Expanded Universe

AFTERWORD

I am precluded from revising this article because Encyclopaedia Britannica owns the copyright; I wrote it under contract. But in truth it needs no revision but can use some late news flashes.

1) Jonathan V. Post reports (OMNI, May '79) that scientists in Geneva have announced containment of a beam of antiprotons in a circular storage ring for 85 hours. Further deponent sayeth not as today (Nov. '79) I have not yet traced down details. The total mass could not have been large (Geneva is still on the map) as the storage method used is not suited to large masses - or, as in this case, a massive sum total of very small masses.

But I am astonished at any containment even though with dead seriousness I predicted it in the section just above. I did not expect it in the near future but now I learn it happened at least 10 months ago, only 4 years after I wrote the above article.

Too frighteningly soon! A very small (anti) mass to be sure - but when Dr. Lise Meitner wrote the equations that implicitly predicted the A - bomb, there was not enough purified U - 235 anywhere to cause a gnat's eye to water.

How soon will we face a LARGE mass - say about an ounce - planted in Manhattan by someone who doesn't like us very well? If he releases the magnetic container by an alarm - clock timer or nine other simple make - it - in your - own - kitchen devices, he can be in Singapore when it goes off Or in Trenton if he enjoys watching his own little practical jokes - he won't worry about witnesses; they will be dead.

Too big? Too cumbersome? Too expensive? I don't know - and neither does anyone else today. I am not proposing sneaking a CERN particle accelerator past Hoboken customs... but note that the first reacting atomic pile (University of Chicago) was massive - but it was not flown to Hiroshima. The bomb that did go was called "Fat Boy" for good reason. Now we can fire them from 8 - inch guns. As for the "suitcase" bomb - change that to a large briefcase; all the other essentials can be bought off the shelf for cash in any medium - large city, no questions asked as they are commonplace items.

Antimatter, containment and all, might turn out to be even smaller, lighter, simpler.

2) That variable constant: Dr. Van Flandern is still plugging away at Dr. Dirac's 1937 prediction about the "Constant" of Gravitation. The latest figures I have seen show (by his measurements) that the "Constant" is decreasing by 3.6 ± 1.8 parts in 1011 years, a figure surprisingly close to Dirac's 1937 prediction (5.6) in view of the extreme difficulty of making the measurements and of excluding extraneous variables. But all this is based on a universe 18 - 20 billion years old since the "big bang" - an assumption on current best data but still an assumption. If the universe is actually materially older than that (there are reasons to think so, and all the revisions since Abbй LemaItre first formulated the theory have all been upward, never downward), then Dirac's prediction may turn out to be right on the nose of observed data to their limit of accuracy.

The data above are from an article by Dr. Herbert

Friedman of Naval Research Laboratory. Our Baker

Street Irregulars have just established a pipeline to Dr.

Van Flandern; if major new data become available before

this book is closed for press, I will add a line to this.

3) In Where To see prediction number fourteen, page

341: At the Naval Academy I slept my way through the course in physics; nothing had changed since I had covered the same ground in high school. "Little did I dream" that a young man at Cambridge, less than five years older than I, was at that very moment turning the world upside down. This quiet, polite, soft - spoken gentleman was going to turn out to be the enfant terrible of physics. This has been the stormiest century in natural philosophy of all history and the storms are not over. We would not today have over 200 "elementary" particles (an open scandal) if Paul Dirac had not simplified the relation of

spin and magnetism in an electron into one equation over fifty years ago, then shown that the equation implied antimatter.

Many thousands of man - hours, many millions of dollars have been spent since then exploring the byways opened up by this one equation. And the end is not yet. The four forces (strong, weak, gravitic, electromagnetic) are still to be combined into one system. Einstein died with the work unfinished, Hawking (although young) is tragically ill, Dirac himself has reached the age when he really should not climb stepladders (as I know too well; I'm not that much younger).

E = me2 everybody knows; it's short and simple. But the Dirac equation, at least as important, is known only to professionals - not surprising; it's hairy and uses symbols a lavutan never sees.

I include it here just for record; I won't try to explain ii. For explanations, gel a late text on quantum mechanic and be prepared to learn some not - easy mathematics. Lotsa luck!

LATE BULLETIN:

Newton's "Constant" of Gravitation is a decreasing variable.

Just as I was about to dispatch this book to New York, through the good offices of Dr. Yoji Kondo (astrophysicist NASA Goddard) I received from Dr. Thomas C. Van Flandern a preprint of his latest results. They tend to confirm Dr. Dirac's 1937 prediction even more closely.

I have just telephoned Doctor Van Flandern. With caution proper - to a scientist he does not say that he has "proved" Dr. Dirac 's prediction ... but that data to date support it; no data that he knows of contradict it.

I don't have to be cautious; this man has established the fact beyond any reasonable doubt. Twenty - odd years of endless Lunar data, done by atomic (cesium) clock, electrically - automatically timed occultation’s of stars, backed by both triangulation and radar ranging, counterchecked by similar work done on the inner planets by other astronomers at other observatories - Certainly he could be wrong... and I could be elected President!

T. C. Van Flandern turns out to be the sort of Renaissance Man Dirac is, but a generation younger (38 years). B.S. mathematics, Xavier, Cincinnati; Ph.D. astronomy, Yale - he has three other disciplines: biochemistry, nutrition, psychiatry. (When does he sleep?)

Reread that list of sciences affected (p. 486), then batten down the hatches! Dirac has done it again, and the World will never be the same.