What's New Robert L. Park 22 Oct 2010

WHAT=92S NEW   Robert L Park   Friday, 22 Oct 2010   Washington, DC

1. DISCONNECT:  HELP!  SCIENCE IS BEING ZAPPED AGAIN.=20
One of the great mysteries of the Cold War was that throughout the 1960s=20
the US Embassy on Tchaikovsky Street in Moscow was subjected to intense=20
microwave bombardment from a building across the street. The rumor was th=
at=20
the radiation was meant to induce mental illness and injure the embassy=20
staff.  Scientists were dubious, but the staff was given hazardous-duty=20
pay.  This strange story was picked up by Paul Brodeur, a writer for the=20
New Yorker covering the cold war.  Despite his lack of scientific trainin=
g,=20
Brodeur shifted his attention to the microwave conspiracy and collected h=
is=20
New Yorker articles in The Zapping of America:  Microwaves, Their Deadly=20
Risk, and the Coverup (Norton, 1977).  In a debate on CBS radio, Brodeur=20
once accused me of using quantum mechanics to hide the truth.  Personally=
=20
innocent of any such scientific bias, Brodeur made no distinction between=
=20
900 MHz cell-phone radiation and 60 Hz power-line fields; it's all EMF. =20
Currents of Death: Power Lines, Computer Terminals, and the Attempt to=20
Cover Up Their Threat to Your Health (Simon and Schuster, 1989)created a=20
near panic. Wower lines did not stop causing cancer until the National=20
Academy conducted its own lengthy and expensive epidemiological study. =20
Epidemiology found what science already knew; power-line fields, like=20
microwaves, are not cancer agents.  Sadly, science never mattered.  With=20
Devra Davis, it still doesn't.=20

2. LCROSS: WATER, WATER, EVERYWHERE, NOR ANY DROP TO DRINK.
"The moon has water," gushed the Wall Street Journal, "and plenty of it."=
=20
You can't penalize the authors of the five papers in Science magazine thi=
s=20
week for a little end-zone taunting;  it was a difficult experiment, and=20
they found what they were looking for in a deep crater near the pole.  Th=
e=20
implications for the future, however, were not quite as clear.  Kenneth=20
Chang, the NYTimes science reporter who covers space, says the estimate i=
s=20
that it costs $100,000 to send 1 kg to the moon (that would be 1 liter of=
=20
water).  Perhaps I will ask my freshmen physics class to run-the-numbers=20
comparing the cost of making rocket fuel from lunar-crater water to=20
shipping it to the moon on a rocket.

3. THE FIFTH PLANET: HOLD THE LAUNCH, HOLD THE LAUNCH!
Three weeks ago, a NASA press release announced the discovery of the=20
first "Goldilocks" exoplanet.  The announcement was complete with a lovel=
y=20
color portrait of Gliese581g, which is another first for an exoplanet.=20
Alas, this week, according to Richard Kerr in today's Science, there is=20
word from a conference of exoplanet hunters in Turin, Italy that question=
s=20
are being raised about the existence of Gliese581g.  Other researchers=20
studying the Gliese581 system reportedly found no trace of a fifth planet=
. =20
I'd be upset if I traveled that far and found it=92s imaginary.

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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