's largest crater­ Kasei Vallis, are from Viking I. at 10 kilometers, nearly half the diameter of Phobos itself-shows features as small as four meters (the length of a VW Beetle), and is one of the highest-resolution views ever of Mars's moons. At the same time, MGS was mapping Phobos's surface temperature, as shown. The fact that the night side gets so cold so quickly (Phobos rotates in seven hours) hints that the surface is covered with a meter-thick layer of very fine particles, which would lose heat rapidly. In other words, Phobos is hip-deep in powder from millions of years of meteor impacts, and getting around on it is going to be a royal pain, even though the gravitational field is only 1/1000 that of Earth's. ENGINEE RI N G & SCI ENCE NO. ] Left: Make way! Make way! Make way for the Sojourner rover! This diorama showcases a system for clearing intersections in advance of ambulances, fire trucks, and other emergency vehicles (note the police car behind the rover). The vehicle carries a transponder that commandeers the traffic signals and causes a warning sign D OUBL E M ANHATTAN (arrowed) to flash at cross traffic. The stuff on the chips in your com pu ter is essentially WHAT NEXT-TECHNO-TROUSERS fROM NASA? laid out in two dimensions, like a city. Oh, sure, the buildings stick up, and there are subways and pipes and Gening technology that kids. And an infrared camera cables underground (and the was developed at taxpayer is being used co detect cherry devices on a chip stick up, expense into the commerc.ial pits (o r parts thereof) in pie while some conneccors are arena is all the rage these filling. buried beneath the surface), days, but the Technology Speaking of cherries, a JPL­ but you can't stack the Mfiliates Program at JPL has designed imaging system Empire State Building atop been doing it since before it periodically scans the the Chrysler Building. Now became fashionable. This Constitution, the Bill of Cal tech researchers have decade-old program has Rights, and the Declaration found a way to layer multiple agreements with some 120 of Independence fot signs of copies of the entire borough companies, and about 200 deterioration. Another of Manhattan, as it were, in technology-transfer projects system was used co examine silicon. Thomas McGill (MS under way or completed. rhe Dead Sea Scrolls in rhe far '65, PhD '69), the Fletcher A lot of these projects are infrared, revealing lettering J ones Professor of Applied what you might expect: that had faded co invisi bility Physics, and colleagues reporr [obmic surgical assistants chat at sharrer wavelengths. the work in the October issue have a steadier hand cban any And 1PL's experience in of theJOItrnal o/Vacuum Science human; remote sensing of dealing with rhe icy cold of and Techllology B. hazardous waste sites, oil space has led to more efficient The method employs a spills, and land-use patterns; refrigerated display cases for widely used process called purring on CD-ROM the supermarkets, and a superior molecular-beam epitaxy to positions of the sun, moon, inslJaco r for the mail-order grow carefully controlled Above: Jo Pitesky of JPL's Commer­ and p lanets (what aStrono­ meat business.