The CORDIS: News service is just one of many reports of the signing of a pointless piece of paper in the saga to achieve controlled nuclear fusion. The next machine, ITER, comes after an increasingly large, and increasingly expensive, series of magnetic confinement machines.
Another title for this could have been "Bunch of old men in suits sign pointless pieces of paper".
The only reason for mentioning this non-event here is that my short lived career, all of three years, as a research physicist was in nuclear fusion. Way back then, the world was a younger place, nuclear power had yet to blot its copy book, and climate change was something that happened in science fiction (read the excellent Hothouse by Brian Aldiss).
The timetable for nuclear fusion back then in the mid 1960s was that it would take 25 years to get to a commercial power station – 40 years on and the timetable is more like 40 years before commercial electricity flows from fusion. Makes you wonder where we will be 40 years hence.
The whole fusion programme has a fascinating history. The first revelation that there was a peaceful fusion effort came with claims that an early machine, Zeta, had produced thermonuclear neutrons. That is, neutrons produced by banging together isotopes of hydrogen and creating atoms of helium. Zeta had done no such thing. The neutrons happened because particles had smashed into the walls of the machine and knocked off the neutrons. (Did someone mention 'cold fusion'?)
Maybe there'll be time to go into some more of this history later. At the moment we can only marvel at the acres of coverage that the media gives to this event, very little of which shows any understanding of the history of fusion power. Maybe someone will find time to go into the subject in enough detail to explain just why it has taken so long. Then again, that would require some fairly detailed description of things like magnetic instability, H modes and stuff.
27 May 2006
Another ITERation towards controlled fusion?
26 May 2006
Eat British lamb
A sign of the times. Spotted last weekend in the car park of the Half Moon, Warninglid.
17 May 2006
Book worms need feeding
If you can afford to spend £250,000 a year for a bit of publicity, you might like to support the Science Book Awards run by the Royal Society. The RS has put out a press release explaining that the Aventis Foundation is pulling out after 16 or so with its hand on the wallet in one guise or another.
First sponsored by the Science Museum, corporate sponsorship started with Rhone Poulenc and moved to Aventis after one of those name changes that companies like to go through every now and then. In recent years, the Aventis Foundation has picked up the tab. The foundation is a charitable operation "established in 1996 as the Hoechst Foundation with an endowment of €50 million".
We have a spot spot for the prizes because the Science Museum set them up when we made a throwaway remark at the end of a meeting of the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science. But they have always been a bit of a disappointment, constantly returning to the same tired old subjects – life, the universe and everything – for winners. There was also a tendency to overlook science writers in favour of academics slumming it.
This year they manage to break one of these traditions by choosing what is, if memory serves us, the first prizewinner with a technological theme. We have to rely on memory because someone seems to have forgotten to pay the fee to renew the web site for the prizes.
At a rather nice dinner at the Royal Society on Tuesday, David Bodanis picked up the £10,000 prize for his book "Electric Universe - How Electricity Switched on the Modern World". On the day after the event The Guardian reported that Bodanis will give the cash to the family of the late government scientist David Kelly, quoting Bodanis as saying that he hoped his gesture would, "tell some people in England something about the importance of truth."
With luck this will not deter potential sponsors. One thing they could do would be to spend a bit less on employing expensive events organisers to lay on the bash. At least one staffer at the RS muttered about duplicating all of their kit resulting in a larger than necessary bill for the sponsor. But we would not want anyone to cut back on the dinner bill. The food and wine were rather nice for a mass event.
15 May 2006
How big is a quantum?
Defending the meaning of "quantum leap" is now a lost cause. But that's no reason not to point the finger at the twits who make the mistake of thinking that a quantum leap is something big. It isn't.
Quantum mechanics deals with stuff around the size of atoms. And you probably don't need me to tell you that atoms are small. This does not stop the EU's energy commissioner, Andris Piebalgs, from talking about "a quantum leap in the production of renewable and low carbon energy".
Quantum leaps are discrete leaps. Discrete and tiny. That means they are like rungs on a ladder. You stand on one run or the next one up. You can't hover in the middle.
The commissioner probably meant an order of magnitude leap. But given the status of many renewable energy technologies, maybe he was right after all. Adding another solar powered battery to the world's energy output would bring about a tiny and imperceptible increase in energy production. A bit like an electron jumping from one quantum state to another.
Insider dealing as a science writer
There is an interesting "disclaimer" within the latest ACS weekly press package. There is also a reference to a useful tool for science writers. The slot billed as Journalists' Helper of the Week mentions something called Patent Watch. This points to a useful RSS feed.
The intriguing bit is the observation at the end of the whole package, although it isn't clear if it is about Patent Watch or everything in the mailing.
The health warning reads: "This information in this press package is intended for your personal use in news gathering and reporting and should not be distributed to others. Anyone using advance ACS News Service Weekly Press Package information for stocks or securities dealing may be guilty of insider trading under the federal Securities Exchange Act of 1934."
Whether this applies outside the USA is one question. The point is that this is the first sighting that I can remember of advice to science writers suggesting that they too could get done for insider dealing.
I've warned about this for years. After all, medical journals carry details of clinical trials that can move the price of drugs companies in a big way. That is why there has been some talk of theindustryy manipulating the journals in devious ways.