An earlier issue of the same magazine (August 1929) shows on the cover a spaceship shaped like a giant soup bowl. Clearly, Paul enjoyed depicting space vehicles with shapes other than the conventional torpedo. This style was adopted by other artists. Just the other day I was poring through microfilms of The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin from 1936, on the trail of historical information concerning the Democratic National Convention of that year. Along the way I observed that the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century comic strip showed Buck cavorting about in a spaceship shaped just like a saucer. Paul’s influence had rippled out over the years.

The point is that the idea of space vehicles shaped like flying saucers was imprinted in the national psyche for many years prior to 1947, when the Roswell incident took place. It didn’t take much stretching for the first observers of UFOs to assume that the unknown objects hovering in the sky had the same disk shape as the science fictional vehicles. It is nice to know that science fiction has had such a profound influence on society, but sometimes I wish it were not quite so profound.

A number of readers have written concerning the Levitron — the magnetic levitating top I discussed in a recent Skeptical Briefs (June, and see also September, Letters). The consensus is that the top does levitate — if handled with care. Some readers were able to make it work some of the time. The more expert spinners made it work most of the time. One reader found that some of the tops did not work at all. A paper published in the American Journal of Physics on the theory of a spinning magnet in a vertical magnetic field did a computer solution of the exact equations of motion of this system and found that the description of the stability of this top is more complicated than the description in the brochure that comes with the Levitron. But the device does possess regions of stability, so it is not a fraud.

Altogether, this has been an educational experience, demonstrating that sometimes science is a social phenomenon. If I had depended entirely on my own experience, I might have concluded that the Levitron was a fake. However, since there were no reasons for thinking it impossible, I thought I'd better ask other people, and was delighted to find that it is actually not a piece of pseudoscience. Thank you all.

The desire to get something for nothing is a universal trait. Even as scientists become more precise about their understanding of energy, amateurs expend more effort looking for ways to circumvent the laws of nature so as to obtain energy at little or no expense.

We know that energy exists in the universe in many ways. The air contains thermal energy. The oceans contain thermal energy. The laws of nature, however, tell us that we can only extract useful energy from this ocean of heat by making use of temperature differences between two parts of the system, or else by using energy from somewhere else, as in an air conditioner or heat pump.

We also know that individual atoms possess energy, even when in their lowest, most quiescent state, called the ground state. The atom cannot exist with less energy than it has in the ground state, we are told by the principles of quantum mechanics.

This brings us to a clipping sent by CSICOP’s executive director Barry Karr. This clipping tells us of a scientist who claims that atoms can be collapsed to a state lower than the ground state, resulting in the emission of heat energy. To find out more, I dove onto the Internet and found myself at the Web site of Blacklight Power, Inc.

Here I discovered that the scientist is Randell L. Mills, M.D., of Yardley, Pennsylvania. His idea, in brief, is that a container of hydrogen gas, together with a simple catalyst, is heated to about 250ºC. The hydrogen atoms supposedly collapse to an energy state below the ground state, corresponding to a fractional quantum number. The collapsed atoms are called “hydrinos.” The transition from ground state to the lower state results in the emission of energy in the form of heat, without radiation. The heat produced is much greater than that required to start the reaction.

When I tried to access the detailed theory page, I found that the only way I could read this page was with the help of an Adobe Acrobat Reader, a piece of software that could be downloaded onto my computer. I did this, but when I tried to use this reader, it asked me for a password. Where do I get a password? (I suspect there is another piece of Adobe software that I must buy.)

At any rate, there is one firm and certain conclusion I can pass along to readers: You can watch the newspapers steadily for the next ten years and you will not see an announcement that Blacklight Power, Inc., has built a power generator obtaining cheap energy out of the collapse of hydrogen atoms. This is my firm prediction.

On this page we learn of an exposition to be held at Philadelphia’s newest basketball arena, the Corestates Center, displaying dozens of new inventions. This show was scheduled for September 23.

Numerous marvels were promised: a 318 Chrysler engine, modified to run on heat taken directly from the air; a heat system that can produce “free electricity” from the air; an engine cycle that lifts 250 pounds a foot high using the air pressure in the room; a gravitational torque intensifier that intensifies energy from the earth’s gravitation; and dozens of other items guaranteed to give you something for nothing. The feature presentation is a technology that can totally neutralize all radioactive nuclear waste and make it harmless in a matter of seconds. Professor Yull Brown is advertised as the most important man in the entire world.

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend this fascinating exhibit. Apparently, neither were the local newspapers, because I saw nothing in the news sections following the announced date. How sad that we saw no reports in the papers of inventions that will solve our impending energy crisis. How sad that we saw no report of a new and successful perpetual motion machine of the second kind.

We are all familiar with perpetual motion devices of the first kind. These are the commonplace machines that produce energy out of nothing, violating the first law of thermodynamics. This law, of course, is nothing more than conservation of energy as applied to heat engines. The second law of thermodynamics is less well known. This law tells us that it is impossible to withdraw heat from a reservoir (a gas, a liquid, or a solid) at a single temperature and convert it into mechanical energy (unless the heat travels downhill, so to speak). A heat engine always needs a hot place (a source, from which heat is extracted) and a cold place (a sink, to which exhaust heat goes). A device which claims to extract heat out of the air or the ocean (without a sink, or without supplying external energy) is a perpetual motion machine of the second kind.

Thus, the Better World Technology exhibit is no more than an attempt to sell the public devices which have been tried without success for many years — in some cases, for hundreds of years. The only people who will make money out of this event will be the sponsors who are able to induce the gullible and ignorant to invest money in their schemes.

The sad thing is that I have been watching inventions like this come and go for the past sixty years, since I left the childish interests of high school and embarked upon the professionalism of college. Not once during that time has somebody gotten a Nobel prize for a machine that made energy out of nothing, or for a machine that could collect the heat of the monster ocean. But my skepticism concerning these endeavors is not founded on the failure of individual machines. I know that none of these machines can possibly work because they violate fundamental laws of nature.

Addendum: Since writing the above, I have received a copy of Phactum, the newsletter of the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking (PhACT). Tom Napier, an electronics engineer and devotee of critical thinking, writes that he and some other skeptics attended the above assembly and found themselves surrounded by about 3,000 true believers listening to talks about the wonderful inventions just described. The level of technical knowledge displayed by the speakers was what you might expect from somebody who had flunked thermodynamics in school. Discussion of a heat pump showed an inventor who thought that if you used one unit of electrical energy to pump six units of heat energy from one place to another, you were generating five units of energy. With that kind of logic, you could turn your air conditioner into a generator. But the audience ate it up.

From CSICOP’s Executive Director Barry Karr come two clippings. One, from Business Week (September 30, 1996), tells us of an amazing discovery made by a Russian scientist working in Finland. The scientist, Eugene Podkletnov, has, we are told, been doing research on high temperature superconductivity at the Tampere University of Technology. (High temperature superconductivity is exhibited by certain materials at the temperature of liquid nitrogen, which is quite a bit higher than the temperature of liquid helium.) Cooling a ceramic disk to -334°F, he “zaps it with an electromagnetic field that causes it to spin.” (Not mentioned is the fact that the disk must be levitated in a vertical magnetic field.) At an angular velocity of 3,000 rpm anything placed above the disk loses about 2% of its weight, regardless of what kind of material it is. This is taken as evidence of antigravity.

Another article, in the New Scientist (September 21, 1996), reports pretty much the same discovery, except that this time the superconductor is in the form of a ring, spinning at 5,000 rpm. This time we are told that the ring is suspended in a magnetic field. We are also told that anything placed above the ring has its weight reduced by “up to 2%.” Both articles agree that a paper was submitted to the Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, published by the British Institute of Physics, and was scheduled to be published in the October issue. It is difficult to determine what happened subsequently. Business Week claims that Podkletnov withdrew the paper from publication after one of his coauthors complained that he was no longer connected with the project. Cries of fraud were raised. New Scientist, on the other hand, says that the paper was withdrawn after Tampere University issued a statement denying all knowledge of antigravity research. Following which Petri Vuorinen, the supposed coauthor, issued a statement denying he had ever worked on antigravity research.

What is one to believe?

Hoping to obtain more information, I jumped into my webcrawler and typed in the keyword “Podkletnov.” No hits were recorded. (A hit is a positive response when you are looking for a keyword on the Internet.) I then cleverly thought of trying “antigravity.” Aha! That was the secret. This keyword gave me sixty-eight hits, although at least two of them were problematical, with titles of “Guide to Classical Indian” and “Jazz Fusion.” My eyes gave out before I reached the end of the text, but it is possible that one of the jazz groups mentioned includes the word “antigravity” in its name. All I learned from this exercise is that there are a lot of people out there seriously discussing antigravity (as well as perpetual motion, UFOs, and other topics) as a real possibility.

Finally, under a pile of papers, I unearthed a printout labeled “The Institute for New Energy,” which I had a few weeks ago searched out for some forgotten reason. This missive lists for its keywords: New Energy, Free Energy, Cold Fusion, Space Energy, Zero Point Energy, Aether, Ether, Antigravity, and Levitation, among others. Below the keywords are listed several dozen abstracts of articles on these topics for the edification of that part of the population that does not think professional scientists know what they are talking about. Among these is an article on the Podkletnov work published in the Sunday Telegraph, September 1, 1996. This tells us nothing new except for the formula of the superconducting material used.

So there we are. Lots of fuss and fury. Strange that for a topic of such importance there has been no mention in the New York Times or in Science. But what do we expect? The stuffy mainstream scientists have always been hostile to new and original ideas. Perhaps in my next column I will unearth more goodies from the Internet. It is a never-ending source of insanity.

One thing the antigravity folk have not noticed is that their discovery gives them a perpetual motion device as well as a means for space travel. Yes, it gives us free energy, in unlimited quantities. For it is only necessary to put a wheel, like a Ferris wheel, over the superconducting disk (or coil). If you locate it so that half the wheel is over the disk and half is to the side, then half the wheel will be lighter than the other half. Then this will truly be an unbalanced wheel and will turn endlessly, driving a generator and giving an endless source of mechanical or electrical energy, which, of course, is impossible.

I knew about this disproof of antigravity sixty years ago when I was a voracious science fiction reader. We loved to disprove the gravity shield H. G. Wells used in First Men in the Moon. In this story the intrepid space travelers used a material called “cavorite” to block the force of gravity from their ship, which, as I have shown above, is impossible. Science fiction writers never worry about what is possible or impossible. But scientists do.

Once again we use an established law of nature (conservation of energy) to argue against a proposed antigravity scheme. (We don’t have to know anything about gravity to use conservation of energy.) And once again we return to my fundamental theme: once a conservation law has been established with a high degree of accuracy, it is not going to be overthrown, no matter how many malcontents out there may rail against the stuffy establishment. I've seen this going on for over sixty years, and I don’t expect it to change. I admit it would be fun to know in detail just how Podkletnov got his 2% reduction in weight. Was it an error in measurement? Was it an environmental effect such as air currents or electrostatic fields? Was it a plain hoax? But I don’t have the time or energy to go to Finland to find out.

Related Information

• KeelyNet — “Free Energy - Gravity Control - Electronic Health”
• Free Energy Demo in Philadelphia
• The Institute for New Energy

At that time I thought that these were merely adolescents playing around with their imaginative notions of science. In time, as they went to school and learned real science they would grow out of it. So I thought. However, my hopes were shattered when I graduated to America Online and discovered the Internet. There I found the same fantasies, masked by more sophisticated homepage techniques, created by adults, some with Ph.D.'s.

A very elaborate homepage is called the Internet Science Education Project (ISEP), a California non-profit 501(3c) corporation. (For those who are not familiar with the Internet, a homepage is a page that appears on the screen, created by some interested person, and accessed by a specific address — one of those lengthy strings starting with “http://". From the homepage you can jump to other pages, from which you can jump to other pages. This is what we do when searching or surfing the web.) On the ISEP homepage we are greeted by a picture of a ravishing beauty who claims to be Lt. Alexandrova from Space Force Academy at the San Francisco Presidio in the year 2196. She is communicating with us by advanced quantum waves from the future. (In physics an advanced wave is a solution of a wave equation that lies in the future light-cone of space-time. At present there is no physical interpretation to this wave.)

Clearly somebody is having fun. The person in charge is Jack Sarfatti, Ph.D., "President of the Corporation.” Dr. Sarfatti uses the Science Education Project to publicize his advanced ideas, which he calls post-modern physics. At the bottom of the homepage we find a logo for the Space Force Academy which we click to reach the next level (the next page). Here we find a large number of choices: Muse Magazine, PSI Wars, Quantum Mind & Microtubules, Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Animation, UFOs: Fact or Fancy?, Quantum Teleportation, to name a few.

Examining some of the pages, and accumulating a large pile of printouts, we are able to distinguish the pattern of post-modern physics. It is an interlocking set of theories centered on the non-locality of quanta — that is, on the observation that within a single quantum (wave packet) a particle such as an electron or photon can appear to be in two places at the same time. It is also deeply concerned with quantum gravity and its possible uses.

The post-modern enthusiasts claim that recent work in “anomalous cognition,” teleportation, and the relation between quantum gravity and consciousness presages a revolution in physics analogous to the quantum-relativity revolution that took place at the end of the nineteenth century. It certainly would if true.

Reading the theories found on these Internet pages we find certain technical terms used repeatedly: quantum gravity, Bohm pilot waves, microtubules, qualia, etc. A typical sentence: “The qualia [i.e., subjective mental experiences] are excitations in the macroscopic coherent quantum Bohm mental ‘pilot wave’ attached to the material vibrations of ‘Frohlich collective modes’ of electric dipoles in the microtubules inside living cells.” Or, look at this one: “The Mind of God hangs suspended in the Hilbert raum of Wheeler’s superspace guiding the evolution in time of the three-dimensional space geometry of our Universe — at least in Bohm’s pilot wave theory of quantum gravity that, according to Penrose and Nanopoulos, form the substratum of our consciousness.”

Here we see a concatenation of perfectly legitimate physical concepts (and physicists) to form a string of words that convey very little meaning to my impoverished brain. Quantum gravity is a theory that combines quantum mechanics (the theory of small objects) with general relativity (the theory of gravity and the curvature of space). Many of the greatest physicists have worked on this, with a variety of results. Pilot waves were proposed by David Bohm to explain certain mysterious phenomena stemming from the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox. (Bohm was a great quantum theorist in the old days — I read his quantum mechanics textbook from cover to cover back in 1952.)

An example of an incomprehensible observation that relates to pilot waves is an experiment I did myself in 1976. (It’s a rather simple experiment that can be done in any optics laboratory.) In this experiment, a beam of light is passed through a half-silvered mirror inclined at 45° to the beam. Cut down the intensity of the light so that just one photon wavepacket passes through the mirror at one time. Quantum theory tells us that half of each wavepacket is reflected while the other half is transmitted. We know that this happens because if you bring the packets together in an interferometer, you do get interference fringes, showing that both transmitted and reflected waves go around the interferometer. But if you detect the photons with two photodetectors (A and B), you find that if the reflected wave is detected in one location by phototube A, the transmitted wave is not detected at the same time by phototube B, and vice versa. How does one detector (A) know not to trigger when the other (distant) detector (B) does trigger, even though both are being hit by exactly the same wave? This is very hard to explain by classical quantum concepts. To make sense out of this paradox, Bohm proposed that inside each quantum was a “pilot wave” that hid within one of the split wavepackets and determined which detector was going to trigger. For many years physicists believed that pilot wave (hidden variable) theories were untenable, but later came to believe they were not so untenable. As a result, the use of pilot waves is a possible way of explaining the observations associated with the above experiment, just one of the many experiments that have a bearing on the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox.

Quantum gravity theories are legitimate theories; the only problem is that so far no one has figured out how to test any of these theories. But there is always hope. The mischief arises when you take a theory that has no visible consequences and apply it as an explanation of a phenomenon such as consciousness. The post-modern physicists do this by stringing together a bunch of legitimate terms like beads on a string, piling conjecture on top of conjecture. It’s great entertainment, but is it science?

My fundamental objection to the use of quantum-gravity pilot waves to explain consciousness is this: the authors of these theories provide no mechanism to explain how the sub-sub-microscopic entities control what happens in the brain. What happens to pilot waves when a person dies? Do they disappear, or are they effective only when interacting with a brain that has a certain type of organization? And what were they doing during all the billions of years before human brains came on the scene? Are we to assume that the pilot waves cause consciousness only when they meet a brain with a certain kind of organization? Perhaps it is the organization that causes consciousness, and quantum-gravity pilot waves are simply a bit of poetry.

On another web page we find the breathless news of a new breakthrough in space propulsion. Listen carefully: ” . . . the quantum potential Q found in Bohm’s hidden variable version of quantum mechanics is able to transform ordinary protons into virtual ‘faster-than-light’ tachyons. This would permit the construction of a new type of rocket engine that would enable low-cost highly fuel-efficient practical interstellar flight for large manned spacecraft.” Using tachyons as the propellant, a large spaceship could be pushed to velocities approaching the speed of light, using a relatively small amount of energy.

My question is: how much energy does it take to generate a stream of tachyons? To provide a reasonable amount of thrust, the tachyon beam must have a certain amount of momentum. The relativistic relation between momentum and energy is surely the same for tachyons as it is for other particles. And the mass-energy of the spaceship approaches infinity as the ship approaches the speed of light. So from where do we get this high energy efficiency? (Besides, nobody has seen a tachyon yet.)

AFTERTHOUGHT: It occurs to me that Scarfatti’s Internet Science Education Project with all its scientific double talk makes perfect sense if we consider it to be parody. It is an education project in the sense that it forces the reader to examine what he knows and decide whether the writing makes sense or not. If the writing is intended to poke fun at the new-age, post-modern physics, it succeeds admirably. If it is really supposed to be serious, well, then . . . . Personally, I hate it when I can’t tell whether a writer is serious or not. It goes back to the time fifty years ago when I wrestled with John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding Science Fiction, who presented a new loony idea in each issue of his magazine. I hated to think that such a talented, intelligent person might be a bit less than totally sane.

To save our sanity, true skepticism may be found on the Internet. Set your web searcher to look for “skepticism,” and you will find a large number of items, most of which I have not yet looked at. One useful item is an annotated bibliography of books on skepticism, with one-paragraph reviews. It is very expert and knowledgeable. There is also a list of skeptical journals.

CSICOP has its own homepage (http://www.csicop.org), and past issues of Skeptical Briefs and Skeptical Inquirer can be found therein. Congratulations to CSICOP for joining in the fun. (And now I can e-mail this article to Barry Karr. In about a thousand years I will have saved enough postage to pay for my computer.)

Related Information

• Followup article: Pseudoscience on the Internet

Need we say more?

A wonderful document has wafted its way across my desk. It is either a press release or a scientific abstract. Its opening paragraph tells us: “The tracker is a serious scientific break through [sic] in modern physics. Its design and engineering were carefully approached to produce a simple unit that allows its operator the ability to search for and locate lost, missing and unseen objects from a distance.”

What follows is a “scientific” explanation of how the tracker works. It is a wonderful explanation indeed: perfectly legitimate scientific terms are stirred together to form a stew that sounds like an real explanation to any persons without a few courses in Electricity and Magnetism under their belts. We are first told that all matter contains positive charges. An indisputable fact. Then we are told that all living beings also contain positive charges — as though living beings are not included under “all matter” and so must be treated separately.

The remainder of the explanation appears to be based on the fact that charged bodies produce magnetic fields when they are in motion. We then find that “Since all matter contains positive charges, when a magnetic field is created by a contained electrically charged body moving through space at a perpendicular angle to its direction, and that magnetic field is brought into alignment with another magnetic field, resonating at the identical frequency modulation, then both objects carry positive charges and repulsion occurs.”

How can I count the ways of error in this one sentence? Though it sounds wonderfully erudite, it totally neglects telling us that normal objects carry as many negative charges as there are positive charges. Therefore normal objects are electrically neutral and do not produce magnetic fields when in motion. (If there were only positive charges, the electrostatic repulsion between objects would be far greater than any magnetic effects due to their motion.) Scientific amateurism and pretentiousness are displayed by the use of “frequency modulation” when “frequency” alone would suffice, if the field were indeed alternating.

For this hypothetical alternation no reason is given.

I will not belabor you with further excerpts from this wonderful theory, except to note that it is clearly concocted by analogy with magnetic resonance imaging methods. A small bibliography at the end includes references to such scholarly works as Physics the Easy Way, and Electrons at Work, published by McGraw-Hill in 1933. I suspect that our inventor studied from these books when in high school, sixty years ago, and still considers them the latest thing.

Magnetic fields are much in vogue these days. Fix your eyes on this advertisement contained in a mail-order catalog emanating from DAMARK International, Inc., a company that sells computers, electronics, and appliances. While trying to sell me a radio-controlled submarine as well as a personal shiatsu massager, they also sneak in an ad for a pair of Magnetizer Foot Strips, selling for $19.99 per pair. These strips fit into the soles of your shoes, and when you wear them the magnetic fields they generate induce current into iron-rich blood creating heat that soothes pain and swelling, while the attractive force of the magnet improves circulation. (Gee, those magnetic fields I felt while working around stellarators in Princeton must have been really good for me. Maybe I should get a magnet and rub it over my sciatic nerve. It’s really been a pain.)

But all good things come to an end. DAMARK says they may be forced to stop mailing me their catalogs if I haven't placed an order recently. Funny, I don’t recall ever placing an order with them. (Maybe they are descended from DAK Products, from whom I bought a computer several years ago.)

Another press release featuring an article by Jane Heimlich, wife of the Heimlich maneuver inventor, touts magnetic cures of all kinds, particularly aches and pains of arthritis and injuries. We are told that negative magnetic energy arrests the growth of tumors, whereas positive magnetic energy accelerates tumor growth. We are told that these beneficial results only come from the use of “unipole” magnets, which are flat plate magnets with magnetic poles on opposite sides. Ordinary magnets (such as those you use on the refrigerator) have opposite poles on the same sides. Which ain't the way I learned it.

Jim Townsend, of Fullerton, California, sells a variety of magnets to fit various parts of the body. His insoles sell for twice the price of DAMARK’s. They must be better.

A recent issue of Science (29 September, 1995) reports on two papers in the October 1995 issue of the Journal of Radiation Research, describing attempts to replicate the earlier work, with negative results. The new research not only repeated the older work, but improved on the methods of analyzing the data. According to Jeff Saffer, of the Pacific Northwest Laboratories, Goodman and Henderson had failed to include certain controls and calibrations. When these precautions were taken, “There was no observable effect,” Saffer said.

Here we go again. One experiment says yes, another experiment says no. Well, this often happens in science. We won’t know the final result until enough different people repeat the same work. In the meantime, the EMF work begins to show ominous similarity to the cold fusion brouhaha of a few years ago. Great initial excitement, followed by a simmering down of claims as more careful research finds nothing to get excited about.

In the cold fusion case, physicists with experience in fusion work were initially skeptical because they could not imagine any kind of nuclear reaction that would produce the effects claimed. They thought they had a quite complete knowledge of all the nuclear reactions in existence. But, on the off chance that there were obscure reactions lurking about, they could not come right out and say “cold fusion is impossible.” Therefore a great deal of time, effort, and money had to be spent replicating the original experiments.

In the case of EMF and cancer the situation is even more complex. Here we are dealing with living cells, and we don’t know everything that goes on inside them. We really don’t know much about the interaction between 60 Hertz electromagnetic fields and living matter.

My own initial skepticism on the subject was colored by my experience in working with powerful magnetic fields. When I was at the fusion lab in Princeton I worked with a machine called a stellarator, the precursor of the present tokamak. This was a large device about twenty feet long and eight feet high, consisting of a racetrack-shaped vacuum vessel surrounded by magnetic coils encased in blocks of stainless steel. Occasionally when the coils were being tested I would stand on the platform adjacent to the stellarator and watch in wonder as the four-inch steel slabs would slowly bend toward each other when the magnetic field was pulsed. This was a strong field! But standing a few feet away I felt nothing. Therefore I didn’t think magnetic fields had any effect on me.

However, fields from power lines alternate at sixty cycles per second, quite different from the slowly varying field from the stellarator. These alternating magnetic fields are accompanied by electric fields whose strength is not insignificant. However, to calculate the electric field strength inside a living person and to calculate the effect of this field on living cells is a very complex matter. For this reason it would be foolhardy to claim ahead of time that alternating electromagnetic fields do not have an effect on the health of people exposed to them. The subject is not at all like cold fusion. We have no theoretical reasons for saying EMFs are either good or bad for people. The question must be answered with careful experimental tests.

And I’m glad to see that they are being done.

But let us not go out on a limb like a friend of mine who gave a lecture before a local club extolling the benefits of optimism. He was saying that we cannot put limits on future discoveries in biomedical science. He expected new advances in medicine to increase the human life span indefinitely. I objected, saying that if people live forever then the population growth rate will increase even faster than it does now; in a few hundred years there will be one person for every square foot of the earth’s surface. He replied: not to worry, people will learn how to live in the ocean, how to live underground, how to populate the planets. (Sounds like a lot of the science fiction stories I used to read in the 30s.) The obvious answer to that is: suppose the population doubling time is 100 years, and suppose in the year 2500 you ship half the earth’s population off to Mars to free up some living space. By the year 2600 exponential growth has brought you right back where you were.

There’s no answer to the population problem other than zero population growth.

This error occurs frequently in the area of epidemiology, where the researcher uses statistical methods to discover the causes of diseases. (For example, to determine if cancer is caused by certain environmental factors.) The trouble is, there are good epidemiologists and bad epidemiologists. In addition, the methods of epidemiology are frequently used by people without a degree in epidemiology who think that there is not much more to the subject beyond calculating averages and standard deviations.

I feel qualified to speak on this topic because I was once married to an epidemiologist. She was a good one, having co-authored the basic textbook on the subject (Epidemiology, by Mausner & Bahn, Saunders, 1974), and she was perpetually going about the house screaming about the bad epidemiology that was being published in the journals. As a result, I am a skeptic about the use of epidemiology and biostatistics. They are valid sciences when used properly, but they are somewhat soft as sciences and are readily open to abuse. Therefore any results obtained with their aid must be examined critically.

The particular topic that stirs my attention today is an old one: the possibility that low frequency electromagnetic waves act as carcinogens. A large amount of research has been done trying to establish the relationship between magnetic fields from power lines and the incidence of cancer in the neighborhood. Physicists in general have been doubtful about this work, but have been too polite to say much in public.

Finally the American Physical Society, the broadest professional organization of physicists (of which I have been a member since 1948), has issued an official statement saying that it can find no evidence that electromagnetic fields (emf) radiated by electric power lines are a measurable cause of cancer. (New York Times, May 14, 1995.) A study conducted by Dr. David Hafemeister, of California Polytechnic State University, has reviewed all the existing literature on the subject and interviewed specialists in the field. His conclusion is that the statistical evidence for a correlation between electromagnetic fields and cancer is negligible, and is growing smaller as time goes on (a well known effect in parapsychology research).

The most devastating criticism about some of the emf research is that no effort was made to measure the actual em field strength experienced by the at-risk population. One paper I recall found that the cancer rate among electricians was higher than in the general population. But there was no effort made to show that these electricians actually experienced higher magnetic fields in their work. If I was an electrician I would want to shut off the power before going up on a high-voltage line. There are many chemical agents an electrician might encounter which would be much more harmful than possible em fields. (PCBs from transformer oil, for example).

Not only is the statistical data of doubtful value, but the people belaboring the emf-cancer connection have little or no theoretical explanation of how such em fields can actually produce cancer. The absence of a causal explanation greatly increases the skepticism in my mind.

The reason for the American Physical Society’s unprecedented statement is the fact that efforts to reduce the supposed effects of power-line fields on the population are likely to cost the public billions of dollars. This is money spent with no evidence that it does any good.

“No More Mr. Nice Guy,” continued:

Since my last piece on publications touting unusual theories, I have received in the mail a 21-page book written by Fereydoon Salehi, of Tehran, Iran. Not only is this book nicely printed by word-processor, but it comes in a professional hard binding.

The title of this book is Equivalence Principle of Mass-energy Conservation Law by Physical Constant. Its subject appears to be the classification of mass and energy in cosmic structures (planets, stars, galaxies, etc.). There is a large amount of mathematics in this book, and clearly much work has gone into it. I am sympathetic to the author’s seriousness of purpose, and so do not wish to hurt his feelings with a casual dismissal. Yet, am I to spend my few remaining days wading through insufficiently explained mathematics, even as I try to understand the uncertain English? The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Fortunately, two general principles come to my rescue.

The appropriate laws of physics must be applied to the work at hand. If you are talking about galaxies and the universe as a whole, Newtonian mechanics will not do. General relativity must be used. The book under review starts with Kepler’s third law (regarding motion, which is okay for the solar system, but not okay for larger-scale structures.

In any equation, the quantities on the right side must have the same dimensionality as the quantities on the left. By dimensionality I mean the following: All physical quantities can be broken down into simple fundamental quantities. In mechanics, these fundamental quantities are mass (M), length (L), and time (T). In any equation within mechanics, the combination of M, L, and T on the left must be the same as on the right.

For example, the familiar expression for energy, Mc², has a dimensionality of ML²/T² (because c is a velocity, and a velocity is L/T).

On page 6 of the book in question is an equation in which Mc² is equated to M²G², where G is the gravitational constant. I do not understand how this equation is derived, but it takes but a few minutes to see that M²G² has a dimensionality of L⁶T⁴, which is not the same as the dimensionality of Mc². Therefore, I do not have to know how this equation was derived to demonstrate its fallacy. I know from dimensional analysis that this equation cannot be correct — which, of course, makes me dubious about the rest of the book.

The use of such general principles can avoid a lot of fuss and bother. It is an example of another general principle: It is easier to prove that a theory is false than to prove that it is correct.

One tome, hundreds of pages thick, described the author’s personal theory of gravitation. His idea was that gravity was not an attraction, but rather was caused by the pressure of things raining down from the sun. He was immune to my argument that his theory could not explain the inverse- square behavior of gravity-that is, the way the strength of the gravitational force becomes weaker as you go farther away from the earth. Indeed, he was opaque to the idea that the purpose of a theory is to explain things that are actually observed. It was his mission in life to convince me of the truth of his ideas. I, idiotically, had the idea that I could demonstrate to him the error of his ways. Inevitably I realized that this aim was a total impossibility and so stopped writing to him. This, however, did not discourage him, and letters kept arriving for many months from his indomitable word processor. Lucky for me, his mailing labels all contained a characteristic misspelling of my address, so that it was a simple matter, once I had steeled myself to the requisite ruthlessness, to consign his envelopes to the wastebasket without going to the labor of opening them.

Another correspondent published a book proposing a new (?) theory of atomic and molecular structure. Not for him are the mathematical rigors of quantum theory. Nor is there motion within an atom. His model consists of fixed arrays of positive and negative charges. I attempted to explain to him that there is a theory of electrostatics that proves the instability of any fixed array of electric charges. He scoffed at this notion, even though he had received several letters pointing out the same fallacy. Everybody was wrong except him. Undoubtedly numerous scientists had attempted to make similar models during the l9th century, but nobody could explain anything as simple as the structure of the hydrogen molecule before the advent of quantum theory. Eventually I decided there was no point trying to convince this person of the error of his ways. Let him have his fun. But it’s not going to be at my expense.

Yet another correspondent wanted to replace all of modern science with a single elegant and unified theory. Unfortunately, both my eyes and intellect gave out before I had read more than a few pages. It’s really tough understanding somebody who invents his own vocabulary, erudite though it may seem, and then proceeds to use it without defining any terms. One of the symptoms of scientific illiteracy is a failure to understand how important (and difficult) it is to define terms in a logical, consistent, and operational manner. Therefore I was forced to terminate our correspondence. No more nice guy.

A postscript to a recent column on scientific illiteracy in the media. In the Philadelphia Inquirer of April 20, 1995, the TV page sports a blurb for a “Biography” series on the Arts & Entertainment channel, as follows: “The Wizard of Menlo Park, Albert Einstein (1879-1955), is the subject of tonight’s profile. William Hurt narrates the look at Einstein’s scientific achievements and his politics.” Am I being too fussy when I rail against this illiteracy? What difference does it make that the wizard of Menlo Park was Thomas Edison and not Einstein? After all, Menlo Park is just a few miles north of Princeton, where Einstein hung his hat. So the writer was nearly correct. After all, is not consistency the virtue of small minds? Let’s relax and allow for approximations. Precision is for nerds and wonks. What difference does it make whether pi is 3.14 or 3.15? Come to think of it, I’m not sure that the above newspaper item appeared on the 20th. It might have been the l9th. But who cares?

Sometimes the consequences of scientific illiteracy take on a more sinister aspect, especially when coupled with paranoia and hysteria. Shortly after the Oklahoma City explosion, a tourist of Arab descent named Ibraham Ahmad was arrested in London on the grounds that his luggage contained materials used for bomb making. These materials turned out to be the kind of consumer electronics people from the middle east often buy in the United States: telephones, recorders, etc., plus the requisite cables. Apparently the customs officials couldn’t tell the difference between telephone wires and bomb fuses. Good thing the poor man wasn’t carrying any fertilizer.

Things are not going to get better. In March, 1995, the Alabama state board of education adopted a new set of guidelines for science teaching. (Science, 7 April 1995, p. 33.) These guidelines, which apply to textbooks from kindergarten to 12th grade, emphasize that evolution is to be taught only as a “theory.” This change opens the way for the teaching of creationism. It is part of the slide of the country towards the religious right.

This shows up in all sorts of ways, and not just in the supermarket checkout journals. On KYW, Philadelphia’s leading radio news station, I often hear things like: “A fire was reported in the 2800 block of West Cumberland Street, in the Kensington section of the city.” But every true Philadelphian knows that if it is Kensington, it has to be East Cumberland Street. Clearly, their writer is an immigrant fresh from the hinterlands and is ignorant of the city’s geography.

Headline writers are the worst perpetrators, and often behave as though they have not read the story they are headlining. There was a recent spate of articles in the papers about sonoluminescence, a process in which powerful sound waves in a liquid produce air bubbles within that liquid; simultaneously shock waves are produced inside the bubbles that heat the compressed gas to very high temperatures. As a result, the compressed gas emits flashes of light, as any heated gas will. Each light flash lasts less than 50 picoseconds (1 picosecond = 10 -12 seconds). The announcement of this discovery was accompanied by a reasonable conjecture that if you used heavy water (deuterium oxide) as the fluid, you could produce thermonuclear fusion by this method and so generate energy.

So far so good. However, in his or her enthusiasm, the headline writer added the word “cold” to the caption, thus creating an overheated announcement that the experimenters had achieved “cold fusion.” But the body of the story clearly explained that the fusion reaction would occur because of the high temperatures within the bubbles. Automatically the headline writer assumed that if it took place in a beaker of water, it had to be cold fusion. Two kinds of errors were involved. One, the headline writer did not read the story carefully; two, the headline writer did not understand that even in a beaker of cold water there can be local and temporary regions of high temperature (although it is clear that continuous application of these high energy sound waves is going to heat up the water pretty fast).

P.S.: Experiments are under way at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to do this experiment with deuterium and to try to generate measurable neutrons.

Now let us examine a story published in a prestigious news journal: Newsweek, dated Dec. 26, 1994. On page 108 we see an item that is a prime example of what happens when a couple of English majors try to deal with a science- based story. (I am assuming they are English majors, having only their ignorance of science as evidence. Whatever happened to the idea of having science writers who major in science and so know what they are writing about?) The article is about powering vehicles with fuel cells, part of a series predicting the next century. A fuel cell is described as “a sort of battery that never needs recharging.” True, it never needs recharging, but that is because it derives its energy by oxidizing liquid or gaseous fuel. Its main virtue is touted as no release of pollution to the atmosphere.

The falsehood lies in what is left out. We are told: “Fuel cells make possible the dream of running a car on water: separate water into H₂ and O and, presto—car fuel.” Unmentioned is the fact that to separate water into its elements requires that you put in as much energy as you get out when you burn the hydrogen and oxygen. And generating that initial energy is going to produce a certain amount of pollution.

Notwithstanding, the authors end with an upbeat. After predicting unlimited and cheap energy from fuel cells in the future, we are told: “And then fuel cells would be even more like a perpetual-motion machine: all the electricity you want without a speck of pollution.” A schematic diagram of a fuel cell inspires the writer to even greater heights. Its caption tells us: “A fuel cell is the chemical version of a perpetual-motion machine.” All this hype disregards the fact that fuel cells have not the slightest similarity to perpetual-motion machines. The defining feature of a perpetual-motion machine is that it produces energy without burning fuel-that is, it would if it existed. But a fuel cell burns-or at least oxidizes-fuel. Certainly if perpetual-motion machines existed they would operate without pollution, but that is incidental to the main point. To compare a fuel cell with a perpetual-motion machine because they are both free of pollution is like saying a centipede is like a lion because they both have legs.

It is clear that the authors needed some sensationalism to puff up a fairly prosaic story. They did this by using the term “perpetual-motion” as though this machine really exists. Actually, since perpetual-motion machines do not and cannot exist, the comparison of a fuel cell with a perpetual-motion machine might be taken to mean that fuel cells do not exist either. Which is not true.

Fuel cells are indeed an active area of research. They have been used for years in space vehicles. Efforts are now aimed at using natural hydrocarbons, such as gasoline or methane, for fuel instead of pure hydrogen. Once the price is reduced from $2,000 to $50 per kilowatt, there are two advantages: less pollution and greater efficiency than with internal-combustion engines. The efficiency of heat engines is limited by the laws of thermodynamics to a low value, while a fuel cell, which does not go through a heat cycle, can approach 100 percent efficiency. But in no way can it be likened to perpetual motion. Now look at the obituary for Eugene Wigner that appeared in the New York Times on January 4, 1995. Wigner was one of the 20th-century giants of theoretical physics. His work in nuclear theory earned him the Nobel prize in physics for 1963. In describing his interest in quantum theory the obit says: “In the ordinary world, an object either exists or does not. But quantum theory provides that something at the subatomic level can both exist and not exist simultaneously.” I know of no textbook on quantum theory that makes such a statement. This kind of thing is typical of certain intellectual types who say things like: “Nothing exists until it is observed.” Which I trashed in my last column.

Quantum theory does say that the state of an object is undetermined until it is detected, so that you might think of a photon reflected from a half-silvered mirror as going in two directions simultaneously (the reflected wave and the transmitted wave) until a photodetector places it in a definite location. But that does not mean the existence of the photon is in doubt.

I’m sure, however, that this new myth will remain in circulation forever.

It quickly became apparent that most of the BB denizens were students of various kinds. Many were high-school or middle- school students asking for hints about science projects or seeking answers to their homework problems. A few appeared to be graduate students interested in discussing quantum theory, relativity, or esoteric philosophical topics, such free will vs. determinism.

What surprised me (although it should not have) was the number of individuals interested in expounding on their own grandiose theories of the universe. The grandiosity of the theories appeared to be inversely proportional to the amount of knowledge possessed. Many were determined to show how Einstein was wrong; others were bent on demonstrating the falsity of quantum theory. Since relativity and quantum theory violate common sense, they must be wrong and all the scientists in the world are mistaken.

A number of correspondents were interested in time travel of various sorts. The tachyon was seriously bandied about as a way of accomplishing faster-than-light travel. When I objected that tachyons don’t really exist, I was informed that "Star Trek” uses them regularly. Silly me, I've been out of touch.

It soon became evident that many of these students can’t tell the difference between real science and the kind of science used in science fiction. They think that faster-than-light travel and time travel are serious possibilities. When I started to become alarmed over this confusion in the world of education, I reminded myself of my own ignorance when, at the age of 12, I entered high school. At that time my mind had been totally besotted by science fiction, and my favorite writer was one whose first novel involved a space ship that could accelerate at a rate of one light year per second per second [sic], but nobody was hurt by the g-forces because the floor of the cabin was mounted on springs! (The author of this epic was a chemist, not a physicist.) Later in my career I became more sophisticated and derived much satisfaction by pointing out scientific errors in the stories, attaining a great reputation as a tedious bore.

I do hope that the denizens of the computer bulletin board will in time learn to separate fact from fantasy. If not, they will undoubtedly end up as subjects of this column.

Just this morning, for example, there arrived an E-mail message requesting some or all information known about antimatter. The writer wanted to incorporate this knowledge into his theory about time travel. I responded, saying

1. it would take several textbooks to transmit all known information about antimatter, and
2. I didn’t quite see what antimatter had to do with time travel.

I must confess that I get rather testy when people ask me for information that they can get from any good book or encyclopedia. (Right within Prodigy they have an encyclopedia that can answer many of their questions. I don’t mind giving references (especially to my own books) and don’t mind clarifying fuzzy ideas that the correspondents may have acquired, but I do not care to spend the hours it would take to give detailed answers to some of the questions. I have tastier fish to fry.

What is most disturbing is the impression I get that many of the students on the Prodigy BB have never acquired the habit of looking things up in a book (gasp!) when they have questions. Within the computer culture it is more common to log on and ask somebody out there. Of course, not everybody has the wall of books that stands behind my desk, and it is an inconvenience to go to the library, even if there is one within a reasonable distance. But anybody interested in physics should have one good basic textbook (which would answer most of the questions), and access to an encyclopedia is right at the fingertips of Prodigy subscribers.

One of the perpetual philosophical discussions that swirls around the physics bulletin board has to do with a famous old chestnut: “Nothing exists until it is observed.” This statement is supposed to be true because in quantum theory the observation of a particle is accomplished by an interaction between the particle and the observer, and further, the state of the particle depends on the nature of that interaction. But why the very existence of the particle depends on the observation was never clear to me.

The quotation above about existence was subscribed to by many famous scientists (Bohr, Heisenberg, et al.) so that a whole school of thought has grown up believing it to be true. But a little detailed logic shows that certain paradoxical results spring from that statement, making it very hard for me to believe. For example, suppose you are observing the moon. Of course you don’t directly observe the moon; what you actually observe are photons coming from the moon and entering your eye. Each photon is detected when it reaches the retina of your eye. That is where it disappears and an electrical impulse is started that travels down the optic nerve to the brain. In the brain, the impulse is processed, and there you become aware of the moon. If you say that the photon from the moon did not exist until you became aware of it, then that means your retina detected something that did not exist until a few milliseconds later. Or, saying the same thing differently, the existence of the photon depends on events happening in the future.

Well all right, you say. You really mean that the photon does not exist until it is detected in the retina. If so, then where did that photon come from? It came from the sun, and was reflected by the moon. Do you mean the sun did not emit that photon until it was detected by your retina? You see that if you go step by step and trace the course of events in detail, the idealistic statement that “Nothing exists until it is observed” simply becomes nonsense.

The giants who invented quantum theory in the early part of the century learned their philosophy in the nineteenth century and knew nothing about modern neuroscience. Note: Nothing I have said about this philosophical controversy invalidates the success of quantum theory. We are merely arguing about an interpretation. The flap proves once more the truth of Conservation of Ideas: Once an idea is created, it never disappears, no matter how often it is disproved.

What I like is the irrelevant logic. “Because of its speed, Tachyon can exist everywhere.” A non sequitur if I ever heard one. Before it can exist anywhere, a tachyon must exist somewhere. And there’s the rub.

About 25 years ago, a number of physicists suggested the possibility that there exist particles that normally travel faster than the speed of light. In order for this hypothesis to be consistent with relativity, the mass of such particles would have to be imaginary-that is, contain the square root of minus one. Gerald Feinberg gave this hypothetical particle the name “tachyon” and was most prominent in publicizing his brainchild, with the aid of an avid press corps. Mind you, the theory was a proper theory in the sense that it was mathematically consistent, and also because it predicted certain observable consequences-namely, that if tachyons existed they would emit a certain type of radiation (Cerenkov radiation) in a vacuum. This radiation was searched for, and none was found. So, after a flurry of excitement, physicists lost interest in tachyons and went on to more massive hypotheses, such as black holes. As far as physicists are concerned, tachyons do not exist. (But black holes do!)

However, that small fact does not deter the spiritualists of the Pacific Coast. To them, giving the tachyon a name is the same as proving its existence. They then expect the skeptics to prove that it does not exist. For this reason we must always remember the first rule of skepticism: Those who claim the existence of any object or entity have the responsibility of proving its existence.

Don't let the believers sucker you into thinking you have to prove the nonexistence of something that does not exist.

Pseudoscience in the media, Part II

In the last issue I related my experiences as an interviewee for a TV magazine show that dealt with healing by prayer (The Bulletin with Larry Kane, which aired on April 15 at 8:00 PM, on KYW-TV, an NBC affiliate). I was pleased at having a whole interview to myself, in my own office. It seemed a lot better than being part of a talk show with three psychics arrayed on the stage against little me.

When I finally saw the show, I realized that I had not counted on the mighty power of the editor. In the 15 minutes devoted to the topic of psychic healing, the only skeptic (me) got at most one minute. Brenda Dunne made the most of her prestigious connection with Princeton University. (Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne have spent many years in a laboratory at Princeton purporting to demonstrate that the mind can change the motions of electrons and the workings of random-number generators.) The fact that most of the faculty at Princeton considers this work an embarassment wasn’t mentioned. The program also gave much time to research I had never heard of showing that prayer improves the life of bacteria and earthworms, as well as humans.

I must say, however, that in my one minute of fame I sounded very good. All I said was that nobody had demonstrated the existence of psychic forces that allow one mind to directly influence things happening at a distance. As far as physics is concerned, these forces do not exist.

Once more we find ourselves dealing with the fundamental question posed in the paragraph above: If somebody says something exists, who is responsible for proving its existence? There is no physical evidence for any kind of psychic force. Yet a majority of people (even many scientists) believe that they exist. Belief without evidence is a symptom of a religious system. You can’t argue with that kind of belief, and I don’t want to. But as soon as you claim that scientific experiments give evidence for that belief, then scientists have the responsibility to examine that claim and to see if that evidence is truly valid. And as soon as you get into that area, the rigid rules of scientific research must be followed.

An article in the Buffalo News (March 27, 1994) comes with the headline “Time Travel into the Past is a Theoretical Possibility". Well, so it is, if you can find yourself a convenient black hole in the right position and manage to get through it without being destroyed, while ending up back on earth in the past or future. This author disposes of the various time-travel paradoxes by proposing that everytime there is a time-travel event the universe splits into two branches, so that after your temporal voyage you find yourself on a different branch and you can’t kill your grandmother after all. (Or, more precisely, if you kill a lady you think is your grandmother in this branch of spacetime you never get born; but your birth was in another branch.) Gee whillikers, I think the first time I encountered this idea was in a science-fiction story about 15 years ago. Let’s get with it, fellas.

A most fascinating notice recently came to my attention via Barry Karr. It is an announcement for an International Symposium on New Energy held in Denver on May 12-15. (Sorry this date has already passed.) The list of topics is exhilaratingly comprehensive: cold fusion, quaternions (a mathematical device of nineteenth-century origin), “N” machine, Perpetuum Mobile, Zero Point Energy, Casimire effect, Anti-Gravity, Space Power, Vacuum Triode Amplifier-Vacuum Triode Amplifier! I haven't seen one of those in 30 years. What are they doing with it now? Have they made one with an efficiency greater than 100 percent?

Sorry I couldn’t be at what must have been a very educational event, but I was spending the time posing as a target for 10-Mev X-ray machine, converting high energy photons into low energy electrons, positrons, and ions, with enough efficiency to burn my innards to a crisp. Ooh.

I am probably not the first person to entertain this thought, but it appears to me that the proposals described in the paragraphs above are examples of a general law of psychology called Conservation of Ideas. This law says that ideas cannot be destroyed-once an idea has been proposed it never goes away. Perpetual motion, cold fusion, tachyons, Elvis Presley, etc., all remain active somewhere no matter how many times they are killed. Even the idea of a a messiah, more than two thousand years old, remains powerful in spite of a total absence of material evidence in its favor. The recent death of Rabbi Schneeman will do nothing to change the beliefs of his followers.