New Dawn for Fusion Research

FUSIONNovember-December 1984Astifcmcfmj&An Ancient Battle for Science•

ThisHolidaySeason,Give theGreatestGift ofThePower ofIdeasBooks by Lyndon H.LaRouche and associates,guaranteed tomake whoever readsthem think. Whatbetter could you wishyour loved ones thisholiday season?Special holiday offer—four books for only $25.95(Postage included.)LaRouche: Will This Man Become President?by the editors of Executive Intelligence Review.A biography of the world's most controversialpolitical figure. $4.95There Are No Limits to Growthby Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.A refutation of the arguments of the Club of Rome. $4.95The Hitler Bookedited by Helga Zepp-LaRoucheThe philosophical roots of National Socialism, and theinternational networks that put Hitler into power andexist to this day. $9.95The New Dark Ages Conspiracyby Carol WhiteAn expose of men like Bertrand Russell and H.G. Wells,the grandfathers of today's anti-science movement. $4.95

FUSIONVol. 6, No. 4 November-December 1984Features19 Beam Defense Works!A Point-by-Point Refutation of the SDI CriticsPaul GallagherEverything you need to know to convince any sensible person thatbeam-weapon defense will make nuclear weapons obsolete.32 Astronomy: The Foundation of Scientific MethodJonathan TennenbaumThe ancient science of astronomy must be revived to educate thepopulation and defeat astrology, the secret weapon of the oligarchy inits age-old war on reason.42 How the Universe Is Created iCarol WhiteA Mexican astronomer has extended Kepler's method to relate the massand spin of astronomical objects over 40 orders of magnitude.51 Food IrradiationA Technology Ready for a Production BoomMarjorie Mazel HechtThere is a cheap and efficient way to expand the world's food supply—food irradiation. Yet the implementation of this beneficial technologyhas been stalled by the same Malthusian lobby that has blocked thedevelopment of civilian nuclear power worldwide.NewsNUCLEAR REPORT6 Will TMI Unit 1 Ever Reopen?SPECIAL REPORT8 You Can Live to Be 100Research on Aging Shows That It's PossibleFUSION REPORT11 Japan's Cekko XII Laser ScoresMajor Advances in Inertial Fusion13 Kyoto's Heliotron:A Unique Machine with Great Promise16 Krypton Fluoride Laser Fired;'New Dawn for Fusion Research'17 Los Alamos Begins Work on Gamma Ray LaserTHE YOUNG SCIENTIST58 A Preview of NASA's Manned Space StationDepartments2 EDITORIAL 4 NEWS BRIE3 VIEWPOINT 61 BOOKSEDITORIAL STAFFEditor-in-ChiefCarol WhiteManaging EditorMarjorie Mazel HechtFusion Technology EditorCharles B. StevensWashington EditorMarsha FreemanEnergy EditorWilliam EngdahlBooks EditorDavid CherryArt DirectorAlan YuePhoto EditorCarlos de HoyosAdvertising ManagerJoseph CohenCirculation and Subscription ManagerDianne Oliver(212) 247-8820FUSION (ISSN 0148-0537) is published 4 timesa year by the Fusion Energy Foundation, 304 West58th Street, Fifth Floor, New York, N.Y. 10019. Tel.(212) 247-8439. Dedicated to providing accurateand comprehensive information on advanced energytechnologies and policies, FUSION is committedto restoring American scientific and technologicalleadership. FUSION coverage of thefrontiers of science focuses on the self-developingqualities of the physical universe in such areas asplasma physics—the basis for fusion power—aswell as biology and microphysics, and includesground-breaking studies of the historical developmentof science and technology.The views of the FEF are stated in the editorials.Opinions expressed in articles are not necessarilythose of the FEF directors or advisory board.Subscriptions by mail are $20 for 6 issues or$38 for 12 issues in the USA; $25 tor 6 issues inCanada. Airmail subscriptions to other countriesare $40 for 6 issues. Back issues are available at$5 each, postpaid.Address all correspondence to FUSION, FusionEnergy Foundation, P.O. Box 1438, Radio CityStation, New York, N.Y. 10101.Second class postage paid at New York, N.Y.Postmaster: Send address changes to FUSION,P.O. Box 1438, Radio City Station. New York, N.Y.10101.Note to Libraries and SubscribersWe apologize for irregularity in our printingschedule, but we assure readers that the only pronuclearscience magazine in the country intendsto continue publishing! Because of financial difficulties,the FEF published only 4 issues of FUSIONin 1983. The FEF will now regularly publish 6 issuesa year, but only 4 issues in 1984, beginning withVol. 6. No. 1, May-June 1984.Subscribers who purchased a 10-issue subscriptionand those who purchased a 6-issue subscriptionwill receive the number of issues they paidfor.Contributions to the FEF are welcome (and taxdeductible).Copyright 9 1984Fusion Energy FoundationPrinted in the USAAll Rights ReservedISSN 0148-0537 USPS 437-370On the cover: Spiral galaxy NGC 6946 in theconstellation Cepheus; photograph by the U.S.Naval Observatory, courtesy of NASA. Cover designis by Virginia Baier.Philip Ulanowsky is the photographer of themode! of the ear on the backcover of the September-Octoberissue. His name was inadvertantlyleft out of the credit column.

EditorialThrowing Away theU.S.Technology LeadSince World War II, the United States has been the recognizedworld leader in theoretical science and industrialtechnology. This nation proved in the 1960s that with anational commitment and sense of mobilization it couldovercome an impressive Soviet lead in space technology,leaving other countries behind in the dust. In defense, theUnited States has worked with its allies in Europe to protectWestern civilization from any military threat.Today, however, we are facing the nearly inconceivablesituation where the Western world could be held hostageto Soviet military threats because our directed energy beamweapon defense program is lagging. The paltry $1.8 billionrequested by the Reagan administration for strategic defensehas been chopped to $1.4 billion by Congress.Allowing for inflation, the appropriation for beam weaponresearch and development represents no increase overthe spending levels projected before President Reagan madehis March 23,1983 speech proposing to make nuclear missilesobsolete. The question now is whether the Presidentwill use his landslide election victory as a mandate for anApollo-style ballistic missile defense effort, or whether theSoviets will have the first beam defense system in the world.Stepping Down in TechnologyThe United States has been the leader in civilian fusionenergy research for the past decade. Yet the ambitious andfeasible plan to lead the world in the development of commercialfusion power plants is fast disappearing. Goadedby the refusal of the administration to move toward powerplant engineering development and by Capitol Hill hysteriaover budget deficits, Congress has slashed the magneticIt is with great sadness that we report the death ofspace scientist Krafft A. Ehricke on Dec. 11, 1984, asthis issue goes to press.A man of exceptional vision and spirit, Ehricke devotedhis life to developing the means by which mancould conquer and colonize space.We are proud to have published some of his pioneeringwork on colonizing the Moon, and we lookforward to continuing his mission by helping to publishthe work Ehricke was just completing, The Sevfusionenergy budget by $43 million. At this rate, our onlyhope for having this cheap, clean, and plentiful energysource is if the Japanese build plants that the United Statescan import at the turn of the century.Fusion is not the only frontier science area where budgetrealities have squashed dreams of development; laser andplasma technologies are another example. In July, the SovietUnion announced the establishment of its first nationalplasma technologies center at Novosibirsk in Siberia. Plasmaguns and other devices for materials processing arebeing mass produced there for large-scale introduction intoindustry. In contrast, U.S. industry does not have the economicwherewithal to use the laser and plasma technologiesthat are already available, and the U.S. government hasmade no effort to transfer new defense-developed technologiesto the commercial sector.To take other vital areas of technology development: Ifthe United States wants to have nuclear breeder reactors,it will have to import them from France—if national policiescontinue in the current direction. And in the area of transportation,local governments here are now consideringpurchasing magnetically levitated trains from Japan or WestGermany to improve their rotting urban transport systemswith the most advanced technology.Four more years of policymaking on the basis that thisnation does not necessarily have to be "number one" willleave the West defenseless both in military and economicterms. The opportunity exists to reshape the policies of thesecond Reagan administration and restore the United Statesto a first-rate position in science and technology. Not totake this opportunity could cost us our future.Krafft A. Ehrickewas just completing, The Seventh Continent: Industrializationand Settlement of the Moon.For more than 40 years, Krafft Ehricke fought tirelesslyto create and advance man's knowledge and toprove, through his work, that there are no limits togrowth. What better tribute to his memory than forus to rededicate ourselves to complete the task he setfor himself—advancing the frontier of science andtechnology to create a better world for mankind hereon Earth and throughout the solar system.2 FUSION November-December 1984 Editorial

News BriefsLawrence Livermore National LaboratoryA "target" used to make the soft X-raylasers. The aluminum frame is about 7inch by 112 inch. A metal-coated film isstretched across a gap in the frame. Thelaser light is focused to the central 150-200 microns of the film.LAWRENCE LIVERMORE MAKES 'SOFT' X-RAY LASERSResearchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced Oct.29 that they had succeeded in producing soft X-ray lasers from the hot vaporizedgases of the metals selenium and yttrium. The wavelengths were the shortest atwhich amplification had ever been observed in a laboratory, the yttrium at 155angstroms and the selenium at 209 and 206 angstroms. These wavelengths are25 times shorter than visible light and 5 to 10 times shorter than wavelengths ofcommercial lasers.The soft X-ray lasers use a powerful pulse of visible green light from theNovette laser aimed at a thin metal-coated film held in a frame the size of apostage stamp. The energy from the green laser vaporizes the film and strips allbut 10 electrons from each of the energized metal atoms. When the first excitedatoms spontaneously relax from their energized states, they emit X-rays thatstimulate other ions to emit identical X-rays. This amplifies the original input toproduce a coherent, increasingly bright X-ray pulse traveling along the lengthof the film.The soft X-ray laser will have a revolutionary impact on science and medicine,making possible microholographs that can "see" living processes on a molecularlevel without damaging the living tissue. The laser will also make possible scientificmeasurements, now difficult or impossible, of various physical properties,as well as the production of compact circuit patterns on semiconductors.Lawrence Livermore is also studying "hard" X-ray lasers powered by nuclearexplosives to serve as antimissile beam defensive weapons.DOD ANNOUNCES BREAKTHROUGH IN LASER PROPAGATIONOptical phase conjugation may compensate for distortions produced in laserbeams propagated through the atmosphere so that ground-based lasers couldattack ballistic-missile targets in space, according to remarks by Robert S. Cooper,director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, in the Sept. 24issue oi Aviation Week & Space Technology.Optical phase conjugation is a nonlinear effect in nature. In one example,stimulated Brillouin scattering, a liquid backscatters a high-power incident beamso as to reflect a divergent, unfocused beam into a convergent and focusedbeam, which then interacts with the liquid to establish an acoustic shock front.This shock front backscatters the beam with a frequency down-shifted by thefrequency of the acoustic wave. The phenomenon demonstrates the fundamentalelectromagnetic character of sound production.As a result of its ability to correct for distortions, Cooper argued that opticalphase conjugation would also reduce the required precision of fabrication ofhigh-energy laser optical components from a small fraction of a wavelength ofthe generated laser light to many wavelengths, perhaps even many tens ofwavelengths. One effect of this application would be to reduce the precision towhich space-based mirrors need be machined. One argument against beamdefense has been the claim by Kosta Tsipis of MIT that the required precisionwould never be attained. Cooper's remarks, however, indicate that combinedwith optical phase conjugation present technology will suffice.Illustration by Christopher SloanFusion on the Moon. In his extensivestudy of lunar industrialization, Ehrickehas proposed using large deuterium-tritiumreactors as a fuel factory toproduce helium-3, potentially one oflunar industry's most valuable exportsto Earth markets.EHRICKE PRESENTS LUNAR INDUSTRIALIZATION PLAN TO NASA MEETINGSpace scientist Krafft A. Ehricke gave the banquet address at a Washington,D.C. conference on a manned return to the Moon sponsored by NASA Oct. 29-31 at the National Academy of Sciences. "If Cod had wanted man to go out inspace, He would have given him a Moon," Ehricke quipped, at the beginning ofhis talk on the industrialization of the Moon. He received a standing ovationfrom the audience of scientists, former astronauts, engineers, and NASA administratorsfor his overview of the transport, energy, industrial and human technologiesthat will have to be developed in order to move our civilization off itshome planet.4 FUSION November-December 1984 News Briefs

GREENS LAUNCH DRIVE TO BUILD MOVEMENT IN UNITED STATESEfforts are underway to establish a Green political movement in the UnitedStates modeled on Die Grunen, the Green Party of West Germany, which hasrecently gained double-digit votes in local elections. In August a group of 62self-professed anarchists, Aquarians, environmentalists, leftists, and assortedmystics met at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn, to discuss how to build aGreen Party out of the disparate community groups, environmentalist networks,and remains of the 1960s left-radical movement.Organizers for this effort are working out of offices provided by the HubertHumphrey Institute in Minneapolis, which served as a policy think tank for theMondale Presidential campaign. The seed money for the Institute was providedby Henry Kissinger through fundraising efforts in Great Britain.JET HITS RECORD FUSION CONFINEMENT TIMEThe Joint European Torus (JET) tokamak in Culham, England, has reachedrecord energy confinement times for fusion plasmas in the range of seven tenthsof a second—more than double that previously achieved on both the TFTRtokamak at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and on JET itself. The excellent,early results on JET strongly indicate that this joint effort of the EuropeanCommunity not only will be the first to produce net-energy-producing fusionplasmas, but also could leap ahead of the U.S. machines to reach full fusionplasma ignition. JET's ignition potential is related to its larger size, experimentalpulse length, and plasma current, in addition to its emphasis on radio frequency(RF) heaters. The RF heaters, antennas that direct electromagnetic waves intothe plasma and increase the plasma temperature, can be used to further extendthe pulse length of the experiment, thereby giving more time for the attainmentof fusion ignition.Stanley EzrolGreen Party leader Petra Kelly at a1983 demonstration outside the WhiteHouse.FEF EXPANDS THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FUSION ENERGYThe first edition of the newly expanded International journal of Fusion Energy,to be published quarterly, will appear in January 1985, announced Dr. Robert J.Moon, editor-in-chief. Moon, a member of the Manhattan Project during WorldWar II, is professor emeritus at Chicago University.Featured in this issue is "The Morphology of the Electron" by Dr. WinstonBostick, "Missing Energies at the Pair Production by Light Quanta," by Dr. ErichR. Bagge, "The Relation Between Angular Momentum and Star Formation inSpiral Galaxies," by Dr. Luis Carrasco, and "New Frontiers in Biophysics," by Dr.James Frazer. The issue also contains reports on progress in several areas offusion research, astrophysics, and biophysics, as well as translations of twoworks on electrodynamics, one by Riemann and the other by Betti.Subscriptions are $80 for four issues ($100 foreign) and can be obtained fromthe FEF.LOUSEWORT LAURELS TO EPA'S OFFICE OF TOXIC SUBSTANCESThis issue's Lousewort Laurels award goes to the Environmental ProtectionAgency's Office of Toxic Substances for its May 23 announcement of a "priorityreview" of the health effects of formaldehyde in industry. The review wasprompted by one study that found that rats got nasal cancer after inhaling 15parts per million (ppm) of formaldehyde. The industry limit, enforced by OSHA,is 3 ppm, with the vast majority of industry sites at a level far below this. In 75years, and many studies, there have been no reported cases of such cancer inhumans working with formaldehyde. In fact, formaldehyde, a simple chemicalcomposed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, is found everywhere and is producednaturally by plants, animals, and the human body. Formaldehyde is responsiblefor the "permanent" in permanent press, is an essential ingredient inwood products, and constitutes about 8 percent of the GNP.Readers can contact the EPA's Office of Toxic Substances at 401 M Street,S.W., Room E 409, Washington, D.C. 20460.News Briefs November-December 1984 FUSION 5

Nuclear ReportVisitors tour Three Mile Island. The environmentalistshave spent millions toensure that the plant stays closed.At the time of the incident at theThree Mile Island Unit 2 nuclear powerplant in March 1979, Unit 1 was temporarilyshut down for routine refueling.Now, after more than five years ofantinuclear intervention, this powerplant is still closed, and the cost ofkeeping an operational plant ready butclosed—while paying for replacementpower—may become an unfeasibleburden for the utility.GPU Nuclear Corporation is nowpaying $14 million a month to bring inelectrical power to replace the capacitylost while TMI Unitl is closed, costingGPU's customers more than $400million since 1979. And if the NuclearGPU NuclearRegulatory Commission (NRC) continuesto bow to pressure from the environmentalistsand refuses to allow theplant to restart, the doors of Unit 1might shut for good.The Sabotage of Unit 1There is no legitimate reason thatTMI Unit 1, which was unaffected bythe damage at Unit 2, is not back inoperation. According to GPU Nuclear,Unitl could be up and running four tosix weeks after a go-ahead from theNRC.Admiral Hyman Rickover, the founderof the Nuclear Navy, which builtthe nation's first nuclear power reactor,has done two evaluations of TMIoperations. He has stated that "basedon the assessment of GPU NuclearCorporation organization and its seniormanagement GPU has the managementcompetance and integrity tosafely operate the TMI-1 plant."Testifying before the NRC in August1984, GPU officials said that there is"ample basis" for lifting the 1979 shutdownorder of TMI Unitl.Since 1979, GPU has spent $95 millionto modify the plant to meet newNRC safety requirements. In September1984, an NRC staff report statedthat Unit 1 is on par with other operatingBabcock and Wilcox nuclearpower plants in terms of plant modifications.Yet, the NRC is continuing tohonor the delay tactics of antinuclearintervenors, which now will put off restartat least past the first of next year.Over the past five years, the intervenorshave run from pillar to post to inventnew reasons why the plant shouldnot reopen: The plant is unsafe, theysaid; it would be too "psychologicallystressful" to open it; and radiation releasesfrom the damaged reactor havecreated biological damage to residentsin the area. None of these argumentsholds any water.On this last point, the State of PennsylvaniaHealth Department has carriedout exhaustive studies in responseto the environmentalists' outrageousclaims of health damage fromthe TMI accident. In 1981, Dr. GeorgeTokuhata, director of epidemiologicalresearch for Pennsylvania, stated thatarticles written by the notoriously antinuclearProfessor Ernest Sternglasswere "highly inaccurate to the extentof creating unnecessary fear in theminds of Commonwealth citizens."Charges included an increase in infantmortality rates, which was absolutelyrefuted by Health Departmentstudies. The same is true for chargesof congenital hypothyroidism and birthdefects.Tokuhata summed up his rebuttal of6 FUSION November-December 1984 Nuclear Report

Sternglass by stating that Sternglass'swords in The Nation magazine: "havethe potential of creating fear, apprehension,stress, and even panic amongthe residents of central Pennsylvania.This is totally irresponsible and the Departmentof Health regrets that thepublic has been subjected to such unfoundedstatements from Dr. Sternglass."Unfdrtunately, there is one area inwhich the Health Department punted.Tokuhata has stated that during the1979 TMI accident expectant motherswere under increased stress, and medicationswere used in excess, includingtranquilizers, sleeping pills, analgesics,and cardiac or hypertensivepreparations.This increased use of medicationsupposedly led to lower birth weightamong newborns in gestation duringthe accident. What Tokuhata does notpoint out, of course, is that the increasein "stress" was caused by thedeliberate exaggeration of supposeddanger by so-called experts likeSternglass, by the media, and by GovernorThornburgh, whose inaccurateremarks caused a near-stampede offrightened citizens from the Harrisburgarea.Now the intervenors are claimingthat the utility is "incompetent" to runthe facility, demanding that all nuclearpower plants operated by CPU Nuclearbe shut down. This would includethe Oyster Creek nuclear plant in NewJersey, in addition to the two TMI units.That this is more of a witchhunt thanany concern for "public safety," wasnoted by GPU President HermanDieckamp, who stated a year ago: "Ican't help but contrast TMI with theDC-10 that crashed in Chicago, killingover 270 people, a few months afterthe TMI accident. Nobody called forthe dismissal of the top corporate officers.There are no continuing investigationsfour years later. Why shouldit be so different for TMI and nuclearpower?"The answer to Dieckamp's questionwas stated by a spokesman for the environmentalistgroup "TMI Alert"—inbrief, that the postindustrial state ofPennsylvania does not need powerplants. "Through conservation and theslowing down of the economy, thereis excessive power on the electric gridn Pennsylvania," the spokesman stated.The trend is for "industry to moveto the south and southeast, and thistrend will continue."Then and NowAfter the 1979 TMI incident, the FusionEnergy Foundation went on theoffensive against the antinuclearmovement, exposing their efforts touse the TMI incident to shut down nuclearpower and push the nation into apostindustrial era. We documented thepossibility of sabotage at TMI, set upan Independent Commission of Inquiryto look into this, and won theFreedom Foundation George WashingtonMedal of Honor for a series ofarticles in Fusion on TMI and the antinuclearmovement.At the time, we told the nuclear andutility industries that unless they wereready to launch an aggressive campaignto stop the sabotage of the na-"To wage an all-out battlefor the industrial future ofthis nation ... requires namingthe names of those whoare sabotaging progress."tion's electric grid system and, thereby,its economy, they would soon findthemselves out of business. The responseof the nuclear industry was forthe most part to be a "nice ostrich";maybe if we keep our head in the sand,nuclear leaders told us, we'll get by. Ifwe attack the environmentalists andtheir political backers, they said, it willonly anger them and make thingsworse.Unfortunately but predictably, thisostrich philosophy failed, and the nuclearindustry now finds itself rapidlydisappearing. In the process, much ofthe American public, after several yearsof unadulterated antinuclear propagandaand nuclear industry apologies,has become almost incapable of makinga rational judgment on the nuclearquestion based on the scientific facts.Three months after the TMI-2 incident,the United States had more than100,000 megawatts of nuclear capacityunder construction. During the summerof 1979, the head of the AtomicIndustrial Forum, Carl Walske, declared,"Far from being the beginningof the end for nuclear, TMI was reallythe end of the beginning."But five years after this new "beginning,"50 nuclear power plants havebeen canceled or mothballed, and notone new reactor has been ordered. TheWashington State Public Power systemhas gone bankrupt, and other utilitiesare threatened with fiscal ruin as evencompleted power plants have beenprevented from coming on line.The Tennessee Valley Authority(TVA), which has the nation's largestpower-producing system as well as thelargest nuclear construction project,decided at the end of summer 1984 toscrap four unfinished reactors, writingoff $2.7 billion in losses.Years ago the TVA planned to produce40 percent of the power for theirseven-state system through nuclearenergy. But in 1982, the board canceledfour units under constructionand since then has canceled four more.Now the TVA is left with only two reactorsoperating and two more nearingcompletion.In October 1984, the only remainingmarket for U.S. nuclear power plants,the export market, began to unravel,as well. President Reagan had promisedthe industry that China would bespending $10 to $20 billion on U.S. reactors.Now the West German pressreports that U.S. sales are being frozenby nonproliferation agreements, andWest German industry, led by the nuclearfirm Kraftwerke Union, may"snare" some of the Chinese business.If the management of the TMI unitsdecides that for financial reasons theycannot continue to carry the cost ofmaintaining the operability of the plantwithout actually producing power, thisdecision will signal the end of a poorlyfought battle for nuclear power in theUnited States. The option still exists,however, to wage an all-out battle forthe industrial future of this nation. Asin 1979, it requires naming the namesof those who are sabotaging progressand discussing exactly who benefitsfrom surrender.—Marsha FreemanNuclear Report November-December 1984 FUSION 7

Special ReportYou Can Live to Be 100Research on Aging Shows That It's Possibleby John Grauerholz, M.D.A review of the rapidly expandingarea of aging research shows that withinjust one decade, a crash effort toapply already existing knowledge couldadd up to 30 years to the average humanlife span. A great number of thepeople living today might still bearound, living productive, healthylives, 100 years from now.The premises upon which researchin aging are now based are mechanistic;work in the field is based on pushingback mortality rather than defeatingit. Notwithstanding, the resultsachieved so far—with minimal budgets—justifymassively increasing thesebudgets. By pushing life to its seeminglimits, we will create the conditions inwhich fundamental breakthroughs aremore likely to occur.Immunity and AgingOne area that holds great promise isstudy of the immune system, whichprotects the body against foreign organismsand against its own cells whenthey become cancerous. Studies ofpeople who have lived to 100 or moreindicate that their immune systems retainthe functioning level of youngerpeople. So there seems to be somedefinite connection between the immunesystem and the aging process.Clinically, as an animal ages, certainchanges in the immune system accompany,and even precede, symptoms ofaging.For many years it has been knownthat the thymus gland reaches its maximumsize in late adolescence and thenprogressively shrinks such that thegland has almost disappeared by themid to late 40s. We now know that thethymus secretes a number of hormonesthat are crucial for activatingcertain immune cells involved in defenseagainst infections and cancer. Bythe age of 60, however, thymus hormonecannot be detected in most humans.Carlos de HoyosLiving to be 100 could be the norm if we accelerate research in promising areas.But if the Malthusians have their way, this man—and others like him who dependon renal dialysis treatments—would die at an earlier age.In fact, one branch of the immunecells known as T-lymphocytes or (thymus-dependent)T-cells shows age-relatedloss of function that can be correctedby administration of thymusgeneratedhormones. T-cells are thecells that are damaged or destroyed inthe tissue of AIDS (autoimmune deficiencysyndrome) victims, which leadsto infection by rare organisms.In addition to their direct actionagainst tumors and invading organisms,the presence of T-cells also activatesanother group of immune cellscalled B-cells, which are responsiblefor production of protein antibodies.In aging animals the total productionof antibodies is not significantly decreased,but some of the antibodiesthat are produced attack the body'sown tissues, and the remaining antibodiesare less effective against bothinvading organisms and tumors. Thesituation is analogous to a watchmanwith failing eyesight who occasionallylets in thieves and shoots the owners.Many of the changes described innormal aging are produced in so-calledautoimmune diseases in which thebody's immune system attacks thebody's own tissues. Atherosclerosis,arthritis, and lupus erythematosus areexamples of autoimmune diseases inthe young that resemble the effects ofaging. Investigation of the connectionshere is a promising avenue of research.Agreatdeal of animal, and some human,research has demonstrated reversalof immune-system abnormalitiesby administration of thymus hormonesand other substances calledimmunomodifiers. One of these immunomodifiers,known as interleukin-2,can be produced from humanwhite blood cells, and is alreadyundergoing tests to evaluate its effectivenessagainst cancer and age-relatedimmune deficiencies.The human cells used to produce interleukin-2are abundantly availablefrom blood banks, where they are routinelydiscarded when whole blood isseparated into plasma and red bloodcells. The technology is relatively inexpensiveand could be rapidly up-8 FUSION November-December 1984 Special Report

graded to large-scale production. Thethymus hormone thymosin is readilyavailable from slaughterhouses and isalso synthesized by a numberof differentprocesses. Interestingly, a gooddeal of the research on thymosin therapyappears in the Soviet literature.Theories of AgingIn fact, the question of aging of tissue,taken from the correct epistemologicalstandpoint, will prove to be thekey that unlocks all the various diseaseprocesses for our understanding andultimate control. Now, however, mosttheories of aging treat this entropicprocess as genetically preordained,either programmed by the DNA like acomputer program of decay, or else asa by-product of the random destructionof individual genetic molecularbonds. These theories view the DNAmolecule as made up of "buildingblocks" forming a programmed codein which genes are repeated in sequences,interspersed with so-callednonsense syllables of meaningless material,to form chromosomes.The current aging theories have twoextreme types: those who postulate atotally random accumulation of errorsin the form of point mutations, andthose who hypothesize a totally programmedreading out of genetic informationrelated to development, maturation,aging, and ultimate life span.Somewhere in the middle is the theorythat there is accumulation with age ofchromosomal mutations whose lostfunctions are replaced by redundant(reserve) sequences until the reservesare depleted and senescence ensues.The actual role of DNA is far morebeautiful and complex, acting as anenergy transfer focus for cell growthand activities as well as the immunesystem (see Ned Rosinsky, "The Geometryof Life," Fusion, july-Aug. 1984,p. 41). In addition, researchers havenow discovered that "old" DNA presumedto be no longer capable of regenerationcan be made to function asyouthful DNA.One crucial question of aging thatmust be answered is whether it is "predetermined"—isthere a clock that ticksonly till your time is up? Studies onfibroblasts (cells cloned from animalcells and made to grow in a culturedish) by Dr. Leonard Hayflick indicatethat normal cells in culture undergoonly a finite number of cell divisionsand then stop dividing (at what is calledthe "Hayflick limit"). If old nuclei areplaced in young cytoplasm, the numberof remaining divisions appears tobe influenced by the nucleus and notthe cytoplasm. These studies are takento indicate that there is some sort ofclock in the nucleus that regulates lifespan, regardless of other conditions.Recent experiments, however, haveindicated that the Hayflick limit can beexceeded by adding certain factors tothe medium. Some researchers, suchas Robin Holliday of Britain, contendthat there is a population of potentiallyimmortal cells that are simply dilutedout by standard culture techniques,leaving only so-called committed cellsthat have a finite life span.Is the Hayflick limit merely an experimentalartifact, caused by laboratorytechniques and conditions? What connectionis there between the simpleenvironment of a culture dish and thecomplex environment of living tissuewithin a live organism? What interactionis there between the individual cellnucleus and the hormonal messageswithin a living body? These are someof the questions that must be answeredbefore one can accept the ideaof a rigid clock.Cancer and AgingThe incidence of cancer seems to berelated to aging, in that the highestriskgroup is aged 45 to 65. There is notruth to the statistics supposedlyshowing a "cancer epidemic"; the factis that the population of 45-to-65-yearoldsis much greater today than at anytime in history, and therefore, peopleare living long enough for age-relatedcancers to occur. Past 65, the cancerSpecial Report November-December 1984 FUSION 9

ate drops dramatically, indicating thatif one's immune system is healthyenough to survive to that age, it canhandle the occasional cancer cells thatare constantly produced in everybody.Cancer should be viewed as anotherdisease of the immune system, insteadof wasting vast sums on identifyingcarcinogens. Since most carcinogensare natural substances, unavoidable ifwe want to live in this world, and infact many carcinogens are producedby the body itself, it would be better todevelop ways to cure flagging immunesystems so that they can recognize anddestroy cancer cells or the tumors theygive rise to.One interesting line of research isthat of Dr. Takashi Makinodan of theNational Institute on Aging, who suggeststhat decreasing caloric intake accompaniedby vitamin and other supplementsor injecting immune cellsfrom younger donors may prove a cureforcanceraswellasaging. Presumablythe reduction of caloric intake slowsthe maturation rate of the immune system.This presents certain problemsearly in life; however, if these areweathered, it extends the maximum (asopposed to the average) life span.On a more fundamental level, recentbreakthroughs in molecular biologyand neurochemistry are beginningto reveal intimate interactions betweenthe brain and the immune andendocrine systems. These connectionshave been especially well delineatedin the study of the hypothalmus,an area at the base of the brain that isconnected to the pituitary gland, the"master gland." Immune function isalso affected by pituitary hormonesand, in addition, it has been demonstratedthatT-cells have surface receptorsfor the neurotransmitters responsiblefor cell-to-cell communication inthe brain.Among the more exciting developmentsin the area of brain research isthe recent report that new neurons(nerve cells) are formed in adulthoodin canaries in association with learning.These cells arise from a populationof undifferentiated nerve cells thatform a reservoir of potential new cellsto replace lost or damaged cells. Theimplications of growth of new neuronsin response to learning may have greatrelevance to the problems of brain injuryand aging. This may explain whystaying mentally active, learning andteaching, seems to play a function inavoiding senility.On another front there is evidencefrom both animal and human studiesof benefits of transplantation of cellsinto the brain. The cells derived fromthe adrenal gland produce neurotransmitterchemicals that are lackingin such disorders as Parkinson's disease.At a recent conference, researchersfrom the Karolinska Institutein Stockholm described two suchtransplants in humans conducted in1982 and 1983.The 'Garbage Glut' Theory of AgingThe finite-multiplication characteristic(Hayflick limit) of normal cells inculture does not apply to transformed(malignant or cancerous) cells, whichwill divide infinitely as long as they arefed. In the process of transformation,whatever factor is responsible forstopping replication in normal cells islost. When a normal old (nondividing)cell is fused with a transformed cell,the nucleus of the old cell will synthesizenew DNA. This indicates that theDNA of the old cell may not be irreversiblyaltered by age.Free-radical damage to proteins andlipids has also been described as a possiblemechanism for wear-and-tear aging;that is, the small slings and arrowsof time may accumulate over the yearsto create a gross," garbage glut" effect,clogging the cell. Free radicals arehighly reactive substances such as peroxidesthat combine with anything thathappens to be in their vicinity to oxidizeit. Evidence for this is the goldenyellowpigment lipofuschin that accumulatesin certain aging cells, which isa waste product of membrane lipidperoxidation by free radicals.Dr. Denham Harman has shown anincrease in average life span up to 50percent in some animals by supplementingtheir diets with free-radicalscavengers such as BHT (bis-hydroxytoluene),which apparently prevent orslow down damage. Further evidenceis supplied by the fact that superoxidedismutase, one of the naturally occurringantioxidants, is responsible forprotection of mitochondria, the smallbacterialike structures within the cellthat are involved in energy metabolism.Another readily available substancethat has shown promise in delaying theaging process is a naturally occurringhormone known as DHEA (dehydroepiandosterone).This substance apparentlyhelps maintain the structure ofDNA and suppresses enzymes that activatecarcinogens. It is currently beingevaluated in animal studies, and initialresults are quite promising. DHEA iselevated in fasting animals and may accountfor the prolongation of life spanobserved in calorically restricted animals.A New Approach NeededAt present, scientists are in a positionto begin to apply some of the particularfacts obtained from aging research,in order to extend the averagehuman life span. Yet, we are in needof a coherent theory of aging that willincorporate all of these various datawith a better understanding of thenegentropic life process itself. Thereare mountains of data that describe agingchanges at various levels, molecular,cellular, tissue, organ, organ system,and organismic, but there is noproper epistemological standpoint.The most coherent of the currenttheories indicate conformationalchanges in the cellular DNA and its associatedproteins, which affect primarilythe neuroendocrine and immunesystems that are in one way or anotherresponsible for communication andlearning within the organism. Disorderedfunction of these systems thenproduces the spectum of physicalchanges subsumed under the headingof aging.In spite of the inherent theoreticallimitations of viewing life in terms ofnonliving chemistry and physics, agreat deal of information on the agingprocess, and means of altering it, alreadyexists. With a crash program wecould no doubt increase the averagelife span by 30 percent within the nextdecade. Equally as important, we couldpostpone the debilitating effects of agingto ensure the "elderly" the potentialfor an active and effective life.The real obstacle to life extension inthe near future is not scientific or technical,but the neo-Malthusian politicalphilosophy that views life-extension,and indeed, some human life itself, asan excessively costly burden to societythat just might have to be triaged.10 FUSION November-December 1984 Special Report

Fusion ReportJapan's Gekko XII Laser ScoresMajor Advances in Inertial FusionMajor advances in the Japanese inertialconfinement fusion program,achieved with the world's most powerfullaboratory laser, the Gekko XII,were announced by Dr. Chiyoe Yamanakaat the 10th International Conferenceon Plasma Physics and ControlledNuclear Fusion Research heldin London Sept. 12-19. Japan may nowhave leapfrogged the United States inthis important technology, althoughthis is impossible to judge since U.S.research in this area is top secret andthere is no official cooperation withJapan on inertial fusion.Yamanaka heads the Institute forLaser Engineering at the University ofOsaka, the world's most powerful andversatile inertial confinement fusionlaser facility, which houses the 12-beam, 30-kilojoule, 50-terawatt GekkoXII glass laser. At the conference, Yamanakareported that Gekko XII wasable to generate more than 40 billionfusion neutrons. Since one of the primaryproducts of the fusion reaction isneutrons, this provides a direct measureof the number of reactionsachieved; 40 billion is essentiallyequivalent to the best result previouslyattained with the U.S. Shiva laserat Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.(Because of funding cuts, Livermore'sNova laser system, the successorto the Shiva, will not begin experimentsuntil 1985.)More significant, fuel compressionsmore than 100 times the normal liquiddensity of hydrogen were achieved.Since density is the key to high gain,this result is even more important thanthe amount of fusion achieved and,again, is equivalent to the best resultsachieved by the U.S. program.Yamanaka also reported new experimentalresults that promise greatly toenhance the efficiency and effectivenessof indirect-drive targets—resultsthat open up entirely new possibilitiesSteven BardwedThe beam system for the Gekko 2Mlaser in Osaka, a predecessor of GekkoXII.for inertial confinement. In indirectdriveinertial confinement, the incidentlaser beam energy is transformedinto another form, usually X-rays, thatis then used to compress and heat thefusion fuel target. Indirect-drive researchis under top security wraps inthe United States.The Osaka CannonballThe Osaka cannonball target surroundsa direct-drive target with a hollowmetal sphere. (In direct-drive inertialconfinement, the laser beams aresymmetrically directed onto the target'ssurface, which ablates, creating ainertial force directed toward the centerof the fuel.) The metal sphere hasholes in it so that laser beams can bedirected onto the interior surface ofthe sphere. Plasma generated by thelaser irradiation of this interior surfacequickly moves across these openingsand thus traps the laser beams withinthe sphere.There are two possible configurationsin the cannonball target.First, in & plasma cannonball, the fuelpellet surface is close to the interiorsurface of the metal sphere. The plasmagenerated by the laser irradiationof the interior of the metal sphere willcome into contact with the fuel targetand compress it just as the hot gasestrapped in a gun barrel propel a cannonball(Figure 1).Second, in an X-ray cannonball, thefuel pellet radius is significantly smallerthan that of the metal sphere, andtherefore the two surfaces are geometricallyseparated. In this case onlysoft X-rays from the plasma created onthe interior of the metal sphere willmake contact with the fuel pellet.It has been known theoretically forsome time that X-rays generated by alaser-produced plasma offer the bestmeans of achieving uniform and efficienthigh-density compression of fusionfuel. This is because the energy ofthe individual laser beams has beenuniformly spread out in the plasmagenerated over the interior of the metalsphere. Therefore, the resulting X-rayradiation is quite uniform when it fallsonto the fuel pellet.Also, it has long been known that X-rays have the ideal wavelength forcoupling electromagnetic radiation tosolid matter. This means that the X-rays will be most efficient in driving theimplosion of the fusion fuel target.Experiments demonstrated that fairlyhigh implosion efficiencies in therange of 5 to 6 percent were achievedwith both the plasma and X-ray can-Fusion Report November-December 1984 FUSION 11

nonball targets. Implosion efficiencyis a measure of that part of the incidentlaser energy that goes into compressingthe fuel. As seen in Figure 2, theFigure 1LASER FUSION TARGETCONFIGURATIONSA direct-drive target is shown in (a),where the cones represent incidentlaser beams. In direct-drive fusion, thebeams are symmetrically directed ontothe surface of the sphere of fusion fuel.As the beam energy is deposited, thesurface of the fuel target is boiled off,a process called ablation. Like a rocketexhaust, ablation creates an oppositelydirected force toward the center ofthe fuel target, compressing the fuel tohigh densities. The fuel will now burnup before it blows up; that is, the smallignited core will generate sufficient fusionenergy to heat and burn the remainingfusion fuel.Two different geometries for cannonballtargets are shown in (b). Herethe incident laser beam cones aretrapped within the cannonball. In thisindirect-drive method, the incidentbeam energy is transformed into anotherform of energy, usually X-rays,that then compresses and heats the fusionfuel target.cannonball targets achieved a higherabsorption of incident laser energy athigher laser intensities than did directdrivetargets.(a) Direct-drive targetLaser intensity (watts per square centimeter)Figure 2ABSORPTION RATE OF VARIOUS LASER TARGETSThe various types of cannonball targets achieved higher absorption ofincident laser energy at higher laser intensities than did direct-drive targets.The experimentally measured absorption rate of incident laser energy isgiven in percentages; incident laser beam intensities are given in watts persquare centimeter.Tuning into the TargetIn addition to successfully demonstratingthe essential features of bothplasma and X-ray cannonballs, theOsaka group discovered a new possibilitythat could significantly decreasethe requirements for high-gain inertialconfinement fusion. First, the Osakagroup reported that in the laser generationof X-rays, the resulting X-rayscan be tuned to specific wavelengthsby choosing different materials for theinterior of the metal cannonball. These"tuned" X-rays are often called line radiation.Second, the fuel target can be madeso that its surface consists of layers,each of a different material. The layerscan be arranged so that X-rays of onewavelength will readily penetrate somelayers and deposit their energy on aninterior surface of another layer.By generating several different X-rayline radiation wavelengths and using anumber of material layers on the fueltarget, the deposition of the total X-rayenergy can lead to the simultaneousgeneration of several compressionshocks on the interior of the pellet.This can lead to the tuning of thecompression process to achieve themost efficient densification of the fuel.This same type of tuned X-ray depositioncan also be used to achieve anincrease in the effective power densityof the incident X-rays. The fuel targetsurface layers can be further modifiedsuch that in deposition of the line X-rays, their energy is transformed intosoft X-rays (often called blackbody radiation),which are trapped betweentwo surface layers.Because the layers are imploding onone another, this trapped blackbodyradiation will be driven to higher powerdensities. The theoretical papers ofthe Osaka group indicate that this typeof X-ray power amplification can reducethe initial beam requirements forinertial confinement fusion by morethan one order of magnitude.As these processes are further exploredexperimentally and theoreticallythey could lead to a major decreasein the projected costs of inertialconfinement fusion power and to entirelynew, energy-dense plasma regimesthat will further advance the horizonsof fundamental science.—Charles B. Stevens12 FUSION November-December 1984 Fusion Report

Heliotron E, the latest in a series ofheliotron machines designed by ProfessorKoji Uo at Kyoto University, hasregistered relatively high confinementtime.Kyoto's Heliotron:A Unique Fusion MachineWith Great PromiseThe author, Fusion Asia editor-in-chiefRamtanu Maitra, toured the PlasmaPhysics Laboratory at Kyoto Universityduring a trip to Japan in February 1984.This article is adapted from his specialreport on the Japanese fusion programin the July 1984 issue of Fusion Asia.Heliotron E, the latest in a series ofunique magnetic-confinement fusionmachines, has made steady progresstoward attainment of breakeven conditionswith relatively high confinementtime, and its results rank with allthe mainline experiments. The deviceis located at the Plasma Physics Laboratoryat Kyoto University, where ProfessorKoji Uo has been conductingheliotron fusion research for the last26 years.Although it is a promising alternativeroute to magnetic-confinementfusion, the heliotron has progressedin relative obscurity, with more attentionpaid to it in the United States thanin Japan.The heliotron is a high-f3, steady helicalsystem that produces a currentlessplasma, using the toroidal field coils toregulate field properties rather than toconfine the plasma. The only otherlarge device for helical systems at presentis the Wendelstein VIIA in WestGermany.Trained as an electrical engineer, Uodeveloped the heliotron concept fromhis understanding of electromagneticfields, and he has continued to maintainhands-on involvement in every aspectof its development.The idea is elegant in its simplicityand in the extent to which it takes advantageof the natural behavior of theplasma. Uo built the first heliotron—Heliotron A—in 1958, and the second—HeliotronB—a year later. A newand improved model has been builtevery five years since then. The presentgeneration is called Heliotron E.The heliotron project, financed bythe Ministry of Education, Science, andCulture, rather than the Japan AtomicEnergy Research Institute (JAERI), employs19 physicists. It also has significanthelp from private corporationssuch as Hitachi, Mitsubishi, and Toshiba.Uo feels that the apparent officialindifference to his work will change."The heliotron will do it [producecommercial fusion power] before thetokamak does," he said.The Heliotron ConceptThere are two different ways to confinea high-temperature plasma withmagnetic fields to produce controlledfusion energy. In the first, the magneticpressure is comparable to the plasmapressure, as in a pinch-type machine.In mirrors, tokamaks, and heliotrons,however, the magnetic pressureis much greater than the plasmapressure.The heliotron has a donut-shapedvacuum chamber similar to the tokamak,but the heliotron's magnetic fieldis entirely different. Where the tokamakhas toroidal coils, shaping coils,joule heating coils, plasma heatingcoils, and divertor coils, the heliotronpossesses only helical, vertical, and toroidalfield coils.A currentless steady-state operationis the basic design concept of the heliotronseries. (That is, there are nocurrents within the plasma itself, althoughan electric current must beused to produce the magnetic field.)Uo's experiments have clearly demonstratedtwo noteworthy features ofthe heliotron: first, the heliotron plasmaremains extremely stable; and,second, the level of impurities is remarkablylow, a fact that, in turn, confirmsthe efficiency of the plasma containment.Moreover, the plasma is so stablethat it is not disturbed by infusion ofeven small amounts of impurities at theplasma center. What the impurities do,however, as Uo explained, is restrictthe rise of plasma temperature. To dealwith this problem he has conceived a"secret design" to keep the plasmacompletely clean, and he will incorporatethis design in the next model,Heliotron ES, which is now on thedrawing boards.Uo has also worked out the parametersof a commercial heliotron, Heli-Fusion Report November-December 1984 FUSION 13

otron H, and expects this to be built bythe year 2000.First-Generation HeliotronsHeliotrons A and B, the first generation,were simple: The magnetic fieldwas produced by the electric currentin a series of pair coils wound aroundthe discharge tube at regular intervals.The electric current in each coil of thepair differed both in intensity and direction.The lines of force in this fieldwere undulated near the tube axiswithout cutting the wall, while thosenear the tube wall crossed the wall.Thus the high-temperature plasmacould be produced by ohmic heatingin the central region of this field andbe prevented from touching the wall.In fact, the plasma current was observedto flow only within the centralregion, whose mean cross-sectionaldiameter was about 3 centimeters, andthe plasma had a sharp boundary.Outside of this region there was nocurrent. From the experimental results,it became evident that the hotplasma was almost perfectly isolatedfrom the stainless steel tube wall bythe heliotron's magnetic field.Heliotron B, made of stainless steel,had the shape of a race track. Thestainless steel tube's skin thickness of2 millimeters was insulated byaceramictube at one of the two linear legs.Nine apertures for diagnostics werelocated in the tube.The negative and positive coils thatproduced the Heliotron B magneticfield were contained in gun metal casesfixed on the iron trusses supportingthe tube. The primary winding, whichinduced the accelerating field for theohmic heating, was wound on the outsideof the gun metal cases, parallel tothe tube axis. An 84-kilojoule-maximum-energycapacitor was the energysource for the field coils and ohmicheating winding.SCHEMATIC OF THE HELIOTRON EThe Heliotron E has a donut-shaped vacuum chamber similar to thetokamak, but the heliotron has only helical, vertical, and toroidal fieldcoils. The confining magnetic field is produced by a combination of thesecoils.The helical conductor, mounted outside the vacuum chamber, closesitself after 2 toroidal and 19 poloidal rotations. An opposing vertical fieldis necessary to cancel the vertical field produced by the helical coil. Thetoroidal field coils are not needed to produce the confining field, but areused to change such field properties as rotational transform, shear, andvolume of the confining region. The electrical power is fed to the coils bya 330-million-volt-amperes AC generator through rectifiers.The Heliotron E produces a currentless steady-state plasma of high stabilityand with a low impurity level.It was observed in Heliotron B, however,that the confining conditionsseemed rather strict, and thereforeparticles were lost from the circularcuspseries. Thus, after experimentingwith Heliotron C (a circular machine),Heliotron D was built to overcomethese faults by making the coils helicalaround the tube. The field thus becamesimilar to the field produced bythe helical windings in a stellarator, butin Heliotron D the pitch of the windingswas made shorter and the helicalwinding carried only unidirectionalcurrent.Heliotron E, the present generation,has a major radius of 2.2 meters and aminor radius of 0.2 meter. The toroidalmagnetic field is 1.0 tesla. The machineuses electron-cyclotron resonanceheating to produce and heat plasmas.It is also equipped with a neutral beaminjection system that has three beamlines, each with two injectors of a magneticmulticusp type. Two beam linesare deliberately arranged at 28 degreesoff the normal injection angle and onein the perpendicular injection angle ofthe torus in order to investigate theinfluence of injection angles. By May1984, the neutral beam system was expectedto provide 4 megawatts at maximumbeam energy; the resonanceheating system will use about 1 megawattheating power.Present ResultsIn resonance heating, the torus isfilled with hydrogen gas 500 milliseconds(msec) before the radiofrequency(RF) pulse. During the pulse,additional gas is put in to keep the densityconstant. The plasma is consideredto be fully ionized 2 msec afterthe beginning of the RF pulse. The centralelectron temperature continues torise to 1.0 kiloelectron volt (keV) at 20msec, after which it seems to saturateduring the RF pulse. The central iontemperature is much less, 0.11 keV at20 msec.The ion temperature saturation phenomenon,Uo stressed, may be causedby the charge-exchange loss. A newset of experiments has been carriedout replacing hydrogen gas with heliumgas. Since the charge-exchangecross section of helium plasma is muchsmaller than that of hydrogen plasma,the temperature attained was higher.—Ramtanu Maitra14 FUSION November-December 1984 Fusion Report

Professor Koji Uo showing the history of the heliotronAsia editor Ramtanu Maitra (right).Fusion Asiadesign concept to Fusion'A Prototype Reactor by 1999'Professor Koji Uo spoke with HeinzHoreis, managing editor of the German-languageFusion, at the 11th EuropeanConference on Controlled Fusionand Plasma Physics in Aachen,West Germany. Here is an excerpt fromthat interview."Many people say that the realizationof fusion will take 50 or 70 moreyears, until the middle of the next century.In our country there are somepeople who have this opinion, too, butmost do not think this way. I believe if,for example, our present experimentis successful, we can realize a reactorin this century—if we get the necessaryfunding. Then we can proceed veryquickly."In Kyoto we are working now withthe Heliotron E machine—a high-beta,steady, helical and currentless system.If it is successful, we could have a prototypepower reactor, the Heliotron G,with 1,000 megawatts around the year1999. . . ."Japan conducts almost all the alternativelines to the tokamak, includingthe compact tori, the plasma pinch, theplasma focus, and the spheromak.. . . The philosophy behind thisapproach is that our projects are separatedin two parts. JAERI [a governmentinstitute] is more or less followingthe safe way—mainly the tokamak,because most of the world is focusingon this principle. JAERI is now buildingthe JT-60, which will be completed in1985."The universities, on the other hand,belong to the Ministry of Education,Science and Culture. Their research isvery free. The Ministry of Educationdoes not order, 'You have to do this orthat.' If a university has a good idea, aproject with good prospects, then itwill get the funding for it. . . ."Japanese industry is deeply involvedin fusion research because . . .in our universities the manpower isvery poor, and we have no or very smallmachine shops. So everything, beginningwith the small-sized machines, weorder from industry. We do the designand the supervising of the construction."This gives our industry a great advantagein being involved in the creationof new technologies from the verybeginning. Now the machines worldwideare very large and no universityor laboratory machine shop could buildthem. So we already have the industrywith the necessary knowhow."EIRwas rightabout the 1980sdepression.All the otherforecastersweredead wrong.For thirteen quarters since 1979, ExecutiveIntelligence Review has publishedsummaries of the LaRouche-Riemannmodel's quarterly forecast of the U.S.economy. We warned that if PaulVolcker's high-interest rate policiescontinued, the U.S. economy wouldslide through two dips into the worstworld depression in modern history.Every other econometric forecast,government and private, predicted an"upturn."EIR was consistently right; the Brand Xforecasters were consistently absurd.That's the standpoint from which ourindependent worldwide intelligencegathering network works. And that'swhy we have been right about a lot ofthings where all the media have beenwrong.EIR3 months $1256 months 225lyear 396D Please send me a brochure on EIR.• I would like to be contacted by asales representative.NameCompanyFusion Report November-December 1984 FUSION 15

Krypton Fluoride Laser Fired:'New Dawn for Fusion Research'Aurora, the krypton fluoride gas laserat Los Alamos National Laboratoryin New Mexico, was successfully firedJuly 3, making it one of the most promisingcandidates for practical laser fusionelectric power reactors. Los Alamostitled its news release on the event,"Aurora: New Dawn for Fusion Research?"The krypton fluoride laser is also aprimary candidate for a defensive beamweapon that can destroy nucleartippedmissiles in their vulnerableboost phase.Aurora takes us much closer to a fusionreactor because it meets the exactingspecifications needed for practicallaser fusion energy production.According to Louis Rosocha, managerfor the Aurora project: "It has a shortwavelength for efficient coupling oflaser energy to fuel targets, the capabilityof being cost-effectively scaledto a large size, the ability to fire repeatedly,and a tremendous, economicalefficiency in comparison with otherlasers—a possible 10 percent efficiency.. . or more than five times thatof some systems."These same qualities—coupling oflaser energy to targets, economic scalingto higher energies, high repetitionPhotos by Fred Rick/Los Alamos National LaboratoryLeft: Quartz mirrors reflect multiple images of researcher GeorgeYork as he checks the paper target that successfully documentedAurora's pinpoint accuracy. Above: The krypton fluoride laser atLos Alamos.rates (tens to thousands of shots persecond), and high laser beam generationefficiency (10 percent)—also makethe krypton fluoride laser an effectivesystem against nuclear-tipped missiles.Near-Term DevelopmentsThe July 3 test achieved a 3,000-joulelaser pulse generated within 400 billionthsof a second. Los Alamos experimentersplan soon to bring this totalenergy up to 10,000 joules in the samepulse length.Experiments using angular multiplexingto compress the pulse lengthto 5 billionths of a second—increasingthe beam energy flux density by a factorof 80—will also be carried out inthe near term. Angular multiplexing isa form of optical compression in whichthe light pulse is cut up into many partsand spatially stacked to form a morecompact and powerful pulse.The Aurora laser module is the prototypefor a full-scale multimodule laserneeded for both fusion and beamweaponapplications. Los Alamos reportsthat a prototype multimodulesystem, the Polaris, is under designnow, which would be only one stageremoved from the million-joule energylevels needed for deployable systemsfor fusion energy production andfor beam defense."So impressive is the new system,the 50,000-joule laser called Polaris maybe underway as early as mid-fiscal-year1986," the lab said. Polaris can be realizedthis quickly because it can makeuse of the existing structures of LosAlamos's long-wavelength carbondioxide laser, Antares.The KrF Laser and the X-Ray LaserWhen combined with the nuclearbomb-pumpedX-ray laser, the KrF laserprovides the overall capability formaking offensive nuclear missiles obsolete.The X-ray laser is the most lethalbeam weapon yet demonstrated.Each X-ray laser system popped up intospace when a large-scale missile attackis detected could destroy scores ofICBMs as they rise out of the atmosphere.But the X-ray laser must kill abovethe Earth's atmosphere (about 70 kilometersaltitude), because dense air absorbsX-rays and prevents the propagationof the X-ray laser beams. In thisregard, the krypton fluoride laser providesa major complement to the X-raylaser. The krypton fluoride laser beamis capable of penetrating well belowthe 70-kilometer altitude limit of the X-ray laser, killing missiles within the atmosphereand in their boost phase.In fact, the krypton fluoride gas laserrepresents the most effective laser forachieving this complementary capabilityto the X-ray laser, because it has16 FUSION November-December 1984 Fusion Report

just about the shortest wavelength withwhich optical transmission can beachieved. At the even shorter wavelengthof X-rays, all existing types ofmaterials used in optical systems, suchas mirrors and lenses, are destroyedby the electromagnetic waves. The0.248-micron wavelength of the kryptonfluoride laser represents the currentminimum for which such materialscan still be utilized.Wavelength and LethalityBoth in terms of propagation rangeand coupling of laser energy to a target,wavelength is an essential parameter.Laser beam divergence is directlyproportional to wavelength. Therefore,given laser beam pulses of equalenergy and utilizing the same size mirrors,the 0.248-micron krypton fluoridelaser would have a lethal range 10times that of the 2.7-micron chemicallaser.In terms of coupling, the advantageof shorter wavelengths becomes mostevident. For the longer-wavelengthchemical lasers, upwards of severalthousand joules per square centimetermay be needed; the krypton fluoridelaser can achieve the same resultwith just a fraction of the energy fluxdensity. The krypton fluoride laser andX-ray laser pulses achieve kills byshock-induced damage, while longerwavelengthlasers depend on burningholes through their targets.At the krypton fluoride wavelength,the laser light is deposited right on thetarget's surface. At longer wavelengthsthe energy is deposited insteadin the low-density plasma generatedduringthe laser light irradiationof the target. The result is that the energyin the latter case is deposited overa larger volume, therefore generatinga smaller pressure buildup per unit energy.This difference between the shortand long-wavelength coupling is analogousto the difference between tryingto drive a nail or a hammer through apiece of wood.Deployment and FutureAlthough the X-ray laser unit itself,because of its small size, would bepopped up into space on a small rocketfor boost-phase intercept, the kryptonfluoride laser would most likely bedeployed either on mountaintops orlarge aircraft. The krypton fluoride laserbeam would then be transmitted viaContinued on page 18Los Alamos Begins WorkOn Gamma-Ray LaserScientists at Los Alamos NationalLaboratory have launched a major researchproject "that could result in theworld's first nuclear laser in just a fewyears," the lab announced Sept. 21. Aresearch team headed by Dr. GeorgeBaldwin has studied this idea of a gamma-raylaser (or "graser") for 20 yearsand now feels confident in going aheadwith the next step: actual experimentsto discover what material will be a goodgraser substance."Crasers offer enormous scientificpotential," said Baldwin. "In the 1960sthey looked utterly impossible to make.Now I think it can be done and in justa few years." Achieving the graser,however, will be "as difficult a challengeas any ever undertaken," accordingto Baldwin.Most graser research has been carriedout in the Soviet Union over thepast several decades. Now the UnitedStates will try to catch up with experimentsdesigned to discover whetherthe extreme conditions needed to attaingamma-ray lasing can be practicallyrealized.Gamma-Ray LasingUnlike ordinary lasers, which utilizeelectron energy levels (characteristicof chemical reactions), the graser almostcertainly must be based on nuclear-leveltransitions.Baldwin's team will explore candidatesfor the host material with the helpof the Los Alamos atom smasher accelerator.The sought-after host substancemust be able to absorb a preciseamount of energy in the nucleus froman external source, store the capturedenergy while remaining in an excitedstate, and release this extra energy asgamma-rays and not as other kinds ofradiation.The Los Alamos team will try to findout if there are ways of producing thedesired nuclear transitions and maintainingthem until a sufficient amountof such "excited" material has beenconcentrated in order to produce themacroscopic conditions for grasing.For generating the desired nucleartransitions, the Los Alamos team hasbeen exploring the possibilities of atwo-stage process. Nuclei are first irradiatedwith neutrons and brought upto a certain energy level. Then whenthey are assembled in a concentratedform, they are irradiated with a laserpulse. This pulse changes the electronconfiguration of the atom and is foundin some cases to effect a transition inthe nucleus.Through this means it is hoped tofind a way to transform quickly a longlivednuclear excited energy state intoa short-lived one capable of lasing.A second type of experiment beingcarried out is that of using lasers forrapidly separating excited nuclei fromunexcitedones. In this way the excitednuclei can be concentrated quickly ina sufficient dense quantity to supportgrasing.The graser will have importance inmilitary defense as part of an antiballisticbeam defense, because it will firehighly energetic pulses of penetratingradiation in repeatable and accuratebeams that can easily pass through theatmosphere. In fact, the graser willhave all the advantages of the X-ray laser,only more so, because of its shorterwavelength and higher frequency.Electromagnetic radiation rangesover a spectrum of wavelengths andcharacteristic energies of action, withwavelength and frequency being directlyinverse. The longest wavelengthsare those of radiowaves, whichalso have the smallest characteristicenergy of action. X-rays have far shorterwavelengths and are far more energeticand penetrating. Visible lightwaves, which are the energy form inlasers, fall in between, and gamma-rayshave the shortest wavelengths andhighest characteristic energies of action.The distinction between gamma-raysand longer-wavelength ranges of theelectromagnetic spectrum is like thatbetween chemical and nuclear reactions.In fact, light waves and X-raysare generally capable of directly inducingonly chemical types of transformationsin matter, whereas gammaraysare capable of producing nuclearreactions.Fusion Report November-December 1984 FUSION 17

This is because of the respectivewavelengths. Imagine a grid with slitsthrough which the light or ray mustpass, where the size of the slits controlswhat wavelengths or "widths" ofrays can pass through. On the atomicscale, such "slits" are on the order of10 _1 ° meter (or 1 angstrom) for theatomic radius, including the electronenergy levels where chemical reactionsare controlled. Thus visible lightwith wavelengths on the order of 10" 7meter can affect only the outer shellsof atoms while X-rays with wavelengthson the order of 10" 9 to 10"meter can actually penetrate the atoms.To interact with the atom's nucleus,however, requires wavelengths commensurablewith its radius of about10~ 13 meter. Only gamma-rays havesmall enough wavelengths (down to10~ M meter) to reach and interact withnuclei.Crasers for Beam DefenseGamma-rays are in fact the mostpenetrating form of radiation, and passeasily through the atmosphere withoutdeflection or loss of energy. Thisoffers great possibilities for a systemof defensive beam weapons to shootdown attacking nuclear missiles. Oneadvantage of the graser over that of theX-ray laser is that it could penetratemore deeply into the atmosphere. Thiswould mean that even fast-burn rocketboosters could not escape destruction.Moreover, when "tuned" to theappropriate wavelength, gamma-rayswill react vigorously with atomic nuclei.Because of these characteristics,graser beams would be the most efficientand effective beam weapons.They could be tuned to efficientlypropagate through the air and othermaterial barriers. At the same time theywould react vigorously with "heavy"nuclei like the uranium and plutoniumfuel used in nuclearweapons. Becausethe incident gamma-rays would generatenuclear reactions, only a minuteenergy deposition would effectivelydenature a nuclear weapon, turning itinto a dud. In other words, with anenergy equivalent to the tap of a humanfist, the graser beam could kill offensivenuclear warheads.In terms of range, the short-wavelengthgraser has the potential of attainingdestruction of nuclear warheadsover gigantic distances—millionsof miles. In fact, just as the X-raylaser will be vastly superior to the firstgenerationchemical lasers that shouldbe on-line now, so the graser willsupersede the X-ray laser for beam defense.A Revolution for ScienceLasers produce coherent beams ofradiation—electromagnetic waves inphase and all at the same wavelength.This means that the radiation they generatecan be focused to extremely highpower densities. Since gamma-rays cancause nuclear reactions without beingfocused, a focused graser beam wouldprovide the means of attaining supernuclearenergy densities, a unique stateof matter providing the conditions forall sorts of experiments addressingfundamental problems in physics, suchas the birth of the universe.Having a coherent source of electromagneticradiation also makes threedimensionalpictures—holograms—possible. The wavelength of the coherentradiation determines the resolutionwith which the three-dimensionalpicture of an object can be made.Holograms made with light lasers,whose resolution is only in the rangeof one-millionth of a meter, are alreadyused in industry.For example, a hologram of a pieceof machinery can be superimposed onthe actual machine. As the machineryis brought into operation its physicalshape becomes distorted by strain andstress. These distortions will cause visiblyapparent interference patternswith the superimposed hologram image.In this way the actual stresses canbe seen on a microscopic scale.Experiments are already being carriedout to use coherent X-rays from X-ray lasers and synchrotron radiationfacilities to produce X-ray microholograms.The much shorter wavelengthof X-rays makes possible the imagingof individual molecules. Most significant,the shorter-wavelength radiationalso makes possible much smallertemporal resolutions.The net result is that it is possible toachieve something like a moving pictureof the molecules of living matter.Because of the even shorter wavelengthof grasers, this type of micoholographyof living cells can be greatlyextended in both resolution and thetypes of objects that can be imaged.Thus, as a diagnostic tool, grasers willprovide a unique way of dissecting thenucleus and atom and become a potentiallypowerful microscope thatcould actually examine individual cellsand their structure in unprecedenteddetail. The most exciting aspect of thisis not merely the possibility of viewingmolecules of DNA in detail, but thefact that such molecules will be livingand in action while viewed.For the first time, man will be able toobserve directly the structures andchemistry responsible for life itself.Cancer and aging research, as well asall aspects of disease and health care,will be revolutionized overnight. Geneticbioengineering will become afully elaborated science. The potentialimpact is so great scientifically that thecomparison to the discovery of thetelescope falls far short; it is like theinvention of the eye. Graser microholographypromises to revolutionize allmedical and biological research.This is best seen in the case of nuclearspectroscopy. For over a centuryspectroscopy with electromagnetic radiationin the light range has been usedto unravel the chemical dynamics ofmatter. In other words, this type ofspectroscopy is used to "see" the electronstructure of atoms in molecules.Grasers will extend this capability tothe nucleus itself. Besides vastly improvingthe possibilities of extendingour fundamental understanding of nuclearprocesses, graser nuclear spectroscopywill open up entirely newforms of nuclear energy.—Charles B. StevensKrypton Fluoride LaserContinued from page 17orbiting mirrors to be directed to thetarget. These mirrors would be of twotypes—some orbiting during peacetimeand others popped up when anattack is detected. Each krypton fluoridelaser could generate tens tohundreds of lethal shots per second.Once the Polaris system is realized,deployment would only be a questionof engineering resources. Given therecent Los Alamos developments thereappears to be no reason that such deployedsystems could not be attainedwithin five years if there is a crash effortto get the job done.—Charles B. StevensFUSION November-December 1984 Fusion Report

Illustration by Christopher SloanA Point-by-Point Refutation of the SDI Criticsby Paul GallagherU.S. BEAM-WEAPON EXPERTS have submitted reportssummarizing their progress through mid-1984 on PresidentReagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)—the plan to defendagainst nuclear attack with antimissile systems basedon land, sea, in the air, and in space.The breakthroughs these scientists are reporting dramaticallydemonstrate the near-term potential for the wholerange of antiballistic missile (ABM) defense capabilities,Artist's depiction of a homing overlay interceptor like theone that made the first direct-impact intercept of an ICBMreentry vehicle in June 1984. The Army's Homing OverlayExperiment, HOE, has an infrared sensor in its nose sectionfor "homing" in on the warhead, plus three other sensingdevices that track the target.from Earth-basing or low-Earth orbit and "pop-up" deployment,to geosynchronous orbit 22,000 miles up and beyond.As Dr. Lowell Wood of Lawrence Livermore NationalLaboratory emphasized recently, "My colleagues and Iwould not be expending this effort on a development forthe 21st century."The national laboratory reports were written to debunkthe incompetent critiques of beam defense that dominatepublic discussion through the press. These critiques havethe general authoritative character of the famous 1945 remarkby President Roosevelt's naval aide Admiral WilliamLeahy, "The atomic bomb will never go off, and I speak asan expert on explosions."November-December 1984 FUSION 19

either the design approach to multitiered ballistic missiledefense systems or the potential effectiveness of such systems."The Los Alamos group insists that the OTA report is notmerely wrong but irrelevant to the actual progress of theSDI: "When the errors are removed, the arguments losetheir impact. . . . The OTA paper purports to demonstratethat the prospects for the SDI are remote. But the analysisprovides no support for this conclusion, which must beviewed as essentially the personal opinion of the principalauthor."In fact, the national laboratory reports reveal that antimissilebeam-weapon technology, as well as ABM rocketinterceptortechnology, is leaping ahead toward the stageof engineering development. "As to the factors that 'conspire'to make directed energy BMD remote," the Los Alamosreport concludes, "the first—that the defense of society[that is, population centers] is difficult—is true, but thatdoesn't make it any less worthwhile. The second—that 'forevery defense concept ... a countermeasure has alreadybeen identified'—is incorrect." The countermeasures makefor heavier, less maneuverable boosters and "buses," andsmaller warhead payloads—precisely what the boost-phaselayer of defense is supposed to do, the report says.One such technology review paper on antimissile defenseswas prepared at Los Alamos. National Laboratory. Itshows that the most publicized anti-ABM policy papers—inparticular, "Directed Energy Missile Defense in Space," issuedin April 1984 by the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment(OTA) with the authority of the U.S. Congress—areoutright scientific frauds, perpetrated deliberately by individualswhose political goal is to stop the Strategic DefenseInitiative.These fraudulent reports have been produced by whatthe New York Times has called the "Shadow Cabinet" ofdefense strategists, centered around a group of HarvardUniversity and Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicistsand arms-control "experts." The most famous antibeam-weaponreport, written by former defense adviserDr. Ashton Carter of MIT and published by the OTA, hasbeen rendered into anti-"Star Wars" pulp by virtually everySunday magazine supplement in the United States and Europe.Other well-known attacks on antimissile defense fromthe Union of Concerned Scientists were written by the samecircle, which includes Carter, Richard Garwin of IBM, andHans Bethe of Cornell University.Blatantly Incompetent CriticismThe Los Alamos report, issued in May 1984, shows thatbeam scientists have surpassed every one of the "fundamentallimits" that, according to Ashton Carter, would makebeam defense impossible. Furthermore, it is now clear thatthe OTA report both compromises classified informationand fakes its claims that beam defenses will not work. Accordingto Deputy Secretary of Defense William H. Taft,who asked the OTA to withdraw the report, it should "notbe taken seriously by anyone attempting to understandREFUTING THE LIESOF THE BEAM CRITICSLIE #l.There is no defense againstnuclear missiles.The most general attack on beam defense by proponentsof Mutually Assured Destruction is the argument that evensmall leakage of warheads through a layered defense willdevastate the United States. They claim that either a retaliatoryor a preemptive nuclear strike will always succeed,once launched, because there are so many warheads.In fact, ever since the first rocket interceptor (then called"antimissile missile") systems were designed around 1960,the military commands of the nuclear powers have recognizedthat even these crude clustered interceptor defenses,spread around the defending country, could defeat an alloutlaunch of single-warhead missiles.This fact is what led to the requirement for an offensivestrike to deliver massive salvos of tens of thousands of separatewarheads, decoys, and the like—and to repeat thismore than once—to overcome such interceptor systemssufficiently to inflict significant destruction upon a countrydefended by antimissile missiles. If the massive, multiwarheadstrike fails to inflict critical damage to military andrelated systems of the country under attack, then the attackeris at the point of defeat.Nuclear missiles and other types of delivery systems cannottolerate being hit from the outside with the kinds ofradiant energy—electromagnetic radiation or particles—thatthey carry within their own nuclear explosive cargo. Nuclearweapons are a very highly organized, extremely energy-20 FUSION November-December 1984

dense form of energy, but they are carried to their target byvehicles powered by diffuse chemical energy. Therefore,nuclear weapon delivery vehicles have always been vulnerableto precisely directed nuclear explosives, used defensively.This has been known and proved by live test seriessince the end of the 1950s.The defense can put small, precisely designed nuclearwarheads, triggered by advanced proximity fuses, on rocketinterceptors. This pits various forms of radiation fromnuclear explosions, traveling at or near the speed of light,against mere metal shells traveling several hundred thousandtimes slower.Very low frequency radiation (microwaves) from nuclearexplosions kills the electronics of missiles and warheads.Very high frequency radiation (X-rays) from the explosionsblows apart the missiles or the warheads themselves. Particleenergy (neutrons) from the explosions, especially ifenhanced in neutron warheads, disrupts the warhead materialsand the nuclear explosive inside and destroys theelectronics.Thus, for 20 years we have had the means to use theradiant energy from small, precise nuclear explosives todestroy large numbers of attacking nuclear warheads farabove our own territory, if we could use fast interceptorrockets to get the nuclear explosives up near the incomingwarheads. These interceptors can sweep small areas of thesky clear of incoming warheads, destroying their electronics,fuel assemblies, and fuses so instantaneously that theycannot explode.Scientists are now working on engineering the means topropagate the same kinds and flux levels of radiant energyover thousands of miles, as focused beams traveling at ornear the speed of light. This would destroy missiles as theyare just rising from enemy territory or as they are passingthrough space.The same physical principles by which the radiant electromagneticand particle energy is able to destroy missiles—thehigh energy density and the super-high speed ofpropagation of the radiation—also make possible highlyaccurate sensing and tracking of the missiles, buses, orreentry vehicles. Virtually every kind and wavelength ofelectromagnetic beam that is being developed to high powerlevels in order to disable missiles, can be used at lowpower levels to sense and track them at longer ranges. Inaddition, space-relay laser systems are being tested by theSoviet Union for the tracking of submarines under the ocean,and may eventually be able to attack the submarines themselves,not just their missiles after launch.Thus, it was inevitable from the invention of nuclear explosivesthat the form of energy thus unleashed could, beforetoo long, be precisely controlled and targeted to destroythe various kinds of missiles and planes that deliverthose weapons. The radiant energy of nuclear explosivesand the broader class of controlled radiation devices likelasers, microwave beams, particle beams, and so forth,would eventually become defensive weapons superior totheir offensive forms.So much for nuclear missiles being the ultimate offensiveweapon.LIE #2.The Soviets can protect their ICBMsin the boost phase.Critics have largely given up arguing that the physics ofbeam defense are impossible to engineer. They now admitthat beams of the necessary power and focused brightnessto destroy missiles can be generated and propagated, andmirrors can reflect and refocus them. Instead the criticsFigure 2FIRST INTERCEPTION OF AN ICBMIN 1962A Nike-Zeus missile fired from theKwajalein Missile range in the MarshallIslands makes the first successfulinterception of an intercontinentalballistic missile on Dec. 12,7962. The photo captures on film thepoint where the Nike-Zeus missileintercepts an Atlas D ICBM launchedfrom Vandenberg Air Force Base inCalifornia, 5,000 miles away.Ballistic Missile Defense OrganizationNovember-December 1984 FUSION 21

Figure 3X-RAY LASER POP-UP DEFENSEPop-up deployment is ideal for putting beam weapons into firing position as close as possible to the flight of themissiles they are seeking to destroy. When an ICBM launch is detected, defense X-ray lasers are "popped-up" intospace on hypersonic rockets from land bases in Western Europe and Asia, from submarines, and from aircraft.now argue that it is impossible successfully to engineerthese systems for battle against large missile launches andthat it is impossible to defeat "countermeasures" aimed atprotecting the missiles.For example, the critics claim that during the boost phase,ICBMs are protected from beam attack by the atmosphere!Specifically, they claim that the beams of X-ray lasers—small, light, mobile, ideal beam weapons for attacking theboost-phase missile—cannot pass through any atmosphereat all. They say that the same "laws of nature" restrict particlebeams as well.Therefore, say these peace-loving experts, the enemymissile is safe until it leaves the atmosphere and emergesinto space, about 2 minutes after the launch. All the Sovietshave to do is build "fast-burn" boosters that will burn outwithin 1 minute, while the missile is still in the atmosphere.Then by the time it emerges into space as a target for X-raylasers and particle beams, it will be a cold, dark object thatinfrared and laser sensors cannot find and track. Therefore,our lasers and particle beams will search in vain for themissile they could now destroy if they could find it.These critics make a similar claim against the "pop-up"deployment of beam weapons—the concept of not puttingthe beam weapons in orbit in advance, where they themselvescould be attacked, but launching them on fast-risingmissiles from submarines only when an enemy launch wasseen to be underway or immediately in preparation. "Popup"deployment is potentially ideal for putting the beamweapons up into firing position as close as possible to theflight of the missiles they are to destroy. The beam weaponscan be "popped up" from submarines in Arctic waters, closeto the Soviet Union and directly in the path of rising missilesheaded over the Pole at North America. They also could bepopped up from European or Japanese territory to attackmissiles being boosted toward those countries.Ingenious, say the beam-weapon critics, but it will neverwork, because of the curvature of the Earth! The beamweapon we launch must get high enough into space that itsbeam can be fired for a thousand kilometers or more withoutpassing through any atmosphere, and then it must waituntil its target missile emerges above the highest level ofcurvature of the atmosphere in between. At that point the22 FUSION November-December 1984

ooster engines are burning out; by the time the X-ray laseror particle beam has a clear line of fire over the atmosphere,the missile has become a dead, cold carrier bus full of warheads,which our sensors cannot find or track.First, let's deal with this fast-burn idea. In fact, the Sovietshave no "fast-burn ICBMs," and the United States has onlya study done by one contractor for the Defense Departmentwho proposed to build fast-burn ICBM boosters by the1990s. Current Soviet boosters (SS-18, SS-19) make bright,burning targets for 300 seconds (5 full minutes); the nextgeneration MX-type solid fuel booster (and the Soviet SS-Xand SS-NX types now being developed) will burn out in 3minutes, so they will still be burning brightly far above theatmosphere.What if the Soviets over the next 15 years or so spendtens of billions replacing most of their ICBM force with"fast-burn boosters" to defeat our lasers and particle beams?Then, as even "authoritative" critics like MIT's Ashton Carteradmit, these new ICBMs will have much lighter payloadswith fewer warheads; they will have a much more difficultand costly time of deploying decoys, and it will be three ormore times as costly to deliver a single warhead to ourterritory.In other words, this "fast-burn booster" will be a veryexpensive adaptation to U.S. defenses. By deploying it, theSoviets would make boost-phase defense a little harder,but all the other stages of defense, later in the missile'sflight, much easier. And that's what boost-phase defense isall about.Now for the critics' claim that the "laws of physics" preventX-ray laser beams from passing through the atmosphere:In fact, these critics are just plain wrong. Althoughnewspapers and television shows on "Star Wars" constantlyrepeat the litany that X-ray beams and particle beams, themost potent antimissile weapons, cannot pass through theatmosphere, national laboratory scientists have stated intheir recent reports to Congress the actual results they aretesting: X-ray beams can penetrate into the atmospherefrom space, down to an altitude of 40 to 50 miles with currentdevelopment designs. This is below the burn-out altitudeof the fastest-burn "fast-burn booster" anyone is talkingabout. And with higher power levels and better focusing,there is no reason these X-ray lasers should not burntheir way down much farther into the atmosphere.The same thing is true of beam of neutral particles generatedby a particle-beam accelerator. Ordinary high-powerchemical lasers, and "projectile gun" accelerators, canpropagate down into the atmosphere, of course, althoughthey carry heavy fuel loads and cannot be "popped up";they must be in predetermined low-Earth orbits to beginwith.There are many devices and many ways being developedto attack missiles even during a very short boost phase, andthe atmosphere will not protect them, despite the claims ofthe "ICBM protection society." Thus, there is no need forour antimissile defensive systems to "wait" after sensingthe launch of the missiles, because "one can see all the wayto the ground" from space, including through cloud coverwith infrared sensors. The defense can attack as soon as themissiles leave their silos.LIE #3.Missile skins can be hardenedagainst beams.Next, the critics, insist, the Soviets will merely harden theirboosters so that beam weapons cannot destroy them. Or,they will design boosters that cover their surfaces with constantshowers of water, to cool their skins against the burningof the laser. As you might suspect, this is more wishfulthinking by the "ICBM protection society."First, let's take particle beams: The critics say that shieldingagainst neutral particle beams would be "heavy, but stillan attractive countermeasure." In their most authoritativereports, the critics assume that only a few millimeters thicknessof lead shield will be coated on the booster. However,the fact is that high-energy particle beams will penetrate 4centimeters—400 millimeters—of lead. The actual leadweight required to stop them would be 20 times as muchper centimeter of surface as the authoritative beam-weaponcritics claim. In fact, the lead shielding required wouldweigh more than the entire load the booster is carrying intoorbit—the carrier "bus" and all of its warhead reentry vehicles.So each "shielded" booster would be much heavierand more costly, and thus would have to carry many fewerwarheads, making later stages of defense easier.The same is true when it comes to hardening the missileagainst laser beams. For this, the critics say, the Soviets willmultiply the hardness of their boosters by 20 times. Today,a few kilojoules of laser energy per square centimeter ofthe booster will burn through it very rapidly. Therefore, theSoviets will harden this to 10, 20, or even 30 kilojoules persquare centimeter, say the critics. How? Again, by addingthat lead shielding to the missiles, which means fewer warheadstraveling toward our military forces, industry, andcities. Another suggestion is that they will add ablative materiallike that on the bottom of the reentry vehicles inProject Apollo, which adds not only weight but drag, slowingdown the booster as it rises through the atmosphere.And what will the Soviets do to counter the lasers that arenow being developed to destroy a hardness of 10 to 30kilojoules per square centimeter of booster? Well, say thecritics, the Soviets will make the boosters spin as they rise,spreading out the laser burn on the surface.This spin countermeasure is a trick that has not beentested and would exact unknown penalties against the accurate guidance of the missile, which is crucial to its successas a weapon. What's more, if the booster is spinning, thelaser merely has to track its own burn-spot on the boosteras it turns, since many types of antimissile lasers will disablethe missile before it could spin through even one revolution.The laser can do this because in addition to a radiationbeam to disable the missile, it will probably have a laser"probe" beam to track the missile as well, like a battlefieldlaser gun sight. Thus, once the laser and its probe beam areon the missile, they are "locked on" to the missile surfaceas it burns; they no longer need the other sensor probesthat found that missile for them in the first place.The X-ray laser, critics admit, will kill the vulnerablebooster with an instantaneous, hammerlike blow: The high-November-December 1984 FUSION 23

Figure 4THE ICBM TRAJECTORYICBMs are most vulnerable inthe boost phase. Current Sovietboosters, the SS-18 andSS-19, make bright, burningtargets for 5 full minutes.Midooursepower X-rays literally burn off the booster's outer layer ofskin in an explosive instant, sending destructive shock wavesinto the interior. Thus, no "hardening" will stop the X-raylaser. So, the beam-defense critics claim, in addition tocarrying layers of lead, spinning, and "fast-burning," theSoviet boosters will also send out showers of lead dust tointerfere with the X-rays.This might work if the booster did not have to defenditself with such lead dust showers until after it was out intospace. However, since the X-ray laser can attack the boosterwhile it is still in the upper atmosphere, these lead dustclouds will be swept away by the atmosphere that is rushi ngpast the missile. Unless the booster is loaded with enoughlead dust to spray clouds of it for 45 seconds or more, this"countermeasure" won't work.LIE #4.Too many beam weaponswould be required.As we have shown, ICBM boosters are big, bright, glowing,slowly lumbering, vulnerable targets. Furthermore, as theyrise through the thinning atmosphere and out into space,beam weapons have the lethal power and concentration ofenergy to disable missiles, using controlled radiation thatmoves at the speed of light against mere metal—whether itbe spinning, showering, ablating, or even dancing the hora.The next argument, made famous in two of the mostpublicized and so-called authoritative anti-beam-weaponreports—the Office of Technology Assessment report tothe Congress and the Union of Concerned Scientists report—isthat there could never be enough beam weaponsto defend against an all-out attack. As the missile flight risesand heads for the United States 25 minutes away, theseexperts say, there cannot possibly be enough beam weaponsin position, in orbit, or popped up, close enough to themissiles and accurate enough to destroy them. Too manyof the beam weapons, they insist, would have to be elsewherearound the globe in their orbits at the time of launch,and therefore "out of range." This is what gives rise to thevery well-known scenarios drawn by the critics, in whichthe United States and its allies would have to put in orbitliterally thousands of antimissile lasers, in order to haveenough over the Soviet missile fields at all times to attackthe missile launch. This, they say, would require so manymillions of tons of chemical fuel for the lasers to be put inorbit that the Space Shuttles would be flying for centuriesto lift it all up there.For this to be the case, the sorcerer's apprentice of fairytale fame—not our nation's best energy-beam physicists,space engineers, and technicians—would have to be planningbeam defense, simply flooding space with lasers in theleast efficient way with no planning at all. First, such a noviceputs 32 lasers in four orbits around the Earth, 8 beamweapon positions in each orbit. Then he puts 32 more at24 FUSION November-December 1984

the same positions; then 32 more, and 32 more, until hehas 10 lasers sitting on top of each other at each orbitalposition. No wonder he needs a lot of lasers! This is liketrying to tile a floor by choosing 32 tile squares out of thewhole floor, and piling up tiles to the ceiling on thosesquares, leaving the rest of the floor bare!Fortunately, our military and laboratory beam-weaponplanners have planned to spread out the laser stations alittle more intelligently. In fact, just 100 to 150 laser stationscould cover the Soviet missile fields quite well at all times.The average range at which a laser would be firing at boostersmight be 1,000 miles or less. At this range, each laser,after all, can attack one booster after another, killing up todozens.Because the critics assume big holes in the laser defenseand lasers firing at missiles from very long distances, theyalso assume that the laser beams will spread out as theytravel these distances, resulting in the beam hitting a largecircular "spot" on the missile, without great intensity orbrightness. If you do things that way, each laser does needmany tons of fuel and needs to stay locked on the missilesurface for many seconds to disable it. This is, indeed, veryhard to do.However, beam scientists point out, our lasers will beusing "battle mirrors" to refocus their beams. These mirrorswill be in many orbital stations around the Earth, spacedin between the lasers and their missile targets. These mirror"relays" are like additional lasers, refocusing the beamagainst the missiles from fighting positions much closer tothe missiles than the laser itself. This makes for a shortereffective range, and a smaller, brighter, more intense "spot"of laser radiation burning through the missile skin. Thus,much less fuel is needed than the critics claim, and scientistsestimate that 100 tons of chemical fuel could be enoughfor the whole constellation of laser stations. Ten launchesof the Shuttle could bring that much fuel into orbit.Pop-up Relay MirrorsTaking this one step further to greater effectiveness, manyof the lasers and their fuel can be kept on Earth! Only therelays of battle mirrors need go up into space, and they canbe "popped up" because they are much lighter. Two relaymirrors can relay the lethal laser beam around the Earth atthe speed of light until the last "battle mirror" refocuses itonto the missile from close range.This will never work, cry the critics; everyone knows thatlaser beams are only light, and as they travel up through theatmosphere they will be distorted and spread. But here thecritics are deliberately misstating the state of the art in optics,one of the most astonishing precision fields of technologytoday. Two years ago, a prestigious optical scienceconference in San Diego was suddenly thrown into controversywhen the Defense Department asked that many ofthe papers prepared for it nor be presented there. Why?Because the work to be discussed was the technology of"nonlinear, adaptive optics," which is being developedprecisely to enable high-power laser beams to burn theirway through tens of miles of atmosphere—and out intospace. By all public reports, this is succeeding.Very large mirrors not only reflect the laser light; theyFigure 5DISTRIBUTION OF DEFENSIVE SATELLITES INNEAR-EARTH ORBITThe Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Departmentof Defense have chosen the even deploymentconfiguration (a), deploying battle stations evenlyalong their orbits. This is efficient and leads to a muchsmaller proportion of the defense satellites being absentfrom the area of the launch.In contrast, the Office of Technology Assessmentreport on beam defense chose the clustered deploymentconfiguration (b), in which the satellites areclustered at a few points along each orbit. As both theLos Alamos Lab and the DOD's Office of StrategicDefense have pointed out, this configuration seemsto have been chosen to decrease the efficiency andeffectiveness of the battle stations.November-December 1984 FUSION 25

Figure 6LASER MIRROR RELAYSYSTEMLaser mirror relays willrefocusthe beam against the missilesfrom fighting positions thatare much closer to the missilethan the laser itself. Thismeans a shorter effectiverange and a more intense spotof laser radiation to burnthrough the missile skin.can also refocus it, actively correcting for distortions in thelaser light that hits them. In fact, our relay mirrors in spacewill have small laser beacons on them that shine their beamsdown on our ground-based lasers! With the informationgathered by this "probe" beam on its way down throughthe atmosphere, the optical mirrors and advanced lensesof the laser below can predistort the high-power antimissilebeam to compensate for the condition of the atmosphereabove it. The high-power beam can then "burn through"all the way up into space and arrive at the relay mirrorfocused and bright.So far, this "shield full of holes" argument by the criticsconcentrates only on chemical-powered lasers, becausethe critics imagine that in this way they can mislead thepublic with images of vast oceans of chemical fuel that mustbe carted up into space. However, this would be the caseonly if the sorcerer's apprentice were in charge.With the lightweight "pop-up" systems like the X-ray laser,in which a small nuclear explosive fires 50 beams ofsuperlethal X-rays at 50 missiles at once, these argumentsobviously do not apply. In fact, leading beam-weapon criticCarter says in the OTA report: "X-ray lasers on submarinesstationed in the Kara Sea or the Sea of Okhotsk could climbto firing position before burnout" of the Russian ICBMs,and each laser could attack over 100 boosters. Thus a singlesubmarine, launching 10 "pop-up" rockets carrying X-raylasers into firing position, could attack a massive Sovietlaunch of 1,000 ICBMs.Why then do Carter and his friends in the "ICBM protectionsociety" assert that an array of X-ray lasers will not beable to wipe out the missile threat?Well, they say, look at the insides of the X-ray laser or theneutral particle beam. (This, of course, is something we,the general public, are not authorized to do, nor are thelaboratory scientists authorized to tell us about these "insides"in any detail. Yet the critics, who are not working onthese devices, claim not only that they know what goes oninside X-ray lasers like the back of their hand, but that weshould believe them.) Light lasers, the critics say, maketheir beams precisely focused, pointed, and bright by multiplereflections back and forth between internal mirrors.But, they claim, X-rays cannot be reflected from mirrors,because their frequency is so far above visible light andtheir radiation is so intense it would destroy the mirror'smetallic surfaces. Thus, X-ray lasers, they say, are not reallylasers but bursts of coherent radiation, and they spread outvery rapidly, making them impossible to focus onto a missileat any great distance.To quote Carter, "Since X-rays are not back-reflected byany kind of mirror, there is no way to direct the X-rays intoa beam with optics like the visible and infrared lasers."These critics also insist that particle beams "diverge" veryrapidly for related reasons and lose their precision andbrightness except at very short distances.What do the scientists who are actually working on beamweapons say about this argument? To quote one group atLos Alamos: "That is simply incorrect. Experimental opticaldevices for X-rays have actually been developed, whichenable one to perform the same sort of optics with X-rayswhich are done for visible light." They answer the criticismof neutral particle beams similarly.Remembering that the X-ray laser and neutral particlebeams are by far the most powerful and most lethal antimissiledevices against which hardening attempts are use-26 FUSION November-December 1984

less, the ability to keep these beams just as focused and justas bright as ordinary lasers means that an X-ray laser beamcould, in fact, destroy a missile from geosynchronous orbit,22,000 miles up. Think about that. From geosynchronousorbit, boosters are really sitting ducks in a shooting gallery.The laser itself at that altitude is virtually invulnerable toany kind of antisatellite attack. And it is motionless above asingle spot on the Earth's surface. Therefore, 100 X-ray laserscould be stationed permamently directly above the Sovietmissile fields. Even if each one emitted only a few highintensitybeams as it exploded, this armada of lasers couldseverely thin out any missile launch, leaving the rest to beattacked by particle beam and laser devices in low orbit andon the ground.LIE #5.The Soviets will saturate our postboostdefense.We have shown even our critics that boost-phase interceptionof missiles exercises a great leverage against the successof a preemptive missile attack as a whole, even if someboosters get through. Some critics claim that the Sovietscould minimize this leverage, by launching all 1,400 or soof their boosters within a few seconds, thereby "overloading"the boost-phase interception systems. Perhaps, butsuch instantaneous total launch pays a penalty at the otherend. Missiles launched instantaneously will deliver theirwarheads to their targets over a period of several minutes,rather than all at once, making the terminal defense jobeasier.Missile interceptors and particle beams stationed at terminal-areadefense locations in the United States couldattack the first warheads arriving at the targets along theCanadian border; then the next wave arriving across thecentral belt of the country; then the final wave of warheadshitting targets in the South. This would enable the defendersto reply with more concentrated, more effective fire atthe incoming warheads.Conversely, to saturate our terminal defenses, the Sovietswould want to launch their missiles in salvos over severalminutes, which would give our boost-phase layers"several shots each," knocking out more of the launch inboost phase.However, since some missiles will get through, we comenext to post-boost-phase defense, when beam weapons goto work against the warhead carriers or "buses" that arereleased by the boosters. If 100 buses have gotten through,the buses start maneuvering to launch their 500 to 1,000warheads.Now the critics say something cute about attacking thesebuses: They say it just isn't worthwhile, that "they are targetsof declining value as they release their warheads. "Thecritics also claim that buses are easier to harden becausethey are smaller than the boosters.The second of these two statements is particularly foolish,because the bus is a canister with a metal-plate doorFigure 7NEUTRAL BEAM DEFENSE FOR THEBOOST, POSTBOOST, ANDMIDCOURSE PHASEA particle beam accelerator in near-Earth orbit at an altitude of'600 milesengages missiles in the boost, postboost,and midcourse phase of theirtrajectories. A diffuse laser beam directedfrom a relay mirror in geosynchronousorbit is used to light upthe neutral beam so that it can beeasily directed onto the missiles inthe same manner in which tracersare used by antiaircraft guns.The Los Alamos lab report comments:"Neutral particle beamswould have the very high effectivenessagainst postboost vehicles,which are heavily dependent onelectronics and can stand little interruptionin their function, andreentry vehicles, which are exposedfor a very long time and very susceptibleto neutral particle beam effectsin midcourse."November-December 1984 FUSION 27

over its front end; and the door, which is built in segments,must open up in order for the warheads to be released.Hardening a segmented door that must split open preciselyin space is a very difficult task indeed, a little like trying to"harden" the Shuttle bay doors with thick lead coatings,and then expecting them to function properly.Another strong discouragement against hardening these"buses" is that they are the last stage of the missile that doesany maneuvering; therefore, the penalties for any additionof weight to this stage are greater, in terms of fuel requirementsand loss of maneuvering accuracy, than any previousstage.What the critics are really saying, with their assertion thatthe bus is "a target of declining value," is simply that thewarheads will drift to the end of their trajectories even ifthe bus is destroyed. But if it is destroyed, those warheadswill come nowhere near their targets. They will tend to flyall the way back down to Earth in dense clusters, since it isthe maneuvers of the bus that direct them toward separatetargets. Thus every bus we can destroy makes the attackless effective militarily and the warheads easier to destroyby midcourse and terminal defenses later in the flight.More serious critics claim that the bus is simply hard tosee—hard for sensors to pick up and track, because it hasno bright, hot plume behind it and is not as large as thebooster. Also, they say, it can start launching decoys rightaway, and thus our sensing and tracking system will get"overloaded" just at the beginning of the warheads' long,20-minute free-fall flight through empty space.This classic argument against antimissile defense—thatthe defensive sensors and trackers will always be overloadedby the sheer numbers of objects to track and discriminate—mightstill be true if all we were using for our mostadvanced tracking were infrared sensors that pick up heat.This is the primary technology for tracking boosters, whichgive off large amounts of heat. However, these infraredsensors will be tracking every booster that gets through theboost-phase interceptors, and when that booster burns outand releases its dark, cold bus, the sensors will have toldour computers the trajectory of that bus. So finding the busagain in space will not be like finding a needle in a haystack,but finding a needle on one side of your knitting, when youknow exactly where you stuck it in on the other side!More important, we will use much more than infraredsensing to find these buses. We will use lasers to illuminatethem. In fact, when our lasers are in battle, even those thatare out of range to "kill" missiles are not too far away to beused as probes to sense them. Many other laser and particlebeam probes will be launched as well. The visible lasers willilluminate the buses; and the particle beams and infraredlasers will heat them slightly so that the infrared sensorscan track them.Virtually all sensing devices are, in fact, "coherent energybeams" of one sort of radiation or another, just as the antimissileweapons are. When we are just passively using thebeam to sense something, as in radar, the beam cannot findanything that is smaller than the beam. But "when we areactively illuminating and heating a target," beam scientiststell us, "we can produce a very bright return" to our sensors.Then we can perform the process known as "signal28 FUSION November-December 1984processing," or beam division, as is done with the advancedclass of radars known as "phased array radars." We can then"see," even at great distance, very small objects and pickout such small objects from large crowds. By the slightdifferences in the heating or lighting of these targets—differencesthat are picked up by the sensors—our computerscan tell which are the heavier buses or warheads and whichare the 1 lighter decoys, aerosol sprays, balloons, and otherdiversionary devices.It may take some minutes for this sensing and discriminationprocess to occur, but the bus phase precedes thelongest phase of the warhead flight, the free fall throughspace, which takes some 20 minutes in all. Any buses weknock out will make this long "duck shoot" easier in thediscrimination and tracking of the ducks.To quote the report of Los Alamos beam scientists, "Neutralparticle beams would have very high effectivenessagainst post-boost vehicles, which are heavily dependenton electronics and can stand little interruption in their function"LIE #6.Midcourse defense is too difficultbecause there are too manywarheads, decoys, and so on.The midcourse of the nuclear missile attack is by far thelongest of the 30-minute flight time—a period of 20 minutesof free ballistic flight through space, in which the majorproblem confronting the defense is the very large numberof warheads, decoys, and other objects, totaling thousands,even if up to 90 percent of the warheads have beendestroyed or disabled in boost-phase and bus-phase defense.They reach a maximum altitude of 700 to 900 miles,depending on how they are launched, and are therefore upabove many of the beam weapons attacking them, but stillpassing within fairly close range of line after line of antimissileweapons. They are also heading over the North Pole ina "corridor" only 2,000 to 3,000 miles wide as they fly towardthe United States, so that beam weapons, in polar orbits or"popped up" into space over polar regions, "pass in file"across and under the phalanxes of warheads flying overthem.The critics say that in this phase there are truly so manyobjects to track and discriminate, selecting the warheadsand "killing" them is an impossible task, even if only 1,000remain on course. These warheads, they insist, are verysmall and nowhere near as vulnerable as the booster, beingmuch harder. In addition, they say, the region of the engagementwill be the scene of nuclear explosions as Sovietsubmarines launch missiles into space to detonate theirnuclear explosives there, both to "pin down" the U.S. ICBMsin their silos and to make sensing of Soviet warheads impossible.However, although nuclear explosions high in space maymake infrared heat sensors and ordinary optical telescopesworthless for use in detection, they do not stop higherwavelengthradiation—X-ray and ultraviolet—from gettingthrough and back again with tracking information on the

warheads. In fact, X-ray and ultraviolet beams have beenused for years in nuclear weapons tests to "see" inside theplasma fireball. Such beams have had the same uses indiagnosing what is going on inside plasmas in experimentalfusion energy machines. This is called "backlighting" withX-rays or ultraviolet, and is the most sensitive and "active"means of detection and tracking in space—but it must becombined with infrared, optical, and radar scanning.The beam weapons themselves are also trackers—whatthey don't hit with enough energy to disable, they detect!And in the midcourse phase, the greatest variety of antimissiledevices will be at work, with the greatest expanse oftime for them to track and attack the warheads.Neutral particle beams, for example, according to the LosAlamos report, "have very high effectiveness against reentryvehicles, which are exposed for a very long time andvery susceptible to particle beam effects in midcourse." Aspace-based version of the neutral particle beam is nowexpected in prototype during the 1980s. Free-electron lasersare also being prepared for space basing. These lasersare superefficient in converting their fuel energy into beampower and can operate at the high frequencies (visible andultraviolet) that are desirable for both detection and destructionof warheads in midcourse.So-called excimer lasers, which are powerful and efficientlasers to be based on Earth, also produce these desirablehigh frequencies up into the ultraviolet region. This makesthem easy to refocus from relay mirrors that do not have toFigure 8ARMY HOMING OVERLAY EXPERIMENT (HOE)SUCCESSFULLY INTERCEPTS AN ICBMThe Army's Homing Overlay Experiment lifts off fromthe Kwajalein Missile range in the Marshall Islands onits way to the first intentional direct-impact interceptof a reentry vehicle from an ICBM, June 10,1984. Lessthan 10 minutes later, the HOE vehicle's third stagecollided with the reentry vehicle, shattering both vehicles.Inset (a) is a photograph made from video recordedthrough a 24-inch tracking telescope at Kwajalein MissileRange. It shows the rocket plume from the HOEvehicle just a fraction of a second before it collideswith the dummy warhead from the ICBM. The shorthorizontal bar above the plume is a tracking marker.The rectangle defines an area in which the telescopeautomatically tracks objects. The five smaller pointsof light are stars.Inset (b) shows the clouds of debris that followeddestruction of the target ICBM reentry vehicle, whichwas flying from right to left. It is estimated that thebody-to-body collision smashed it into approximatelya million pieces. The larger cloud in the center is debrisfrom the HOE vehicle.be very large, because they are reflecting radiation with ashort wavelength.In addition, when the warheads approach within 500 milesor so of their targets, they can be knocked down and destroyedoutright by homing interceptor rockets, as the U.S.November-December 1984 FUSION 29

Army proved in spectacular fashion June 10, 1984. The warheadthat "homing overlay interceptor" knocked out wastracked by a combination of three sensing devices: an aircraft-basedinfrared sensor, an optical telescope, and aground-based radar. In addition, the interceptor had aninfrared sensor in its nose section for "homing" in on thewarhead.The beam critics are also ignorant about the full potentialsof particle beams that make warheads so vulnerable tothem. Particle beams can be "tuned"; this means that if therange over which the particle beam will travel is known withfair accuracy (as it would be in a midcourse interception ofa warhead), then the particle beam can be generated insuch a way as to "save its energy" while passing throughthe distance to the target, and deposit all that energy verysuddenly in the metal skin of the target and within thenuclear fuel inside. This turns the insides of the warheadinto nuclear mush, so to speak.LIE #7.Even with terminal defense, thenation will be destroyed.In the terminal defense stage, only 200 to 300 warheads willstill be flying toward their targets, as the midcourse attacksby phalanxes of beam weapons end. These warheads willreenter the atmosphere over the United States, only 100seconds or so from their assigned destruction of those targets.The thousands of remaining decoys, balloons, and soon, slow down and burn up in the atmosphere, leaving thewarheads easy to discriminate and track by simple opticalmeans and with radar.Now, say the opponents of antimissile defense, even ifwe have gotten this far and knocked out 95 percent of thewarheads in a full launch, the nation is lost. Even if only 15or 20 of these hundreds of warheads still on course getthrough to their targets, the destruction will be devastating.What's more—and this the critics imagine to be conclusive—eventhose warheads that are intercepted after thispoint will detonate, because of a technique called "salvagefusing" available to the attacker. Although this technologyis not perfect, it is thought that warheads can be "fused"late in the flight to detonate as soon as they sense contactwith any attacking object or burning on the skin of thewarhead.The critics are dead wrong on three counts. First, andmost general: If we can knock out 90 percent of thoseremaining reentry vehicles, the damage done by the 20 orso that reach their targets may be locally devastating, but itwill not be militarily significant against our retaliatory forces.The attacker will have thrown his best punch without doingdramatic damage to U.S. military strategic capabilities. Theenemy's slow-moving bombers and cruise-type missiles willbe left to face our entire strategic capability. The enemy willhave thus lostthermonuclearwar. Should the Soviets knowthat this result is the likely outcome of attacking the U.S.beam defense—or even that it might come out that way—they face the most powerful possible deterrent to attacking.Once a nation has launched a course of war or war confrontation,it is not the fear of retaliatory destruction alone thatcan then deter that nation from attacking at some point,but rather the fear of losing the war through that attack.Second, those 200 to 300 remaining, highly visible warheadscan be attacked with "everything we can throw," andtoday's frontier accelerator technologies will allow us tothrow quite a lot against those warheads, at very high velocitiesand accuracies. Particle beams will be the technologicalfront end of terminal defense, electron beams, beamsof muons or heavy electrons, proton beams, positrons, andso on. Today's large accelerators, used for atomic physicsresearch, are capable of combining high energy per particlewith high current (a large stream of particles). And, like theneutral particle beams discussed above, they can be "tuned"for very specific deposition of their energy in the first fewcentimeters of a warhead's surface, to destroy it. Salvagefusing, since it rests on electronics, will be too slow todetonate the warhead in most such cases.These electromagnetic accelerators can fire at very rapidrates, hundreds and even thousands of times per second.The same accelerators that send up particle beams, can alsobe used to aim and electromagnetically accelerate largerprojectiles, the size of rocks, to velocities up to 5 to 10 milesper second. These will smash into the warheads and knockthem off course, although their salvage fuses could thendetonate them.The same is true of the very fast-rising antimissile interceptorsfor terminal defense, of the "Sprint" type the UnitedStates made 20 years ago, but no longer produces or stockpiles.A slower variant, called "Patriot," is produced todayfor antiaircraft defense. The Soviets, however, have a largevariety of advanced terminal interceptors for ABM defensealready deployed around Moscow and warehoused elsewherein the country—one of their many gross violationsof the 1972 ABM Treaty.These interceptor rockets, because they can rise and homein on missiles over hundreds of mile ranges, will be usedfor "area defense," not just last-ditch defense of point targets.Area-defense interceptor bases will be established ata certain number of locations around the country in a "grid,"each with responsibilities to "cover" one geographical regionbut with capabilities to "help out" by overlapping intoanother.Now, the critics still insist, you may hit a lot of thesewarheads and knock them off course, but many of themwill still detonate because of "salvage fusing"; their highaltitudefireballs will wreak tremendous damage below, ashave nuclear weapons ever since Hiroshima. But these opponentsof beam defense are wrong again—if we give upthe currently widespread taboo against putting nuclearwarheads on our interceptors.The defense can sweep outwarheads from areas of the sky even under close-in attacks—includingvery short-range attacks from offshoresubmarines, or the intermediate-range and tactical rocketattacks Western Europe would face from the Warsaw Pact—if the defense can used hyperacceleration interceptorsarmed with nuclear warheads. The intense radiation fromthe small nuclear explosives on the interceptors, includingEMP (electromagnetic pulse), microwaves, and X-rays, destroysthe electronics of attacking warheads instantaneous-30 FUSION November-December 1984

Figure 9TERMINAL DEFENSE SYSTEMParticle beams will be thetechnological front end ofterminal defense. These canbe "tuned" for specific depositionof their high energyin the first few centimetersof the warhead's surface.ly, preventing salvage fusing, as it destroys the warheadsthemselves before they can explode. This is effective for arange of 5 miles or more around the interceptor, dependingon its altitude when it detonates.If the warheads are neutron warheads, the defense cando an even better job. The neutron flux travels farther fromthe interceptor detonation, scrambles nuclear fuel andelectronics on attacking reentry vehicles, and fries attackingbombers and their crews. Small nuclear warheads arepowerful defensive weapons against their more destructiveoffensive versions.LIE #8.Beam weapons can't defend againstsubmarine-launched missiles.Since President Reagan's announcement of the SDI onMarch 23,1983, its most violent and continual "critics" havebeen the Soviet command. One of their most highly publicizedrejoinders to the U.S. beam-defense program hasbeen to aggressively station more missile-launching submarinesclose to both United States coasts. Your antimissiledefenses, the Soviets growl, will never stop these submarinesfrom gettingtheirwarheads to theirtargets, some onlya few minutes flight time away from their stations. Not onlyare the flights of submarine-launched ballistic missiles,SLBMs, short, but they are low in trajectory, staying withinthe atmosphere for virtually their entire course.But submarine-launched missiles are by no means invulnerableto a fully deployed, multilayered defense. First,from boost phase through reentry, these missiles travel atsignificantly slower velocities than ICBMs. That makes themeasier to track and hit.Second, submarines can only launch one of their missilesat a time, or, in the case of the largest subs, two or perhapsthree. After the first missile or small salvo leaves the water,the sub's position has been identified. The next flight ofslow-moving missiles that boost out of the water 1 or 2minutes later, can be attacked by aircraft-based lasers, suchas the one tested in May 1983 by the U.S. Air Force againstSidewinder missiles, or by beam weapons popped up fromaircraft to follow the missiles and fire at them.Third, as the missiles near their midcourse, they can beattacked from space and by beam weapons popped up directlyin their path from Earth. Pop-up defenses are particularlyeffective against slower-moving missiles with shortflight paths, since the beam weapon can pop up into a firingposition that is at very close range to the booster or warhead.What's crucial is that because SLBMs stay within theatmosphere for most of their flight, they have much moredifficulty launching decoys. These decoys and camouflageitems hit the drag of the atmosphere as soon as deployed,and are slowed down and fall behind the warheads, whichtherefore remain clearly defined as targets.Finally, when the submarine-launched warheads come inat their targets, they are still traveling25 percent more slowlythan ICBM warheads. Thus our interceptor missiles, projectileaccelerators, and particle beams can track and hitthem more easily.It should be clear that what we have said about the greaterease of defending against submarine-launched missiles,applies equally to the intermediate-range nuclear missiles(SS-20s) that threaten Europe and japan and to the shorterrangetactical nuclear missiles like the SS-21. Imagine howfoolish it is, then, for the opponents of beam defense toclaim that the SDI "offers no defense against cruise missiles,bombers, and other air-breathing threats"—sincethese threats travel 30 to 50 times slower than even submarine-launchedand intermediate nuclear missiles.For anyone interested in the defense of the country anda more stable strategic situation worldwide, it is clear thatbeam weapons work and that the reality of technology developmentrefutes the lies of the anti-beam-defense lobby.Paul Gallagher, the executive director of the Fusion EnergyFoundation, writes, lectures, and debates frequentlyon beam-defense issues.November-December 1984 FUSION 31

The ancient science of astronomymust be revived to educate thepopulation and defeat astrology, thesecret weapon of the oligarchy in itssuccessful age-old war on reason.ThefoundationOf ScientificMethodby Jonathan TennenbaumRECENTLY A WEST GERMAN newspaper reported thatone of the leading items of business expense in Germanfirms is the payment of astrologers. Many firms, it seems,have a "house astrologer," who provides star readings asthe basis for decisions about whether and when to signcontracts. In Italy, one of the most famous European physicists,Professor Amaldi, who was head of the CERN particleaccelerator in Geneva and is a leading member of thePugwash disarmament movement, is presently carrying outexperiments on how dying animals send electromagneticsignals to the center of the galaxy. Tens of millions of housewivesread the daily horoscope sections of their fashionmagazines, sandwiched in between the latest gossip aboutthe kings and queens and barons of Monaco and Lichtenstein.This is not just a European phenomenon. Robert Mc-Above: Illustration of the zodiac.sphere, circa 1730.Below: English armillary

Namara, former defense secretary of the United States andnow head of the World Bank, who is one of the leaders ofthe so-called peace movement in the United States, alsohas a peculiar relationship with the heavenly bodies: Hereportedly belongs to a cult of individuals who go out intothe woods on the day of a full moon and bathe themselves,naked, in the moonbeams. And in U.S. bookstores, thesection on the "occult" and "astrology" is now three timesas large as the science section.Do you think this is harmless nonsense? What would youthink if your doctor were consulting the stars to determinewhether or not to remove your appendix? Or would youfeel safe if you knew that NATO military deployments wereplanned according to the phases of the Moon and Venus?I am sure many of you have occasionally looked up fromyour morning paper and exclaimed: "What is going on here?Is the world going insane?"Indeed, in a precise sense the world is going insane. It isgoing insane because of the age-old oligarchical familieswho have long declared war on reason in order to securetheir arbitrary rule over a brutalized and ignorant mass.Unfortunately, they are winning. The oligarchical program,their declaration of war, has now come out in the open: Itis called the "Age of Aquarius." It means, as Marilyn Fergusondeclares in her book The Aquarian Conspiracy/ theend of rationality in a great epidemic of kookery. If thisconspiracy succeeds, then this may mean the end of mankind.As humanists interested in a future for the humanrace, we must defeat the Aquarian Conspiracy.In the fight against oligarchism and kookery, our weaponis science. If we are to have republican nations, if the populationsof these nations are to determine what policiesthese nations must follow, according to their own interest,then those populations must be educated to be able todetermine what is right and what is wrong, what is realityand what is illusion, fantasy, or swindle. Reality, however—"right" and "wrong"—is not determined by the mere opinionsof parents, teachers, friends, religious leaders, or thelatest copy of the New York Times. All of these might befatally wrong; they might already be hooked on astrologicalkookery.Science Versus the Aquarian Conspiracy"Right" and "wrong" are a question of scientific method,a question of how each person can seek the truth withouthaving to accept blindly whatever belief or prejudice his orher friends or society might wish to enforce. If we are goingto save the world from the Aquarian Conspiracy, we mustknow what reality is, how to find the truth. More important,we must be able to impart the scientific method to thepopulation around us, so they can discover reality themselves.The foundation of scientific method is astronomy—thebasic question about how the universe as a whole is organized.You may be astonished by this. You may ask, "Doyou mean I must know about planetary motions in order torun my business? Aren't you getting into the astrology youwere just warning us about? What do the stars have to dowith problems here on Earth?"I will tell you a secret: Whether you realize it or not, everythought an individual has, every opinion and every judgment,is based on certain assumptions embedded in his orher mind concerning how the universe functions, how itwas created, and what its fundamental laws are. For manypeople, these ideas take the form of religion; more generallythey are embedded in the culture of every society. Somepeople might say, "It doesn't matter how the universe functions;it obviously doesn't make any difference to me howthe planets revolve." Such persons are simply asserting thatthe universe was built to satisfy their infantile desires—thisis their hypothesis, a very unscientific one. Such peoplechange their views only when something falls from the skyand hits them on the head.Throughout history, there have been two main culturaltendencies, one oriented toward science and one orientedtoward magic. Therefore, we can talk about two basic formsof culture: astronomical culture and astrological culture,which are also known as humanist culture and oligarchicalculture, respectively.There have been more than 40,000 years of battle betweenastronomical and astrological cultures, the battle forscientific method against superstition and magic. I will usethe most elementary questions of astronomy—how our solarsystem is organized—to illustrate and distinguish betweenthe scientific and the oligarchical methods downthrough the ages up to today.The firsthand report below on the astronomical accomplishmentsof pre-Vedic astronomers, around 40,000 B.C.,indicates how the basic astronomical questions were treatedby early civilization and the early oligarchical enemies ofscientific culture. These same ideas and method underliethe later breakthroughs of the greatest astronomer of morerecent times, Johannes Kepler. In contrast, Galileo, Descartes,and Newton—far from being the great protagonistsof science advertised in popularized myths—actually opposedthe scientific method of Kepler and opened the wayfor modern versions of astrological cultism.The Aquarian conspirators of today are merely carryingon the tradition of pseudoscientific kookery in cooking upthe myth of the "Big Bang" and quarks on the model of theold Egyptian cult of Isis and Osiris. Fortunately, there hasbeen recent work on a new hypothesis concerning the earlydevelopment of the solar system. This hypothesis, conceivedby Fusion Energy Foundation board member LyndonH. LaRouche, Jr., shows the scientific method in actiontoday, at the forefront of fusion energy, astrophysics, andatomic physics, applied to a very simple and fundamentalquestion: Where did the Earth and the planets come from? 2Astronomy 40,000 Years Ago: A Firsthand ReportThe following is a report from one of the most illustriouspre-Vedic astronomers, from around the year 40,000 B.C.,on the great astronomical accomplishments of his day. Admittedly,this report was not found by archaeologists diggingaround somewhere; it originated in the general vicinityof my typewriter. However, perhaps it is not entirelyunrealistic. (The interested reader is referred, among othersources, to the works of the great Indian scholar Tilak forrelevant historical evidence on the advanced astronomy ofthe pre-Vedic period. 3 )November-December 1984 FUSION 33

Figure 1DETERMINING THE POINTS OF THE COMPASSThe ancient astronomer describes how cities are planned around an observatory located at a point where the horizonis visible in all directions. East and west are then located at points where stars rise and set exactly opposite to eachother in relation to the observatory. North is located at the point where some stars (such as the pole star) just barelytouch the horizon at their lowest point.Now, we do not know exactly who the earliest astronomerswere, nor exactly how far and in what way they developedtheir knowledge about the heavens. We do know thatthey developed astronomical calendars—methods of measuringtime and mapping events on the basis of astronomicalcycles—that reveal a very high level of scientific methodcompared with that applied even in the technical sciencesof today.In addition to what we can learn from old documents andtraditions, our own comprehension of scientific methodgives us a second, most necessary way to construct a pictu reof the ancient astronomy. Namely, we can place ourselvesin the shoes of the ancient astronomers and ask, "Whatwould we have done? What could we have done, withoutany of the modern instruments, without any prior knowledge,from scratch, to develop a scientific astronomy?"Then, we can compare what we come up with to archaeologicaland other historical evidence to arrive at a reasonableestimate of what ancient advanced astronomy musthave been.Here then is the report of the ancient astronomer.* * *"My nation is a nation of seafarers and city-builders. Wehave colonized vast regions of the world, braving the seasand oceans with our ships and establishing new cities farand wide. We live by fishing in the rich waters of the seaand the mouths of the great rivers. We have invested ourwealth and leisure in developing the inland areas, wherewe have established some plantations. It may surprise youthat we, more than 40,000 years in your past, can easilynavigate across the oceans. Actually, it is easy if one knowsastronomy as well as we do. You don't need any complicatedinstruments, just a good pair of eyes."Although we do possess a written language, it may surpriseyou that we use written records much less than yourculture or the oppressive, bureaucratic hierarchy of Babylon,which your historians claim to be the forerunner ofmodern civilization. Instead, we compose and sing beautifulpoetry, and by this method pass down our knowledgeand history from generation to generation, without change,over thousands of years. Our ancestors for this purposegave names to groups of stars and invented funny littlestories about them to help remember them. So, we haveprecise astronomical records from thousands of years back,in the form of astronomical songs. . . ."Let me explain how we plan our cities (Figure 1). Wechoose a high point, where the horizon is everywhere visible.We mark the point with a large stone. It will be thecenter of our city. Now, we watch the motion of the starsfrom this point. This is especially easy in those regions thatare dark for half the year (which you call the polar regions).Otherwise, the Sun interferes with observation. Actually,we know how to observe the stars even during sunlightperiods. (Guess how!)"In any case, there are some stars that rise at some pointon the horizon and disappear again at some other point.For the most prominent stars that rise and set we placestone markers as far as possible from our center to markthe points on the horizon. Some other stars never set, butjust turn around in the heavens. And there are some veryspecial stars that just barely touch the horizon at their low-34 FUSION November-December 1984

est point. This point we mark with a special stone; it is thesame for all stars of this special sort. We call this the 'north'direction. The opposite direction we call 'south.'"Another special set of stars rises and sets at points exactlyopposite each other with relation to our observationpoint. We mark these points also with special stones; therising point we call 'east' and the setting point 'west.' Nowwe build two roads through our center point, running eastwestand north-south. At the center we make a centralsquare, and in the middle of this square an astronomicalobservatory, around which we build the rest of our city.You may ask, why do we use the stars to mark out andconstruct the foundations of our city? This observatory hasthe work of organizing the calendars, predicting the weatherand change of seasons, the tides and movements of fishand other creatures. It shall also be the center of educationfor our youth, a center for the history and archives of ournation."All the stars, with the exception of those you call theSun and planets, move together, in circles or parts of circles,and they always return to their original positions at thesame moment. I call this stellar cycle a 'day.' But I want toknow more: I want to know where each day belongs in thehistory of the universe. I want to find longer cycles withinwhich each day finds its individual place. We think of thisas 'navigating in time.' With the help of these longer cyclesI can construct a map of the history of the creation of theuniverse, which I call a calendar."Square and hexagon: 24 parts, used by some to dividethe day into hours."Triangle, square, and pentagon: 60 parts, used by someto divide the hour into minutes and the minute into seconds."Triangle, square, pentagon, and hexagon: 360 parts, asa rule used to divide any circle into 360 parts for the pu rposeof measurement of angles."So, first, my predecessors looked for the cycles of theSun. They observed that contrary to the other stars, the Sundoes not rise and set at the same place; the rising placeslowly shifts from the eastern point toward the north,reaches a farthest point, and returns, passing through theeast point and shifting to the south. And this movementdetermines the season: at the northernmost point, it issummer, at the southernmost rising point it is winter. Thisis easy to understand, since the Earth gets its light from theThe Development of a Calendar"Now, different cultures construct calendars accordingto different principles. Some peoples base their calendarson the motions of the Moon, which they imagine to be veryimportant. (We call such people 'lunatics.') Others use Venus.Some use just the Sun, and still others try to fit variouscycles together into a single 'great year,' which is a veryinteresting problem."As for my culture, we keep developing our calendar,trying always to find the longest possible astronomical cycleas its basis. This is because we believe that the shortercycles are always derived from the longest by division. So,we always measure time in terms of division of cycles."But, by what principle must we determine the mannerof division? On what appropriate and lawful division is aday or a year based? We decide to take the circle, whichrepresents a cycle, as a foundation along with the simplestpolygons that can be constructed in a circle: the triangle,the square, the pentagon, and the hexagon. All these dividea circle into segments that we call 'periods' (Figure 2a). Asquare divides the circle into four segments, a pentagoninto five, and soon."Each of these segments we can represent as a smallercircle, dividing it again with another polygon. Thus, forexample, using a triangle, we can divide the original circleinto three segments and then, using the square, divide eachof these three arcs again into four segments (Figure 2b).This produces a division into 12 segments, which has beenused by many peoples for division of the year—especiallysince 1/12 of the year approximates the cycle of the moon."Other divisions are also familiar:November-December 1984 FUSION 35

Sun, and the northernmost position is at the same time theposition in which the Sun's path is the longest. In the northernmostregions of our world, the Sun actually rises completelyabove the horizon in summer, and never goes downagain until fall!"Of course, it is not good to look directly at the Sun. Longago, someone found away to map the Sun's motion withouthaving to look at it. They simply placed a stick in the ground,and watched the shadow. But, the astronomers of my nationregard this as an incorrect and misleading method. Forwe argue that it is wrong to represent motion in the universeon a flat surface, except when there is no other choice.For, the flat surface is not closed on itself, and can only bemade closed by adding a boundary of the universe, whosechoice would be arbitrary, whereas all the motions are closedby themselves.The Spherical Solar Observatory"So one very smart fellow conceived of marking the shadowof the Sun on the surface of a sphere, which is closedand complete and is its own boundary! In fact, he pointedout that if we stand on top of our observatory and point anarm in various directions, then our hand moves around ona sphere, whose center is at our shoulder. The sphere isthus a good choice for a map. By the way, in case you didn'trealize it, your own eyes function by spherical projection.Just look at the retina of the eye, which is a spherical surface!"In Figure 3a you see the plan of my spherical solar observatory;the shadow is cast by a small sphere suspendedat the midpoint of the sphere. Of course, we can only projectif we leave away the upper portion of our sphere; then,the equator corresponds to the horizon. Figure 3b, by theway, is a photograph of a similar instrument made muchlater by the Creeks. Now I can trace the path of the shadowthroughout the year!"Now maybe you know what the result of these observationsis: each day, the image of the Sun describes a partof a circle on the sphere; but this circle shifts slowly, alwaysparallel to itself. In Figure 3a I have marked the two extremecircles, corresponding to northernmost and southernmostsettings of the Sun, known as the solstices. In betweenthese circles is a third, half of an equator, that occurs twotimes in the year when the Sun rises exactly in the east andsets exactly in the west. These you call the equinoxes."We argued that if some of the stars always stay abovethe horizon, making full circles of motions, and if also inthe northern regions in summer the Sun itself makes fullcircles above the horizon, then why not imagine that theactual daily motion of the Sun is a full circle, part of whichis just hidden from us underneath the horizon after the Sungoes down ? So, some very wise astronomer decided to addan upper hemisphere to the lower hemisphere, and to completethe daily circles of the Sun by means of curves tracedon the upper sphere! Of course, to see them we trace thecurves on the outside of the sphere. So, these curves aboverepresent an imaginary projection of the Sun, for its motionbelow the horizon during the night. You see, by using thishypothesis we have a beautiful and simple theory."Of course, some people got very angry about this sphericalmap. They objected, 'Who has ever seen the Sun atnight?' They call this idea crazy and impractical. But I answer:if our world were transparent, then we would see theSun shining beneath our feet after sunset! They just say, 'Ifyou can't see it, then you can't talk about it!'The Method of Hypothesis"You see, we use the geometrical method of hypothesis.Our spherical mapping is hypothesis: It is not a model ofthe universe, in the sense that the degenerate systems analystsof your culture understand 'model.' It is, rather, animage-concept upon which the data of our senses (our observations)can be mapped in such a way as to permit us to36 FUSION November-December 1984

Figure 4COMPARISON OF SOLAR OBSERVATIONS FROM DIFFERENT POINTS OF THE GLOBEThe ancient astronomer described an astronomical conference at which the data from spherical solar observatoriesthroughout the world were compared. The lines on the bowl represent the image of the Sun's path in the sky as itappears at different latitudes. By comparing the data the astronomers concluded that the earth was round.transcend the limits of the 'here and now' of sense-certainty,and look at the universe, so to speak, from the outside.'With our method of hypothesis we exercise exactly thosedivine capabilities of mind that distinguish us from the animals.For, no animal can ever 'step outside' the here andnow to examine processes as a whole."My predecessors set up observatories like this in many,many cities. Then, at periodic intervals the spheres werebrought to a single place, where they made an astronomicalconference, and compared them. Figure 4 is a drawingshowing their spheres brought from various parts of ourworld (Central Africa; Frankfurt, Cermany; and the NorthPole). They found a very interesting thing: everywhere, thesphere rotates relative to the horizon, until at the NorthPole itself (where there is actually no northward direction),the horizon coincides with the planes of all the circles.Since the motion of traveling upon the Earth correspondedto rotating the sphere, they concluded that the Earth mustalso correspond to a rotation, that is, the Earth must beroundl Actually, all wise men have always throughout historyimmediately known that our world is spherical."This coincidence of spherical mappings made a bigimpression on everybody. We immediately recognized thata single spherical mapping suffices to completely representthe daily motions of the stars; from any position in ourworld. Our map, shown in Figure 5, we call an armillarysphere. We have marked the relative positions of all thestars on the rotating sphere. The outer, circular disk representsthe horizon. As we rotate the sphere around theaxis you see a representation of how the stars rise in theeast and set in the west. The equator or largest parallel ci rcleon the globe determines the positions of those stars thatrise and set in the exact east and west. This you call thecelestial equator. To determine the appearance of the heav-Figure 5ARMILLARY SPHEREThis armillary sphere, drawn by Kepler, shows the relativepositions of all the stars on a rotating sphere.The outer, circular disk represents the horizon.November-December 1984 FUSION 37

ens in any place on the Earth, we have merely to shift theposition of the axis of the sphere according to the angledetermined by the local solar observatory.Mapping the Sun's Movement"With this excellent mapping instrument, we could nexttackle the question of the movement of the Sun. Someonegot the wonderful idea that for this purpose it was enoughsimply to observe the regions of the stars in which the Sunwas located at different times; in other words, we need notworry about the daily motion since it is already representedby the rotation of the sphere. Now, how can you tell wherethe Sun is located, when its light obviously is extinguishingthat of the stars in the vicinity? I won't tell you the answer!It's really very easy once you have put together a goodspherical map such as we have done. Now we can, so tospeak, 'stand outside' the daily motions, and look at themotions from the standpoint of the sphere of the stars asfixed."What do we find for the Sun?"Another wonderful discovery! The Sun describes, veryslowly and in the course of a full year, a complete, greatcircle through the sphere of the stars—the circle that ourGreek successors named the ecliptic. In Figure 5 you cansee it fixed upon our spherical astrolabe."Now everything becomes clear. As the Sun moves slowlyalong the ecliptic, the result of the daily rotations aroundthe polar axis is to run the Sun around circles of changingradius, resulting in the circles we had earlier observed forwinter, summer, spring, and fall. Now we can see why thedays are longer in summer than in winter: because theportion of the daily circle that runs above the horizon islonger. We also see that when the Sun reaches one of thetwo points of intersection with the celestial equator, thenthe Sun that time will rise in the exact east and set in theexact west. This will be a time when day and night areexactly the same length—the so-called equinox. There aretwo such points—the spring equinox and the fall equinox."This discovery of the motion of the Sun along the eclipticcircle caused a great scientific controversy. For, now thereseemed to be two completely different modes of action inthe universe—the rotation of the whole celestial spherearound the axis of the North Pole, and the rotation revealedby the Sun's motion, a rotation around the axis perpendicularto the plane of the ecliptic. Some people just shruggedtheir shoulders and said, 'Why not?""But the wisest men insisted that there could be only one,unified mode of action in the universe, and hypothesizedthat the celestial and ecliptic rotations must be somehowlinked together and subsumed under a common principle.They said, 'Watch the equinox points, for these are thesingularities,' thinking that the relation between the tworotations must be revealed through the points at which thecorresponding circles (celestial equator and ecliptic) intersect."And, indeed, ancient tradition, handed down for severalmillennia in our ancestors' astronomical poetry, told us twothings. First, the path of the Sun through the stars remainsalmost exactly the same from century to century; the eclipticchanges very slowly, if at all. But, our forefathers, whowere always careful to note the positions of the equinoxes,tell us that many centuries ago, the stars that are now foundat the equinoxes were displaced, and instead other starsoccupied those singular points."We therefore decided to make a very precise series ofobservations, and for this purpose devised a new technique,using carved stones placed atop a distant mountainas reference points for measuring very small changes in thetrajectories of the stars. In fact, we were able to measuredisplacements of less than a hundredth part of a degree.38 FUSION November-December 1984

"We found that in the course of a few years, the stars thatformerly were at the fall equinox were no longer risingexactly in the east, but had now shifted slightly to the north(Figure 6). At the same time, the stars belonging to theregion of the spring equinox were now rising to the southof the exact eastward point. We made a daring hypothesis:we guessed that the entire celestial equator is moving, rotatingrelative to the ecliptic circle, in such a way that thepoints of intersection, the equinoxes, are shifting along theecliptic.The Precession of the Equinoxes"Extensive observations confirmed this hypothesis completely.This is the motion your astronomers call the precessionof the equinoxes. What is happening is that the axis ofthe celestial rotation is itself rotating—around the axis ofthe ecliptic! In other words, we have a 'rotation of a rotation!'(See Figure 7.)"Many people find this a very abstract and obscure idea.But we astronomers are delighted, because it completelyresolves the paradox of the two modes of action in theuniverse. For, the 'orbit' of the celestial equator around theecliptic axis proves that the ecliptic rotation is primary. Everything—thewhole universe—is organized around the rotationalaxis of the ecliptic! At least, this was our hypothesis.We found further proofs of this: the paths oi the Moon andNovember-December 1984 FUSION 39

the other planets all lie very close to the ecliptic. Furthermore,the circle of the Moon's orbit, like the celestial equator,also precesses around the ecliptic."A final, very beautiful proof came from our observationof the Sun. During some years and months you can actuallysee some dark spots on the Sun's surface, when you observeit just at dawn or sunset. We found that in the courseof about 12 days, these spots drift from one side of the Sun'sdisk to the other, along a line oriented exactly along theecliptic direction! So, we concluded that the Sun itself isrotating, and that the axis of the Sun coincides with the axisof the ecliptic."Incidentally, our measurement of the shifts in positionof the equinoxes shows that a complete cycle takes about26,000 years! That is, in 26,000 years the axis of the eclipticmakes a complete rotation around the celestial axis, andthe same stars as today occupy the positions of the twoequinoxes."We make it a practice in our educational system to haveour children work out the measurement of the equinoxcycle themselves, as a tremendous proof of the lawfulnessof the universe and the power of the human mind to comprehendthat lawfulness. Also, the idea that a process existsin the universe that requires 26,000 years to complete givesour young people a remarkable notion of history. Ratherthan just living in the egoistic prison of the 'here and now'like your youth, our young people see their lives as part ofthe great drama of the creative enfolding of the universe.The Spiral Hypothesis"Now I want to close by reporting the most remarkableand exciting discoveries made just recently (that is, 40,000years ago to you). I said that the rotation associated withthe ecliptic seems to be the primary one. I should have said'the axis of rotation,' because, in fact, we find differentCarlos de Hoyos"Of all living beings, the snail shell is the simplest and mostcharacteristic in its growth." Shown is the chamberednautilus.lengths and speeds of various cycles for different phenomena,although all can be related to this axis. So, we have theyear, and the precession of the equinoxes, the periods ofthe planets, the period of the Moon, and even the cycles ofthat strange object which you call Halley's Comet, whichalso moves close to the ecliptic and seems to return aboutevery 76 years."We decided to look for a new hypothesis, a new way ofmapping these cycles. One of my friends got an idea whenhe saw a whirlpool in water—where all parts rotate arounda center, but the closer parts move slower, the ones fartherout move faster. Then, in discussion, we decided in favorof a similar but different model—a snail shell whose windingsare closer near the center but grow wider in constantproportion farther out. I proposed to use such a spiral shellto map the various cycle lengths, since I believe the universeis constantly developing like a living being, and of allliving beings the snail shell is the simplest and most characteristicin its growth. Therefore, we took the snail shell asour higher hypothesis and decided for the moment to forgetabout the spherical model, and just map the cycle timesof various cycles onto the shell."So, I took some point on the spiral as my base point, torepresent one year (Figure 8). Say, I use the distance fromthe center of the cone to represent the length of cycles.Then, since the cycle or year of Mars is a little less thantwice that of the Earth, that is, a little less than two years, Imove along the spiral until I find the point whose distanceis a little less than twice the distance for the starting point.For the planets Mercury and Venus, which have shorterperiods, I have to go up the spiral toward the center. In anycase, if I map the cycles of the planets in this way, I find thatfrom the point representing the Earth, Mars requires aboutone rotation around the spiral, Jupiter requires five, andSaturn requires seven. To get the point for Venus, I mustgo back one rotation. To get to Mercury I need three, andto get to the period of the Moon (one month) I need five."As you see, just about exactly a whole number of rotationsseparates the points for any two planets! It seems thatthere is a gap between Mars and Jupiter, where we mightexpect from the pattern a planet at three rotations downfrom the base point; in fact, I understand you modern peoplehave actually found, not one, but a whole group ofplanets with the corresponding period, which you call theasteroids or little planets."You might be amazed that practically all the other cyclesknown to us map very well to our spiral hypothesis. Forexample, the precession of the equinoxes corresponds toalmost exactly 21 rotations (of course, I would need a giganticshell to go around that far; I can tell you this because Ihave deduced it from the law of the spiral). Halley's Cometis almost exactly at 14 rotations, and the cycle of eclipses,which I didn't talk about, but which is about 18 1/3 years,corresponds to exactly six rotations. If you check, you willfind the same thing for some of the cycles better known toyou today, such as the periods of Uranus, Neptune, and forthe galactic rotation (almost exactly 30 rotations). It maysurprise you to know that we already knew about the galacticcycle in my time."Now, I don't want to give you the idea that everything is40 FUSION November-December 1984

perfect in my nation. In fact, the astronomical method hasalready been destroyed in many parts of the world by astrange group of individuals who call themselves 'priests,''seers,' and 'magicians.' They go around saying that thissphere upon which we were mapping the universe reallyexists up there in the sky! Furthermore, they go aroundtelling people that those wonderful, imaginative stories andfables that we used to help us remember the positions andmovements of the stars are actually true—that the stars aredangerous gods whose battles can make one man happyand destroy another."They don't tell anyone about our marvelous spiral-growthhypothesis, which shows how even the smallest living creatureis similar to the universe, but instead, they say that theheavens and the Earth are ruled by completely differentlaws. Some of these priests say that the heavens are fixedand eternal, but the Earth is evil and corrupt, and they tellpeople to forget about improving their lives and prepare todie, so they can get to heaven as soon as possible. Otherssay that both heaven and Earth are chaotic and withoutorder. But all these priests try to get power and influenceby scaring people. Every time some disaster happens, theycorrelate this with the motion of some star or planet andsay the disaster was caused because people failed to propitiatethe god. This is pure random correlation, but somepeople fall for it."In many cities now these priests have taken over theobservatory and turned it into a temple for sacrifices andstrange rituals. They have hidden all the astronomical instrumentsand do not permit anyone else to use them, sothey build themselves up as the sole experts and authoritiesin these matters. Also they have invented strange, secretsymbol languages and writing, to mystify everybody (somethinglike your algebra)."When they have succeeded in making everybody ignorantand fearful, then they force them to start worshippingthe 'Great Mother'—they say that if you do not make sacrificesand propitiate the Great Mother and all the other godsevery day, and do what the priests say and give them foodand gold, then something terrible will happen. They alsosay that the Earth is flat and that no one should venture farfrom the coast in ships. Anyway, once astronomy has beenforgotten, no one will know how to navigate anymore, so itreally will be dangerous. You see what they are trying to doto us."Jonathan Tennenbaum, a mathematician, is director ofthe Fusion Energy Foundation in Europe and editor-in-chiefof the German-language Fusion. This article is adapted froma speech he gave in 1984 at a European conference of theInternational Caucus of Labor Committees.1. Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformationin the 1980s (Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher, 1980).2. Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., The Present Scientific Implications o/ Vedic Calendarsfrom the Standpoint of Kepler and Circles of Gauss (New York:Fusion Energy Foundation, 1984).3. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Orion and The Arctic Home, Poona, India, reprint 1958.a = Galactic cycle of the Sun (234 million years)b = Precession of the equinox (25,800 years)c = Period of Revolution of Uranus (84 years)d = Period of Halley's Comet (76 years)Figure 8MAPPING OF THE ASTRONOMICAL CYCLESONTO A SPIRALThis self-similar (logarithmic) spiral expands accordingto the golden section:k = '/if? + V5)~ 7.678Every astronomical cycle corresponds to a point onthe spiral, whose radial distance from the center isproportional to the length of the cycle. An arbitrarilychosen point represents the period of the Earth (oneyear) and forms the unit for the radial distance. Thepoint nearest the midpoint corresponds to an Earthyear, followed by Mars, and a series of marks for thedifferent periods of the asteroids, lupiter, and Saturn.If longer cycles are to be represented—for example,the galactic cycle (234 million years)—the spiral mustbe expanded on a gigantic scale. These cycles cannonetheless be projected onto the outer circle, inorder to give the direction in which the correspondingpoints of the different cycles—seen from the midpoint—wouldlie if they were inscribed on the spiral.The cycles group themselves in the region of thegeneral directions that correspond to the Earth yearand the galactic cycle. This means that virtually all thecycles are distinguished from those two through approximatelywhole-number powers of the golden section.November-December 1984 FUSION 41

A Mexican astronomer has extended Kepler's method to relate themass and spin of astronomical objects over 40 orders of magnitude.How the UniverseIs Createdby Carol WhiteALMOST 400 YEARS AGO, astronomer Johannes Keplerlaid the basis for modern astronomy. Even though he is bestknown for his three laws of planetary motion, his primaryinterest was to develop a theory to account for the creationof the planets. While his work has not yet been qualitativelysuperseded, the Mexican astronomer Luis Carrasco hassucceeded in extending its application to account for theformation of all observed astronomical structures in theuniverse. 1Carrasco and his collaborators have pulled together theotherwise disparate findings of a number of modern astronomersin order to demonstrate the fundamental importanceof rotational action, in the form of angular momentum,to the process of forming what he calls astronomicalobjects. To do this he has extended Kepler's Third Law andapplied it to a correlation between the mass and the angularmomentum of a wide variety of these structures, from asteroidsto galaxies. (Angular momentum is the product ofthe square of the radius of a rotating object and its angularfrequency times its mass.) Kepler's Third Law states theinvariance of the ratio between the arithmetic mean distanceof a planet from the Sun at aphelion and at perihelion,taken to the 3/2 power, and the period of the planet's orbit(see Figure 1). This law can also be stated as an invariantratio between the angular momentum squared of an orbitingplanet and its mean distance from the Sun.Carrasco has established a relationship between specificspin angular momentum and mass as a generalization ofKepler's Third Law, and he has applied this law to all astronomicalobjects observed in the universe. Kepler's ThirdLaw states thatA, 3 : 77 = A 2 3 : T*Palomar Observatory PhotographThe "Whirlpool" spiral galaxy, NGC5194, in Canes Venaticiwith its satellite galaxy, NCC 5195, photographed with the200-inch Mt. Palomar telescope.(where A is the arithmetic mean distance from the Sun andT is the period of the planet's orbit) and will be determinedby the mass of the Sun. Carrasco's law equates the twothirdspower of the mass of a given "astronomical object"to its specific spin angular momentum. Specific angularmomentum is the angular momentum per unit of mass ofthe rotating object. Specific spin angular momentum measuresthe daily rotation of the planets, the moment of inertiatimes the angular frequency per unit of mass.Carrasco used the method of Karl Gauss (in which themass of the astronomical object in question is treated as"smeared out" over the extent of its orbit) to develop theformulaM» 3 ~ }IM(where 7 is the spin angular momentum), which he uses torelate the mass and momentum of astronomical objects. Itshould be noted that the extension of Kepler's Third Law tosatellite bodies rotating about a central body establishes arelationship between the mass of the planet, for example,and that of the Sun. The ratio of the quantities A M : Twillbe invariant but different in the case of planets rotatingaround the Sun, or moons rotating around a planet. It isequal to the ratio of the square root of the masses of thetwo central bodies.(Actually, as Newton pointed out, this ratio will not beprecise, because the mass of the rotating body must alsobe taken into consideration.)Carrasco's main contribution to astronomy has been to42 FUSION November-December 1984

understand the significance of the work of a number ofastronomers and to generalize their results into one theory.In 1967, the astronomer L.M. Ozernoy 2 discovered the correctlaw, M 111 = j (where/ equals specific spin angular momentum),applied to galaxies; and in 1970, the astronomerR.P. Kraft 3 applied it to the Sun. Similar studies have beenmade since 1963 by other astronomers, but none of theseapplied the correct power law over the whole range ofastronomical objects—or in some cases, they did not recognizethe correct power of the mass. The relationshipbetween angular momentum and mass for a wide range ofastronomical objects varying over 20 orders of magnitudewas first noticed by the astronomer P. Brosche, 4 who, however,expressed it as a correlation between mass squaredand spin.Minimum Angular Momentum and Characteristic DensityCarrasco has studied the angular momentum of variousastronomical objects over almost two decades. He beganby studying the loss of angular momentum in the Sun as aby-product of solar flaring. Through the solar flare the Sunloses a certain amount of mass and also extends its magneticfield. It transfers momentum to the plasma gas diskthat surrounds it and thereby brakes its own angular velocity.Carrasco became interested in the fact that astronomicalobjects seemed to be formed where angular momentumwas at a minimum locally. He was attracted by the simplicityof a law that was nonetheless universal. As is well known,the angular momentum of a rotating body determines itsstability. Therefore, for a star to form, for example, there isa maximum angular momentum that the star will tolerate.If the angular momentum of the gas from which the star isto be formed is too great, then centrifugal force will preventthe gas from ever condensing into a star.The rate at which angular momentum is shed is reducedwith time. Our own Sun is a good example of this. It wouldhave been rotating at a far greater speed when it was firstformed than now, and would have experienced a great dealmore flaring. This process of solar flaring is important inunderstanding the evolution of stars. The prediction byCarrasco some years ago that high levels of solar flaringshould be seen in the case of young stars has been confirmedexperimentally by NASA's Einstein X-ray detectingsatellite.As the rotating gaseous disk from which a star is to beformed loses momentum, the disk contracts to a certainminimum density that is the characteristic density at whichstar formation takes place. The mass/spin law shows thatcharacteristic densities exist throughout the universe for alltypes of astronomical objects—over 40 orders of magnitude—fromasteroids to clusters of galaxies (see Figure 2and Table 1). This characteristic density is a kind of leastactionfunction, which allows the object to shed the barestamount of angular momentum necessary to guarantee stability.Although the object in question must shed angularmomentum in order to achieve stability, the structure thatis formed will be larger, the greater the angular momentumof the disk from which it was formed. At the point that themaximum tolerable angular momentum is reached, the objectestablishes an identity as star, galaxy, or what ever.Carrasco has found that structure formation is quantizedin narrow bands like the harmonic spacing of the planets,at points of lower angular momentum and greater clouddensity, so that objects do not form at random. The onlyvariation in the law is in the case of spiral galaxies, wherethe mass to the three-fourths power is related to specificspin angular momentum. Carrasco explains this variationin the power from two-thirds to three-fourths by the factthat a spiral galaxy is essentially two-dimensional ratherthan three-dimensional.A New Look at the History of the UniverseCarrasco has discovered a new way of dating the formationof stellar mass. Galaxies, as such, are divided into twomain categories—spiral galaxies like our own—and ellipticalgalaxies. The elliptical galaxies, ellipsoids with threedifferent axes, are far more dense than spiral galaxies, yetthey have less angular momentum than spiral galaxies by afactor of 20. It appears that elliptical galaxies had a higherefficiency for the removal of torque at the time of theirformation than had spiral galaxies. They have alreadystopped the process of star formation. They have little surroundinggas left, and what there is, is ionized and thereforetoo "hot" to support continued star formation.The formation of stars or planets from the gaseous nebulasoccurs as vortices are formed. The spin angular momentumis a function of the angular momentum of the diskout of which the planet is formed and the rate of change ofthe momentum over the area of the disk. Such vorticesformed in a plasma will give rise to an electromagnetic field.Carrasco's work demonstrates that it is essential to integratethe field of plasma physics into the center of astronomy.A great amount of work has been done establishing thatan induced magnetic field will scale with angular velocity.In the presence of a stellar wind, even a moderately strongmagnetic field will suffer large losses of angular momentum.Rotating stars can be expected to slow down whentheir stellar wind interacts with the surrounding convectiveenvelope, as verified by astronomical observations in 1971and 1983. As the angular velocity decreases, the magneticfield decreases, and as a consequence torque and stellaractivity also decrease. Carrasco has found that after theirformation all galaxies tend to lose angular momentum uniformly,as a function of time rather than of mass. It is thisthat allows us to treat them as quasirigid structures. Themass/momentum law operates as a step function, allowingus to date galaxies according to the amount of specific spinangular momentum that they have shed since their formation.This dating has been independently confirmed by othercriteria.Johannes Kepler attributed the force field between theSun and the planets to magnetic action. Although the specificform of his hypothesis has obviously been superseded,the importance of the electromagnetic field has been largelyoverlooked by astronomers. Only recently has the workof plasma physicists been applied to astronomy, as it hasbeen recognized that "space" is also a plasma, despite thedisrepute of ether theories. Traditionally, cosmologists haveignored the importance of the electromagnetic field in theNovember-December 1984 FUSION 43

Figure 1KEPLER'S THREE LAWS OF PLANETARY MOTIONThe physics contained in Kepler's three laws laid thebasis for modern astronomy.SMISN is approximately equal to h, 2 /ft 22(a) Kepler's First LawThe orbit of a planet sweeps out an ellipse, with theSun at one focus. Shown is a greatly exaggerated ellipticalorbit (the orbits of the planets are actually within1 percent of being circles).(b) Kepler's Second LawA planet sweeps out equal areas in equal times, nomatter how far it is from the Sun. The time it takes theplanet to travel from A to B is the same as it takes totravel from C to D. The planet travels slightly fasterbetween Cand Dto make up for the shorter distancebetween A and B.Another way of stating this is that the rotationalvelocity at a certain point is inversely related to theradius at that point. The equal area law is also equivalentto the statement that without the addition ofexternal forces, angular momentum h is conserved.The angular momentum at A equals the length SAtimes the circular velocity along the arc AY, a constructionadapted from Leibniz.A = (a + b)l2 nAB = area of ellipse A M fT = n/2 kB = VaBnAB/2h = TSM = &/A nABI2k (B/VA) = nl2k(A^) = T(c) Kepler's Third LawThe Third Law says that the ratio of the cube of the distanceof the planet from the Sun to the square of the time it takesthe planet to go around the Sun is the same for every planet.This law holds also (with a different constant ratio) for themoons of Jupiter and Saturn.Kepler's Third Law is derived from two relationships. First,the square of the angular momentum h of two planets isapproximately proportional to the semilatus rectum, theradius perpendicular to the focus, of each planet. (We canoverlook the small discrepancy introduced by the respectivemasses of the two planets.) Thus SM/SN is approximatelyequal to h, 2 lh 2 2 .Second, as shown in Kepler's Second Law, the orbital areaa planet sweeps out equals nAB, where A is the semimajoraxis and B is the semiminor axis of the elliptical orbit. Thus,we can divide this by twice the angular momentum, 2h, toget the planetary year, or period, times some constant k thatrepresents the Sun's mass and the gravity constant. However,the angular momentum h equals the semiminor axis Bdivided by the square root of the semimajor axis A. By algebraicsubstitution, we arrive at Kepler's Third Law:A 3 m = k.44 FUSION November-December 1984

evolution of the universe, treating the process of structureformation as an interplay between gravitational and centrifugalforces.In 1958, the plasma physicist Winston Bostick correctlypredicted that the plasmoids he had identified in a laboratorysetting would be found in space by astronomers 5 (Figure3). Although his work has been largely overlooked,Bostick's prediction has been amply confirmed with theidentification of vortex filaments, such as the recent discoveryby astronomers Mark Morris and others of an arc ofparallel filaments near the core of the Milky Way Galaxy.This coheres with the discovery by Bostick of barred-spiralstructures in his laboratory plasma-focus device. So far amean magnetic field running in the same direction of thearm of a spiral galaxy has been detected, by studying radiopolarization maps (Figure4). It is extremely likely that somehelical vortical structure will be discovered in these arms,similar to those seen in the laboratory plasmas by Bostick.Carrasco has also determined that astronomical objectsare formed at those places in which, locally, angular momentumis at a minimum. These local minima appear tooccur in bands, which suggests the possibility that thereare magnetic sheets that create different rates of rotation(see Figure 5). In 1979, it was shown by investigators thatthe time scales for magnetic transport of angular momentumin a typical interstellar cloud are extremely short—inastronomical terms, ranging between 100,000 and 1,000,000years for the value of magnetic field strengths observed. Inhis latest work, Carrasco has studied mechanisms throughwhich magnetic braking may cause stars to lose angularmomentum over time. This is substantiated in a large volumeof work that associates stellar activity, such as X-rayemission, with a star's angular velocity.Carrasco's mass/momentum law operates discontinuously;however, by adding a density factor to his functionhe was able to transform it into a continuous function witha very high correlation coefficient. In its initial form, Carrasco'slaw was able to account for asteroids, planets, satellites,main-sequence stars, double stars, open and glob­20 28 36 44 52Log Mass/Mass of the SunFigure 2CORRELATION OF ANGULAR MOMENTUM ANDMASS OF ASTRONOMICAL OBJECTSPlotted here is the log of specific angular momentum(y axis) in relation to the log of the mass of a largevariety of astronomical objects (x axis). Note the highdegree of correlation. Angular momentum occurs almostas a line function and does not scatter below amaximum.Source: Adapted from Luis Carrasco, et al., "Density Scaling of AngularMomentum Versus Mass Universal Relationship," Astron. and Astrophys.,Vol. 106, page 89 (1982).November-December 1984 FUSION 45

ular clusters, bulges, elliptical and spiral galaxies, localgroups of galaxies, and superclusters. With the exceptionof spiral galaxies noted above, he found that within each ofthese categories, whose mass and specific spin angular momentumincrease exponentially, there is a high degree ofrelationship between mass and momentum. Plotted on alog-log graph they appear as step functions. However, byincluding an additional density factor—actually a step suggestedin 1967 by the astronomer Ozernoy—Carrasco foundthat he could achieve a dramatic improvement in his data:a continuous linear correlation on a log-log graph. Sincethis density factor operates over 24 orders of magnitude, itis by no means negligible (Figure 6).Newton's Method or Kepler's Method?The very simplicity of Carrasco's results has resulted inhis work being undervalued by astronomers. Yet, of course,it is precisely this quality of apparent simplicity that characterizesall important scientific breakthroughs. Kepler'swork, too, was simple. Unfortunately, since the death ofBernhard Riemann in 1866, scientists have increasingly beendiverted from the path of Kepler into the sterile methodologyof Isaac Newton.The question is indeed one of method—obviously nomodern scientist would espouse Newton's mechanics inplace of relativity theory or quantum theory. What they doshare with Newton, however, is the conviction that theuniverse is fundamentally linear—or entropic. For the workof Carrasco or Bostick to receive the attention it deserves,for a new generation of scientists to be educated so that amuch needed scientific renaissance occurs, the fundamentalissues raised by Newton's attack upon Kepler must beresolved once and for all in Kepler's favor.Isaac Newton rejected Kepler's emphasis on the primacyof rotational action. Instead, he believed that the universewas composed of material atoms moving through a vacuum,whose tendency was always to move in a straight line.For Newton, the orbital pathway of a planet was not a continuouscurve but an infinite-sided polygon, whose sideswere infinitely small. Essentially, he tried to square the circlewith his physics. It is as if he could only see the heavensthrough the prism of a computer simulation—an ellipseprojected onto the screen of a computer as a series of linearapproximations.Kepler adopted the point of view of Plato and Nicholas ofCusa. He recognized that the universe was necessarily createdby rotational action. It was one of his outstandingcontributions to recognize that in the case of the planetsthis rotational action was elliptical rather than circular, andto understand that this elliptical form of the planetary orbitsindicates the existence of a force field that governs theinteraction of the planets and the Sun, and represents workdone upon itself by the universe. Kepler identified this fieldas a magnetic field.A merely cursory knowledge of astronomy would convinceeven the most "empirically minded" that the universeis indeed governed by rotational motion, were he or shenot fettered by the bonds of ideology. Not only are theorbits of the planets elliptical, but galaxies take the form ofspirals and ellipses. Yet the dead weight of Newtonian epistemologystill stultifies mathematical physics and astronomyto this day. By asserting the primacy of linear action,Newton constructed a theory to give ideological substantiationto his view of the universe. A linear universe, by definition,must be dissipative, entropic in nature. Newton'shysterical demand that all orbital motion be resolved intolinear motion was merely a thin veneer to make crediblehis claim that the universe was doomed to suffer heat death.Since the hard balls of which the matter was putativelycomposed would lose energy as they collided with eachother, gradually all motion in the universe would come toa halt. To account for observed rotational motion, Newtonwas forced to endow his hard balls with certain occult qualities.They were able to attract each other over immensedistances separated by a vacuum, and this attraction, accordingto him, was propagated instantaneously. This washis theory of gravity. With such a theory, which even hefound to be embarrassing on epistemological grounds, it isnot surprising that he found it necessary to assert that it wasnot the responsibility of a scientist to offer hypotheses toexplain how physical processes occur, but only to describethem. This, of course, has become the credo of the antirationalcult of quantum mechanics.In the modern period, Albert Einstein attempted to offera cosmological alternative to Newton's theory; however, itwas based on the flawed premise that while the universe46 FUSION November-December 1984

Figure 4FILAMENTARY STRUCTURENEAR THE GALACTIC CENTERRecent observations with a radio telescopeof a system of narrow filamentarystructures perpendicular to the galacticplane that are parallel to each other, regular,unbroken, and homogeneous in appearance.The typical width is 20 arc seconds.A halo of 8 arc minutes diametersurrounding the shell can also be seen,consisting of a number of large-scale protrusionsdirected perpendicular to thegalactic plane. These radio continuumobservations of Sagittarius A were madeby Mark R. Morris, Farhad Yusef-Zadeh,and Don R. Chance with data from the 27-antenna Very Large Array radio telescopein Socorro, New Mexico.The National Radio Astronomy Observatory, operated by AssociatedUniversities, Inc. under contract with the National ScienceFoundationwas curved in the large, it could be treated as linear in thesmall. Such a universe would necessarily lack capacity forgrowth and development, since change could only be anepiphenomenon of the rearrangement of what already existed,and energy could not be created. Such a universewould be fundamentally entropic, even if it were locallynegentropic. Thus, Einstein's universe leads to the apparentcosmological alternatives of the Big Bang hypothesis:Either the universe will keep expanding and dissipate, or itwill alternately expand and then implode, going throughsuccessive phases of destruction and re-creation.Natural LawThe methodological point at issue is illustrated by thetwo following quotations, one from Newton and the otherfrom Kepler. For Newton, man is a diminutive creature in auniverse that operates by mechanical laws; for Kepler, man'strue vocation is to be a scientist who views the universe asits Creator would. For Kepler, the "imitation of Christ" is ascientific as well as moral imperative for man.Here is what Isaac Newton writes in his MathematicalPrinciples of Natural Philosophy, Book 3.This most beautiful system of the Sun, planets, andcomets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominionof an intelligent and powerful Being. . . . Thisbeing governs all things, not as the soul of the world,but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion iswont to be called Lord Cod or Ruler; for Cod is a relativeword, and has respect to servants; and Deity is thedominion of Cod not over his own body, as those whofancy Cod to be the soul of the world, but over servants.. . .As a blind man has no idea of colors, so havewe no idea of the manner in which the all wise Codperceives and understands things. . . . What the realsubstance of any thing is we know not.For Newton, just as for Niels Bohr, the universe is fundamentallyirrational and unknowable, and Cod is a pagandiety. Tragically for the moral fiber of the society as a whole,this school of physics is dominant today.Kepler had a directly opposite view of science. As a humanistscientist and republican, Johannes Kepler charted acourse for Gottfried Leibniz, Karl Gauss, and Bernhard Riemann.In Kepler's earliest work, Secrets of the Universe, hewrote:For would that excellent Creator, who has introducednothing into nature without thoroughly foreseeingnot only its necessity, but its beauty and powerto delight, have left only the mind of man, the lord ofall nature, made in his own image, without any delight?. . . For the reason why the mind was joined to thesenses by our Maker is not only so that man shouldmaintain himself. . . but also so that from those thingswhich our eyes perceive to exist we should strive towardsthe causes of their being and becoming, althoughwe should get nothing else useful from them.For Kepler, as for all humanists, man's capacity to createis the mirror, within the human soul, of the divine capacityfor continuous creation that characterizes the universe as awhole. This epistemology is today reflected only in the scientificwork of Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. and his collaborators.As LaRouche and Jonathan Tennenbaum, for example,have discussed, only a universe whose principle of actionNovember-December 1984 FUSION 47

Figure 6CORRELATION OF ANGULAR MOMENTUMAND MASS OF ASTRONOMICAL OBJECTS,CORRECTED FOR DENSITY EFFECTSPlotted here is the log of specific angular momentum(y axis) in relation to the log of the mass of a largevariety of astronomical objects (x axis), as shown inFigure 2, with a correction for density effects. Thiscorrection for density enhances the high degree ofcorrelation, and angular momentum occurs nearly asa continuous linear function that operates over 24orders of magnitude.Source: Adapted from Luis Carrasco, et al., "Density Scaling of AngularMomentum Versus Mass Universal Relationship," Astron. and Astrophys..Vol. 106, page89 (1982).3 5 7 9 11Distance from galactic center (kiloparsecs)Figure 5ANGULAR MOMENTUM, STAR FORMATION,AND CAS DENSITYThe rate of change of angular velocity (y axis) withdistance from the galactic center is shown in (a). (Distanceis measured in kiloparsecs; 1 parsec equals 3.26light years.) There is an inverse relation shown betweenthe peaks and troughs of angular velocity in (a)and the areas of greater and lesser star formation shownin (b). The histogram in (b) shows the radial distributionof gas (solid line) together with a histogram ofthe radial distribution of the ionized hydrogen, till,regions (hatched area) for the Milky Way. These fillregions are proportional to the stellar formation rate.Source: Adapted from Luis Carrasco, et al.can be modeled as a Gaussian conical function can reproduceitself and develop further. 6The model for this is a self-similar spiral upon a cone(Figure 7). One complete rotation of such a spiral determinesthe boundaries of a planetary orbit, and thesebounding circles can be orthogonally projected onto a planeto produce an ellipse, whose major focus lies at the vertexof the generating cone. The net work accomplished by theuniverse in creating the planet can be measured as thediscrepancy between the arithmetical and geometrical meanof the bounding circles. These give the semimajor and semiminoraxes of the elliptical orbit. They also indicate theexponentially increasing rate of growth of the spiral, sincein half the time of a complete rotation the spiral has onlygrown to its geometric mean, leaving the major amount ofnet work to be created in the second half of its rotation.In the process of creating a given planet, the universeaccomplishes net work upon itself. This is preserved in theform of the planet's elliptical rather than circular orbit. Theellipse must be seen as a projection of the original spiralaction upon the plane of the ecliptic, which conserves thataction in the form of repeated action. The orbiting planetexists in a force-free configuration. Gravitational force, suchas Newton described, occurs only when an object gets outof orbit, as is the case when it is lifted above the Earth,without orbiting around it. The tendency of plasmas to organizethemselves in such force-free structures is not limitedto astronomical bodies. As Bostick has shown, energydenseplasmas tend to organize themselves in force-freestructures. For example, in experiments he has conducted48 FUSION November-December 1984

Elliptical orbit of aplanet, produced by theboundary circles that defineone full rotation of the spiralThe geometric meanis the height of thespiral after making ahalf- rotation. Thearithmetic mean is themidpoint of the verticaldistance traversed bythe total action.at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, usinga plasma-focus machine, he has found that the vortices thedevice produces align themselves in a force-free Beltramiflow, in which the electric, magnetic, and velocity fields alltravel in the same direction.Kepler's LawsKepler's laws of planetary motion are usefully stated interms of angular momentum. He viewed the planetary orbitsas the product of two different actions occurring simultaneously.According to Kepler, the spinning Sun carriesthe planets around it in a series of circular orbits thatare deformed into ellipses because the Sun alternately repelsand attracts the planets, as a magnet would. He assumesthat while the planets have both magnetic north andsouth poles on their surface, that the Sun has only onesurface polarity, with the other pole at its center.As Cottfried Leibniz showed in a spirited attack he wroteto refute Newton's Principles of Nature, these particularassumptions about the difference between the "magnetic"action of the Sun and of the planets are unnecessary. Leibnizused the discovery by Christiaan Huyghens that thecentrifugal force produced by rotational motion wouldcombine with a vortical magnetic field. The combined actionof both would account for variation of the orbitingplanet's radial distance from the Sun, which determines itsorbit as that of an ellipse.Key to Leibniz's approach was the insistence that gravitycould be understood only as an impulsion produced byvortical action of the etherial medium in which the planetswere situated. As Leibniz said, attacking Newton for occultism,no other physical hypothesis could account for thefact that the planets maintain their orbit, despite what hecalled their tendency to break out of orbit in a tangentialdirection. Leibniz insisted that even taken at its own value,Newton's theory of gravity could not account for the simplefact that the planets all travel in the same direction, sincefor him their initial velocity is arbitrary.Kepler actually discovered his so-called Second Law, thelaw of conservation of angular momentum, before he de-Figure 7A NEGENTROPIC PRINCIPLE OF ACTIONFOR THE UNIVERSEThe model for a universe that can reproduce itself anddevelop further is a self-similar spiral on a cone (a).One complete rotation of this spiral determines theboundaries of an elliptical planetary orbit. When orthogonallyprojected onto a plane, the ellipse producedby these bounding circles produces anotherellipse, whose major focus, the Sun, lies at the vertexof the generating cone (b). The net work accomplishedby the universe in creating this planet can bemeasured as the discrepancy between the arithmeticand geometric means of the bounding circles, whichgive the semimajor (AS and semiminor (B) axes of theelliptical orbit (c).termined that the orbits of the planets were elliptical, hisso-called First Law. The Second Law states that if no externalforce is brought to bear, a system will conserve its angularmomentum. In such a system, as a planet approaches moreclosely to the Sun it will speed up; conversely, its orbitalvelocity will be reduced as it recedes from the Sun. This isan inverse variation of orbital velocity and radius, and aninverse square relationship between the angular frequencyand radial distance. This being the case, the radius of aplanet will always sweep out an equal area of the orbitalellipse, in an equal amount of time.Kepler's Third Law can be derived by taking the ratio ofthe area of the ellipse swept out by an imaginary radiusconnecting the planet to the Sun, and one-half of its angularmomentum. This will give the period of its planetary "year."Now it is only necessary to note that the semilatus rectum(the radius perpendicular to the major axis) of the orbit isequal to the square of the angular momentum multipliedby a constant mass factor. Substituting the ratio of the squareof the semiminor axis to the semimajor axis, the usual formularesults. The angular momentums of the differentplanets will be related as the square root of their semilatusrecti, respectively.Kepler was concerned in his earliest work, reported inSecrets of the Universe, to account for why certain orbitswere preferred over others. In the course of his life heNovember-December 1984 FUSION 49

PlanetMercuryVenusEarthMarsJupiterSaturnUranusNeptunePlutoRatio of Angular Velocityof Perihelion to Aphelion(kilometers per second)38.824 58.92134.78 35.25629.278 30.27221.964 26.49012.435 13.79.128 10.1776.4902 7.11615.3833 5.47323.6763 6.1024Consonant IntervalMinor thirdAlmost the same noteAlmost the same noteFifthMinor thirdMajor thirdMinor thirdAlmost the same noteDevil's intervalTable 2KEPLER'S HARMONY OF THE PLANETSKepler found that the ratio of the angular velocity of aplanet at its nearest point to the Sun (perihelion) tothe angular velocity at its farthest point from the Sun(aphelion) is consonant. Shown here are these ratiosfor each planet and the harmonious intervals theysound.offered two complementary hypotheses. The first relatedthe orbits by supposing them to be circles on spheres thatenclosed the five regular Platonic solids, beginning withthe cube, which separated Saturn and Jupiter, and thenembedding the other planets in a tetrahedron, dodecahedron,icosahedron, and octahedron, respectively (Figure 8).The results he achieved for the orbital distances from theSun are remarkably accurate to this day.At the close of his life, Kepler introduced a second hypothesisthat accounted for the eccentricity of the ellipticalorbits according to the harmonic relationship between theangular velocities of the planets at their nearest and farthestdistance from the Sun—at perihelion and aphelion. Hecompared the extreme angular velocities of a given planetwith the converging and diverging extreme velocities ofneighboring planets (that is, one at aphelion with the otherat perihelion). He found that these velocities could be treatedas notes of a scale—and indeed were related as scalesteps in a predominantly minor key (Table 2). This relation-ship is borne out by the later discovery of the planets Neptuneand Uranus. The one exception to this rule, discoveredby Gauss's collaborator Johan Wilhelm Andreas Pfaff,ironically confirms it; the four largest asteroids not only donot have their extreme velocities within one scale, but alsoare totally discordant—making the so-called devil's intervalof an augmented fourth. Thus, the orbit between Mars andJupiter is confirmed to be an unstable orbit.In this aspect of his work, Kepler can be best likened toLeonardo da Vinci, whose scientific discoveries were criticalto the scientific renaissance that created the industrialrevolution. Da Vinci discovered that all living forms developedmorphologically according to a golden mean ratio.Kepler looked to the same principle in searching for a relationshipbetween the embedded solids and a harmonicprinciple of music. It is this aspect of his work that must becarried forward, in the direction outlined by LaRouche andTennenbaum, if we are to go further in our search to discoverhow the universe is created.Carol White is the editor-in-chief ofFusion magazine.Notes1. See, for example, I. Carrasco, M. Roth, and A. Serrano, "Density Scaling olthe Angular Momentum Versus Mass Universal Relationship," Astron. andAstrophys., Vol. 106, page 89 (1982).2. LM. Ozemoy, Astron. Tsirk.. Nos. 405, 407.422 (1967).3. R.P. Kraft, in Spectroscopic Astrophysics, ed. G. Herbig (Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1970), p. 385.4. P. Brosche, Astrophys. Space Sci., Vol. 51, page 401 (1977).5. Winston Bostick, Phys. Rev., Vol. 104, page 292 (1956); Vol. 106, page 404(1957); "Plasmoids," Sci. Amer., Vol. 197, page 81 (Oct. 1957); Rev. Mod.Phys., Vol. 30, No. 3, page 1090 (1958).6. LaRouche discusses the concepts of work and energy in "Why I Must AttackAlbert Einstein," Fusion, July-Aug. 1984, p. 41. Tennenbaum discusses theseideas in "How Man Transforms the Laws of the Universe," Fusion, May-June1984, p. 19.50 FUSION November-December 1984

FoodIrradiationA TechnologyReady for aProduction Boomby Marjorie Mazel HechtThere is a cheap and efficient way toexpand the world's food supply—-foodirradiation. Yet the implementation ofthis beneficial technology has beenstalled by the same Malthusian lobbythat has blocked the development ofcivilian nuclear power worldwide.low dose irradiation could save thd^^Hbn tons of grainper year that never reach the const^^^E:ause of insectinfestation and spoilage—enough fl9 0 million peoplefor a year. Here, grain is beinS^^Btpnto barges inFISH THAT STAYS FRESH in the refrigerator for two orthree weeks, strawberries that don't go bad, potatoes thatdon't sprout, and flour that doesn't get mealy: This was thepromise of food irradiation intf\e Atoms for Peace days ofthe 1950s, and 30 years of extensive testing have proved thetechnology to live up to every bit of the spectacular expectations.Irradiation eliminates insect infestation, retardsspoilage, prolongs shelf life, ensures purity, and permitsshipping and storage of meats without refrigeration—all atrelatively low cost.Furthermore, food processed with gamma irradiation orX-rays from an electron beam accelerator is perfectly safe,tastes good, and is as wholesome as it is when fresh. Forthese reasons, irradiated food (including dinners of beef,pork, smoked turkey, and corned beef) was selected by theU.S. National Aeronautics and Space Agency as the mosttasty, pure, and convenient way to feed astronauts in flight.Perhaps most incredible, the technology of food irradiationbrings the promise of nearly doubling the food availablefor consumption in some parts of the world, not byproducing more food, but by ensuring that current foodsupplies are not lost to insects, rodents, or fungi. At present,an estimated 50 to 60 percent of the food shipped to or

produced in much of the developing sector never reachesthe intended consumer because of insect infestation andspoilage. In terms of grain alone, the amount lost to insects,rats, and fungi yearly is 33 million tons—the equivalent ofthe agricultural production of 12 million acres of land, orenough to feed the U.S. population for a year! The U.S.National Academy of Sciences estimated that by 1985, foodlosses would total at least 107 million tons per year at a valueof $11.5 billion.Food irradiation is also cheap, when compared to presentmethods of food preservation, like canning and chemicaltreatment. Initial cost estimates put the cost as low as onethirdthat of conventional methods.A Proven TechnologyThe technology of food irradiation is not new, althoughit has not yet been commercialized in the United States. Along-awaited pending change in the U.S. Food and DrugAdministration regulations, however, will open the door tocommercialization and should spur further use of food irradiationworldwide.Scientists began investigating the usefulness of nuclearirradiation during World War II, and it has undergone nearly40 years of rigorous testing for safety and wholesomeness,coming out with a clean bill of health. As the U.S.Atomic Energy Agency put it in 1970, food irradiation hasbeen "more thoroughly tested than any other method offood preservation."Given these outstanding benefits, the obvious questionis: What has prevented this technology from being commercializedin the United States, the country that led theworld in civilian nuclear development?The answer is one that even veterans in the nuclear technologyfield puzzle over. In the early 1950s, in the spirit ofPresident Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace program, theUnited States was gearing up to commercialize food irradiationunder joint government and private management,at first for use by the U.S. Army to produce food for thetroops that would not require refrigeration. But just as constructionwas confirmed for what the Department of Defensecalled "the first and most comprehensive pilot production-sizefood radiation facility in the world," in Stockton,Calif., the U.S. Congress killed the emerging technologyoutright by classifying irradiation as a "food additive,"instead of a process. The 1958 Food Additives Amendmentto the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act classified as a foodadditive "any substance and any source of radiation intendedfor use in producing, manufacturing, packing, processing,preparing, treating, packaging, transporting, or holdingfood."This classification effectively stopped commercializationof food irradiation, putting those interested in promotingHow It WorksFood irradiation uses the ionizingradiation (or ionizing energy) from adecaying radionuclide such as cobalt-60orcesium-137as it's radiation source.X-rays and electron beams can also beused as the source of radiation.The very short wavelength gammarays penetrate inside solid particles andkill microorganisms by breaking downthe cell walls or destroying the metabolicpathways of the organism, so thatthe cell dies. At higher doses, all microorganismsare killed, sterilizing theprocessed food.There is no radioactivity induced inthe processed food. The chemical reactioncaused by the gamma rays doesnot involve the atomic nuclei of thefood, and therefore the atomic structureof the molecules is not changed.Of course, some natural radiation,called background radiation, is presentin all foods, but irradiation processingdoes not add to this.One of the bugaboos of food irradiationhas been the claim that gammarays would change the chemical structureof the food, producing unique radiolyticproducts (chemicals) that mightprove harmful. All the years of testing,however, have determined that of theradiolytic products produced, 90 percentare the same as those in nonirradiatedfood. The remaining 10 percentare chemically similar to natural foodcomponents and constitute only 3 partsper million of the processed food.The conclusion of the FDA is that thedifference between irradiated andnonirradiated foods is "so small as tomake the foods indistinguishable inrespect to safety."Gamma irradiation is a "cold" process;that is, it produces no significanttemperature increase in the food. Thismakes it particularly useful for fumigatingspices, because it does not driveoff the volatile substances that givespices their characteristic flavor andaroma. Irradiation also does not damagethe nutritional quality of the food.In fact, in radiation sterilization, thelow temperature allows meats to retainmore of thei r nutrients than do theother methods of preservation, suchas canning.The penetration capability of thegamma irradiation permits the processingof food that is already packagedand sealed, thus ensuring that nonew contamination takes place in thepacking process. Packaging materialshave been developed and approved bythe FDA for use in food irradiation.Irradiation FacilitiesIrradiation facilities for food or medicalsupplies are not elaborate: Thereis the radiation source with its shielding,an automatic conveyor system thattransports the produce to and from thesource, various control systems tomanage the processing at the appropriaterate, and storage facilities.In a typical facility, the cobalt-60 isembedded in pencil-thin rods, whichThe irradiated sample18 months later isas good as new.52IRRADIATED CONTROL • £

the technology in the position of applying for clearance tothe FDA product by product, with extensive testing to provesafety and wholesomeness. According to one authority,this required spending at least $250,000 for each item toconduct three years of tests in which the three to five generationsof animals eat the particular food under considerationfor 30 to 40 percent of their daily diet. The FDA procedureresulted in an enormous amount of excellent re^search on all aspects of food irradiation; but in 26 years, theonly products that the United States has permitted to beirradiated are potatoes to prevent sprouting, grain to preventinfestation, and, most recently (July 1983), spices. Petitionsto permit irradiation of many other foods were turneddown by the FDA, despite extensive government and industrytesting that showed safety and wholesomeness.What prompted this strange amendment in 1958? Onelong-time researcher blames actress Gloria Swanson, a foodfaddist and the )ane Fonda of her day, who lobbied stronglyfor eliminating any potentially "cancer-causing" additivesto food.In the years of plentiful energy and booming agriculturalproductivity, there was not a lot of pressure in the UnitedStates to change this situation. However, for the developingsector—countries where often the majority of a postharvestcrop is lost to pests or fungi—the effect of this U.S.slowdown in research and development can be measuredin terms of starvation and death. As A. Sreenivasan, a scientistat the Bhabha Atomic Research Center in Trombay,India, told a 1972 conference on food irradiation in Bombaysponsored by the International Atomic Energy Agency:"Perhaps the greatest negative input that can be singled outfor its adverse impact on food irradiation programs aroundthe world has been the action of the U.S. Food and DrugAdministration in withholding clearance for radiation-sterilizedham and in revoking that given earlier to radiationsterilizedbacon. . . .The action of the U.S. FDA has resultedin a misunderstanding in some quarters over the safetyof irradiation procedures for food preservation as a whole."The U.S. Army ProgramThe pioneer agency in food irradiation research is theU.S. Army, which during World War 11 asked the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology to investigate whether irradiationcould extend the shelf life of foods needed for feedingthe troops abroad. Within five years, MIT had demonstratedthe efficacy of food irradiation, and in 1953, the Army setup a special laboratory center—the Quartermaster CorpsResearch and Development Command in Natick, Mass.,near Boston—to consolidate the government-sponsoredfood irrradiation projects.The history of this Natick lab is a success story in thedevelopment of an advanced technology. Once scientistsare submerged in a well of water thatserves as a shield to protect the personnelfrom the radiation when thesource is not in use. About 10,000 curiesof radiation are contained in eachpencil. The area housing the gammairradiation source is shielded with sixto eight feet of concrete. The productsto be irradiated travel on conveyor beltsto the source, which is automaticallyraised out of the water on cables whenneeded. The dose of radiation receiveddepends on the time of exposureand also the product's distancefrom the source.The capital cost of such a basic unitmay be as much as $2 million, but withthe proper design, the same facilityOne of the plant designs available from Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd.could handle both food products andmedical supplies simultaneously, thusensuring maximum use of the equipment.Ninety percent of the cobalt-60 usedin irradiating medical products andfood is supplied by Atomic Energy ofCanada Limited, a crown corporation,which produces the cobalt-60 as a byproductof its fission reactors. The U.S.Department of Energy is experimentingon a very small scale with cesium-137 as a radiation source, using thewaste products from the nuclear defenseproject. While cobalt-60 has aneffective lifetime of 5.5 years before itmust be replaced, cesium-137 lasts for30 years, and its use in food irradiationwould literally halve the amount of nuclearwaste that the nation has to disposeof.The DOE is now building a transportableirradiation unit, the Trans-Portable Cesium-137 Irradiator or TPCI,which is expected to test the effectivenessof irradiation in disinfesting cropssuch as citrus fruits right at the harvestsite. Such a facility would also be usefulin developing countries, wherethere is a lack of transportation at theharvest and storage site.November-December 1984 FUSION 53

Radiation Technology president Dr. Martin A. Welt at hisNew Jersey plant. On display are samples of irradiated meat,poultry, and beans that are just as fresh today in their sealedpackages as they were when they were processed severalyears ago.knew in general what the technology could do, they set outto perfect it. As described by Dr. Eugen Wierbicki, a researchleader in the project, the U.S. Army program wasdesigned to determine which conditions—irradiation level,temperature of processed food, packaging, and so on—would produce the most wholesome and tasty products aswell as to test the effect of feeding irradiated food to generationsof animals. Scientists had to be sure, for example,that the irradiation did not cause the formation of any deleteriousradiolytic products in the food being processed,and that there were no genetic changes induced from a dietof irradiated food. They also had to solve aesthetic problems,such as the funny smell that the early experimentswith high dose radiation produced in meats; and they hadto develop the appropriate packaging materials in which toseal the food product before irradiation.Just at the point when the Natick laboratory had withoutquestion advanced the technology of food irradiation tothe commercialization stage—that is, having produced thedata that could objectively meet the stringent specificationsof the U.S. Food and Drug Administration—the U.S. Army,under the Carter administration, disbanded the program.In October 1980, all 56 scientists at the laboratory weredispersed around the country, the irradiation source (cobalt-60)was given to a state university for research use, andthe laboratory was shut down. The ostensible reason givenwas that the Army should no longer be involved in somethingthat was ready for commercialization. However, thisdeliberate destruction of a successful U.S. research teamon the verge of realizing the fruits of 30 years' labor is avivid example of how food irradiation has been sabotagedto prevent the technology from implementing its most importantpromise: the elimination of hunger and starvationin the world simply by preventing food loss to insects andspoilage.Stuart K. LewisToday only one of the Natick scientists is still working onfood irradiation, under the aegis of the U.S. Department ofAgriculture, which took administrative control of the Natickproject.Taking the Technology Off the ShelfThe U.S. Food and Drug Administration in March 1981published an advanced notice of its proposed change inregulations for the approval of irradiated foods. Althougha very small step—allowing foods processed with up to 100kilorads to be commercially marketed with no further testing—itwas not until Feb. 14, 1984 that the proposal wasgiven a preliminary green light by the secretary of Healthand Human Services, Margaret Heckler, whose agency hadbeen reviewing the proposed chartge for three years. Thepublic was given 90 days to comment on the proposed newregulations, and the FDA is expected in early 1985 to issuethe final version of the new rules, which will then be law.Once law, the new regulations will open the door forcommercialization of food irradiation in the United States,although the proposed allowable dosage—100 kilorads—isso low that the full range of benefits of the technology willstill be prohibited. Also, since profitability depends uponvolume with food irradiation facilities, the proposed 100kilorad limit of the FDA will restrict commercial growth, byrestricting the range of products that can be processed.This 100 kilorad level of radiation (a rad is a measurementof radiation energy absorbed) is sufficient to inhibit sproutingin onions and potatoes; to eliminate parasites and insectsin meat (such as trichina in pork), grains, and soft54 FUSION November-December 1984

fruits; and to delay ripening of perishable foods. But it isfar lower than the 1980 regulations set by the Joint ExpertCommittee on Food Irradiation, an international projectinvolving 25 countries, sponsored by the Food and AgricultureOrganization, the World Health Organization, and theInternational Atomic Energy Agency. This committee establishedthat any food irradiated to a dose of up to 1,000kilorads (1 megarad) was toxicologically safe for humanconsumption. Ayear later, in 1981, the Codex AlimentariusCommission of FAO and WHO supplemented this with alist of recommended international standards for individualirradiated foods. "All the toxicological studies carried outon a large number of irradiated foods, from almost everytype of food commodity, have produced no evidence ofadverse effects as a result of irradiation," WHO concluded.The three-year review of the FDA regulations within theHealth and Human Services agency has centered on thequestion of labeling: Should irradiated foods bear the label"irradiated"? The agency concluded that this was not necessary,except for bulk shipments (those not yet packagedfor individual sale) so that the product would not be irradiatedagain in processing it for sale. Some countries, includingthe Netherlands and South Africa, have adopted a smallsymbol to label irradiated products. Many experts feel thatsince the process is so safe, so thoroughly tested, and leavesabsolutely no radiation in the product, such labeling is unnecessaryand would simply provide a target for the antinuclearenvironmentalists.(The flavor of such environmentalist opposition can beseen in the remarks of the director of the energy project ofthe Ralph-Nader-connected antinuclear group Critical Mass,who told the author of a May 1983 Baltimore Sun feature onfood irradiation: "We haven't had time yet to fully researchthe issue of irradiated food, but I have an instinctive negativereaction. . . .We oppose on principle the commercializationof nuclear material—whether it's Three Mile Islandor smoke detectors. And I basically see this as a way offurther legitimizing the weapons business.")Commercialization: How Soon?There are a handful of U.S. private firms ready to go withcommercialization of food irradiation, including RadiationTechnology, Inc. and Isomedix in New Jersey and InternationalNutronics in California.Dr. Martin A. Welt, president of Radiation Technology,Inc. has been the most active advocate of commercializationin the United States for nearly two decades, and it washis petition to the FDA that produced the regulation lastJuly permitting the irradiation of spices. Currently Welt'scompany operates three plants in the United States to irradiatefood for export, including poultry, grapes, strawberries,and fish. Welt has just signed a contract with a Hawaiianfirm, for the radiation processing of tropical fruit, such asmangoes and papayas, which must be fumigated before itcan be exported. And Welt's company has also just signeda licensing agreement with the Japanese engineering firm,Toyo Engineering Corporation, to expand Radiation Technology'spatented multipurpose irradiator system in the FarEast and Southeast Asia. The international market, specificallythe Pacific Basin and Latin America, is also where InternationalNutronics sees its future. This firm just completeda pilot project plant in Irvine, Calif.Once the new FDA regulations finally become law, thesecompanies expect to be on the front line of a long-awaitedrevolution in food processing. One of the immediate U.S.projects will be the use of irradiation on harvested citrusfruits to kill fruit flies and their eggs, now that the pesticideEDB has been banned as a fumigant for this purpose. Thisuse of irradiation, in fact, was specifically mentioned by theEnvironmental Protection Agency as a viable substitute forEDB, although estimates are that it would take at least 18months to build the on-site plants required in Florida andother citrus-growing areas. In early March, Radiation Technologysuccessfully completed a series of radiation processingtests involving packaged grapefruits loaded ontopallets in order to determine the feasibility of using gammaradiation for insect disinfestation. Radiation Technologypresident Welt notes that his plant can process 2 millionpounds of the fruit per day, and has expansion capability.The new FDA regulations should also open up an exportboom, for although many other countries now permit themarketing of irradiated foods, the U.S. go-slow attitude hasbeen responsible for the sluggish development of foodirradiation worldwide. At this point, the total world outputof irradiated food is under 2,000 tons per year, a minisculeamount.Used in 28 CountriesThe rest of the world has not stood still, however, whilethe United States reviewed and researched to death thetechnology of food irradiation. Most countries have workedout their own regulations, many in line with the internationalrecommendations cited above. More than 40 differentfood products have been cleared by 28 countries, withsome countries, such as the Netherlands, approving 20 differentfoods and Japan, a nation that has pioneered in nucleartechnology, irradiating everything from seafood andseaweed to spices. In addition, Canada is aggressively pursuingthe lead in exporting food irradiation technology,having built 60 of the 100 or so facilities now in use worldwidefor food irradiation and supplying 90 percent of theradiation source, cobalt-60, worldwide, including that usedby the American firms to sterilize medical supplies. (About30 percent of all medical supplies are sterilized by this irradiationmethod.)Ironically, unless the United States accelerates commercializationof food irradiation, it may be in a position ofimporting advanced technology in this area from countriesthat have moved forward more rapidly. This was the conclusionof California Congressman George Brown who recentlyvisited nuclear technology facilities in India, a developingsector nation that has pursued high-level researchand implementation to increase its food supply and thewholesomeness of food products.It is in the developing sector—where food spoilage is alife and death question because of lack of refrigeration andother infrastructure—that food irradiation could make acritical, short-term difference in providing food to the starving.In 1972, at the international conference in Bombaycited above, the official recommendations of the confer-November-December 1984 FUSION 55

ence led with the statement: "Developing countries shouldpromptly move forward in introducing this process regardlessof the progress in developed countries where the needfor this new method of food preservation may be less acuteand where the existence of other established alternativetechnologies has made it difficult for the introduction of anew process."Even the U.S. Agency for International Development,which is notorious for its funding of population control andlow-technology projects only, considers food irradiation an"appropriate technology" for the Third World. In a recentinterview, AID official Dr. Robert Morris predicted thatwithin a year the agency would have an active program inthis area. At this point, he said, the technology is beingreviewed at the top level of the agency in terms of its potentialfor treating a wide variety of products. It is definitelymore appropriate than freezing as a preservation measureand much cheaper than canning; much of the cost of cannedfoods for a developing sector—50 to 60 percent—is to purchasethe containers, Morris said.Many developing sector nations have conducted researchprograms, some under the aegis of the InternationalAtomic Energy Agency, on the feasibility of using gammairradiation with specific crops. India, for example, has thoroughlystudied the feasibility of reducing postharvest lossesin onions and potatoes, while Bangladesh has examinedthe use of irradiation in the preservation of dried fish, amajor source of protein in this region. One 1975 study bythe Department of Atomic Energy in Bombay concludedthat with a commercial irradiator operating at 50 percentcapacity for eight months, "high returns on investment maybe expected for the economy as a whole and for potentialentrepreneurs." U.S. advocates of food irradiation expectthat the change in FDA regulations will expedite collaborationwith developing nations in implementing these wellstudiedtechnologies.Another key to how fast this revolution in food productionwill take hold is consumer acceptance. In the UnitedStates, the fact that the FDA has dragged out its change inregulations over the decade of the 1970s means that thepublic today is considerably more fearful and less able toapply scientific standards than it was in the Atoms for Peacedays or even in the days of NASA's Apollo project. Thisprocess of devolution, of course, is deliberately fosteredby the environmentalist groups promoting a postindustrialsociety and the media, and there is every indication thatboth groups will treat food irradiation as just another assaulton their natural environment. The New York Times,for example, in its article reporting on the proposed FDAregulations noted that "Some scientists. . .expressed concernaboutthe proposal, sayingthe long-term safety of foodirradiation had not been demonstrated," and then devotedmore than one-third of the article to the specific commentsof one such scientist, John Cofman. (Gofman's prescriptionsfor safety testing are such that we probably would nothave bathtubs and certainly not automobiles if his judgmenthad prevailed.)Curiously, a representative for the Isomedix companytold this writer that he was not interested in having a pronuclearmagazine advocating food irradiation because thecompany wanted to dissociate itself from the word nuclearto get better consumer acceptance. Specifically, he said hewas working with consumer groups associated with RalphNader and counting on the cooperation of the Naderitesnot to attack the irradiation process.The Immediate FutureThe new FDA regulations, once law, will permit 100 kiloradsof irradiation to process food in the United States. Atthis low dose level, one of the main applications will be tokill insects. This low-level irradiation is able to easily kill anykind of insect in any physiological stage, compared withother disinfestation measures, which do not always eliminateinsect eggs.With a low dose limit of 100 kilorads:• potatoes, onions, and garlic can be irradiated to inhibitsprouting (6 to 15 kilorads);• citrus fruits and tropical fruits can be irradiated to killRadiation Technology, Inc. has plantson Arkansas and North Carolina thatcan process 7 million pounds each perday of fresh poultry. Right: The controlroom of a Radiation Technology processingplant,with the automated conveyorsystem and the entry to thesource area seen through the windows.Left: A technician loading containerswith the food product to be irradiatedonto the conveyor.56 FUSION November-December 1984

all insects and their eggs (20 to 50 kilorads);• grain in storage can bedisinfested (20 to 100 kilorads);• strawberries and blueberries can be treated to inhibitmold and prolong shelf life for one to two weeks; and• bananas, tomatoes, pears, avocados, mangoes, papayas,and other fruits could have their ripening process delayed(25 to 35 kilorads).The new FDA regulations, however, would not apply tomeats, poultry, and fish, which would require a separateFDA regulation. If the FDA grants the same level of irradiation—100kilorads:• fresh fish could have its shelf life extended;• pork could be made free from trichina at just 20 to 30kilorads (the United States now has one of the highest ratesof trichinosis among the advanced sector nations and forthis reason, a number of European nations embargo U.S.pork products); and• ground meat could be decontaminated, prolonging itsshelf life by lowering its bacteria count (specifically, thepseudonoma bacteria that cause ground meat to putrefywhen kept for more than a couple of days are very sensitiveto irradiation).Killing Bacteria and Sterilizing FoodAt the next dose level, 100 to 500 kilorads, radiation canprovide other crucial benefits:At 100 to300 kilorads, many pathogens can be eliminatedfrom meats and poultry. For example, salmonella, accordingto the Interdepartmental Committee on IrradiationPreservation, contaminates as much as half of all chickenand leads to more than a million cases of gastroenteritis peryear. Atomic Energy of Canada Limited reports this figureas much higher, 10 to 15 million people in North Americayearly, and estimates that 250 irradiation facilities couldcompletely eliminate salmonella in poultry at a cost of 2cents per pound.At 200 to 500 kilorads, shelf life of many products can beextended significantly, as can refrigerator storage. Poultry,for example, can stay fresh for up to 25 days. This dose levelcan also reduce the microbial level of food products significantly.And at 500 kilorads, frozen shrimp and frog legs canbe guaranteed free from salmonella.At even higher dose levels, 500 to 1,000 kilorads, spices,condiments, and dehydrated onions can be fumigated efficientlyand with no loss of aroma, since irradiation is a dryprocess. And at 1,000 to 3,000 kilorads, irradiation couldserve as a partial replacement for sodium nitrite in processedmeats.For total sterilization of foods, eliminating all pathogensand viruses, high dose rates of 2.5 to 5 megarads are required.With high dose irradiation and secure packaging,food products including meats can stay fresh without refrigerationindefinitely. This is what the astronauts eat inspace, and this is the way hospital patients who requiregerm-free meals can be fed.The U.S. Army Natick laboratory developed a high doseradiation technique, which first blanches the meat (to preventenzyme deterioration), vacuum packs it, and thenfreezes it and irradiates the packages in the frozen state.Once processed in this way, the meat can be shipped andstored without refrigeration, remaining fresh for years. Accordingto Dr. Eugen Wierbicki, a research leader in theArmy program, these meats were rated tasty in tests by U.S.Army personnel and retained their taste and wholesomenesswhen tested 10 years later.The FDA has not yet approved this high dose irradiationfor sterilization and long-term storage, but a decision isexpected after the results of a mammoth 8-year study bythe U.S. Army and the USDA on irradiation-sterilized chickenare officially reviewed in the near future. To determinewholesomeness, more than 300,000 pounds of sterilizedchicken were fed to various animal species for several generationsover a period of years.As stated by Wierbicki in December 1981, ". . . there isnot a single indication that the irradiated food performedless efficiently than the nonirradiated control or that itcaused any abnormalities in organs, reproduction, andgrowth [of the animals participating in the study].Many of the researchers who have been working for foodirradiation for 30 years, and of course those in the irradiationindustry today, have been anticipating the long-awaitedcommercialization boom since the FDA first announcedits intention of changing the regulations on irradiation inMarch 1981. Their vision is that of the Atoms for Peace years,using the most advanced technology for the benefit of mankind.As the president of Radiation Technology, Inc., Dr. MartinWelt, put it, "The United States can prove to the worldthat it cares about underdeveloped nations and their peoplesby approving radiation preservation of food for Americanconsumers and making use of this same technologyfor low cost and extended shelf life shipments to the ThirdWorld or disaster areas."Marjorie Hecht is the managing editor of Fusion magazine.A follow-up article on commercializing electron-beamfood irradiation—a spinoff of the beam weapon defenseprogram at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory—willappear in a future issue.November-December 1984 FUSION 57

A Preview ofNASA's Manned Space Stationby Marsha FreemanIn just a few years, some of us willhave a new kind of address. We won'tlive in New York or Kansas, or insome other country: We will moveoff the planet Earth and live in smallcities in low-Earth orbit, about 200miles or so away from Earth. For thefirst time, man will be able to makehis home in space.The recent successes of the SpaceShuttle transportation system meanthat we can now embark on a wholenew era of space exploration, spaceutilization, and space colonization.By 1992, the U.S. National Aeronauticsand Space Administration,NASA, is planning to start operationof its first permanently manned spacestation. In that year, we will also becelebrating the 500th anniversary ofColumbus's discovery of America.Right now, NASA is evaluating designsfor the first permanent spacestation.Building a Space StationThe first permanent U.S. spacestation will be transported to spacein the form of separate modules thatare built on Earth. These modules willconsist principally of living quartersand complex instrumentation packages.They will be delivered to low-Earth orbit in the Shuttle cargo bay.Figure 1EARLY SPACE STATION DESIGNSEarly space station designs looked like large spinning wheels or tops (a).Space scientist Krafft Ehricke's early design (b) resembled a paddlewheel.He designed this fueling station satellite to rotate around its hub morethan two times a minute, producing an artificial gravity about one-thirdthat of the Earth. The artist's depiction shows a spaceship being serviced.This 1976 rotating space station (c) is designed to house 10,000 people.The nonrotating shell around the outside of the station shields the stationfrom cosmic rays and solar flares. Such protection is required because thisstation was planned for a high orbit, at least 500 miles high, which is outsidethe protective blanket of the Van Allen radiation belt. The colonists herewould live in houses on the inner surface of the large central sphere, whichis 1 mile in circumference. The sphere rotates to produce gravity comparableto that on Earth.The spaceship drawings are by artist William A. Kocher. They are taken from the book SfaSons in Space byDonald Cox (New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, 1960).58 FUSION November-December 1984

specialize in astronomy, where thescientific instruments would bepointed out toward the heavens. Astronomicalobservatories and industrialplants to manufacture new metalalloys, medicines, crystals, and otherproducts would be disturbed bythe movement of people around thespace station. These facilities couldbe placed on unmanned platformsthat could be serviced by space stationcrews.NASA has been looking at manykinds of space station designs. Engineershave decided that the stationwill not be spinning. They are favoringwhat is called a "power tower"design, which will have the living andworking quarters at one end and thesolar cell arrays to power the stationat the other (Figure 2).The modules at the bottom of thepower tower could be pointed towardEarth, while the module at thetop could house the telescopes andother instruments for away-from-Earth viewing.An International ProjectOver the next year, countries inEurope, as well as Japan and Canadawill decide on how they will workwith NASA to build this mannedspace station. Hopefully, they willdecide to contribute to the spacestation by building modules, such asscientific laboratories like the existingSpacelab. The crews that workand live in the space station willprobably come from many differentnations of the world.The space station will be the firststep toward moving part of humancivilization off planet Earth and intospace, our next frontier. From thespace station, it will be easy to returnto the Moon, and then go on to Mars.Will your address in the year 2000be 200 miles up above the Earth?Figure 3MORE RECENT SPACE STATION DESIGNSThis 1982 space station design by Rockwell International shows severalmodules for living quarters, command and control of the station, experiments,payload storage racks, and solar panels for electrical energy.Nearby (at right) is a small Orbital Transfer Vehicle that can be used togo from the station to other places in space. The vehicle can be mannedor unmanned and can go to high-Earth orbit to fix communications andother satellites.This space station design would be stable in its operation (not rotating).Its various units are clumped together, however, and it does not providefor unmanned platforms to house instruments and experiments away fromthe movement of the astronauts.ViewpointContinued from page 3research by the U.S. Army and the Departmentof Energy that we today cansee food irradiation as a safe substituteto pesticides, a tool for export expansion,and a partial answer to worldhunger. This experience proves thatfederal R&D pays.Infrastructure RequiredIn order to gain widespread commercialapplication, a food irradiationtechnical infrastructure needs to bebuilt. More field testing of the technologyis required. Different types ofradiation sources need to be thoroughlystudied including nuclear byproductslike cobalt-60 and cesium-137, X-rays, and machine-generatedsources of radiation such as electronbeams. Various food commoditiesneed to be studied to see how foodirradiation could be used effectivelyand in a cost-competitive way. Differentdoses under special conditions alsoneed to be researched to determinethe most desirable combination of circumstancesand appropriate economiesof scale.Since cobalt-60 is in short supply,cesium should be developed as an alternativesource. To help facilitate theuse of cesium, my legislation establishesguidelines for leasing cesium andother nuclear by-products to the privatesector, with the government retainingtitle as a profit-making ventureto save tax dollars.Twenty-eight foreign countries arenow using gamma irradiation for foodprotection; and various internationalorganizations have fully endorsed irradiationup to 1 megarad, which is 10times higher than the 100 kilorads proposedby the FDA, as wholesome andsafe. In short, the time is now to getthis technology moving here in theUnited States.Contributions to the FEFare tax deductible!60 FUSION November-December 1984 The Young Scientist

BooksBeams ... But Not X-RaysBeam Weapons: The Next Arms Raceby Jeff HechtNew York: Plenum Press, 1984, $17.95Beam Weapons: The Next Arms Race,by Jeff Hecht, is one of many booksand studies that have appeared in thepast year on the feasibility of directedenergydefense against nuclear-armedmissiles. Most of these studies, suchas that of Kosta Tsipis at the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology, AshtonCarter's report for the CongressionalOffice of Technology Assessment, andthe Brookings Institution's BallisticMissile Defense, are "riddled withtechnical errors," as a recent nationallaboratory review put it. Even Hechtnotes of these studies: "Their analysesare so determinedly pessimistic thatthey can become unrealistic. . . .Theyhave stacked the deck to come out withthe answers they want to hear."In contrast, Hecht is billed as an expertcommunicator for the layman onthe complex technologies involved inlaser and particle beam weapons. Hehas written scores of articles on lasertechnology and related subjects forLaser Focus, High Technology, NewScientist, and Omni magazines andtakes what might be called a mildly probeam-defenseview in his book.In particular, the book is supposedto reveal the true story behind the X-ray laser: "For the first time, supersecretefforts to build X-ray lasers energizedby nuclear bombs are analyzedin depth," the blurb on the coversays.It is precisely in the area of X-ray lasers,however, that Hecht's book is itself"riddled with technical errors."Although he does not repeat the moreblatant errors of the other studies concerningthe X-ray laser, his analysiscontains many critical flaws. Hecht triesto demonstrate, for example, that theproblems of targeting, pointing, andtracking are far more difficult for thenuclear-bomb-pumped X-ray laser thanfor other types of more conventionalbeam weapons. His own data, however,demonstrate the opposite to bethe case: The problems of pointing andtracking for X-ray lasers actually are ordersof magnitude less than for otherbeam weapons.Specifically, X-ray laser pulses destroymissiles within a billionth of asecond, while more conventionallypowered systems such as chemical laserstake from a fraction of a second toseconds. In the first case, the missilewill have moved only a few inches whilebeing lased, whereas in the second itwill have moved miles. Therefore,tracking difficulties are billions of timesless difficult for X-ray laser missile kills.A second example is Hecht's implicationthat the X-ray laser beam wouldbe much narrower and therefore requiremuch greater accuracy in pointing:"The more strongly emitted X rayswill be concentrated into a tightbeam. . . . The narrower the beam, themore likely it is to miss its target," hewrites. In fact, however, the X-ray laserpulse is projected as having muchgreater energy and power than conventionalbeam weapons and willtherefore be able to destroy missileswith much more diffuse beams. Again,the facts demonstrate that pointing X-ray lasers will be orders of magnitudeless difficult.Third, Hecht implies that it would benecessary to abrogate several treaties,such as the one banning space-basedtesting of nuclear weapons, in order toperfect the bomb-powered X-ray laser.Actually, because of the extremelyhigh lethality of the X-ray laser and itssignificantly reduced problems of targetingand tracking, nuclear-bombenergizedlasers tested in "legal" undergroundexplosions will be morethan sufficient for determining the X-ray laser beam parameters.Once you know how the beampropagates over 100 yards, you knowhow it will propagate over thousandsof miles. Nonnuclear components,such as targeting, pointing, and tracking,can be tested "legally" in spacetoday. And since the whole idea of the"pop-up" X-ray laser is to deploy themafter a nuclear missile first strike hasbeen detected, in actual use they wouldbe no more in violation of arms controltreaties than the offensive nuclearwarheads being hurtled through spaceby Soviet ICBMs.Teller's Toy?Permeating Hecht's flawed technicalanalysis of the X-ray laser are twounderlying premises:(1) The near-term prospects for theX-ray laser are just a joke, and the wholeidea is actually the product of a madscientist—"Teller's Toy" and " 'firststrikers' within the Pentagon" are thewords he uses in the book.(2) "If someone does find a wayaround the formidable technical difficulties,a pop-up X-ray laser weaponsystem could be the realization of thenightmares of the harshest critics ofbeam weapons. . . .You don't have tobe a radical critic of the beam-weaponprogram to conclude that the mostcredible role for a pop-up X-ray lasersystem is as part of a first-strike system,"he writes.The truth is actually the opposite:Pop-up X-ray lasers uniquely demonstratethe potential capabilities formaking massive, sneak first strikes militarilyunthinkable and unworkable. Asinadvertently detailed by the calcula-Continued on page 64Books November-December 1984 FUSION 61

Cancer and the Big LieThe Apocaiypticsby Edith EfronNew York: Simon and Schuster, 1984,589 pages, $19.95The subtitle of this remarkable book,"Cancer and the Big Lie," sets out itsmajor theme. Recounting the false allegationsthat synthetic chemicals producedby American industry weredooming hundreds of thousands of usto death by cancers that would not otherwiseoccur, the author attempts toexplain how and why this happened.In 1962, Rachel Carson warned thattechnology could wipe out the entirehuman race by the 1980s. Eight yearslater, a small group at the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology publishedsimilar opinions in "Man's Impacton the Global Environment," a reportthat went directly to the UnitedNations as authoritative, without anypeer review or analysis by competentscientists. In 1972, a computer studyby this same group, commissioned bythe Malthusian Club of Rome, waspublished under the title Limits toGrowth. Although widely criticized as"unscientific nonsense," statementsfrom both MIT studies have been bandiedabout the Earth as gospel truth bythose who relish predictions of globaldisaster.'Apocalyptic Chic'After the popular "radical chic" inthis country, says the author, we havebeen confronted by an "apocalypticchic." Many persons who were formerlysaturated with Marxian eschatologynow "harbor expectations of—or yearnings for—a cataclysmic collapseof American capitalism."A likely explanation for the blind acceptanceof apocalyptic chic, Efron believes,is that most "humanists" areuntrained in science. They readily acceptthat the biosphere is in great peril,even though no data exist to substantiatesuch a claim. "Few of themnoticed the voids, the logical fallacies,and the actual rejection of science thatlay beneath the apocalyptic rhetoric,"she says.Space limited coverage of all facetsof apocalyptic chic in this book, so Efronconcentrated on the topic thatelicits the greatest public anxiety,namely, cancer. Many controversialquestions are considered here:Should all chemicals be consideredguilty until proven innocent? Whatproportion of human cancers arecaused by man-made synthetic chemicals?How carcinogenic are naturalchemicals? Is it possible to prove thatany synthetic or natural substances arenot carcinogenic?Is there a "threshold" level belowwhich exposure to a carcinogen willnot result in cancer development? Is asingle molecule of a carcinogen sufficientto trigger cancer, as some apocaiypticstheorized? How reliable is theAmes test in assessing the potentialcarcinogenicity of either synthetic ornatural chemicals? How reliable areextrapolations from megadosed experimentalrodents to humans exposedto doses thousands of timeslower?How appropriate is the DelaneyClause as a guide for regulatory agenciesconsidering whether to ban or restrictchemicals? Should the thousandsof naturally occurring carcinogensin our environment also be regulatedby the Delaney Clause?Capricious Regulatory AgenciesQuestions such as these are discussedin detail, incriminating regulatoryagencies as biased and capricious,with greater interest in politics andpropaganda than in seeking the truthabout chemicals.OSHA has repeatedly testified thatonly a very small number of chemicalsare carcinogenic (belittling scientists'claims that a great many are capable ofcausing cancer in rodents). Refutingtheir own testimony, however, OSHA's1980 policy statement specified that,"It is important to emphasize that'negative' results in carcinogenicitybioassays simply define a limit beyondwhich carcinogenic activity would havebeen detected" if higher doses hadbeen applied (emphasis added).OSHA also said that an assay that "isnot positive for carcinogenicity is thesame as if the chemical has never beentested for carcinogenicity." They canthus condemn as a threat any chemicalthey wish to attack.'Natural' CarcinogensIn a 1983 Science magazine article,Bruce Ames (who developed the Amestest, which screens substances for mutagenicityon microorganisms, a possiblemarker for carcinogenicity inhigher organisms) pointed out thatmany natural substances are muchmore carcinogenic than man-madechemicals. If the naturally occurringcarcinogens were viewed by regulatoryagencies with the same degree ofconcern as synthetic substances, thepublic would have to be warned thatvery little we breathe, eat, drink, wear,use, or contain can be proven to benoncarcinogenic.Apocaiyptics could ban all man-madeproducts, close all factories, and regulateall industrial and technologicalactivities, says Efron, but the naturalcarcinogens would still be everywhereand could not be avoided or turnedoff. Obviously the no-threshold, single-moleculetheory would never havebeen proposed if the natural carcinogenshad been properly acknowledgedbefore the apocalyptic propagandaconcerning man-made substanceswas exploited!Unfortunately, the author's relianceon many scientists who requested anonymitymay diminish the acceptanceof her book. Such anonymous sourceswere not needed, since many outstandingscientists already had beenpublicly proclaiming those same factsfor decades and were readily quotablesources. Efron failed to give credit tothose authorities, such as GeorgeClaus, Thomas Jukes, Edward Laws,Robert White-Stevens, and many otherswho were leaders in the long fightagainst apocalyptic propaganda.A great many other scientists were,62 FUSION November-December 1984 Books

however, given good treatment in thebook and contributed to the overallcredibility of Ef ron's allegations.Scientific Truth versus DelusionIf this dramatic book receives themedia attention that it deserves, it mayhelp rejuvenate the ancient objectiveof "truth in science." Also, reporters(and politicians) could not so easilymisinform readers, viewers, and listenerswith myths about "cancer epidemics"in the United States.The public has been brainwashedderstands the magnitude of the ideologicaldelusion in which the entirecountry was enmeshed, a few moresophisticated questions will be asked,for example: While the Biologist Statewas concocting a pseudo-science andregulating industry on the basis of afairy tale . . . while it was suffocatinghuman minds with myth . . . wherewere the critical scientists who knewthat this was happening. . .andwherewas the watchdog press?"—Dr. J. Cordon EdwardsA Solid Program for Space ExplorationBound for the Starsby Saul J. Adelman and Benjamin AdelmanEnglewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hail, 1981Steering clear of the twin perils ofscience fiction and mundane reportingof present plans and past accomplishments,Bound for the Stars laysout a clear, scientifically competent,and yet imaginative program for man'sfuture exploration and conquest ofspace.Written by a father-and-son team ofscience writer and astrophysicist, thebook is almost unique in its strongpronuclear bias and its location of thedevelopment of technologies necessaryfor the conquest of space in thecontext of simultaneously developingthose high-energy technologies necessaryfor the industrial developmentof the Earth. In accordance with thisoutlook, the book contains an excellentrefutation of the "L-5" fantasy of fmoving select portions of mankind intosolar-powered Hiltons in space, an antisocialvision that is largely hegemonicamong much of the popular spaceliterature.The book's greatest strength lies in iits correct emphasis on the importanceof propulsion technology, and Inuclear propulsion in particular, to thefuture of space exploration. The authorsexplain the importance of goingbeyond our present chemical rockets,which can gain a maximum specific impulseof 450 seconds of thrust per rpound of fuel, to solid-core nuclear rrockets like the Nerva, which could attain900 seconds; gas-core fission lrockets, which might attain from 2,500to 5,000 seconds; and fusion rockets,into believing that "chemicals" are evil,while "nature" is benign. Efron thinksmost people are now wise enough torealize that those who frightened usconcerning man-made carcinogens,while avoiding all mention of naturalcarcinogens (even though they werewell aware of them), were either seekingto generate more antitechnologyfunding for themselves or were simplyhoping to pit us against our own industrialand economic system.As Efron says, "When the public unwhosespecific impulses can reach upto a theoretical limit of 1 million seconds.They then narrate the suppressedstory of the history of successful developmentof nuclear rockets in theUnited States, and the wrecking of theprogram through budget cuts. "This isnot a scientific failure or an engineeringfailure," they accurately conclude."It is a political failure of the first magnitude."Before these cuts, NASA hadplanned a manned mission to Mars by1981. Now the Soviets are announcingthat they will accomplish this first formankind.Fusion in Space! The authors go on to an inspiring; discussion of how the same fusionbasedtechnologies that will make !represent significant steps toward solutionof the many technological prob-: quick interplanetary travel cheap and I iems that will have to be solved before; routine will also ultimately make possiblethe settlement of solar systems •>the Bussard ramjet can be realized.The book also contains an excellentthroughout the galaxy. They show how i chapter on possible astronomical• a straightforward fusion rocket, such i techniques that could be used in the• as that outlined in the British Interplanetarynear future to detect other solar sys-Society's Project Daedalus, , terns, and a fair chapter (although of; which might attain a maximum velocitysomewhat inadequate detail) aboutof 12 percent of the speed of light, possible techniques that might be usedis marginally applicable for such a task. to transform other planets within ourR.W. Bussard's interstellar ramjet, solar system, especially Mars, intohowever, which gathers its fusion fuel I habitable planets.; from interstellar hydrogen using large > The writing in Bound for the Stars ismagnetic fields and thus can attain ve- clear enough to be understandable by» locities close to that of light, may i a bright high school student, while the, someday give man a practical solution l information is detailed enough to makefor interstellar flight in reasonable time ; the book valuable and interesting toscales. The Adelmans also discuss a \ those with extensive scientific educanumberof ideas, such as the proposal I tion. Serious researchers will find esbyDaniel Whitmire to use either the > pecially valuable the extensive list ofneon-sodium or the carbon-nitrogen- sources and technical paper referi) oxygen cycle to catalyze the hydrogenences that follows each chapter., fusion reactions in the ramjet, that t—Robert ZubrinBooksNovember-December 1984FUSION63

Books for Young ScientistsOn the Path of Venus: Discovering theStructure of Our Solar System by LloydMotz, and Experiments in Space Scienceby Peter Greenleaf are both recommendedfor inquiring minds at the sevenththrough tenth grade level. Others,including especially scienceteachers, can learn something of pedagogyfrom these books.On the Path of Venus (New York:Pantheon, 1977, $7.95 hardcover) tracesthe process of discovery of the solarsystem's order, from Aristarchus toNewton. How did Aristarchus figureout that the Earth orbits the Sun? Motzdemonstrates in detail what observationslead to this result and tells howthis great achievement was "forgotten"until Copernicus.Motz's assertion that Newton andEinstein are the two greatest scientistsin history is far from the truth; yet hisbook discloses the dialogue a greatmind has to carry on with its predecessors,and with the evidence, to reach agreat advance.Experiments in Space Science (NewYork: Arco Publishing, 1984, $4.95 paperback)is not a beautiful book to lookat, but its contents are outstanding.Since astronomy is the foundation ofspace science, it is appropriate that thisbook is chiefly astronomy. How tobuild a transit to find your latitude;make a sky clock to tell time from thestars; locate and trace the ecliptic inspring and winter; find the perigee andapogee distances of the Moon fromthe Earth; plot the orbits of the planets;distinguish sidereal from solar time;gather and separate cosmic dust fromEarth dust; make a spectroscope; makea reflecting telescope—this is a sampleof the contents.Wonders of the Sky—Observing Rainbows,Comets, Eclipses, the Stars, andOther Phenomena by Fred Schaaf (NewYork: Dover Publications, 1983, $6.95paperback), although not billed as abook for young people, is so writtenthat a serious ninth grader could readit. The book is devoted to naked-eyeastronomy, and its distinctive featureis poetic thinking, which is the properpoint of departure in science.In his preface Schaaf observes:"What children at first have, and adultslargely lose, is the sense of wonder.But is it inevitable that gaining moreexperience of the world should resultin lossofwonder? Not always. If apersonresists the tyranny of thinking thatall his factual knowledge and classificationsare justifiably fixed and final,... he can retain some of that nativewonder and bring it to his experienceof a world far more complex and richthan that of any child."Wonders of the Sky is an observer'sBeams ... But Not X-RaysContinued from page 61tions of Ashton Carter in his report forthe Office of Technology Assessment,just one submarine with 10 or more X-ray lasers to pop up could negate a fullsimultaneous Soviet launch of 1,000missiles. And as the recent governmentrevelations made in counteringthe Office of Technology Assessmentreport by Ashton Carter emphasize, thebomb-pumped X-ray laser has a tremendouspotential for making missiledefense workable, boost-phase interceptin particular.It is important to note in this contextthat it is not necessary to be capable ofkilling all Soviet missiles launched in asneak first-strike salvo. Even a 60 percentkill capability, accomplished at asmall cost, would be more than sufficientto militarily deter any such attack.Sneak first strikes, therefore,would no longer be a rational optionfor Soviet military planners.Hecht, however, then takes theseobjections further: He suggests thatthe X-ray laser never be developed bythe United States. ."..I cannot see adequatereasons for a crash-priority,multibillion dollar program," he says.Hecht also downplays "reports" thatthe Soviet Union has a far larger andmore advanced beam-weapon defenseprogram underway:"The Soviet Union historically tendstoward making risky demonstrationsearly in a development program. . . .The Soviet Union managed a first fewspectacular shots, most notably Sputnik,but was eventually overtaken byguide that will teach the beginner agreat deal.Astronomy Handbook by James Muirden(New York: Arco Publishing, 1982,$8.95, hardcover) is suitable for aneighth grader on up. The book's brilliantand well-captioned color photosand diagrams literally create in theviewer an urge to read the book. Theyoung person who wants to learn aboutastronomy could work his or her waythrough this book quickly—and be wellprepared for more challenging materials.—DavidCherrythe United States. In keeping with thispattern, the Soviet Union might be thefirst to demonstrate (or try to demonstrate)a laser weapon, but that demonstrationmight not indicate a commandinglead," he writes.Who Is Jeff Hecht?Once you realize that the technicalcover for these observations about theX-ray laser is riddled with errors, it thenbecomes obvious that Hecht must havesome other motivation for his views.Clearly, his purpose is not to supportreal beam-weapon missile defenses orgive people an accurate assessment ofthe potential of the X-ray laser.Perhaps some light may be shed onHecht's selective reporting if we lookat one of the more revealing examplesof Soviet espionage that he briefly discusses:"High-energy laser mirrors are highon the Pentagon's list of strategicallyimportant technologies. Thus, governmentofficials became very upsetwhen a metal mirror able to withstandhigh laser powers found its way fromSpawr Optical Research Inc., a smallcompany in Corona, California, to theSoviet Union, through the company'sWest German sales representative.. . . Both Spawr personally and thecompany were convicted of violatingexport regulations."A most interesting case history—butthe author neglects to point out thatSpawr at the time was publisher of LaserFocus magazine while Hecht was themanaging editor.—Charles B. Stevens64 FUSION November-December 1984

The world will have widespreadfusion power by the year 2000.The only question is whether it will bedelivered by an ICBM or a tokamak.It's up to you!With your help, the FusionEnergy Foundation can• put Fusion magazine into thehands of 200,000 progrowthAmericans• educate America on thebenefits—economic, military,and scientific—of developingdirected energy beamtechnologies• send speakers nationwide todebate nuclear freeze advocateson campuses and at communitymeetings• promote science andtechnology—specifically thedevelopment of nuclear fusionand fission and space exploration—asthe most importanttools for continuing humanprogress.Join the Fusion EnergyFoundation and give giftsubscriptions to Fusion magazine.Yes I want to support the FusionEnergy Foundation.Enclosed is:• Sustaining membership $250• Individual membership $75• Corporate membership $1,000(All memberships include 6 issues ofFusion)• 1-year subscription to Fusion $20(6 issues)• 2-year subscription to Fusion $38(12 issues)Make checks payable to Fusion EnergyFoundation, Box 1438, Radio CityStation, New York, N.Y. 10101

In This IssueASTRONOMY: THE FOUNDATIONOF SCIENTIFIC METHODAstrology and magic, age-old weaponsin the war against science andreason, are today becoming hegemonicin the minds of much of thepopulation. Jonathan Tennenbaumdiscusses why astronomy is the foundationof scientific method and whyit must be revived if we are to defeatthe forces of unreason. To illustratethe basics of astronomical science,he presents the fascinating accountof a 40,000-year-old astronomer andhis civilization and how they determinedthe laws of the universe.Bringing this process of astronomicalknowledge up-to-date, CarolWhite discusses the current work ofthe Mexican astronomer Luis Carrasco.Carrasco has extended themethod of Kepler to relate the massand spin of astronomical objects over40 orders of magnitude, thereby accountingfor the formation of all observedastronomical structures in theuniverse.EVERYTHING ANYONE NEEDSTO KNOW ABOUT WHY BEAMDEFENSE WORKSU.S. scientists in the national laboratorieshave recently demonstratedthe near-term potential of the wholerange of antiballistic missile defensecapabilities—from Earth-basing orlow-Earth orbit and "pop-up" deployment,to geosynchronous orbit22,000 miles up and beyond. In short,the U.S. labs are doing what the beamdefense critics say is "impossible."FEF executive director Paul Gallagherdescribes these advances indetail and refutes the anti-beam-defensearguments of the self-described"Shadow Cabinet" at MIT andHarvard.FOOD IRRADIATIONTECHNOLOGY:LET'S TAKE IT OFF THE SHELFLow-dose irradiation could save the33 million tons of grain per year thatnever reaches the consumer becauseof insect infestation and spoilage—enough to feed 230 million peoplefor a year. Irradiation retards spoilage,prolongs shelf life, eliminates insectinfestation, kills microorganismslike trichina in pork, and ensurespurity.As Marjorie Mazel Hecht documents,after 40 years of rigorous testingfor safety and wholesomeness,food irradiation has come out with aclean bill of health. It's time for theUnited States to stop stalling andcommercialize this technology. Thenwe can get on with the job of feedingthe world efficiently.Los Alamos National LaboratoryThe krypton fluoride laser, now being developed at Los Alamos NationalLaboratory, has about the shortest wavelength with which opticaltransmission can be achieved, and it will be capable of killingmissiles within the atmosphere and in their boost phase. Shown hereare the red magnets that confine the electrons that energize kryptonfluoride gas. The grid is a 32-piece glass mosaic through which laserlight is delivered.Courtesy of Jacek Sivinski'CH2M HillFood irradiation can save fish, a major source of protein in Asia, fromspoilage. Shown here are bags of dried fish in Bangladesh. The fishirradiated with 100 kilorads (left) remains insect-free, while nonirradiatedfish (center and right) has been eaten away by insects.