PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet, 078/2000 - 21 July 2000
------------------------------
Due to a family holiday in the south of France, the next issue of
CCNet will be posted in the second or third week of August.
Wishing you all a restful and refreshing summer break!
Benny J Peiser
CCNet Moderator
--------------------------------
"About 251 million years ago,
something killed 90% of all life in
the oceans and 70% of vertebrates on
land. It was the largest mass
extinction in the history of Earth.
Although scientists don't yet
know the cause, a report in the 21 July
issue of Science indicates
that it was a single cataclysmic event
rather than a series of
catastrophes."
--
John S. MacNeil, inScight, 20 July 2000
"The example of Nazi Germany shows
that 'politically responsible'
science endowed with power can have
disastrous consequences for
innocent people and for science itself.
The call for politically
responsible science, frequently heard
today, cannot solve the
problem of how scientists can prevent
science from serving
immoral, inhuman ends."
-- Ute Deichmann, Institute
for Genetics Cologne, 21 July 2000
(1) PERMIAN/TRIASSIC MASS EXTINCTION STRUCK SUDDENLY
Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
(2) PROFESSIONAL AND AMATEUR COLLABORATIONS IN ASTRONOMY
Margaret Penston <mjp@ast.cam.ac.uk>
(3) TIME TRAVEL THROUGH A TRAIL OF COMET DUST
NASANews@hq.nasa.gov
(4) ON THE IRRESPONSIBILITY OF "POLITICALLY
RESPONSIBLE" SCIENCE
Science-Week <prismx@scienceweek.com>
(6) THE LATEST TWIST IN THE EUROPA DEBATE
Larry Klaes <lklaes@bbn.com>
(7) WE MAY BE THE FIRST TO FLOWER IN GARDEN OF INTELLIGENT LIFE
Michael Martin-Smith <martin@miff.demon.co.uk>
(8) ALIENS - WHERE ARE THEY?
Michael Paine <mpaine@tpgi.com.au>
(9) UNIVERSE IS STILL IN ITS INFANCY
Jens Kieffer-Olsen <dstdba@post4.tele.dk>
(10) U.S. MISSILE DEFENSE IS RUBBISH
Alasdair Beal <A.Beal@btinternet.com>
(11) JERRY POURNELLE ON STRATEGIC DEFENSES
Intellectual Capital, 20 July 2000
========
(1) PERMIAN/TRIASSIC MASS EXTINCTION STRUCK SUDDENLY
From Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
[ http://www.academicpress.com/inscight/07202000/graphb.htm
]
Thursday, 20 July 2000, 5 pm PST
Mass Extinction Struck Suddenly
By John S. MacNeil
About 251 million years ago, something killed 90% of all life in
the
oceans and 70% of vertebrates on land. It was the largest mass
extinction in the history of Earth. Although scientists don't yet
know
the cause, a report in the 21 July issue of Science indicates
that it
was a single cataclysmic event rather than a series of
catastrophes.
The extinction, which marks the end of the Permian period and the
beginning of the Triassic, has intrigued paleontologists because
of its
massive scale; more than twice as many kinds of vertebrates died
out
than in the extinction that killed the dinosaurs 186 million
years
later. And unlike the end of the dinosaurs, exactly what happened
is a
mystery. Some scientists see evidence for a gradual series of
natural
disasters, such as glacier-induced changes in the oceans, while
others
believe only the rapid punch of a massive asteroid could have
wreaked
so much havoc so quickly.
To find out whether everything went wrong all at once,
paleontologist
Doug Erwin of the National Museum of Natural History in
Washington,
D.C., and his colleagues at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and
Palaeontology in China analyzed 333 extinct species, collected
from a
well-studied section of the Permian-Triassic boundary near the
town of
Meishan in South China. The strata at the Meishan site have
previously
been dated, so the researchers knew when each species last
appeared in
the fossil record. Erwin and his colleagues also took into
account the
number of fossils of each species. This is an important factor in
determining the probability that they didn't find the last
fossil,
which would mean the extinction took place later than it appears.
After crunching the numbers, the researchers conclude that it's
most
likely that 94% of the species discovered at the end of the
Permian
are, in fact, the last survivors. This means that they died off
more or
less simultaneously, about 251.4 million years ago. As further
evidence
for a one-time mass extinction, Erwin's group found volcanic dust
in
the same stratum as the extinct species, as well as a change in
the
carbon isotope profile, an indication that fewer plants were
alive and
photosynthesizing. Erwin thinks the event most likely was
triggered by
massive lava flows but doesn't rule out an impact from outer
space.
The researchers are the first team to study such a large number
of
species at this extinction event, says Charles Marshall, a
paleontologist at Harvard University. The data "do seem to
suggest
there was one major event, that's for sure," he says. But
Marshall is
skeptical of extraterrestrial influence, saying his guess would
be that
a massive change in ocean circulation or ocean chemistry,
possibly
after a continental collision or rift, caused the extinction.
© 2000 The American Association for the Advancement of Science
[Extracted from inScight, Academic Press.]
===================
(2) PROFESSIONAL AND AMATEUR COLLABORATIONS IN ASTRONOMY
From Margaret Penston <mjp@ast..cam.ac.uk>
A special Pro-Am RAS Discussion Meeting
Saturday September 16th 200, 10.30-16.00
University of London Observatory, Mill Hill
'Professional and amateur collaborations in astronomy'
Topics will include the discovery and follow-up observations of
supernovae, cataclysmic variables and gamma-ray bursters and
their
interpretation and also the importance to the professional
astronomer of asteroid, meteor and comet observations by
amateurs.
NUMBERS ARE LIMITED so if you wish to attend please contact
Margaret
Penston (mjp@ast.cam.ac.uk)
and please say if you wish to make a
contribution to the Discussion. There will a small charge to
cover
refreshments.
Details of the programme will be on the RAS webpage
(http://www.ras.org.uk/whatsnew.htm)
in due course.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Margaret Penston Tel: 01223-766655
(with voice-mail)
Institute of
Astronomy
Fax: 01223-337501
Madingley Road
Cambridge CB3 0HA
==================
(3) TIME TRAVEL THROUGH A TRAIL OF COMET DUST
From NASANews@hq.nasa.gov
Dolores Beasley
Headquarters, Washington,
DC
July 19, 2000
(Phone: 202/358-1753)
Bill Steigerwald
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
(Phone: 301/286-5017)
RELEASE: 00-111
TIME TRAVEL THROUGH A TRAIL OF COMET DUST
If you've seen one comet, have you seen
them all? Not
according to new NASA research.
Scientists believe they may one day be
able to travel through
time by looking more closely at the dust swirling with a comet as
it hurdles through our galaxy. The research also indicates that
theories of how comets were formed may need to be revised.
Comets are lumps of ice, gas, rock, and
dust - frozen relics
from the birth of our solar system - that orbit the Sun.
Scientists now believe comets could have formed at different
times
during the evolution of the solar nebula, and may reveal their
age
by the structure of the dust they carry.
Within a comet's cosmic cloud,
astronomers have found two
kinds of dust grains; grains with their molecules stuck together
every which way, called amorphous, and grains with molecules that
have an orderly, crystalline structure. The dust emit light of
various colors at different intensities, allowing astronomers to
distinguish between the two.
The researchers believe molecular
clouds, like the one that
collapsed to form the solar nebula, contain only amorphous dust.
Crystalline grains formed later, as the dust clouds were heated
by
the forming Sun.
The research, to be published in the
July 20 issue of Nature,
indicates that comets with mostly amorphous dust are ancient
because they formed early in the solar nebula's evolution, before
the Sun had time to heat and distribute very much crystalline
dust. Comets with a large proportion of crystalline dust formed
later as the nebula evolved and crystalline grains became more
common.
"The fun part of laboratory work
like this comes when you try
to tie it together with observations, and you run into an
interesting problem," said lead author Dr. Joseph Nuth,
Supervisory Astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center,
where the laboratory research was conducted. "Observations
in 1989
found crystalline olivine dust in comet Halley. Our
research placed
severe constraints on how fast this dust crystallizes, and we
realized
that Halley could not have formed the way astronomers think it
formed."
Astronomers believe Halley formed
exclusively from material
present in the region of the giant planets (Jupiter and Neptune),
then was ejected to the cold fringes of the outer solar system,
well beyond Pluto.
"We know that these dust grains
change from amorphous to
crystalline as they are heated, and our laboratory research
revealed that the rate at which they change is extremely
sensitive
to temperature," Nuth added. "At the very low
temperatures, where
water-ice and the other volatile components of comets are frozen,
the time required for amorphous silicate dust grains to change to
the crystalline olivine found in comet Halley is many times
longer
than the age of the Universe."
The crystalline olivine dust must have
been made much closer
to the Sun, where temperatures were higher, and olivine could
have
been formed in hours, days, or years. However, at these warm
temperatures, the ices that make up the bulk of Halley could not
form. Researchers believe the crystalline dust formed near the
Sun
and was thrown out to the region near the giant planets, where it
was incorporated into Halley. This outflow of material is a new
twist on models of comet formation and the solar nebula's
evolution.
For images and more information, refer to:
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/gsfc/spacesci/solarexp/cometage.htm
=====================
(4) ON THE IRRESPONSIBILITY OF "POLITICALLY
RESPONSIBLE" SCIENCE
From Science-Week <prismx@scienceweek.com>
SCIENCE-WEEK (Shareware Edition)
July 21, 2000 -- Vol. 4 Number 29
3. SCIENCE POLICY:
ON THE IRRESPONSIBILITY OF "POLITICALLY RESPONSIBLE"
SCIENCE
Since science, in the words of J.R. Oppenheimer (1904-1967)
brings
"power over the world", and since politics is more or
less devoted to
the wielding of such power, one can reasonably expect an implicit
or
explicit bond between science and politics to always pervade
their
respective histories. How is the individual scientist to deal
with this
dangerous dance of science and politics, which is more a
passionate
tango than a minuet? This question is not easily answered.
Ute Deichmann (Institute for Genetics Cologne, DE), presents an
essay
on the dangers of "politically responsible" science,
the author making
the following points:
1) Disillusionment concerning the contributions of eminent
scientists
to the Nazi Regime (1933-1945) led many to question the notion of
a
pure and universal science, to reject this as a myth, and instead
to
redefine science as a socially organized political enterprise.
Proponents of this view argue that science must be politically
responsible, directed towards socially acceptable goals, and
assessed
according to its long-range consequences.
2) But this call for politically responsible science does not
guarantee
an ethical stance. For example, environmentalists attempted in
the
1980s to create a "political ecology", but the
intellectual origins of
their criticisms of "causal reductionist" science lie
in the 1920s,
when German ecologists proclaimed ecology as a path to "a
view of the
world, in which everything is related to everything else,
everything
directly or indirectly affects everything else." The
ecologist Karl
Friederichs became a leading Nazi ecologist, and he and his
colleagues
created and spread the view of biology as an eminent political
science
aimed at serving "the benefit of the people (Volk)" and
of ecology as
the "doctrine of blood and soil".
2) Eugenics, or race hygiene, is another example of scientists
claiming
to act in a politically responsible manner, with the idea that to
avert
long-range threats to the gene pool it is necessary to institute
compulsory sterilization of "genetically unfit" people.
These attempts
to create a politically responsible biology ended disastrously.
The
author states: "If we criticize reductionist science for
having
contributed to the technical and military power of the Nazis, we
have
to acknowledge that 'politically responsible' biologists provided
for
their ideological and political power."
3) The author suggests there is a scientific level outside
politics,
ethics, and applications. It is not the quest for knowledge that
was
responsible for the Nazi atrocities, but the fact that scientists
did
not pay due regard to normal ethical principles. The author
states:
"Nazi moral standards were not imposed on scientists. On the
contrary,
for whatever reason -- opportunism, conviction, promotion, or
power --
scientists lent their support to ranking human beings as
valuable,
inferior or worthless, hence providing the ideological basis of
the
Nazi state."
4) For example, Otmar von Verschuer, the director of the Kaiser
Wilhelm
Institute for Anthropology, collaborated with Josef Mengele in
Auschwitz, and Verschauer's acceptance of organs and blood from
deliberately infected concentration-camp inmates is considered by
many
as the most infamous crime in which geneticists have
participated, and
a clear transgression of the limits of science.
5) The author concludes: "The example of Nazi Germany shows
that
'politically responsible' science endowed with power can have
disastrous consequences for innocent people and for science
itself. The
call for politically responsible science, frequently heard today,
cannot solve the problem of how scientists can prevent science
from
serving immoral, inhuman ends."
-----------
Ute Deichmann: An unholy alliance.
(Nature 15 Jun 00 405:739)
QY: Ute Deichmann, Institute fur Genetik, Weyertal 121, D 50931,
Koln, DE.
-------------------
Summary by SCIENCE-WEEK http://scienceweek.com
21Jul00
For more information: http://scienceweek.com/swfr.htm
-------------------
Related Background:
ON THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE NUREMBERG CODE
This past August was the 50th anniversary of the formulation of
the
Nuremberg Code, which occurred during the so-called Nazi Doctors
Trial
held in Nuremberg DE immediately after the Second World War, and
which
included 23 defendants, all but 3 of whom were physicians accused
of
murder and torture in the conduct of medical experiments on
concentration camp inmates. Of the 23 defendants, 16 were found
guilty,
and of the guilty 7 were sentenced to death by hanging, 5 were
sentenced to life imprisonment, 2 to imprisonment for 25 years, 1
to
imprisonment for 15 years, 1 to imprisonment for 10 years. The
executions were carried out at the Landsberg prison, DE. In a
recent
review of the Nuremberg Code, Evelyne Shuster (Veterans Affairs
Medical
Center, Philadelphia US) describes the important role physicians
had in
the prosecution of the Nazi doctors and in the formulation of the
Nuremberg Code, and she summarizes how medical researchers have
used
the code over the past 5 decades. The author emphasizes that
perhaps
the most important aspect of the code is the centrality of
informed
consent of human subjects in experiments. The editors of the
journal in
which the review appears have recently criticized US research
authorities for unethical protocols in connection with HIV
research in
undeveloped countries, protocols using placebo controls involving
patients with diagnosed medical conditions who could have been
helped
by the drugs that were tested.
QY: E. Shuster, VA Medical Center, Philadelphia, PA 19104 US)
(New England J. Med. 13 Nov 97) (Science-Week 21 Nov 97)
For more information: http://scienceweek.com/swfr.htm
Copyright (c) 1997-2000 SCIENCE-WEEK/Spectrum Press Inc.
All Rights Reserved
========================
* LETTERS TO THE EDITOR *
========================
(6) THE LATEST TWIST IN THE EUROPA DEBATE
From Larry Klaes <lklaes@bbn.com>
As posted on the Europa Icepick Group <europa@klx.com>
From: Bruce Moomaw <moomaw@jps.net>
I've finally been through the last 4 months of
"Nature", and found
several interesting Solar System articles.
The one that applies directly to Europa is Eric Gaidos' and
Francis
Nimmo's "Tectonics and Water on Europa" (June 8), in
which they
detail their attack on Richard Greenberg's theory that Europa's
ridges are areas where liquid water has oozed through tidally
produced cracks in an ice shell only 1 km thick:
"The formation of kilometer-deep cracks in Europa's crust is
a
problem. Below a depth of 35 meters, the pressure from the
weight
of the overlying ice will exceed the estimated stresses due to
tides
(<40,000 Pascals) and prevent cracks from growing. Any
fractures
will halt at a depth where warmer, less viscous ice flows, rather
than fracturing further, to acommodate tidal strain... We find
that
the brittle-ductile transition occurs at depths where
temperatures
exceed -103 deg C, well above that of any ice-ocean interface.
"Also, liquid water in a crack will freeze solid by virtue
of the
conduction of heat to the walls... A 1-meter crack will freeze in
1.3 orbits. Hydrostatic forces are too weak to extrude ice
from
such a narrow orifice and, unless a compensatory removal of crust
occurs elsewhere, the crack will disappear.
"We propose, alternatively, that tides drive viscous flow
and
heating by dissipation at zones of lateral motion (strike-slip)
in
the crust... The relative motion along a fault or defect will
produce frictional heating, causing the local temperature to
increase and the viscosity of the ice to decrease. This feedback
can
lead to accommodation of the relative motion of two blocks of
crust
by viscous flow in a zone of finite width, rather than a
discontinuity at a fault...
"A plausible diurnal motion of 0.6 meters can maintain the
ice in
the center of the shear zone at a temperature of 0 deg C...The
width
of this zone of soft ice is...about 1 km for a shear stress of
20,000 Pascals. This warm ice will have a buoyant density
contrast...with respect to the surrounding ice and will flow
upwards
by a few tens of centimeters over the course of one tidal
cycle...
"We suggest that such motion over the course of many cycles
could be
responsible for the formation of structures such as ridge
pairs.
Our model does require the existence of an ocean (not necessarily
shallow); without the mechanical decoupling between the ice crust
and the interior, the motion of the crust would be 30-50 times
smaller.
"Larger strike-slip motion may lead to partial melting
(liquid
water) in the zone...Although there are considerable
uncertainties
in some of these values, the equilibrium melt fraction is of the
order of 1%. This much melt will form only if the strike-slip
motion
is sufficiently large (~1 meter) to compensate for the reduction
in
ice viscosity by a factor of about one-third as a result of the
presence of melt.
"The pore pressure due to the presence of melt will also
increase
the depth to the brittle-ductile transition and allow fractures
to
accommodate strike-slip motion and to slow heat generation.
Melt
pockets below the fracture zone will percolate downwards at a
velocity of a few tens of meters per year, and so will have a
lifetime of ~1,000 years...
"In this case, the melt lifetime, estimated by equating the
latent
heat that must be rejected to the rate of thermal conduction away
from the fault zone, will be about 30 years (although shorter at
shallow depths, where vertical conduction to the surface is
important). Depending on the thickness of the fractured
zone,
transient liquid-water or brine pockets may exist within reach of
sunlight, potentially providing habitats for photosynthetic
organisms capable of remaining dormant in ice for millennia
between
relative brief 'blooms'."
Other interesting items:
(1) Don Yeomans' "Small Bodies of the Solar System"
(April 20), in
which he backs up the statement I made a few weeks ago tht the
debate over whether to call Pluto a planet is nothing compared to
the next big problem in Solar System nomenclature -- the fact
that
the distinction between asteroids and comets is now hopelessly
blurring, both because we're now regularly seeing small icy
objects
so far out in the outer Solar System that they don't have comas,
and
because we can't simply assume that all such objects are ice
rather
than rock:
"Most of the objects in the Oort cloud are probably comets
that
formed in the outer Solar System. But up to 3% of the
current
population could be asteroids that formed just inside Jupiter's
orbit and then were pushed out, by way of gravitational
interactions
with Jupiter, to the very edge of the Solar System...
We now have comets in asteroid-like orbits and asteroids in
comet-like orbits [including two recently discovered asteroids in
retrograde orbits]. Both comets and asteroids can evolve from the
Oort cloud into highly inclined, even retrograde, orbits around
the
Sun, so orbital behavior is no better than physical behavior for
telling them apart. Our attempts to sort comets and
asteroids into
separate boxes have failed, and astronomers should now consider
these objects as members of a highly diverse family -- the small
bodies of the Solar System...
"The loss of our standard picture of comets and asteroids is
already
providing a more diverse spectrum of possible structures -- from
porous balls of ice to solid rocks and slabs of iron... Far from
being the dry rocky bodies they were once thought to be, it would
seem that some asteroids, along with comets, mgiht be significant
sources of water...From physical evidence alone, it appears that
the
structures of asteroids run from fluffball ex-comets to rubble
piles, solid rocks and slabs of solid iron."
(2) "Nature's" April 6 editorial: "Don't Blame
NASA Alone for Mars
Mission Failures":
"Most would agree that [Dan] Goldin is a visionary, and that
his
transformation of NASA has been truly revolutionary. But he
is also
a politician. And NASA tends to run into trouble when politics is
injected into a business that is difficult even under the best
circumstances.
"It would be wrong to say the Mars program was politically
motivated. The planet's similarity to Earth and the
existence of
water (certainly in the past, maybe under the surface today) make
it
a compelling scientific destination. But the 1996 claim of
fossils
in a Martian rock added a public relation (hence political)
dimension to the program that hadn't been there before. This,
along
with Goldin's eagerness to prove that his employees could do more
with less, are what led to the [1998] downfall.
"The Young report treats this NASA prssure on JPL
delicately: 'NASA
Headquarters thought it was articulating program objectives,
mission
requirements, and constraints. JPL management was hearing these
as
non-negotiable program mandates.' This may be letting NASA off
the
hook too easily. The political realities of the Mars program were
not misinterpreted by the JPL engineers and scientists in the
trenches. They udnerstood that they could not ask for more money,
nor could they radically 'descope' their missions. Their
opnly
choice was to sigh and accept more risk. That, or resign...
"Do Goldin and those who determine his funding really
understand
where they went wrong? In the case of the Mars program,
probably
yes. But it will be interesting to see how they respond to
another
current agency project that has the same disturbing combination
of
engineering complexity, too few resources, politics that
constrain
project managers' decision, and workers just trying to make the
best
of a bad situation. It's called the International Space
Station."
I'll add only that NASA understands perfectly well that the Space
Station program is running off the rails -- after all (as with
the
Shuttle), they only got Congress and the White House to approve
it
in the first place by ridiculously understating its cost and
overstating its utility, and since then have resorted to the
time-honored Camel's Nose technique of steadily raising the cost
while telling Congress that they should keep supporting it anyway
or
the money already spent will have been wasted. Neither program
was
an honest "mistake" on NASA's part -- both the Shuttle
and the
Station are deliberate, cold-blooded schemes by NASA to defraud
the
taxpayers of tens of billions of dollars. (As one former
NASA
official told "Time" magazine, regarding its lies to
Congress to get
the Shuttle program started: "We hated to do it, but we were
getting
SO many votes.")
Bruce Moomaw
==========
(7) WE MAY BE THE FIRST TO FLOWER IN GARDEN OF INTELLIGENT LIFE
From Michael Martin-Smith <martin@miff.demon.co.uk>
Dear Benny
Commenting on Timo Niroma's letter "Are we Alone?"
A personal view
It is possible that we see a Universe evolving from simplicity to
complexity over aeons, in a series of phase changes. For example,
we
see a progression from four forces, radiation domination,
subatomic
particles, condensation of matter as atoms, galaxies, stellar
systems, simple biochemistry, uni-cellular life, complex life
to,
finally, mental/civilized Life.
This, like the stages in the growth of an embryo, requires time,
and
it could be that only now is the time sufficient for this. We may
even be the first to flower in a garden of intelligent life forms
only now emerging.
Given the known hazards of impacts, Gamma Ray Bursters and
ecological variability, it could be that only Intelligent races
which become space travellers and colonists can truly expect to
survive and develop for long enough to make their presence felt
in
the Galaxy at large. We after all are the only species among 500
millions to have arisen on Earth capable - in principle at least
-
of building our own Future according to a conscious plan.
The future development of Mind in the Universe may depend vitally
on
whether we are prepared to build a spacebased civilization, and
bring the Galaxy to a state of cultivation before Nature once
again
reshuffles the cards. Maybe, after all, Mankind is special and
has a
role to perform in the larger History of the Cosmos.
Current widely voiced attitudes, even among people who could be
more
far sighted, show that this is by no means an assured outcome. It
is, I am learning to my surprise, not politically correct
to
champion our own species in some quarters. This, if a Universal
trait, surely accounts adequately for Fermi's Paradox!
The real lessons from Astrobiology may relate not so much to our
origins as to our Future. "The Lifespan of an Intelligent
Civilization is inversely proportional to the cost of Space
Travel!"
Michael Martin-Smith
================
(8) ALIENS - WHERE ARE THEY?
From Michael Paine <mpaine@tpgi.com.au>
Dear Benny,
The issues raised by Timo Niroma (CCNet 18 Jul) are also covered
in
detail in the July issue of Scientific American:
Where Are They? http://www.sciam.com/2000/0700issue/0700crawford.html
On the subject of the 'Chandler Wobble', it would be interesting
to
work out the magnitude of wobble created by a well-placed large
NEO
impact. I suppose it is not much (given the huge difference in
mass)
but it seems that the various wobbles (from whatever cause) are
now
being measured to a high degree of accuracy. In his book Cosmos,
Carl
Sagan mentioned the possibility that the Moon might be ringing
like a
bell after the impact that generated the 20km crater Giordano
Bruno so
a wobble is not out of the question. See
http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/tps-seti/spacegd2.html#bruno
for links on
this highly speculative event. (but the NASA links have
vanished!)
regards
Michael Paine
============
(9) UNIVERSE IS STILL IN ITS INFANCY
From Jens Kieffer-Olsen <dstdba@post4.tele.dk>
In CCNet, 18 July 2000 Timo Niroma wrote:
> Where was I. One planet in one galaxy per a million
galaxies?
> After all, it seems that we probably really are not alone.
But the
> others are far, too far our imagination to grasp it. But
they are
> there. The Universe is so huge, they got to be. But
hopelessly far
> to be reachable or us to be observed by them.
For one thing the present incarnation of the Universe is v_e_r_y
young,
maybe 15 billion years. Second or third generation stars take
time to
emerge, but are necessary for iron-ball planets such as Earth to
form.
In other words there is a high probability that our civilization
is as
fast off the starting block as they come, and therefore we have
no
predecessors who could have left us their card.
Even the most pessimistic among cosmologists expect the Universe
to
last for trillions of years, so let's not despair at the thought
that
right now we may have no intragalactical neighbours to quarrel
with!
--
Jens Kieffer-Olsen
Slagelse, Denmark
=================
(10) U.S. MISSILE DEFENSE IS RUBBISH
Alasdair Beal <A.Beal@btinternet.com>
Dear Benny,
Re: IRAN'S MISSILE TEST UNDERSCORES U.S. POSITION ON MISSILE
DEFENSE?
How does Iran developing a missile with an 800 mile range justify
the
USA developing an anti-ballistic missile system (in breach of the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty) for its own territory over 5,000
miles
away? I am pretty broad minded but I'm not sure that rubbish like
really merits space on CCNET.
Yours,
Alasdair Beal
==============
(11) JERRY POURNELLE ON STRATEGIC DEFENSES
From Intellectual Capital, 20 July 2000
http://intellectualcapital.com/issues/issue393/item10122.asp
Strategic Defenses
by Dr. Jerry Pournelle
As often noted, one problem with the National Missile Defense
(NMD)
debate is that most Americans think we already have it. If you
ask the
average man in the street how many ICBMs aimed at their city we
could
intercept if we knew when and where they would be launched, the
answers
vary from a few to some to all; few give the right answer, which
is
zero.
The only reason we do not have strategic missile defenses is that
our
political leaders do not want them.
Yet some sort of NMD system is strategically, morally and
constitutionally necessary. It is also economically and
technologically
feasible. I made the case, along with Stefan T. Possony and
Francis X.
Kane, in 1969 in our book, The Strategy of Technology. Since that
time
both the technological and economic factors have gotten much
better for
defenses. The moral and constitutional arguments are unchanged.
The constitutional and moral arguments for a strategic defense
system
are simply stated. Our present arms policy is based on
retaliation: If
you kill any of us with nuclear missiles, we will destroy you.
You kill
us, and we will kill you back -- cities, civilians, children and
all.
The doctrine is called Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) strategy,
and it
has been the official policy of the United States since Robert
McNamara
was secretary of defense in the 1960s.
Without strategic-defense capability, MAD is all we have, but
surely it
is nothing to be proud of. The Constitution says the United
States
should "provide for the common defense," not for the
common destruction.
If mutual destruction is the only possible course, you take it,
but as a
moral country we need to develop other capabilities. Leaving only
one
option -- a repulsive one -- is itself an immoral action.
FULL ARTICLE at:
http://intellectualcapital.com/issues/issue393/item10122.asp
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