Heinlein, Robert A – Expanded Universe

1) Jonathan V. Post reports (OMNI, May ’79) that scientists in Geneva have

announced containment of a beam of antiprotons in a circular storage ring for 85

hours. Further deponent sayeth not as today (Nov. ’79) I have not yet traced down

details. The total mass could not have been large (Geneva is still on the map) as

the storage method used is not suited to large masses-or, as in this case, a massive

sum total of very small masses.

But I am astonished at any containment even though with dead seriousness I

predicted it in the section just above. I did not expect it in the near future but

now I learn it happened at least 10 months ago, only 4 years after I wrote the above

article.

Too frighteningly soon! A very small (anti) mass to be sure-but when Dr.

Lise Meitner wrote the equations that implicitly predicted the A-bomb, there was not

enough purified U-235 anywhere to cause a gnat’s eye to water.

How soon will we face a LARGE mass-say about an ounce-planted in Manhattan

by someone who doesn’t like us very well? If he releases the magnetic container by

an alarm-clock timer or nine other simple make-it-inyour-own-kitchen devices, he can

be in Singapore when it goes off Or in Trenton if he enjoys watching his own little

practical jokes-he won’t worry about witnesses; they will be dead.

Too big? Too cumbersome? Too expensive? I don’t know-and neither does anyone

else today. I am not proposing sneaking a CERN particle accelerator past Hoboken

customs. . . but note that the first reacting atomic pile (University of Chicago)

was massive-but it was not flown to Hiroshima. The bomb that did go was called “Fat

Boy” for good reason. Now we can fire them from

8-inch guns. As for the “suitcase” bomb-change that to a large briefcase; all the

other essentials can be bought off the shelf for cash in any medium-large city, no

questions asked as they are commonplace items.

Antimatter, containment and all, might turn out to be even smaller, lighter,

simpler.

2) That variable constant: Dr. Van Flandern is still plugging away at Dr.

Dirac’s 1937 prediction about the “Constant” of Gravitation. The latest figures I

have seen show (by his measurements) that the “Constant” is decreasing by 3.6 ± 1.8

parts in 1011 years, a figure surprisingly close to Dirac’s 1937 prediction (5.6) in

view of the extreme difficulty of making the measurements and of excluding

extraneous variables. But all this is based on a universe 18-20 billion years old

since the “big bang”- an assumption on current best data but still an assumption. If

the universe is actually materially older than that (there are reasons to think so,

and all the revisions since Abbé LemaItre first formulated the theory have all been

upward, never downward), then Dirac’s prediction may turn out to be right on the

nose of observed data to their limit of accuracy.

The data above are from an article by Dr. Herbert

Friedman of Naval Research Laboratory. Our Baker

Street Irregulars have just established a pipeline to Dr.

Van Flandern; if major new data become available before

this book is closed for press, I will add a line to this.

3) In Where To see prediction number fourteen, page

341: At the Naval Academy I slept my way through the course in physics; nothing had

changed since I had covered the same ground in high school. “Little did I dream”

that a young man at Cambridge, less than five years older than I, was at that very

moment turning the world upside down. This quiet, polite, soft-spoken gentleman was

going to turn out to be the enfant terrible of physics. This has been the stormiest

century in natural philosophy of all history and the storms are not over. We would

not today have over 200 We would not today have over 200 “elementary” particles (an

open scandal) if Paul Dirac had not simplified the relation of

spin and magnetism in an electron into one equation over fifty years ago, then shown

that the equation implied antimatter.

Many thousands of man-hours, many millions of dollars have been spent since

then exploring the byways opened up by this one equation. And the end is not yet.