by Tom Clynes
29
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Scotch Tape
TAYLOR AND KENNETH left quickly after the awards ceremony and flew to Florida, where they’d been invited by visionary entrepreneur Elon Musk and NASA to watch the launch of the first SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that would deliver a payload to the International Space Station. They woke and had breakfast at 3:00 a.m., then joined Charles Bolden, the head of NASA, on the bleachers to watch the launch.
Unfortunately, the liftoff was scrubbed during the final countdown, just as it had been during the Wilson family’s visit to Cape Canaveral a decade earlier. Taylor tried to convince his dad to wait for the next day’s launch window and skip the Davidson graduation, but Kenneth wouldn’t have it. Davidson, he told Taylor, had been so much a part of his life, and had given him so much.
But as they streaked their way west, Taylor’s mood darkened. Though his medical-isotopes project had won the top physics award and two other awards, the recognition he’d dreamed of for the project that meant the most to him had slipped out of his grasp.
“I lost,” Taylor told everyone when he got back to Reno.
That made no rational sense, of course. Taylor had won first place in the Physics and Astronomy category. He had, over the past four years, walked away with nine awards, including two first-place awards in the physics category and the Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award. He’d won more than a hundred thousand dollars in prizes, and a trip to Switzerland. He had patents, marketable ideas, and people lined up to invest in them.
Kenneth tried to put things in perspective for his son, then gave up, figuring that once Taylor got to his graduation and started celebrating with his friends, he’d snap out of it.
But that didn’t happen.
“I haven’t seen him this bummed out since Fukushima,” math teacher Darren Ripley says. “But after the meltdown, he snapped out of it and started getting optimistic when he saw the opportunity for making reactors safer with his modular design. But when he got back from ISEF, he was crestfallen, and it didn’t go away. He felt like he’d failed.”
Ikya, too, was facing a major failure for the first time. She’d been denied admission to Wharton, her first choice.
“And yes,” she said, “I’m taking it personally.”
She’d be going to Berkeley instead. Sofia would be going to Pomona College. Even Ron Phaneuf would soon be leaving, heading off to retire in the Colorado Rockies. And Bill Brinsmead, though he had no plans to leave town, was phasing out his involvement at UNR.
Over the summer, Brinsmead and Taylor would inspect a few commercial properties in Reno. Apart from that, though, Taylor’s business plans seemed to be stuck. When Thiel administrators and others would ask how he was doing, Taylor would offer vague, unconvincing answers. “I’m looking at a first round of financing soon,” he’d say; or, “I’m considering a management team.”
Plenty has been written lately of the pro-youth, anti-age bias of Silicon Valley. But the flip side of that bias is the questionable expectation that genius tech kids are automatically genius businesspeople too. Thus far, Taylor had been able to leverage his boy-genius image very successfully. But now, he seemed trapped by it—trapped by his need to know the answers rather than ask the questions; trapped by his reluctance to make the (completely reasonable) admission that, as an inventor and scientist, he didn’t know the first thing about starting a business. For the first time since I’d known him, maybe the first time in his life, he seemed unwilling to jump in and just do something that might fail.
Meanwhile, the big dreams of fusion energy were smashing into hard realities. That fall, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) announced that it would not meet its goal of igniting a fusion plasma any time soon. Under budgetary and political pressures, NIF began shifting its research focus toward nuclear weapons instead of fusion energy.
The U.S. contribution to the ITER fusion research project was uncertain too, as Congress threatened to hold up funding just as construction was ramping up. Suddenly, the pessimistic joke about nuclear fusion being “the energy source of the future, and it always will be” seemed like more than just a naysayer’s cliché.
A few weeks after graduation, Taylor texts me: Big news. Call me!
“A couple of years ago I had this kind of crazy idea,” he says when I reach him. “And I finally got the parts together and did the experiments. I’ve been in the lab for the past two weeks solid and I finally proved it: I made Scotch tape produce nuclear fusion.”
I wonder if I’m hearing him right.
“This is a big discovery, a Nature-type story,” he continues. “What’s going on is that when you pull tape off the roller you’re breaking the intermolecular bond and generating very high voltages with a very small charge.” He tells me that he’s built a mechanism to pull the tape at a constant rate under vacuum with some deuterium in the chamber. By tweaking the variables, he’s been able to generate a hundred thousand volts, enough to accelerate the ions into fusion.
“I’m getting constant neutron output on run after run, way over background levels, and I can see the x-rays coming out. This could represent the cheapest source of neutrons by far.”
Now I’m really wondering if he’s lost his way. Scotch tape experiments? What about nuclear security? Medical isotopes? Fusion energy? Next-generation fission? What about building his company?
“This is just the funnest part about science,” he says. “Where you hypothesize something and you plan for days and get a whole experiment set up, and you see your data and find out that your intuition was right, that it held up.”
He adds that he’s been invited back to TED, which is coming up in a few weeks, and that he’s going to make a “big announcement” there. I try to get more out of him, but he wants to keep it a surprise. “This will be the first TED talk I ever planned,” he says, “and it’s gonna be really big!”
I’m just hoping it won’t be about Scotch tape.
Tiffany and Kenneth can see their son drifting too. “I’m not so sure the fellowship was a good idea, skipping college,” says Tiffany. “He’s constantly researching, but not really doing anything. I’m wondering, Do you really want to start a company? There’s so many things you can do right now. I think Taylor likes being a kid, and is having a little trouble with figuring out what he wants to be, where he wants to be.”
Who, in his situation, wouldn’t be? Once you’ve achieved everything he did at seventeen, where do you go from there?
After Pittsburgh, I don’t see Taylor for several months. In mid-December, we meet in Los Angeles and start with a tour of the SpaceX factory, where Elon Musk and his team are building the next generation of orbital rockets. Taylor, who knows Musk from the past two TED conferences (in 2014, they showed up dressed almost identically in blue gingham button-down shirts), has always been impressed with him, although, Taylor says, “I think we have sort of clashing personalities. But you can’t help but be impressed. He’s the only person who’s taken Silicon Valley capital and built a massive industrial complex. Look at the risks he’s taken. I like that.”
But it’s Taylor, not Musk, who is recognized the moment we walk into the lobby, by a man who’s part of a crowd of NASA engineers and one astronaut—distinguished by his blue NASA jumpsuit—who are here for a training session.
“Hey, you’re that kid who . . .” the guy says.
The astronaut pipes up: “Oh yeah, the fusion kid—you were on CNN! What you’re doing is really cool. I’ve always been interested in nuclear fusion, especially for rocket propulsion.”
Taylor grins broadly. “And I always thought I’d be an astronaut,” he says.
Now eighteen, Taylor has been traveling by himself more often. That evening I’m driving him to Burbank when the song “Radioactive,” by Imagine Dragons, comes on the radio. To me, it’s the worst sort of over-affected power pop, but Taylor loves it. He turns it up and sings along at the top of his voice. I ask him if it’s his favorite song and he grins b
roadly. “What do you think!” he yells. “Of course it is!”
When the song’s over, he tells me, “You know, you really don’t have to do all the driving.” Taylor finally got his driver’s license when he started doing the proof-of-concept tests of his medical-isotopes device at UNR.
“My dad put his foot down,” he says. “He said he wasn’t going to drive me all the way out there and back every day.”
We’ve been invited to that evening’s live taping of The Big Bang Theory, the TV situation comedy that follows the idiosyncratic and narcissistic physicist Sheldon Cooper and his relationships with his small circle of equally nerdy scientist friends and with Penny, their cute, nonscientist neighbor. “You know, I think there actually is a part of me that’s a bit like Sheldon Cooper,” Taylor says as we approach the Warner Bros. studio. “There’s the not-driving thing—or at least there was. And I’m also a bit of a hypochondriac. Oh, and I can be kind of stubborn.”
The show’s popularity has thrown a questioning light on the premise that science can’t be cool as well as the contention that Hollywood can’t be accurate when it comes to science. Director Mark Cendrowski has invited us, but we spend much of the preshow time talking with the show’s science adviser, UCLA physicist David Saltzberg. Saltzberg checks scripts and supplies dialogue and mathematics equations. He also checks one of the show’s central props, an ever-changing whiteboard covered with scribbled equations and diagrams—“to make sure it’s not a bunch of faux-scientific gobbledygook,” he says.
“By the way, we’ve got a show coming up that uses the word tokamak,” he tells Taylor. “So if you want to try your hand at putting something on the whiteboard, let me know.”
Saltzberg and Taylor talk shop about each other’s projects until the bombastic emcee starts to get the crowd riled up by inviting people to come up and dance. There’s a Hasidic guy from Brooklyn, a large Hawaiian guy who jiggles as he dances, and a young girl wearing a shirt that reads I ♥ Coitus, a riff on one of the show’s ongoing themes, the sexual awkwardness of science geeks.
Sitting through a live studio television taping can be an excruciating experience. The emcee reminds us repeatedly to laugh “naturally” on the third or fourth takes of scenes, “just like you’re seeing it the first time!” Taylor calls me out for not keeping up the charade of artificial enthusiasm, reminding me that “these guys are doing great work promoting science—it’s worth supporting!”
Between scenes, audience members are invited up to say why they love the show. One woman introduces herself as a high-school science teacher. “The show gets my kids interested in science,” she says. “Jim Parsons [who plays Sheldon Cooper], he’s a geek, he’s a nerd, he is so cool!” A teenage girl, playing up her science-nerd look, says the show “finally made it cool to be a geek and nerd. This has made me so happy!”
When it’s over, as the studio empties out, Cendrowski and Saltzberg invite us onto the set for the cast and crew’s holiday party. The living-room set is packed with the show’s familiar astro-nerd paraphernalia: old scientific instruments, bookshelves full of science tomes, and an educational beach ball developed by NASA printed with a sky map of temperature fluctuations of the radiation left over from the big bang. Cendrowski encourages Taylor to sit in Sheldon’s favorite seat, and Taylor eases onto the couch and takes a satisfied look around. Suddenly, his eyes zoom in on a prop on the shelf. It’s a Korean War–era Geiger counter that’s been there since the show’s debut in 2008.
“Y’know, they were supposed to remove the radioactive check sources when they decommissioned them, but lots of times they missed them,” Taylor says, rising from the couch and walking toward the shelf. “Mind if I pull it down?”
Cendrowski raises his eyebrows. “So it could be still . . .”
“Radioactive?” Taylor says. “Yes, there’s a good chance. Want me to check it out?”
The set’s leadman (who supervises set-dressing) runs to fetch a screwdriver, and Taylor begins to dismantle the device. Alerted to the drama, the show’s co-creator and executive producer Chuck Lorre grabs cast member Johnny Galecki; they arrive just as Taylor pulls off the outer cover. Then he removes an internal panel and exposes a small white disk.
“Bingo!” he says. “Strontium-90.”
Lorre’s jaw drops, as does Cendrowski’s.
“Oh. My. God,” says Saltzberg.
“Maybe,” says Cendrowski, “it would be a good idea to . . .”
“Get it off the set?” Lorre says. “Like, really quick?”
“Tell you what,” Taylor says, looking up. “How about if I pull it out of there and take it home? Then you’ve got a safer environment, and I’ve got myself something new for my collection.”
Lorre nods, while Cendrowski and Galecki shake their heads in amazement.
“Taylor,” Saltzberg says, laughing, “I think you’ve just become a permanent part of this show’s lore.”
A few months later, Taylor and I rendezvous in San Diego for the International Atomic Energy Agency’s twenty-fourth Fusion Energy Conference. The FEC brings together researchers from around the world every two years to discuss developments in fusion experiments, theory, and technology. Although much of the program is related to some aspect of ITER and its magnetic confinement approach, the conference also attracts researchers working in inertial confinement fusion, hybrid systems, and several wildcard methods.
Taylor, who arrived a day before me, is extremely fired up when I catch up to him. “I’m not a theory guy,” he tells me, “but I am at a theory conference, and I’m loving it!”
Taylor has spent the past day rubbing elbows with the PhDs who work in the billion-dollar labs that spawned the breakthroughs Taylor read about when he was a child, before David Hahn’s errant exploits spurred him to tackle hands-on nuclear physics himself. As we stroll around, it quickly becomes obvious that Taylor has now become an esteemed, if honorary, member of this club of elite physicists. Everywhere he walks, researchers recognize him and call out to him. Some mention his TED talk; others congratulate him on his more recent talk at the National Ignition Facility; still others talk about his television appearances and the renewed interest in nuclear fusion that he has sparked.
The subject of Taylor’s most recent TED talk—“Reinventing Nuclear Fission”—surprised me, and many in the audience. He was taking a risk promoting a new fission technology so soon after the Fukushima disaster, when much of the world was running away from fission power. But Taylor told the audience that even though fusion will transform the energy industry in the long run, the world’s shorter-term energy needs could be met by a new, safer generation of fission reactors. He presented his vision for small, modular fission reactors that could be built in factories rather than onsite and shipped by train or truck to their final destinations. These would be molten salt reactors with no weapons-grade material inside and no way for the reactor to melt down or for radioactive material to leave the vessel. They’d be installed underground and would run for about twenty years without refueling before shutting down and self-sealing—thus solving the problems of waste processing and transportation and minimizing safety risks.
“The perfection of fusion and fission in the twenty-first century, that’s what I’m aiming for,” Taylor said.
This talk was the first presentation in his life that Taylor had actually prepared and practiced for, and as a result, it seemed a little stilted; it didn’t come off as smoothly as when he was winging it. “But in general,” Taylor says, “TED was so much fun this year. I knew what was going on and I got to see people I knew, and it gave me the opportunity to take the modular reactor project public.” After the talk, Taylor was approached by several potential investors.
His speech at NIF was more casual and more fusion-focused. He told the charmed crowd at the largest experimental science facility in the U.S. about how he had started to build his reactor at eleven and finally succeeded at fourteen. Then he moved into his nuclear medicine and antite
rrorism projects. “I know you all have some experience in that field!” he joked. He talked about his collection of radioactive materials and his desert quests for uranium ore and pieces of nuclear history. Then he turned to energy and to the philosophical nature of science. “It’s human nature to pursue the big, challenging things in the universe, like space and fusion,” he said.
The talk was a big hit, judging by the number of congratulatory remarks Taylor receives as we board a bus for a tour of the General Atomics DIII-D tokamak research facility, in the hills north of San Diego. Although Taylor has been there once before, he’s convinced that I need to experience it. “It’s incredibly cool; you can’t leave San Diego without going there,” he says.
Taylor tells me about last night’s update on ITER as we walk from the bus to the General Atomics facility. “I’m totally brimming with ideas—it seems like something sticks out in every talk, something that I need to do an experiment for.”
A minute after we’re waved in, a General Atomics official named Brenda Bowman comes running up, obviously irked with us. “You didn’t sign in!” she yells.
We’d been told that U.S. citizens didn’t need to show ID or sign in.
“Who told you that?” Bowman demands.
Not wanting to get anyone in trouble, we try to shrug it off, and we head back toward the sign-in table.
“Wait!” she says, reaching for her walkie-talkie. “This is a major security violation.”
Just then, another GA official appears and touches her arm lightly. As he whispers something into her ear, a look of horror comes over Bowman’s face, and she covers her mouth.
“I am so sorry,” she says to Taylor. “I didn’t realize who you were at first, but now I recognize you. I really, really apologize. I’m a big fan of yours and I appreciate all you’re doing for fusion, and for science.”
Taylor handles it graciously, tells her it’s no problem, and apologizes for misunderstanding the entry instructions. “Really, it’s no big deal,” he says. “You’re in charge of making sure people are identified and accounted for at a very important facility. Why should you treat me differently than anyone else?”