What's New Friday July 25, 2008

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 25 Jul 08,   Washington, DC

1.  CANCER: WHAT EINSTEIN KNEW ABOUT CELL PHONES.
By now everyone has heard the news frenzy over Ronald Herberman, Director 
of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, advising faculty and 
staff to limit cell phone use because there is no proof that it’s not a 
cancer risk.  Nonsense!  All cancer agents act by disrupting chemical 
bonds.  In a classic 2001 op-ed LBL physicist Robert Cahn explained that 
Einstein won the 1905 Nobel Prize in Physics for showing that cell phones 
can’t cause cancer.  The threshold energy of the photoelectric effect, for 
which Einstein won the prize, lies at the extreme blue end of the visible 
spectrum in the near ultraviolet.  The same near-ultraviolet rays can also 
cause skin cancer.   Red light is too weak to cause cancer.  Cell-phone 
radiation is 10,000 times weaker. 

2.  SUNSTROKE: $4 GAS REVIVES THE SPACE-POWER FANTASY.
This week it was a NY Times op-ed, "Harvest the Sun  From Space" by O. 
Glenn Smith, a former Manager at the Johnson Space Center.  The technology 
already exists, Smith says, large solar collectors would be built in Earth 
orbit.  Unhampered by clouds or darkness, these panels would collect loads 
of energy.  "Once collected," Smith says, "the solar energy would be 
safely beamed to Earth via wireless radio."  How is it stored in the 
meantime?  He wants to use the solar panels on the ISS for 
a "demonstration."  Uh, there are a few snags: the ISS has an orbital 
period of 91 min.  It’s in the dark half the time.  Beaming energy back to 
a ground antenna calls for a geosynchronous orbit - 100 times the 340km 
ISS altitude.  What will be the energy fantasy next week?

3.  MISCONDUCT: THE FUSION BUBBLE BURST SIX YEARS AGO.
The March 8, 2002 issue of Science published a controversial Taleyarkhan 
article reporting d-d fusion in sonoluminescence even though several 
distinguished scientists had asked that it be delayed and published with a 
conflicting paper  http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN02/wn030802.html .  
Meanwhile, Taleyarkhan moved to Purdue, which has been embroiled in the 
controversy ever since.  Today’s issue of Science relates what may be the 
final chapter in a sad journey of Rusi Taleyarkhan from foolishness to 
fraud.  The third Purdue committee to review the controversy "clearly 
documents that there has never been any successful replication except when 
Taleyarkhan is present or supervising."   

4.  UNCOOL:  LOT OF HEAT FROM GLOBAL-WARMING DENIERS.  
Suppose, I asked myself, that the deniers are right and the CO2 thing is a 
mistake?  What will happen if the world takes the CO2 thing seriously, 
adopting common sense measures to counter anthropogenic warming and there 
never was any warming in the first place?  1) there will more non-
renewable resources to leave to our progeny;  2) we will breath cleaner 
air and see the stars again, the way we saw them half a century ago; 3) we 
could stop paving over the planet, and 4) cut down on the number of 
billionaires.  If we’re wrong we could have a party.  We could have a 
party either way.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
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