November 2, 2025 • 26 mins
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:50):
Welcome to a half our mind works short stories from
the words of Spectator. This is Michael Hanson The mind
Web story. This half hour comes from analog of July
and afteen seventy. This is Paul Mayhan's What Wheely Caused
the Energy Crisis.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Walking into his eight.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
O'clock freshman physics class, senior full Professor Doctor John Pixley
had the.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Feeling that the students looked familiar, but of course they weren't.
It was the.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
First class meeting of the fall semester, and all the
students were new to the campus. Looking around at the hushed,
odd class, Pixley knew that wouldn't last past the third meeting.
He decided it must be the firm bodies, tanned skin,
and youthful excitement that.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Was the same every year. If the students were knew u.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Pixley certainly wasn't sixty years old, but still crimin figure.
He thought he was a full propt more by reason
of thirty five years of dedicated teaching and by a
publication of scholarly papers. Oh Pixley had long since resigned
himself to be the sort of teacher who gains influence
in some sort of immortality through.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
His students that Pixley knew his word.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
He didn't take second place in the department packing order
to any of the hot shot publication artists. No, sir,
good morning, class. This is Physics one, just in case
any of you really should be in Bio one that
meets in room two forty one B. Pixley did this
routine introduction each year, as his class was invariably assigned
to forty one A, and a few students always got confused.
(03:02):
Sure enough, two embarrassed boys and a girl got up
and followed mess m giggling left. Pixley watched with a
mixture of appreciation and regrets that the departure of the
blond and a form fitting skirt, after all these years
as a physicist, the motion dynamics of a firm bottom
still misdifding. He wondered if NSF would find an experimental
(03:23):
study of the phenomenon it.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Maybe if he called it.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
The resonance modes of two balanced juxtaposed hemispheres in a
uniform gravity field. These present thoughts were interrupted by the
appearance of four new red faced students, obviously freshly emerged
from Yo one. The class got a new excuse to
laugh at the expense of the confused, and Pixley noted
with disappointment there was no replacement for the blonde. All right,
(03:50):
let's get started. We're going to cover a lot of
ground this semester, and I'll expect hard work out of
all of you, and this class will be demanding. But
you will find, if you were here just to satisfy
the university science requirement, that it can be fun and
you'll learn a lot about how the world we live
in works. Even if you go into a non technical career,
(04:11):
a basic knowledge of physics will help differentiate you from
the uneducated, the uncultured, and, if I may say.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
So, the uninteresting.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Pixley was only momentarily hesitant with these last words, as
while he wasn't sure they were true, he was convinced
they should be. You may not have thought much about
it before, but you really actually know quite a bit
about this subject. Just to survive to the ripe old
age of seventeen or eighteen, you've had to learn how
(04:42):
a lot of things in nature work, like if you
jump off a porch, you'll fall rather than folk, so
you know something about gravity. You've learned to get out
of the way of a bicycle. So you know something
about kinetic energy and energy coupling between bodies undergoing collection,
and so on. Pixley stopped his pacing back and forth
(05:04):
as he talked and looked at the class. They looked
back expectantly. No one showed the slightest intention of asking
the question. In fact, you even know a lot about
theoretical things too, that go beyond mere experimental observations of
everyday life. Now, for example, is there a limit to
(05:26):
how fast things can move? Most of the students looked perplexed,
but several put up their hands, pointing at a red
haired young man in the back of the room. The
boy responded, well.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
I guess you must mean the speed of light. I
mean nothing can go faster than light, right.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Pixley nodded, happy to have been given a good line
to follow. Yes, yes, that's pretty much true. It's not
exactly right, because sometimes things can go faster than light
if they're both moving and something other than empty space,
like water. But you're essentially correct, nothing can go faster
(06:03):
than the white does in a vacuum. Now let's try
something else. Reaching into his briefcase on the floor next
to the rector, and Pixley extracted the dog eared color
photo and held it up to the class. Well, here
is an old aerial picture I picked up years ago
when I did some consulting for the Navy. It's a
shot of the old carrier Enterprise with her crew on
(06:26):
deck and their dress whites. Can anyone tell me what
it means? The red haired boys poke up again, drawing
some resentful stairs from the class. That boy's going to
learn what happens to the students will speak up, thought Pixley.
That old schoolboy rule of never show off your knowledge
was an operation, and Pixley made a mental note to
(06:48):
learn his name.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
The boy looked promising.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
The crew is all lined up spelling out.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
E equals MC squared.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
So I guess that's an old nuclear powered chip, because
isn't that Einstein's mass energy law? Then next to Maxwell's
equations for the electromagnetic field, Einstein's result is probably the
most beautiful creation of the human mind. And you already
know other justice part of growing up with our modern
(07:16):
atomic powered society. A young lady next to the red
haired boy spoke up at this, But.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Shouldn't you add professors and comments about the terrible social problems.
Atomic energy has caused the spread of reactors with the
radioactive race. It threatens everybody and all just because it
makes money for a special few at the risk of
ordinary people.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Fixley felt a cold wave of apprehension as he recognized
the tone of a young idealist speaking with all the
fervor that being naive can muster. He replied carefully, Well,
of course, there are great difficulties of the kind you mentioned,
but so far there haven't been any major problems except
(07:57):
where the partial core meltdown at Puffs a few years ago,
and with the Livermore fusion process of all of you
heard of that good soon to be coupled into the
national power grid, we will then only have the tritium
disposal problem, the minor problem, really. The young lady looked unconvinced,
(08:19):
as did many of her classmates. Pixley knew from sorry
experience that he couldn't lose the class permanently right here
and now. If he did not regain control. To be
challenged in the first ten minutes of the first meeting,
and not to persuasively counter would be fatal. He gained
a few seconds together his thoughts by lighting his pipe. Now, now, look,
(08:42):
I know what the prevailing ideas about the spread of
nuclear power in the United States are at A bunch
of capitalistic money grubbing public be damned utilities and which
corporate investors found it an attractive way to make enormous
profits in response to the world energy crisis that first
started to be publicly understood in the early seventies.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Well, that's wrong.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
There was some of that, of course, but alone it
wouldn't have been sufficient to result in the massive energy conservation,
new energy source development, and nuclear reactor construction programs in
the last three decades or so. There's something else has
been at work, and that's something was national security. Sure,
(09:28):
I know most of you are aware of how that
excuse was abused in the infamous Nixon Watergate scandal and
the Slavery inquiry more recently. But in this case it's true.
The class still looked skeptical, but now there was interest
too on their faces, and Pixley knew he had them
back in his hands. Now to keep them there, Pixley
(09:49):
picked up his lecture notes and dramatically tossed them back
into his briefcase. Well, to hell with today's lecture. I'm
going to tell you a story, a story you may
not believe, a story that the powers that be in
the White House, the Pentagon, and State Department will deny.
But it's nevertheless crue. It isn't classified because well, the
(10:10):
classified would be to admit it, and there's always someone
who would leak it anyway, like me. Today won't be
a loss. In any case, you'll learn some physics from this.
How many of you have heard of our government agency
called DARPER, no response, just as I thought, and that's
(10:31):
not strange. It keeps a low profile now. DARPER, which
stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is part of
the Directorate of Defense Research and Engineering, which in turn
is part of the Department of Defense. DARPER was chartered
decades ago with a basic mission of providing initial financial
(10:52):
support for blue sky even almost crazy ideas for basic
research that trust might lead to new weapons technology. The
idea has been to avoid what military people call technological
surprise on the United States. That's where one of the
potential enemies of this country comes up suddenly with a
(11:13):
revolutionary new weapon that lets them get the upper hand
in the military stalemate we presently have and don't think
this is just paranoia. Such catastrophic weapons developments have happened
in the past, and if you think of some examples,
the red haired boy in the back responded again, but
(11:33):
now there was more interested by the class in what
he had to say. How about the atomic bomb, Professor,
when the United States dropped it on Japan, that must.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Have caught him by surprise.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yes, yes, indeed, it certainly do it through the Japanese
it was pure magic, although that may not be exactly
the right word. They had no idea what had happened
to them. Interestingly enough, captured German documents and interrogation of
captured Sienists indicated that the Third Reich knew what had happened,
(12:04):
but even the Germans didn't know how it had happened.
But that's pretty recent stuff. Actually, technological surprises have occurred
all through history, to the sorrow of the surprise. For example,
you might look into what happened to the flower of
fourteenth century French knighthood at Chris c when they ran
into the armor penetrating arrows of the English Long Bowl
(12:26):
for the first time, or even better, look into the
tenth century Battle for Constantinople where Russia's Prince Igor had
his flee to ten thousand ships burned to their waterlines
when the Byzantines sapped them with their Greek fire. And
of course, the classic case of technological surprise has to
be David and Goliath. Now class Darker itself came into
(12:52):
being because of a major surprise on the United States
the launching of Sputnik by the Russians back in nineteen
fifty seven. But this is drifting away from what I
really started out to target. In the early nineteen seventies,
Darper was suddenly faced with a colossal technological surprise from
(13:14):
this abvience, Yes that's right, one that threatened to leave
us wide open to them. The Russians were on the
verge of developing a weapons system that would completely negate
our ICBMs and the SLBMs. A perfect anti ballistic missile system,
it was the directed energy beam, consisting either of space
(13:38):
based high energy lasers or subatomic particle accelerators. The Russians
had made fantastic strides in such devices, and just because
such weapons violated the then existing ABM and Outer Space treaties,
that didn't make any difference. Once they had such weapons
actually deployed, there wouldn't be a damn thing we could
(13:59):
do about.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
It, the professor, couldn't we just shoot those weapons down?
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Pixley fixed a faderly smile, and the student who had
just spoken with what their new weapon was designed to
shoot our missiles? And that's all we had to shoot
at their satellite based energy beam projectors. No, once in orbit,
they would have really had us right by the neck.
(14:23):
The class was hanging on the edges of their seats.
Now Pixley relaxed a bit. He began to enjoy himself
as he continued on.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
With his tail.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
You you can't believe the uproar that rolled through the
corridors of the Pentagon. The careers of a lot of
generals and admirals and senior civilian intelligence officers came to
an abrupt end once Congress got hold of that story.
As it turned out, some isolated Air Force intelligence people
had been warning the CIA about the Soviet advancements, but
(14:55):
they were dismissed as being alarmists. It was the old
not invented here syndrome. Why the United States couldn't build
such weapons? Why then could mostly row peasant like mother Russia?
Do it well, By God, they did it. Had a spectacled,
bright looking young man in the front row quiet up.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
And now raised his hand.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Pixley gave a quick nod to him. Professor, you know,
this all reminds me of that old Cowboy and Indian Choke,
where the ancient Indian fighters telling how years before he
had been surrounded by attacking Indians and.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
How he was down to his last bullet.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
When asked how it turned out, he replied, I got killed.
The class roared, and Pixley glowed a better entrance line.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
He couldn't have ridden himself.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Keen, quite true, young man, quite true. Here we all
sit alive, healthy, America is still here, and Russia's still there?
And how do why explain that? Could it be that
once Russia defeated us without a shot, they just said, okay,
we won, but don't worry, everything stays the same. We
(16:06):
just wanted to show you, guys, we could do it.
A few snorts of laughter whippled through the class, and
Pixley himself had to suppress a smile. Pixley kept quiet
for half a minute, just smoking his pipe and letting.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Them think about it.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Thirty five years in the lecture room had taught him
that to be a good teacher wasn't just knowing your subjects.
You had to know how to put on a show
too well. That class. Just because the CIA blew, it
doesn't mean we were totally defenseless. The boys at Darper
hadn't been sitting on their hands all those years.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
It seems they.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Had been funding the research of a little non professor
in a small New England university who had come to
them with a wild idea in the late sixties. Remember
Einstein's energy equals mc squared. Oh, the way we used
that in the atomic bomb was to convert a small
portion of uranium mass into a heck of a lot
of energy. And of course that's what we do today
(17:05):
in fission and fusion reactors. Excepting fusion reactors it's hydrogen mass. Now,
what this professor wanted to do was run the Einstein
equation backwards.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
You see what that means.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Pixley could see they didn't, and here he didn't wait
for any grammatic silence down both. What the professor wanted
to do was to take electrical energy and literally compress
it back into mass. The kicker in this was that
his theoretical analyzes predicted the end mass did not have
to add any relation to the mass that might have
(17:41):
been converted to produce the energy he started with. In fact,
energy produced just from chemical reactions like burning wood was
okay too, although not very efficient. A wood burner doesn't
put out much energy compared to a nuclear plant. He
claimed he could create any of the known elements and
other super heavy ones predicted by extending the periodic table
(18:03):
that weren't even known to science. Fixley puffed on his
pipe to get it going again, blew the smoke ring,
and then continued. One of these super heavy elements had
the theoretically calculated property of making an ultra hard heat
resistant alloy when mixed correctly with titanium. The result was called,
(18:25):
appropriately enough, impervium. Impervium used to make the outer skin
in our missiles made them invulnerable to the Russian ABM
energy beam projectors. So you see, we had what in
the old days we used to call a Mexican standoff.
The Russians could build an ABM system we didn't know
how to build, but we could build missiles to penetrate
(18:49):
their ABM defense missiles they didn't know how to build
so counter surprise, and so for the next ten years,
both sides worked like how to catch up with the
others technology, and in the end both ended up with
duplicate capabilities as of right now, or both sides are
refrained from deploying ABM energy beams because both sides have
(19:13):
improvium skin missiles. But of course, this happy ending happy
so far at least, occurred only because of Darper's excellent
judgment and deciding to support good Professor's not the idea.
I might add, however, that he was handsomely rewarded, so
don't worry about him. Even though he didn't get the
Nobel Prize, at least not yet, he did get a
(19:35):
heck of a lot more money than the prize carries
some I think you to fortune, along with the Presidential
Science Medal. And it was all very private and hush hush,
of course, professor.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
But a very interesting story. But just what does it
have to do with the energy crisis? I mean, that's
what you started to tell us about, right, And why
don't you people talk about it today? It's all over, right,
And why did the professor in your story have to
keep quiet about his invention? After the Russians have been
improving in technology too, and what would be the point
of being secretive?
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Now?
Speaker 1 (20:06):
To play well, those young lady, are the crucial questions,
and the answers are really very simple.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Now.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
To answer the first one, just calculate how much energy
it takes to make a kilogram of the impervium addative.
In fact, I'll save you the trouble part of the
value for the speed of light into Einstein's equation, and
it's not hard to calculate that it takes twenty five
billion killer one hours of electrical energy to make a
one kilogram mass of anything. That, my young friends, is
(20:40):
just one hell of a lot of energy. One of
the new rebel fusion plants will run full out at
a power level of ten thousand megawatts. You can work
through the math yourself, but in one year, the total
energy from such an installation will be just enough at
one hundred percent efficiency, just enough to produced three and
(21:01):
one half kilos of imperfium madative. And of course, at
the power levels available in the sixties and seventies, a
lot of those old fashioned reactors were needed to produce
the necessary amounts of imperviium in order to shield our missiles.
Those reactors were built after much controversy, as you well know,
and a portion of the power from each was diverted
(21:23):
from the national power grid. The cover story for all
this was quite simply this all called energy crisis. That
should also explain the failure of Congress, in the face
of what was reported to be imminent doom, to do
anything about it. The student who had set a Pixley
on his story had been squimming in her seat for
(21:44):
several minutes.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Finally she could stand it no longer.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Look, Professor, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I
just can't believe all this. How could everybody be fooled
by that? How could it be hidden from the government
regulatory agencies who looked at the records of the utility.
Wouldn't someone have revealed it all to the public eventually, My.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Dear young lady, it was the government that made the
decision to manufacture impervium. Of course, the regulatory agencies knew
what was going on. They were in charge of running
the whole operation. As to the secrecy involved, the CIA
manages to keep its ten billion dollars budget secret even
from Congress. Bureaucracies can be very good at that sort
(22:27):
of thing. During World War II, the Manhattan Project, involving
billions of dollars and thousands of people, maintained absolute secrecy,
and one of the slogans of the early days of
the energy crisis was that it was the morall equivalent
of war. Only people then didn't really understand what was
meant by that.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
It was for re okay, professor, maybe you're not putting
us on. But why is it still hashed up? You say,
the Russians and we both have impervium missiles today, So
what's the point of not telling people that happened?
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Pixley banged his pipe into the waste paper basket near
the door and began to remat the term with the
pipe cleaner. Well, the reason is simple. It's still happening.
Oh not so much as in the early days of
the crisis, and as the fusion plants come online, the
truth will probably be revealed in the next few years.
(23:21):
You see, like all the other super heavy elements, the
impervium aditative is unstable. With the radiation hap life of
only a few years. We have to keep on making
this stuff, even with a fixed number of missiles to
replace the skins as they lose their resistance to directed
energy beams. The Russians have the same problem, of course,
(23:42):
and that's why no one over there is talking either.
Because stared at Pixley as he repacked his pipe with tobacco.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Professor, how do you happen to know all this? And
how can the government be absolutely sure that professor who
discovered in persium will remain silent?
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Pixley looked pleaseased with himself as he replied, well, let
me let me answer your first question by responding to
your second one with a counter question, what makes you
think he has? The government isn't worried about the professor talking, though,
because who would believe such a crazy story?
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Do you?
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Of course you don't, but it is true. I certainly
wish I could convince you, and maybe I can. From
the inside pocket of his expensively tailored coat, Professor Pixley
took out his wallet and extracted a wad of twenty
dollars bills, spreading them out for the class to see.
(24:42):
He then wrapped them tightly into a tube along the
long axis, setting the tube on fire with his lighter,
Pixley lit his freshly packed pipe with the flaming green Backs.
Well you you believe me now you've heard Paul Mayhan's
(25:31):
story what really caused the energy crisis until it appeared
in the July nineteen seventy eighth.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Edition of Analogue magazine. This is Michael Anson.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Technical operation for this broadcast by Bob Chan Mind webs
has produced at WSA Radio in Madison, a service of
the University of Wisconsin Extension. The same year is the
SAMs
Welcome to a half our mind works short stories from
the words of Spectator. This is Michael Hanson The mind
Web story. This half hour comes from analog of July
and afteen seventy. This is Paul Mayhan's What Wheely Caused
the Energy Crisis.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Walking into his eight.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
O'clock freshman physics class, senior full Professor Doctor John Pixley
had the.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Feeling that the students looked familiar, but of course they weren't.
It was the.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
First class meeting of the fall semester, and all the
students were new to the campus. Looking around at the hushed,
odd class, Pixley knew that wouldn't last past the third meeting.
He decided it must be the firm bodies, tanned skin,
and youthful excitement that.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Was the same every year. If the students were knew u.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Pixley certainly wasn't sixty years old, but still crimin figure.
He thought he was a full propt more by reason
of thirty five years of dedicated teaching and by a
publication of scholarly papers. Oh Pixley had long since resigned
himself to be the sort of teacher who gains influence
in some sort of immortality through.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
His students that Pixley knew his word.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
He didn't take second place in the department packing order
to any of the hot shot publication artists. No, sir,
good morning, class. This is Physics one, just in case
any of you really should be in Bio one that
meets in room two forty one B. Pixley did this
routine introduction each year, as his class was invariably assigned
to forty one A, and a few students always got confused.
(03:02):
Sure enough, two embarrassed boys and a girl got up
and followed mess m giggling left. Pixley watched with a
mixture of appreciation and regrets that the departure of the
blond and a form fitting skirt, after all these years
as a physicist, the motion dynamics of a firm bottom
still misdifding. He wondered if NSF would find an experimental
(03:23):
study of the phenomenon it.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Maybe if he called it.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
The resonance modes of two balanced juxtaposed hemispheres in a
uniform gravity field. These present thoughts were interrupted by the
appearance of four new red faced students, obviously freshly emerged
from Yo one. The class got a new excuse to
laugh at the expense of the confused, and Pixley noted
with disappointment there was no replacement for the blonde. All right,
(03:50):
let's get started. We're going to cover a lot of
ground this semester, and I'll expect hard work out of
all of you, and this class will be demanding. But
you will find, if you were here just to satisfy
the university science requirement, that it can be fun and
you'll learn a lot about how the world we live
in works. Even if you go into a non technical career,
(04:11):
a basic knowledge of physics will help differentiate you from
the uneducated, the uncultured, and, if I may say.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
So, the uninteresting.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Pixley was only momentarily hesitant with these last words, as
while he wasn't sure they were true, he was convinced
they should be. You may not have thought much about
it before, but you really actually know quite a bit
about this subject. Just to survive to the ripe old
age of seventeen or eighteen, you've had to learn how
(04:42):
a lot of things in nature work, like if you
jump off a porch, you'll fall rather than folk, so
you know something about gravity. You've learned to get out
of the way of a bicycle. So you know something
about kinetic energy and energy coupling between bodies undergoing collection,
and so on. Pixley stopped his pacing back and forth
(05:04):
as he talked and looked at the class. They looked
back expectantly. No one showed the slightest intention of asking
the question. In fact, you even know a lot about
theoretical things too, that go beyond mere experimental observations of
everyday life. Now, for example, is there a limit to
(05:26):
how fast things can move? Most of the students looked perplexed,
but several put up their hands, pointing at a red
haired young man in the back of the room. The
boy responded, well.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
I guess you must mean the speed of light. I
mean nothing can go faster than light, right.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Pixley nodded, happy to have been given a good line
to follow. Yes, yes, that's pretty much true. It's not
exactly right, because sometimes things can go faster than light
if they're both moving and something other than empty space,
like water. But you're essentially correct, nothing can go faster
(06:03):
than the white does in a vacuum. Now let's try
something else. Reaching into his briefcase on the floor next
to the rector, and Pixley extracted the dog eared color
photo and held it up to the class. Well, here
is an old aerial picture I picked up years ago
when I did some consulting for the Navy. It's a
shot of the old carrier Enterprise with her crew on
(06:26):
deck and their dress whites. Can anyone tell me what
it means? The red haired boys poke up again, drawing
some resentful stairs from the class. That boy's going to
learn what happens to the students will speak up, thought Pixley.
That old schoolboy rule of never show off your knowledge
was an operation, and Pixley made a mental note to
(06:48):
learn his name.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
The boy looked promising.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
The crew is all lined up spelling out.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
E equals MC squared.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
So I guess that's an old nuclear powered chip, because
isn't that Einstein's mass energy law? Then next to Maxwell's
equations for the electromagnetic field, Einstein's result is probably the
most beautiful creation of the human mind. And you already
know other justice part of growing up with our modern
(07:16):
atomic powered society. A young lady next to the red
haired boy spoke up at this, But.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Shouldn't you add professors and comments about the terrible social problems.
Atomic energy has caused the spread of reactors with the
radioactive race. It threatens everybody and all just because it
makes money for a special few at the risk of
ordinary people.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Fixley felt a cold wave of apprehension as he recognized
the tone of a young idealist speaking with all the
fervor that being naive can muster. He replied carefully, Well,
of course, there are great difficulties of the kind you mentioned,
but so far there haven't been any major problems except
(07:57):
where the partial core meltdown at Puffs a few years ago,
and with the Livermore fusion process of all of you
heard of that good soon to be coupled into the
national power grid, we will then only have the tritium
disposal problem, the minor problem, really. The young lady looked unconvinced,
(08:19):
as did many of her classmates. Pixley knew from sorry
experience that he couldn't lose the class permanently right here
and now. If he did not regain control. To be
challenged in the first ten minutes of the first meeting,
and not to persuasively counter would be fatal. He gained
a few seconds together his thoughts by lighting his pipe. Now, now, look,
(08:42):
I know what the prevailing ideas about the spread of
nuclear power in the United States are at A bunch
of capitalistic money grubbing public be damned utilities and which
corporate investors found it an attractive way to make enormous
profits in response to the world energy crisis that first
started to be publicly understood in the early seventies.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Well, that's wrong.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
There was some of that, of course, but alone it
wouldn't have been sufficient to result in the massive energy conservation,
new energy source development, and nuclear reactor construction programs in
the last three decades or so. There's something else has
been at work, and that's something was national security. Sure,
(09:28):
I know most of you are aware of how that
excuse was abused in the infamous Nixon Watergate scandal and
the Slavery inquiry more recently. But in this case it's true.
The class still looked skeptical, but now there was interest
too on their faces, and Pixley knew he had them
back in his hands. Now to keep them there, Pixley
(09:49):
picked up his lecture notes and dramatically tossed them back
into his briefcase. Well, to hell with today's lecture. I'm
going to tell you a story, a story you may
not believe, a story that the powers that be in
the White House, the Pentagon, and State Department will deny.
But it's nevertheless crue. It isn't classified because well, the
(10:10):
classified would be to admit it, and there's always someone
who would leak it anyway, like me. Today won't be
a loss. In any case, you'll learn some physics from this.
How many of you have heard of our government agency
called DARPER, no response, just as I thought, and that's
(10:31):
not strange. It keeps a low profile now. DARPER, which
stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is part of
the Directorate of Defense Research and Engineering, which in turn
is part of the Department of Defense. DARPER was chartered
decades ago with a basic mission of providing initial financial
(10:52):
support for blue sky even almost crazy ideas for basic
research that trust might lead to new weapons technology. The
idea has been to avoid what military people call technological
surprise on the United States. That's where one of the
potential enemies of this country comes up suddenly with a
(11:13):
revolutionary new weapon that lets them get the upper hand
in the military stalemate we presently have and don't think
this is just paranoia. Such catastrophic weapons developments have happened
in the past, and if you think of some examples,
the red haired boy in the back responded again, but
(11:33):
now there was more interested by the class in what
he had to say. How about the atomic bomb, Professor,
when the United States dropped it on Japan, that must.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Have caught him by surprise.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Yes, yes, indeed, it certainly do it through the Japanese
it was pure magic, although that may not be exactly
the right word. They had no idea what had happened
to them. Interestingly enough, captured German documents and interrogation of
captured Sienists indicated that the Third Reich knew what had happened,
(12:04):
but even the Germans didn't know how it had happened.
But that's pretty recent stuff. Actually, technological surprises have occurred
all through history, to the sorrow of the surprise. For example,
you might look into what happened to the flower of
fourteenth century French knighthood at Chris c when they ran
into the armor penetrating arrows of the English Long Bowl
(12:26):
for the first time, or even better, look into the
tenth century Battle for Constantinople where Russia's Prince Igor had
his flee to ten thousand ships burned to their waterlines
when the Byzantines sapped them with their Greek fire. And
of course, the classic case of technological surprise has to
be David and Goliath. Now class Darker itself came into
(12:52):
being because of a major surprise on the United States
the launching of Sputnik by the Russians back in nineteen
fifty seven. But this is drifting away from what I
really started out to target. In the early nineteen seventies,
Darper was suddenly faced with a colossal technological surprise from
(13:14):
this abvience, Yes that's right, one that threatened to leave
us wide open to them. The Russians were on the
verge of developing a weapons system that would completely negate
our ICBMs and the SLBMs. A perfect anti ballistic missile system,
it was the directed energy beam, consisting either of space
(13:38):
based high energy lasers or subatomic particle accelerators. The Russians
had made fantastic strides in such devices, and just because
such weapons violated the then existing ABM and Outer Space treaties,
that didn't make any difference. Once they had such weapons
actually deployed, there wouldn't be a damn thing we could
(13:59):
do about.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
It, the professor, couldn't we just shoot those weapons down?
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Pixley fixed a faderly smile, and the student who had
just spoken with what their new weapon was designed to
shoot our missiles? And that's all we had to shoot
at their satellite based energy beam projectors. No, once in orbit,
they would have really had us right by the neck.
(14:23):
The class was hanging on the edges of their seats.
Now Pixley relaxed a bit. He began to enjoy himself
as he continued on.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
With his tail.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
You you can't believe the uproar that rolled through the
corridors of the Pentagon. The careers of a lot of
generals and admirals and senior civilian intelligence officers came to
an abrupt end once Congress got hold of that story.
As it turned out, some isolated Air Force intelligence people
had been warning the CIA about the Soviet advancements, but
(14:55):
they were dismissed as being alarmists. It was the old
not invented here syndrome. Why the United States couldn't build
such weapons? Why then could mostly row peasant like mother Russia?
Do it well, By God, they did it. Had a spectacled,
bright looking young man in the front row quiet up.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
And now raised his hand.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Pixley gave a quick nod to him. Professor, you know,
this all reminds me of that old Cowboy and Indian Choke,
where the ancient Indian fighters telling how years before he
had been surrounded by attacking Indians and.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
How he was down to his last bullet.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
When asked how it turned out, he replied, I got killed.
The class roared, and Pixley glowed a better entrance line.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
He couldn't have ridden himself.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Keen, quite true, young man, quite true. Here we all
sit alive, healthy, America is still here, and Russia's still there?
And how do why explain that? Could it be that
once Russia defeated us without a shot, they just said, okay,
we won, but don't worry, everything stays the same. We
(16:06):
just wanted to show you, guys, we could do it.
A few snorts of laughter whippled through the class, and
Pixley himself had to suppress a smile. Pixley kept quiet
for half a minute, just smoking his pipe and letting.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Them think about it.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Thirty five years in the lecture room had taught him
that to be a good teacher wasn't just knowing your subjects.
You had to know how to put on a show
too well. That class. Just because the CIA blew, it
doesn't mean we were totally defenseless. The boys at Darper
hadn't been sitting on their hands all those years.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
It seems they.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Had been funding the research of a little non professor
in a small New England university who had come to
them with a wild idea in the late sixties. Remember
Einstein's energy equals mc squared. Oh, the way we used
that in the atomic bomb was to convert a small
portion of uranium mass into a heck of a lot
of energy. And of course that's what we do today
(17:05):
in fission and fusion reactors. Excepting fusion reactors it's hydrogen mass. Now,
what this professor wanted to do was run the Einstein
equation backwards.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
You see what that means.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Pixley could see they didn't, and here he didn't wait
for any grammatic silence down both. What the professor wanted
to do was to take electrical energy and literally compress
it back into mass. The kicker in this was that
his theoretical analyzes predicted the end mass did not have
to add any relation to the mass that might have
(17:41):
been converted to produce the energy he started with. In fact,
energy produced just from chemical reactions like burning wood was
okay too, although not very efficient. A wood burner doesn't
put out much energy compared to a nuclear plant. He
claimed he could create any of the known elements and
other super heavy ones predicted by extending the periodic table
(18:03):
that weren't even known to science. Fixley puffed on his
pipe to get it going again, blew the smoke ring,
and then continued. One of these super heavy elements had
the theoretically calculated property of making an ultra hard heat
resistant alloy when mixed correctly with titanium. The result was called,
(18:25):
appropriately enough, impervium. Impervium used to make the outer skin
in our missiles made them invulnerable to the Russian ABM
energy beam projectors. So you see, we had what in
the old days we used to call a Mexican standoff.
The Russians could build an ABM system we didn't know
how to build, but we could build missiles to penetrate
(18:49):
their ABM defense missiles they didn't know how to build
so counter surprise, and so for the next ten years,
both sides worked like how to catch up with the
others technology, and in the end both ended up with
duplicate capabilities as of right now, or both sides are
refrained from deploying ABM energy beams because both sides have
(19:13):
improvium skin missiles. But of course, this happy ending happy
so far at least, occurred only because of Darper's excellent
judgment and deciding to support good Professor's not the idea.
I might add, however, that he was handsomely rewarded, so
don't worry about him. Even though he didn't get the
Nobel Prize, at least not yet, he did get a
(19:35):
heck of a lot more money than the prize carries
some I think you to fortune, along with the Presidential
Science Medal. And it was all very private and hush hush,
of course, professor.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
But a very interesting story. But just what does it
have to do with the energy crisis? I mean, that's
what you started to tell us about, right, And why
don't you people talk about it today? It's all over, right,
And why did the professor in your story have to
keep quiet about his invention? After the Russians have been
improving in technology too, and what would be the point
of being secretive?
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Now?
Speaker 1 (20:06):
To play well, those young lady, are the crucial questions,
and the answers are really very simple.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Now.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
To answer the first one, just calculate how much energy
it takes to make a kilogram of the impervium addative.
In fact, I'll save you the trouble part of the
value for the speed of light into Einstein's equation, and
it's not hard to calculate that it takes twenty five
billion killer one hours of electrical energy to make a
one kilogram mass of anything. That, my young friends, is
(20:40):
just one hell of a lot of energy. One of
the new rebel fusion plants will run full out at
a power level of ten thousand megawatts. You can work
through the math yourself, but in one year, the total
energy from such an installation will be just enough at
one hundred percent efficiency, just enough to produced three and
(21:01):
one half kilos of imperfium madative. And of course, at
the power levels available in the sixties and seventies, a
lot of those old fashioned reactors were needed to produce
the necessary amounts of imperviium in order to shield our missiles.
Those reactors were built after much controversy, as you well know,
and a portion of the power from each was diverted
(21:23):
from the national power grid. The cover story for all
this was quite simply this all called energy crisis. That
should also explain the failure of Congress, in the face
of what was reported to be imminent doom, to do
anything about it. The student who had set a Pixley
on his story had been squimming in her seat for
(21:44):
several minutes.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Finally she could stand it no longer.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Look, Professor, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I
just can't believe all this. How could everybody be fooled
by that? How could it be hidden from the government
regulatory agencies who looked at the records of the utility.
Wouldn't someone have revealed it all to the public eventually, My.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Dear young lady, it was the government that made the
decision to manufacture impervium. Of course, the regulatory agencies knew
what was going on. They were in charge of running
the whole operation. As to the secrecy involved, the CIA
manages to keep its ten billion dollars budget secret even
from Congress. Bureaucracies can be very good at that sort
(22:27):
of thing. During World War II, the Manhattan Project, involving
billions of dollars and thousands of people, maintained absolute secrecy,
and one of the slogans of the early days of
the energy crisis was that it was the morall equivalent
of war. Only people then didn't really understand what was
meant by that.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
It was for re okay, professor, maybe you're not putting
us on. But why is it still hashed up? You say,
the Russians and we both have impervium missiles today, So
what's the point of not telling people that happened?
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Pixley banged his pipe into the waste paper basket near
the door and began to remat the term with the
pipe cleaner. Well, the reason is simple. It's still happening.
Oh not so much as in the early days of
the crisis, and as the fusion plants come online, the
truth will probably be revealed in the next few years.
(23:21):
You see, like all the other super heavy elements, the
impervium aditative is unstable. With the radiation hap life of
only a few years. We have to keep on making
this stuff, even with a fixed number of missiles to
replace the skins as they lose their resistance to directed
energy beams. The Russians have the same problem, of course,
(23:42):
and that's why no one over there is talking either.
Because stared at Pixley as he repacked his pipe with tobacco.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Professor, how do you happen to know all this? And
how can the government be absolutely sure that professor who
discovered in persium will remain silent?
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Pixley looked pleaseased with himself as he replied, well, let
me let me answer your first question by responding to
your second one with a counter question, what makes you
think he has? The government isn't worried about the professor talking, though,
because who would believe such a crazy story?
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Do you?
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Of course you don't, but it is true. I certainly
wish I could convince you, and maybe I can. From
the inside pocket of his expensively tailored coat, Professor Pixley
took out his wallet and extracted a wad of twenty
dollars bills, spreading them out for the class to see.
(24:42):
He then wrapped them tightly into a tube along the
long axis, setting the tube on fire with his lighter,
Pixley lit his freshly packed pipe with the flaming green Backs.
Well you you believe me now you've heard Paul Mayhan's
(25:31):
story what really caused the energy crisis until it appeared
in the July nineteen seventy eighth.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Edition of Analogue magazine. This is Michael Anson.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Technical operation for this broadcast by Bob Chan Mind webs
has produced at WSA Radio in Madison, a service of
the University of Wisconsin Extension. The same year is the
SAMs
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