Friday, May 26, 2006
3. IMAGINARY WEAPONS: WHY THE PENTAGON KEEPS THIS STUFF SECRET.
The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), one of the
countless independent, nonprofit, public policy research institutes in
Washington, reported last week that the Pentagon will spend $30
billion on classified programs in FY 2007. Why? In a new book,
Imaginary Weapon: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific
Underworld, Sharon Weinberger peeks behind the curtain at hafnium
bombs, "remote viewing," telepathy and all the rest and concludes
secrecy is mostly to avoid rational oversight.
Friday, October 15, 2004
1. EXOTIC WEAPONS: WHAT'S NEW ESTABLISHES THE "EXCALIBUR PRIZE."
The $10 million X-Prize for the first civilian sort-of space ship
capable of offering affordable space sickness to the public got
front-page coverage around the world. The WN editorial board was
inspired to offer a prize of our own. We put our head together and
came up with the Excalibur Prize for the weapon based on the most
speculative physics. "Excalibur" was the code name of the fearsome
X-ray laser that Edward Teller promised could wipe out the entire
Soviet missile fleet simultaneously. They chose the name of another
mythical weapon. Candidates abound, such as the hafnium bomb (WN 16
Apr 04), but lest you think the prize is wired for Carl Collins, there's
the awesome anti-matter bomb, which comes up so often it's now
called the "doesn't-matter bomb." The Air Farce slapped a secrecy lid
on the "positron bomb" after the San Francisco Chronicle carried a
story on it. No word on how many positrons the Air Farce has. The
Excalibur Prize consists of a free subscription to WN.
Friday, August 6, 2004
1. COLD FUSION: JUST WHEN YOU THINK LIFE CAN'T GET ANY SILLIER.
The cover of Popular Mechanics for August warns that "Cold Fusion
Technology Enables Anyone To Build A Nuke From Commonly Available
Materials." A nuke? The cold fusion guys can't brew a cup of tea. The
article: "Dangerous Science" is by Jim Wilson, whose cover story in
April proclaimed the dawn of the age of atomic aircraft powered by
hafnium-178 isomer reactors, which don't exist and never will (WN 16
Apr 04). OK, so grownups aren't supposed to read Popular Mechanics,
but if the cold fusion faithful think they're going to get a cover
story in Time, get over it. DOE recently announced that cold fusion
research will be reviewed, and believers imagined they'd been
vindicated (WN 02 Apr 04). Wilson says Eugene Mallove of Infinite
Energy Magazine assured him that the experimental evidence for cold
fusion is too compelling for DOE to ignore. Mallove couldn't be
reached for comment.
Friday, June 4, 2004
1. HAFNIUM: CONGRESS KILLS THE "ISOMER ENERGY RELEASE PROGRAM."
In spite of the Pentagon's fascination with imaginary weapons, the
Senate Armed Services Committee listened to the scientists and
recommended a $4 million reduction in the program. That puts it at
zero. The House Armed Services Committee agreed: "The committee
questions the utility of this research under any circumstances and is
particularly skeptical of research into nuclear isomer production
before triggering is shown to be possible." WN recommends they also
cancel DARPA's subscription to Popular Mechanics (WN 16 Apr 04).
Friday, April 16, 2004
1. HAFNIUM-178: JUST WHEN YOU THINK LIFE CAN'T GET ANY SILLIER.
The cover of Popular Mechanics for May proclaims the dawn of the age
of atomic airplanes powered by miniature nuclear reactors. These are
not old-fashioned fission reactors. These are the new "quantum
nucleonic reactors," a.k.a. hafnium-178 isomer reactors. The problem
with fission reactors was that they required too much shielding. The
problem with the hafnium-178 reactor is that it doesn't exist. Carl
Collins at U. of Texas, Dallas, claimed to be able to trigger decay of
the hafnium-178 nuclear isomer with x-rays. That would be a miracle,
but several other groups found it just doesn't happen. That detail
was left out of the Popular Mechanics story, which contains nothing
beyond the New Scientist story a year ago (WN 15 Aug 03). The
hafnium-178 isomer avalanche now seems destined to join hydrinos,
zero-point energy, gravity shields, cold fusion and all the other
free-energy fantasies that only work for believers. In the paranormal
world this is known as "the investigator effect."
Friday, April 2, 2004
2. THE HAFNIUM BOMB: THE DARPA MOTTO IS "HIGH RISK, HIGH PAYOFF."
With DARPA support, a group led by Carl Collins at the U. of Texas at
Dallas claimed to be able to trigger energy release from a hafnium-178
isomer using a dental X-ray machine. As What's New reported last
October, a group using the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne found no
sign of the hafnium-178 isomer-triggering effect (WN 24 Oct 03). We
thought that would be the end of it, but Sunday there was a long cover
story on the hafnium-178 bomb in the Washington Post Magazine. The
people at DARPA seem to have the "high risk" thing down pretty well,
but "high payoff" still seems to be a problem.
Friday, October 24, 2003
4. HAFNIUM-178 BOMB: SOME BELIEVE IT, BUT FEW HAVE SEEN IT.
Some in the Pentagon apparently choose scientific beliefs the way they
choose to be Methodists, or Democrats or Chicago Cubs fans. Claims
that the Hf-178 isomer can be triggered to release its stored energy
by irradiating it with X-rays found plenty of fans in the
Pentagon. The energy would lie somewhere between chemical and
nuclear. That is, it would if it was so. A group using the Advanced
Photon Source (APS) at Argonne tried to repeat the isomer-triggering
effect reported by Carl Collins and colleagues at U. of Texas at
Dallas, using a borrowed dental X-ray machine. Despite a far greater
X-ray intensity, the APS group, led by John Schiffer and Don Gemmell
found no effect (WN 15 Aug 03). Still, some at the Pentagon call for a
costly program to make Hf-178.
Friday, August 15, 2003
3. THE ISOMER BOMB: HOW A DENTIST'S X-RAY MACHINE WENT TO WAR.
Well, maybe not quite. A news story in this week's issue of New
Scientist magazine reports that the Department of Defense is currently
pursuing an isomer bomb, which would supposedly release its energy in
the form of gamma rays from the decay of a nuclear isomer of
Hf-178. Indeed, such nuclear isomers are on the Militarily Critical
Technologies List. The claim is that decay can be accelerated by
irradiation with low-energy x-rays. We're told that the scientist who
did the research used an x-ray machine borrowed from a dentist
friend. A JASON panel determined that the idea is theoretically
implausible and the evidence shaky at best. A group that attempted to
reproduce the effect in a carefully controlled study at the Advanced
Photon Source found nothing.