Strange Glow

by Timothy J Jorgensen

  Again, the government has provided us with a report: “The Effects of Nuclear Weapons,” first published in the 1960s, but periodically revised through 1977.23 This report comes with a handy circular slide rule that allows a reader to determine the effects of nuclear detonation of various sizes, at various distances. Knowing your distance from some likely bomb target, and making an assumption about the size of the bomb, you can quickly determine what types of damage you might expect at your location. It’s hard to get your hands on one of these original slide rules today, but a virtual replication of the original has been made into a tablet app called “Nuke Effects.”24 Better still, Alex Wellerstein, a professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, has produced a free web-based program called NUKEMAP that overlays damage circles for various sized nuclear weapons on Google Maps at any desired geographic location, and immediately generates a body count based on the latest census data.25 It is, in effect, a more modern and sophisticated version of QUICK COUNT that can be used to precisely map nuclear bomb casualty statistics of personal relevance to individuals living at any particular location.26

  If you are like most Americans, these handy calculation tools will probably reveal you’re living or working near enough a potential nuclear target to be well within the immediate death zone of a hydrogen bomb (assuming a 10-MT fusion device); but you’re likely outside of the death zone of an atomic bomb (assuming a 10-KT fission device), because the casualty radii of fission bombs is much more limited. Your likelihood of encountering lethal fallout, in contrast, is more serendipitous since wind patterns are a stronger determinant of lethal doses than distance from the epicenter. Fallout can travel quite far on the winds, and settle long distances from the epicenter, as we know from the Lucky Dragon No. 5 and Bikini Island bomb testing experience. Scary stuff indeed. Given our high vulnerability, what are we to do?

  In the early days of atomic bombs, civil defense was quite popular, and may have had some legitimate benefit, though slight.27 It was based on the idea that by taking a few precautions, and doing some simple training exercises, we could gain protection from the consequences of an atomic bombing, with an expectation of life soon returning to normal. In the advent of hydrogen bombs, however, we’ve stopped kidding ourselves. We no longer promote “duck and cover” as a way for school children to survive a bombing, we no longer build bomb shelters in our homes, and we no longer buy into the fantasy that hydrogen bombings are survivable.28 We just go about our lives in ignorant bliss and hope that we never see a nuclear bombing within our lifetimes.

  The old adage that an ounce of prevention is worth of pound of cure was never truer than for nuclear weapons, except that it might be more accurate to say that an ounce of prevention is worth a megaton of cure. Since a megaton of cure will always be beyond our capabilities, we are left with prevention as our sole option for survival. Have we done enough prevention?

  On August 29, 2007, 39 years after operation Chrome Dome had ended and 6 years after terrorists had hijacked 4 planes and flown 2 of them into the World Trade Center, a B-52 bomber, prophetically nicknamed Doom 99, was mistakenly loaded with 6 cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads at Minot AFB in North Dakota. The plane was left unguarded, parked on a runway overnight. In the morning, it was flown to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana, crossing South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma, in violation of current regulations that prohibit nuclear weapons from being flown over United States soil. At Barksdale, the plane was again left unguarded on the runway for nine more hours. Later in the day, Air Force maintenance workers accidently discovered the armed nuclear weapons. All the while, no one back at Minot AFB had noticed that six nuclear bombs were missing. This was a security breach in which ABC News had played no part.

  A task force was convened by the Air Force to investigate the incident. They reported their findings to the Pentagon:

  Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a marked decline in the level and intensity of focus on the nuclear enterprise and the nuclear mission [within the US Air Force]. … The decline in focus has been more pronounced than realized and too extreme to be acceptable. The decline is characterized by embedding nuclear mission forces in non-nuclear organizations, markedly reduced levels of leadership whose daily focus is the nuclear enterprise, and a general devaluation of the nuclear mission and those who perform the mission.29

  In other words, nuclear weapon duty had lost its glamour. To rectify this situation, the task force made 16 specific recommendations to improve nuclear security and restore nuclear weapon responsibilities to their former luster. This included nuclear training for B-52 pilots, because existing basic and advanced B-52 training courses “largely ignore the nuclear mission,” and “there are no flying sorties devoted to the nuclear mission in either course.” No nuclear training for B-52 bomber pilots? Yes indeed, times had definitely changed!

  Some people were concerned, however, that as bad as it sounded, the task force actually had understated the problem, so a further investigation was commissioned with the USAF Counterproliferation Center with the goal to “provide a deeper understanding of the context of internal and external forces that led to the unauthorized movement of nuclear weapons.”30 The findings of the investigation, published in 2012, were quite damning to the Air Force:

  Through our research we have found the problems to be far more systemic than the Air Force leadership admitted in 2008. The problems were at all levels of the Air Force and institutionalized through years of change at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. … We see the problem in three areas: leadership, management, and expertise. Each of these elements is critical to the other and without improvement in all three the nuclear mission will likely fail again.31

  Likely fail again? We certainly have come a long way from the Air Force’s assertion in the early 1960s that they had everything under control and the risk of losing nuclear weapons was low to nonexistent. Most disturbing was the report’s final comment that “it was clear to the investigators that the Air Force no longer valued its nuclear role and mission.” Nuclear weapons had gone completely out of fashion.

  Unfortunately, terrorists are less concerned that nuclear weapons are no longer fashionable. In fact, terrorists have a contrarian view. They believe that possession of nuclear weapons actually enhances their swagger, and would be glad to take any unfashionable nuclear weapons off our hands. No need to bother delivering the weapons, they are happy to stop by and pick them up … or rather, they’d probably prefer to skip the heavy lifting altogether and just detonate the weapons in place. There’s likely a worthwhile target somewhere nearby. Happy Thanksgiving!

  EPILOGUE

  N-RAYS

  The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell us all they know and then stop.

  —Mark Twain

  This is a good place to stop. The story of radiation is far from over, but we have nearly reached the limit of what history can tell us. To go any further would require considerable speculation about what the future might bring. Although futurists have no qualms about telling us what will happen tomorrow, speculation is a slippery slope that we best not climb here. Nevertheless, we’ve learned a lot of things about radiation that should serve us well as we move into the future, if we have the wisdom to heed the lessons from our past.

  In this book, we have specifically focused on the properties of radiation that drive its health effects, and have learned how the risk of suffering adverse consequences is largely determined by dose. We’ve also examined how scientists measure risk. We’ve even taken a stab at characterizing radiation’s benefits and have explored how they might be measured as well. We’ve learned to weigh both the risks and benefits when making any decision regarding radiation, and we’ve warned ourselves about the ever-present threat that uncertainty poses to the validity of those decisions.

  Armed with this information, we now know what questions to ask and of whom to ask them. We realize that we can look to the
experts, but we need to hold them to high standards and critically consider all that they tell us, because some may have biased viewpoints.

  Speaking of biases, there is one story about radiation that we’ve skipped over. But it’s a story that happens to speak to our very concern about deception. Let’s end this book now with that story. It’s a little story with a big lesson. It’s the story of N-rays.1

  EUREKA … AGAIN?

  In 1903, French physicist and distinguished member of the French Academy of Science Prosper-René Blondlot (1849–1930) may have been trailing in the field of Crookes tube research, but he was determined to catch up. Roentgen had made a big splash with his discovery that Crookes tubes emitted x-rays (1895), but Blondlot was confident that there were still things to be discovered.

  Roentgen had painstakingly shown, in the eight years since their discovery, that x-rays share many properties with light, their neighbor on the wavelength spectrum. But there was at least one property that they do not share. Unlike light, x-rays cannot be refracted by a prism. Roentgen had been first to show that, and others had corroborated his finding. They found that x-rays just go straight through a prism, as though it were made of air, or water, … or human flesh. But what about polarization? Are x-rays polarized like rays of light are? That’s what Blondlot wanted to know, and he wanted to know it before Roentgen did. Answering the question would be an important contribution to science and perhaps even win him a Nobel Prize.

  Science builds on what has come before. And new discoveries beget new questions. Blondlot’s polarization question was just that, a consequence of Roentgen’s discovery of x-rays. This was an opportunity for Blondlot to build on what Roentgen had done before him and add his unique contribution to mankind. He was in the right place at the right time to answer the polarization question; that is, if he worked fast.

  Saying an electromagnetic wave is polarized means that it has a specific orientation, similar to how the spinning Earth has an orientation that is defined by the axis of rotation around its north and south poles. The physics of wave polarization is quite complex and we don’t need to know anything more about it here, but let’s just say that light waves, when viewed head on, come at you with either a horizontal orientation, a vertical orientation, or something in between. It’s similar to staring down the point of a knife blade; you are able to clearly see whether the blade is oriented horizontally or vertically. A wave of light comes at you just like the blade of a knife—it approaches with a specific orientation.

  Polarization is a fundamental property of electromagnetic waves, just like wavelength is, so you might expect x-rays to be polarized just like light. But are they, and how would you prove it to be so?

  Blondlot had an idea. As everyone well knew by 1903, electrons jumping through space, from one electrode to the other, produced x-rays. Roentgen had clearly shown that with the Crookes tube. Furthermore, the more electrons that jumped the electrode gap (i.e., the higher the electrical current), the more x-rays produced. Yet, Blondlot wondered if the reverse might be true. If you aimed an x-ray beam at the electrodes, might the x-rays alter the number of electrons jumping? Blondlot further reasoned that, since the jumping electrons took the form of a visible spark, changes in brightness of the spark should indicate changes in the numbers of electrons jumping due to the impinging x-rays.

  So Blondlot set up an experimental apparatus to beam x-rays at sparking electrodes. When the x-rays were turned on, the spark brightness did seem to change, supporting Blondlot’s hypothesis. He then reasoned that, if x-rays are polarized, the brightness of the spark should be dependent on the orientation of the electrodes in relationship to the x-ray beam. So he modified the apparatus in order to rotate the paired electrodes’ orientation in relation to the direction of the beam, and called his new instrument a spark gap detector. As he rotated the electrodes through a 360-degree turn, yes indeed, the brightness of the spark did seem to vary. Orientation of the electrodes in relation to the beam is important! X-rays are polarized!

  But wait. If the changes in spark brightness were really due to x-rays, then blocking the beam with cardboard should have no effect on the sparking phenomenon he was studying, since x-rays readily penetrate cardboard. He attempted to block the beam with cardboard, and he got the same results, seemingly confirming that it was x-rays producing the effect on the spark. He tried some other materials that Roentgen had shown to be transparent to x-rays and they, too, did not alter his spark findings. But then he tried a prism.2 A prism placed within the beam seemed to refract the beam and modify the spark brightness effect. But what did that mean? Prisms don’t refract x-rays!

  It was at this point that exuberance overtook reason. Blondlot jumped to the conclusion that the prism results proved that the changes in spark brightness were due to some type of invisible rays other than x-rays; these rays were some unique form of penetrating radiation that could be refracted by prisms. Blondlot decided that this was a new type of ray that he had discovered and, therefore, he had the right to name, just as Roentgen had named his x-rays and Willie Bragg had named his cuttlefish. Blondlot chose to call them N-rays after his home institution, the University of Nancy. He rushed to publish.

  It wasn’t long after publication, however, before Blondlot’s claim to be the first to discover N-rays was challenged by other French scientists who maintained that they had actually been the first to discover them. They petitioned the French Academy of Sciences, asking the Academy to rule on the matter of primacy in the discovery of N-rays. After all, a Nobel Prize was on the line. After an investigation, and to Blondlot’s chagrin, the Academy sided with one of his challengers, Augustin Charpentier (1852–1916), who claimed to have first discovered N-rays emanating from living organisms. This claim was corroborated by a spiritualist who said he made a similar observation about N-rays coming from animals, and another who claimed that he had even detected N-rays coming from human cadavers. Nevertheless, the academy recognized that Blondlot’s spark gap experiments had been a major achievement and bestowed on him a cash award of 50,000 francs. The Academy asserted it made the award to Blondlot in recognition of his body of work that included investigations into N-rays, without including any statement regarding his primacy in discovering them. Thus, they endorsed Blondlot’s findings with N-rays, while cleverly sidestepping the issue of whether his work had been the first.

  The scientific environment in 1903 was a completely different one than Roentgen had faced just a few years earlier in 1895. By 1903, scientists did not need to fret about whether they would be classified as kooks if they made outrageous claims about invisible rays. Roentgen had liberated them from that concern. In the decade following Roentgen’s discovery, people were completely receptive to the idea of various invisible waves flying all around us and doing all sorts of amazing things. No longer was Roentgen’s rigor a prerequisite for validating such a claim. Rigor just slowed down the pace of discovery.

  Yet, the tried and true methods of scientific inquiry could not be bypassed without consequence. What was true in the past was true today. What was learned from past experience was best not forgotten.

  Some of the more traditional physicists had a hard time swallowing the N-ray story, particularly the optical physicists, who were well versed in Newton’s experiments with prisms. The story about the N-rays and the prism did not sit well with these scientists who knew their prisms. One of these skeptics was Robert W. Wood (1868–1955), a physics professor at the Johns Hopkins University. To him, what Blondlot was claiming smelled fishy. In the same Johns Hopkins tradition of skepticism that had motivated fly geneticist Thomas Morgan to test whether Gregor Mendel’s genetic principles of inheritance were as true for fruit flies as they were for peas, Wood decided to test Blondlot’s N-ray claims. As Wood suspected, he could not reproduce Blondlot’s finding in his own laboratory, lamenting that he had “wasted a whole morning” playing with sparks.

  When Sir William Crookes and Lord Kelvin also announced that they couldn�
�t get the spark experiments to work either, things got serious.3 Wood decided that the issue was important enough for him to travel to France to visit Blondlot’s laboratory and actually see the evidence for himself. So off from Baltimore to Nancy he went. Quite a journey in 1903.

  At a demonstration in Blondlot’s laboratory, Wood failed to see the differences in spark brightness that Blondlot and his colleagues asserted were obvious. The tense situation then became a parody of the story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Since Wood couldn’t see the changes in spark brightness, Blondlot insisted that there must be something wrong with his eyes (or possibly his brain). Wood then retaliated by exploiting the fact that the experiments needed to be done in a darkened room. When the lights were turned out, he surreptitiously removed the prism from the experimental apparatus, but Blondlot’s group still claimed to see the prism-dependent variations in spark brightness even though the prism was absent. When the room lights were turned back on and the prism proved missing, the jig was up. Who had the bad eyes now? This and other control experiments insisted upon by Wood revealed all the experiments to be tainted, not with fraud, but with observer bias. Just a bit too much wishful thinking.

  Wood returned to Baltimore and submitted a paper to the journal Nature, in which he carefully dissected Blondlot’s various N-rays experiments one by one, pointing out their biases, and thus putting the final nails in the coffin of N-rays.4 Or so he thought.