Borderlands of Science

by Charles Sheffield

  Critics of the Big Bang point out that the theory does not explain the mystery of the missing matter, nor how galaxies formed in the first billion years of an originally smooth universe. The nature of quasars is also open to question.

  It is one thing to object to a theory. It is another to offer a viable alternative. What do we have that might replace the Big Bang cosmology?

  There are two independent groups critical of the Big Bang theory. The first is led by Fred Hoyle, Halton Arp, and Geoffrey Burbidge. Arp has done considerable observational work on quasars, showing that some of them with large red shifts seem to be physically connected to galaxies displaying much smaller red shifts. If this is the case, then the whole redshift-distance correlation falls apart. And Hoyle, back in the late 1940s, along with Thomas Gold and Hermann Bondi, proposed an alternative to the Big Bang known as the "continuous creation" or "steady state theory." (Hoyle, more recently, says that the word "steady" was a bad choice. He, Gold, and Bondi meant only to indicate that the rate of recession of the galaxies does not change with time, as is the case with Big Bang cosmology.) The original form of the steady-state theory, however, had other problems; observations did not support the independence of galactic age with distance that it predicted.

  Hoyle, along with the Indian astronomer Narlikar, has developed a new and different version of the steady-state theory, this one consistent with ideas of cosmological inflation needed also by the Big Bang theory. Instead of a single, one-time Big Bang, however, Hoyle and Narlikar posit a large number of small acts of creation, arising from vacuum fluctuations and suffering rapid expansions or "inflations."

  Hoyle also proposes another mechanism to explain the microwave background radiation, although in a sense, he hardly needs to. Scientists long ago, knowing nothing about an expanding universe or the recession of the galaxies, had calculated the temperature of open space. Charles Guillaume, in a paper published in 1896, calculated a temperature of 5.75 Kelvin. Eddington in 1926 estimated the temperature as 3 Kelvin. Early proponents of the Big Bang, by contrast, believed the temperature ought to be higher, anywhere from 7 to 30 Kelvin.

  Hoyle and his associates argue that the microwave background radiation stems from a well-known process called thermalization. All that is happening, they say, is that the light from stars is being scattered to longer and longer wavelengths by its interactions with metallic "whiskers" (length-to-width ratios of 1:100,000) seeded throughout interstellar and intergalactic space by supernova explosions. In Hoyle's words, Nature is an "inveterate thermalizer," and the process will continue until actual stellar radio sources dominate—which is in the microwave region.

  The second group of Big Bang critics began with Hannes Alfven, a Swedish Nobel Prize winner in Physics. His work has been continued by Anthony Peratt and Eric Lerner, and the resulting theory is usually termed "plasma cosmology."

  Plasma cosmology has its own proposed mechanism for explaining the 2.7 Kelvin background radiation. It is based on a theory proposed in 1989 by Emil Wolf. The "Wolf shift" shows how light passing through a cloud of gas is shifted in frequency toward the red end of the spectrum. This effect and the thermalization effect (both of which may be operating) throw question on the recession rates of the galaxies.

  The plasma cosmology group also argues that most of the matter in the universe is not electrically neutral, but charged—free electrons, or positively charged nuclei. Since this is the case, electromagnetism, rather than gravity, is the controlling force. Alfven, making this assumption, concluded that sheets of electric current must crisscross the Universe. Interacting with these, plasma clouds would develop a complex structure and complex motions. Alfven predicted that the universe would display a cellular and filamentary nature over very large scales.

  At the time, the universe seemed to be smooth at such scales, and his ideas were not accepted. Evidence of "walls" and "voids" and galactic super-clusters did not appear until the mid-1980s. Today, the supporters of the Big Bang are hard pressed to explain what Alfven's theory establishes in a natural way.

  Finally, there is the question of the abundance of the elements. Both the Hoyle school and the plasma cosmology school have pointed out that, according to the Big Bang's own equations, the abundances of four light nuclei—hydrogen, deuterium, helium, and lithium—must all be linked. If the helium abundance of the universe, today, is below 23 percent (as observation indicates) then there will be more deuterium than observed. In fact, there will be eight times as much. On the other hand, if the density of the universe is high enough to avoid producing too much deuterium in the very early days, then there is not enough helium now. It should be more than 24 percent. And finally, when we put lithium and deuterium together into the picture, the necessary helium abundance comes out as over 25 percent.

  In other words, juggle the Big Bang theory as you like, you cannot come up with a version that provides the observed amounts of the three substances.

  We see that the three mainstays of Big Bang theory are subject to alternative explanations or open to question. So where does that leave us?

  Well, today the Big Bang remains as standard dogma; anything else, steady-state or continuous creation or plasma cosmology, is still scientific heresy.

  However, I can't help feeling that Big Bang theory has some major problems. Its proponents, if they are at all sensitive, must feel the winds of change blowing on the back of their necks. In science, that is usually a healthy sign.

  13.9 Free energy. Energy from nothing, free electricity drawn from the air. Who could resist it? I include this more for fun than anything else, and because I experienced the matter at first hand.

  It began in February 1996, with a telephone call from Arthur Clarke in Sri Lanka: "There's going to be a demonstration on March 5th, at Union Rail Station in Washington, D.C. A group claims to have a way of generating free electricity. I can't go. Can you?"

  I could, and did. The East Hall of Union Station had been rented for the occasion, with an overflow room upstairs that offered a real-time video of the live performance. The event was scheduled to begin at 7:30. I went along early, and made a point of talking with the group (the Columbus Club) who rented out the space. One man talked of the event as a "show"; i.e., an entertainment. A lady responsible for registration had been told to expect about nine hundred people. My estimate of the actual turnout is maybe one hundred, at the beginning. By the time I left, roughly at ten o'clock, no more than fifty were left.

  The man who did most of the talking was tall, American, dark-haired, and very experienced in presentation. He spoke for two and a half hours, without notes. He had a disarming manner, and constantly referred to himself as more lucky than clever. In fact, because he disdained technical knowledge, it was hard to question him about technical matters.

  He began by describing a heat pump that seemed quite conventional and comprehensible. The "low-temperature phase change" technology is exactly that employed in a refrigerator, with freon as the material that is cycled. He described his heat pump as better than anyone else's, and that may be true. It would require a good deal of study to prove otherwise. Less plausible was the method by which the pump was designed. He said he came across it by accident, taking an evaporator, a compressor, and a condenser, of rather arbitrary sizes, dumping freon into them, and finding that the result performed better than anything else available—by a factor of three. Because he said he was not technical, answers to some important questions were not forthcoming. Did he vary the parameters of his system? Or, how does he know that his design is the best that there is?—a claim that he made.

  However, the heat pump claim was completely testable. If he had stopped there (we were maybe forty minutes into his two and a half hour presentation) I would have been favorably impressed.

  I had more trouble with the next, nontechnical statements that he made. He asserted that he had built this device in the early 1980s and made 50 million dollars in 18 months. The electric companies then drove him out of bus
iness, made three attempts on his life, threatened his associates, and in some way not altogether clear arranged for him to serve two years in jail. Time not wasted, he says, because he had 17 new energy production ideas while locked up.

  Ignoring all that, I was disturbed by three technical aspects of the next part of the presentation. First, there was a continuing confusion between energy storage and energy production. Second, he moved smoothly from the statement that he had a very efficient heat pump, which I could accept, to a statement that he had a pump that produced a net energy output—in other words, the efficiency was more than a hundred percent. Third, every method of producing energy that I know of relies on the existence of a thermal gradient, usually in the form of a hot and a cold reservoir. These two seemed to be muddled in his discussion, with the heat flow going in the wrong direction. In other words, he took energy from his cold reservoir and put it into his hot reservoir. That's a neat trick.

  We move on. Next he introduced a new device, which he termed the Fischer engine. This, as he describes it, is a steam (or, if you prefer, freon) engine which uses super-heated water (or freon) under high pressure and requires no condenser. His explanation of how it works left me unsatisfied. However, I believe that the Fischer engine could be a genuine advance. He stated that "the Carnot cycle is not a major concern." Since the Carnot cycle represents an ideal situation in which all processes are reversible, his statement is equivalent to saying that the second law of thermodynamics is not a major concern, at least to him. It is to me.

  After this, things became less comprehensible. He coupled his heat pump with the Fischer engine, and asserted that the result would be more powerful than an internal combustion engine of the same size, would never need gasoline (or any other fuel), would not need any oil changes, and would run for 400,000 miles before it wore out.

  If some of those statements seem remarkable, during the final hour several much more striking ones were offered. He declared that he knew five different ways to produce free electricity. He stated that he had seen a working anti-gravity machine. Finally, he again insisted that his desire to offer the world (or at least the United States) free, unlimited, pollution-less energy was being thwarted by the utility companies.

  In summary, it was a fascinating evening. However, it seems a little premature to sell that Exxon or BP stock. It also proves to me that entrepreneurs are still out there, trolling the deep waters for sucker fish.

  13.10 Wild powers. So far in this chapter we have discussed what might be called "offshore science." The ideas might be heretical, and an occasional proponent might suggest lunacy or charlatanism, but they live within the general scientific framework. Now we are heading for deep water.

  Let us begin with a quandary. What can you say about something for which every scientific test has turned up no evidence, but which 90 percent of the people—maybe it's 99 percent—believe?

  I am referring to the "wild powers" of the human mind. A short list of them would have to include telepathy, clairvoyance, prescience, psychokinesis, divination, dowsing, teleportation, reincarnation, levitation, channeling, faith healing, hexing, and psychics.

  In addition to these, another group of widely-held beliefs involves aliens: abduction by aliens, sightings of alien spacecraft, rides in alien spacecraft, impregnation by aliens, and—a central element of the movie Independence Day—aliens who landed on Earth, only to have their existence concealed by the U.S. Government.

  I know at least one person who believes in each of these things, often while rejecting many of the others as ridiculous. People who pooh-pooh the idea of, say, UFOs, will accept that humans, in times of stress, can communicate over long distances with close family members—and I am not referring to telephone calls. At least one United States president, Ronald Reagan, permitted astrology to play a part in his administration. Another's wife, Hillary Clinton, may have tried to channel Eleanor Roosevelt, though she later claimed that it was just a game. I know several trained scientists who believe that the government is covering up knowledge of alien landings on Earth—although they acknowledge that the government has been singularly inefficient in hiding other secrets.

  This is a book about science. Rather than engage in pro and con arguments for the hidden powers of the human mind, or the presence or absence of aliens, I will say only this: good science fiction stories have been written using every item on my list. Some of them are among the best tales in the field. Thus, Alfred Bester used telepathy in The Demolished Man (Bester, 1953), and teleportation in The Stars My Destination (Bester, 1956). Robert Heinlein had aliens taking over humans in The Puppet Masters (Heinlein, 1951). Theodore Sturgeon employed a variety of wild powers in More Than Human (Sturgeon, 1953), as did Frank Herbert in Dune (Herbert, 1965). Zenna Henderson, in her stories of The People, used aliens and wild powers to great effect (Henderson, 1961, 1966).

  These writers took unlikely ingredients, and used them to produce absolute classics. Feel free to go and do thou likewise.

  13.11 Beyond the edge of the world. Finally, let's take a trip right to the edge of the world and off it, with the Kidjel Ratio. I feel fairly confident that this has never been used in a science fiction story, and it's never going to be used in one of mine, so it's all yours.

  It's not often that a revolutionary new scientific advance makes its first appearance in the Congressional Record. But here we go:

  From the Congressional Record

  of the U.S. House of Representatives,

  3 June, 1960:

  The Kidjel Ratio—A New Age in

  Applied Mathematics and Arts

  Extension of Remarks of

  Hon. Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii.

  "Mr. Speaker, Hawaii's wealth in human resources has once again proved to be unlimited. The ingenuity and pioneering spirit of its citizens have given to the world a new and practical system of solving a multitude of problems in the important fields of applied mathematics, art, and design.

  "The Kidjel ratio is now being used to great advantage in more than 40 related activities in the world of architecture, engineering, mathematics, fine arts and industrial arts . . .

  "Academically speaking, the Kidjel ratio also led to the discovery of the solutions of the three famous 2,500 year-old so-called impossible problems in Greek geometry, popularly known as:

  "First. Trisecting the angle—dividing an angle into three equal parts.

  "Second. Squaring the circle—constructing a square equal in area to a given circle.

  "Third. Doubling the cube—constructing a cube, double in volume to that of a given cube with the use of compasses and unmarked ruler only . . ."

  What is the Kidjel ratio? I have no idea. But as to the three mathematical advances cited, all three have been proved mathematically impossible with the restriction imposed by the Greeks who originally proposed them (solution must be done by a geometrical construction of a finite number of steps, using compasses and unmarked ruler only). The first and third were shown to be impossible by about 1640, when Descartes realized that their solutions implied the solution of a cubic equation, which cannot be done using ruler and compasses only. The second was disposed of in 1882, when Ferdinand Lindemann proved that ? is a "transcendental" number, not capable of being expressed as the solution of any algebraic equation.

  What is impossible to mathematicians is apparently simple enough for the U.S. House of Representatives. Moreover, the Kidjel ratio amendment is not without precedent. Here we have another fine example:

  "A bill for introducing a new mathematical truth, and offered as a contribution to education to be used only by the State of Indiana free of cost by paying any royalties whatever on the same . . ."—House Bill No. 246, introduced in the Indiana House on January 18, 1897.

  Section 1 of the bill continues:

  "Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Indiana: It has been found that a circular area is to the square on a line equal to the quadrant of the circumference, as the area of an equila
teral rectangle is to the square on one side. The diameter employed as the linear unit according to the present rule in computing the circle's area is entirely wrong . . ."

  In other words, the value of ?, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, and one of the most fundamental numbers in mathematics, was not what mathematicians believed it to be. The value of ? is an infinite decimal, 3.141592653 . . . which can be approximated as closely as desired, but not given exactly. However, a correct and exact value was promised to the Indiana legislature, thanks to the efforts of an Indiana physician, Dr. Edwin J. Goodwin.

  This piece of nonsense would probably have become law, except for the timely arrival at the State Capitol of Professor C.A. Waldo, a member of the mathematics department of Purdue University, there on quite other business. He was astonished to find the House debating a piece of mathematics, with a representative from eastern Indiana saying, "The case is perfectly simple. If we pass this bill which establishes a new and correct value of ?, the author offers without cost the use of this discovery and its free publication in our school textbooks, while everyone else must pay him a royalty."

  Professor Waldo managed to educate the senators. They voted to postpone the bill indefinitely on its second reading. The State of Indiana learned a lesson, and passed up a wonderful opportunity to become the laughing-stock of the mathematical world. But as Senator Inouye proves, no lesson lasts forever.

  13.12 One last heresy. Not all science fiction stories have to be serious. They can, if you prefer it, be ridiculous. Here, as an example, is one which plays games with a few basic ideas of physics. I leave it to the reader to pick up the references to theories and people. I will only add that all the formulas quoted in the story are correct.