| Monday, July 14, 2003 |  |
| Frankenfood Follies | 0 comments |
 14 Jul 2003 @ 23:06Frankenfood Follies or "the woods are their own revenge..." By Joseph Fasciani 7-13-3 Starting in 1982 and until now I've worked as a horticultural consultant to government and private enterprise, advising new farm operators and upgrading old farms. Although I'd caution people against it, I saw many instances of "the next great thing" rushed into production, then withdrawn after five to ten years of problems. A fine example of this was shown on a CBC documentary some years ago about farms in Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island. Because of the area's long history of low farm income, Canada Agriculture promoted the "salvation of the family farm" by turning them into monocultural producers for mass market food factories, mostly potatoes for chip makers.. After twenty years production had not only peaked but the soils and environments were so degraded they were subject to erosion, heavy invasion by pests and diseases, and required ever more costly "fixes". There was one fortunate exception, however. It seems an old-time family farm of less than 160 acres, too small to qualify for monoculture, had maintained its "archaic" mix of small diary herd, vegetables, hay production, and orchard. Having "failed" to make it in the new trend, it was now in very healthy condition in both finances and total environment, and had proved resilient to both market vagaries and environmental degradation. In the end, Canada Agriculture reversed its position and recommended farmers go back to their traditional diverse and sustainable polycultural approach. If truly conservative thinking and practices were followed rigourously, we would stop creating ever greater "new problems" to solve. Of course, this happens in finance as well, e.g., the egregious Greenspanning phenomenon of the past 20 years, which is why we're in so much trouble. Popular economist and writer Dr. Robert Heilbroner (The Worldly Philosophers, et. al.) had written warnings about this in the late Seventies and early Eighties, when a few souls were concerned the deficit was getting out of control. I felt it was important, so I reprinted an essay of his in my monthly financial newsletter, T.R.A.I.N. In it he convincingly argues that all the Fed can do is print money and tinker with interest. He did not assert as Greenspan has that its role was to make the economy get up and go by printing more fiat currency. Perhaps it's as simple as "better the devil you know than the devil you just created." Well, Frankenmoney will soon crush what little life is left in the greenback, and then we can all witness another replay of substance, but not style, in history. Hang on to your gold and silver! The markets are very shaky, trading far more on greed and emotion instead of reason, they tumble on any bad news, in spite of all the "rah rah" cheerleading of the tube boobs and government spokespeople. If people would only read a little history to see that we're going through yet another replay of old scenarios! The Stock Market Crash of '29 was preceded by a real "stock market crash" in farm commodities. Having received record high prices for grains supplied under WW1 contracts, farmers borrowed heavily, bought more land, new equipment, and expanded agressively. Unfortunately, prices then collapsed for several years running, which set off massive defaults and losses of income and properties. The paper markets followed in five years. The rest, as they say, is history. Now we're being fed a new mythos from the ag chemical and seed giants that biotech this and genetically modified that will save the world. REMEMBER: These are the same clowns who told you this would happen in "The Green Revolution" of the Sixties, another dim history they want you to forget. The real revolution in technologically driven societies is that they've undergone a transformation in hierarchy and stability. Earlier, traditional societies were stabilised from the bottom up by a mass of worker-drones, with managers atop them, priests and scientists atop them, the ruling classes atop them, and finally the god-king, chief theocrat, whatever, at the pinnacle. Regardless of what we might think of this arrangement, it existed within parameters dictated by a less degraded planet, so it had enough margin that it was stable, and could recover reasonably well from systemic shocks, whether from human ignorance or natural disasters. This was our classic social pyramid. The crucial problem with societies compulsed by technique (a truer statement of our situation, as technology properly speaking is the study of technique, as biology is the study of life processes, botany the study of plant processes, geology the study of Earth, etc.) is they become extremely complicated, unstable and given to collapse from very slight fractures of their constructs. You know, Shakespeare's "for want of a nail, the kingdom was lost," or Dr Joseph Chilton Pearce's "crack in the cosmic egg" type of thing. The social pyramid has been inverted: the entire construct is precariously balanced on an individual who generates whatever it is the rest are anxiously waiting for, whether information or a new 'wonder drug.' In 1500, if a book-keeper made an error, the next ten minutes couldn't bring down a cascade of derivatives that beggar nations in their wake. Today a technician makes a simple entry error, and at a single keystroke s/he can send markets staggering in a few seconds, or even nuclear weapons ablaze. I know, because I've done it in my own life! When I'd written my Canadian Commodities Broker exam, I started in the new office of my former broker, Daniel Ho. I'd shorted a contract earlier in the day, and the market started going against me. Even twenty years ago new electronics had quickened the pace of trading, so I had to offset my position ASAP to prevent further loss. I picked up the phone and called our floor trader at the CBOT and sadly told him to sell another contract. I'd hardly put the phone down when Daniel said from around the corner, "Don't you want to buy instead of sell?" Gadzooks! In my fog over the few hundred dollars I was losing I'd made the wrong order, and immediately called back to place yet another order, now for two contracts. Fortunately for me, in the thirty seconds between the two calls, the market had turned again and I made a hundred dollars! I was too new to this stance, and my thinking hadn't adjusted accordingly. As Einstein or Oppenheimer remarked after the first atomic bomb went off, "Now everything's changed but our thinking." We've seen this happen enough times now that it should inform all our thinking, but it does not, which is the main reason we keep getting into Big Trouble. To the extent that we fail to act accordingly, it's gotten worse since then, for the reasons set out above. What to do, what to do? I wrote in a poem thirty-plus years ago, "the woods are their own revenge." Once they are gone, they will be gone for a very long time, maybe forever. Forests twice covered the now arid, barren land of Greece; only ten percent of our planet's original stand of forest remains from three thousand years ago. The oceans are fished out and ready to collapse. The USofA, with five percent of the world's population, consumes sixty percent of its petroleum. What's truly insane is that its military consumes sixty percent of that, so we now have the military going over seas to secure more oil! I've worked on this Problem and the lesser problems associated with it for a long time; here are some positive conclusions: 1. We don't need any more research or commissions to re-invent the wheel. 2. We already have What We Need in Dr Eugen Loebl's Humanomics, Cobb & Daly's For the Common Good, and E R Schumacher's Small is Beautiful , all published more than fifteen years ago, but not yet put into everyday practise!! 3. It's time to re-establish a Civilian Conservation Corps in lieu of military service; an entire nation needs useful, good work to rebuild its soil, water, and forest treasures. What we don't have - in spite of Dubya's blissful ignorance -is endless time to address the crises we have made for ourselves. |
| First for Hawaiian telescope link-up | 1 comment |
 14 Jul 2003 @ 23:06First for Hawaiian telescope link-up The first scientific result from a pair of linked telescopes - the mighty Keck twins on Mauna Kea - has been released. It is the observation of a young star surrounded by a disc of dust in which planets may be forming. When the two 10-metre (33 feet) Kecks - sited up a volcano in Hawaii, US - open their eyes on the heavens in tandem, they form what is arguably the world's largest optical telescope system. Acting in unison, they create an interferometer, in which the outputs from several smaller telescopes are combined to mimic that from a much larger, single telescope. The swirling dust disc seen around the star DG Tau is an important discovery, say astronomers. Observations of such systems, now possible at higher resolution, will cast light on how worlds like our Earth formed. Combining signals Interferometry is a technique used routinely in radio astronomy where the long wavelengths involved make the bringing together of signals from different dishes relatively straightforward. In the optical region of the spectrum, things are more difficult, however, because the shorter wavelengths involved demand a greater accuracy when combining the light beams. Still under development, the Keck interferometer is equivalent to a single 85-metre (279 feet) telescope. An added complication for engineers trying to bring the different light signals together is that the individual Keck telescopes employ an adaptive optics system. This adjusts the shape of the telescopes' mirrors to remove distortion caused by the Earth's atmosphere. It all has to be taken into account to provide a final pin-sharp image. Immature star The Keck interferometer's inaugural scientific observation was of the young star DG Tau, a star that is not yet mature because it has not yet started to burn hydrogen in its core. "We're trying to measure the size of the hot material in the dust disc around DG Tau, where planets may form," says Rachel Akeson, of the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, US. "Studies like this teach us more about how stars form, either alone or in pairs, and how planets eventually form in discs around stars," she adds. The observations reveal a gap of 29 million kilometres (18 million miles) between DG Tau and its orbiting dust disc. This may be significant because the gap is larger than that seen in other systems. Of the planets known to orbit other stars, roughly one in four lies within 16 million km (10 million miles) of the parent star. Because planets are believed to form within a dust disc, either DG Tau's disc has a larger-than-usual gap, or planets form farther out from a star and migrate inward. By measuring dust around other stars where planets may form, the Keck interferometer will pave the way for the US space agency's Terrestrial Planet Finder mission which will look for Earth-like planets. More > |
| Beyond Bush | 0 comments |
| 14 Jul 2003 @ 23:06 Beyond Bush by Michael Ruppert Click Link for Essay "There is no longer any serious doubt that Bush administration officials deceived us into war. The key question now is why so many influential people are in denial, unwilling to admit the obvious...But even people who aren't partisan Republicans shy away from confronting the administration's dishonest case for war, because they don't want to face the implications... After all, suppose a politician - or a journalist - admits to himself that Mr. Bush bamboozled the nation into war. Well, launching a war on false pretenses is, to say the least a breach of trust. So if you admit to yourself that such a thing happened, you have a moral obligation to demand accountability - and to do so in the face not only of a powerful, ruthless political machine but in the face of a country not yet ready to believe that its leaders have exploited 9/11 for political gain. It's a scary prospect. Yet, if we can't find people willing to take the risk - to face the truth and act on it - what will happen to our democracy?" Paul Krugman, The New York Times, June 24, 2003 Sidenote from my friend Greg: Beyond the case of whether or not Bush et. al. lied to get us into war - or if the American public believes they even care anymore at this point (unfortunately)- is the fact that the globe is rapidly running out of 'peak oil', and natural gas (which is not imported) is at a critical stage. (The US only has expensive heavy oil that costs too much to produce) Someday we may be fighting over water as well. The attempt at controlling oil production and preventing the countries of the world, as well as Opec, from switching to the Euro from the petrodollar is failing. The US economy is FAR too dependent on oil/war/organized crime (drugs)/prostitution as a baseline for global hegemony and false power. Signs of a potential market collapse include: The real estate balloon beginning to hiss (recently announced Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac corruption) The credit bubble is about to burst, with record numbers of bankruptcy's so far this year. Manipulations of derivatives in bank loan management. Manipulations of the price of Gold - based on selling futures on Gold that hasn't even been mined yet. A costly war used to divert our attention from global market meltdown. Japan, Europe, China, and Russia returning to gold-backed currency while selling the dollar. Sucker rallies on the stock market. The Euro is now worth more than the dollar. The war in Iraq has only angered the rest of the world and boycotts of American goods is accelerating (China just changed their order for airliners from Boeing to Aerbus) I continue to live for peace and mindfulness. |
| In Favor Of Sexual Pluralism | 37 comments |
 14 Jul 2003 @ 00:06Leif Ueland, Nerve.com An ambivalent heterosexual comes out in favor of sexual pluralism... Trials of a Gay-Seeming Straight Male By Leif Ueland, Nerve.com August 5, 2002 I am sitting on her lap as she plays with my hair. I've got a longish late-70s do, and the strands are blond and baby-fine. She runs her fingers through them, massages my scalp. She is a beautiful girl, probably sixteen, with white poreless skin, full eyebrows, a disarming stare and the naturally red lips for which Snow White was famed. At our performing arts school, run by a renowned theater in the Midwest, we wear black karate pants and gray t-shirts with a bluebird on the front, but she has cut a small V in the neck of her shirt. It's thanks to the V and the way her arms are raised to work on my scalp and the angle at which she is holding my head and the fact that she isn't wearing a bra that I can see her breasts, study them, without worrying that I'll be caught. Her voice is smoker-gravely and she speaks with flawed grammar and an ease with profanity that to my suburban ears is very cool. "Leif, you're not going to be one of them, are you?" I laugh, it tickles. "Huh? Are you? Leif? Listen to me. Promise me. You're not . . . won't . . . be gay. Promise me." I turn back to her. Inside the shirt, her nipples have stiffened, extended. My cheeks flush deeply, feverishly. "I promise." I am apparently not the straightest-seeming guy you could ever meet. I don't know what it is about me – my pierced ears and pageboy haircut, perhaps, or maybe I'm just too clean. For whatever reason, my heterosexuality is frequently called into question. It happens all of the time. A total stranger will approach me, usually in a straight bar, and say "My friends wanted to know if you're gay or straight?" I feel like I'm in a Kafka novel as adapted for the screen by Woody Allen. How am I to respond? If I say I'm straight, isn't that exactly what George Michael used to say? And if I indicate that I am a practicing heterosexual, won't they then assume that I am headed toward an inevitable sexual epiphany, akin to the great John Cheever's? Most recently I joked, "I'm totally straight, but I can't resist sucking the occasional cock." It certainly ended the conversation. When I told a good female friend I was writing about the topic of my misunderstood sexuality she said without a second's hesitation, "Oh yeah, everyone thinks you're gay." To the best of my knowledge I'm straight, but the question is hurled at me so frequently that I'm beginning to think everyone knows something I don't. Sometimes, if there's a point, I'm willing to go along and play gay. Last summer, I was doing research in a Carnegie library in a small Midwestern town, a place best known for hosting the national lumberjack championships, when I noticed an adolescent boy between rows of books fixating on me. Taking in his delicate features, ivory skin and black clothes, I thought to myself, town loner, doesn't yet know he's gay, feels a connection with the effeminate stranger. Not wanting to interrupt my work, I was relieved when he disappeared. Fifteen minutes later, though, he was back and bearing a gift. Blushing to his ears, he presented me with a scalding café latté from the town's new and only gourmet coffee joint. There was no point in explaining the misunderstanding, so while I drank the coffee, we cryptically discussed the difficulties of being different, talked around the terrifying subject. Gay-and-understanding-me encouraged him to hang on until eighteen and then get the hell out of town. Until being sworn to heterosexuality by that suburban Snow White, the possibility that I might be gay never even occurred to me. I'd always had girlfriends – from the vixen in first grade who, after some discussion, let me go so far as kissing her index finger, to the girlfriend in seventh grade who sanctioned a visit to "second base." I spent more time wondering if I was a vampire. Only in high school, when a trusted older friend and homosexual told me, "One morning you just wake up and you know," did I start to suspect that homosexuality was not a question of choice. This was an explosive, frightening thought, with one unavoidable implication: I might be gay! Me, the kid with all the girlfriends, the reacher of second base, the suburbanite with loving parents and a great family, I might be, I might . . . That was the beginning of a lot of adolescent soul-searching. But even now when I replay every kiss, grope, or penetration of my first thirty-two years, all I see are females. Even leafing through the scrims behind my countless solo sexual efforts, I only come up with women, just one depraved fantasy after another. Granted, throw dreams into the mix and we may have something there; I am willing to concede that I may have had a handful in which it suddenly dawned on me, "Hey, that's no woman, that's the guy who fixes my car!" just as I would have to admit there have been relatives, minors, family pets, inanimate objects and a brief but very kinky cameo by a genderless character who called himself Satan. The doubting continued until one morning in tenth grade when I woke up soaking in what I initially misdiagnosed as a bed-wetting relapse. As the dream came back to me I felt something akin to what Zora Neale Hurston described as the pride of finding a first pubic hair when I realized that though the vision had not been Farah, it was a woman, and a relief on so many levels. Finally, at seventeen I had a serious girlfriend. Fellow neophytes, we would fall deeply, crazily in love, lose our virginity together and be a couple for the next seven years. Like all males, I couldn't wait to tell my friends after the first time, and was thankful that the issue was apparently settled, but mostly I was just overwhelmed by the power of emotional and physical love that converged when I was with her. It seemed it would vaporize me. I have to think that those feelings at least make me bi. To be frank, I am sick to death of this topic. I have been suppressing my homosexuality for so long it cuts too close to the bone. Just kidding! The fact is I don't particularly mind that what everyone's really trying to say is, "Leif, you are a gay man in denial." What drives me crazy is that they say these things with an air of not having their own secrets, aspects of their own sexuality that don't conform to whatever the cookie-cutter conception of normal sex is. I feel a strong bond with my fellow gay-seeming straight males. I especially treasure the virtual queens who exhibit the mating habits of the homo sapien heterosexual. Strange as it may seem, there is such a category. I'm tempted to propose we all start a club or a support group and print up t-shirts that scream, I LOVE THE VAGINA EXPERIENCE! I prize my gay-seeming straight male friends so much that when one of them crosses over to gay-seeming gay male, as not infrequently happens, I go through a little mourning, realizing as I do that they have just made it a little harder for the world to buy my sexuality. Most recently it was an old college friend. Talk about gay-seeming – tall, handsome, former male model, voice well-suited for the fading matriarch of a clan in a Tennessee Williams play . . . He announced recently that he was divorcing his wife and was not, in fact, straight. In hindsight, there was always something forced about his collegiate stories of female conquest, like a teenage boy feigning enthusiasm for the taste of beer. I think I wanted to believe almost as much as he did. I feel the same way about the other side: straight-seeming gay males. I sometimes go to a dance club where they are everywhere – young guys I could swear were straight, except for the fact that they are all kissing each other. A woman I'd brought once cut in on such a couple and started making out with one of the guys. He took a pause and said, "You know I'm gay, right?" To which she responded, "Of course." The shocking thing is that I think of myself and all my mixed-signal comrades as the normal ones. I wonder about everyone else, all the people who seem compelled to keep their mannerisms, interests and selves marching in step with the mores expected of their sexuality. How scary is that? And to be honest, I harbor the sneaking suspicion that my team represents the future, when the masses, including homosexuals, come to honestly accept the full range of sexual nuance. In the meantime, I think I know what might help. There's a scene in a movie, or perhaps it was a comedic sketch, where the obviously gay character is accused of being gay. He nervously laughs, "Well, well, if I'm gay, well they're going to have to change the definition." Maybe what my people need is a new definition, a nice user-friendly label. Something that says, "not gay, but not straight in the way to which you're accustomed, and maybe not even willing to rule out the possibility of being gay in the future." I've been using "gay-seeming straight male," but since that's unwieldy, perhaps we could go with the abbreviation: GSSM. I guess that would be pronounced "jism," as in "No, I'm not gay, but I am jism." On second thought, maybe labels are not the answer. (Leif Ueland received a Master's Degree in the Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California. He has written for public radio's Marketplace and several newspapers, and had a play produced in Minneapolis. His first book, Accidental Playboy, will be published by Warner books in November 2002 More > |
| The Better World Travel Club | 0 comments |
 14 Jul 2003 @ 00:06Ralph Nadar spoke of this just over a year ago. I'm still a member of AAA though I am considering switching to BW. The Better World Travel Club By Ralph Nader July 03, 2002 For decades, the American Automobile Association-better known as Triple A- has grown up with the American automobile. Millions of travelers have joined to ensure themselves of roadside service in emergencies and to gain access to triptickets (maps), travelers checks, insurance and other travel offerings. Beneath its benign image as a "travel club" AAA has become a big time lobbyist that mimics the agenda of the nation's giant automobile manufacturers. Travelers who pay dues to AAA find themselves supporting lobbyists who fight the "Clean Air Act," public transportation, stronger safety standards and even bike paths. "What they [AAA members] don't know is that AAA is a lobbyist for more roads, more pollution and more gas guzzling," says Daniel Becker, director of Sierra Club's Global Warming/Energy program. Now, a couple of entrepreneurs from Portland, Oregon-Mitch Rofsky and Todd Silberman-- are challenging Triple A's comfortable perch at the top of the travel club business. Rofksy and Silberman have formed "The Better World Travelers Club" which not only competes head-to-head on basic travel services, but actively supports programs for a clean environment. Rofsky was a consumer activist in Washington who later became president of Working Assets Capital Management where he managed a widely-acclaimed socially responsible mutual fund and was the first chairman of Business for Social Responsibility. Silberman headed Lifeco which became the nation's third largest travel company before its sale to American Express in 1993. As starters the Rofsky-Silberman team is donating one percent of its annual travel agency and club revenues to environmental clean up efforts. They are also promoting big discounts on what they have dubbed as "eco-travel services" including such things as green lodging and eco tours.The club also offers a 20 percent discount on electric and hybrid car rentals and discounts on bicycles and electric car purchases. In its promotional material, the Better World Travelers Club reminds its customers that each time a passenger takes a domestic airline flight that more than a ton of harmful greenhouse gas emissions are released into the atmosphere. Rofsky and Silberman trumpet the fact that their club is the only U. S. travel agency to offer a "clean air" program-"Travel Cool"-- certified by the Climate Neutral Network for its efforts to offset greenhouse gasses generated by air travel. A portion of each airline ticket purchased through the Better World Travel Club will be earmarked for programs to save energy and reduce CO2 pollution. The club also offers "Travel Cool" automobile insurance that supports programs to help offset carbon produced by automobiles. The pro-environmental stance of this new travel club is throwing down the gauntlet to other travel services, not only AAA, but to the multitude of other travel clubs promoted through new car warranties and credit card companies. It is a highly competitive field, but consumers and the environment can only gain if the competition turns into a battle for cleaner air. The news about healthy new competition in the travel business is welcome in the overall business community which has been clearly stung by the sleaze revealed by the investigations of Enron, Tyco, World Com and other corporations. Lawyers and public relations operatives are working overtime in efforts to restore badly tattered corporate images. But, it is going to take tangible action--not just slick public relations campaigns-to convince the American public that real change and real reform are being undertaken. The newspaper headlines and the television news programs are leaving the public the impression that con artists have invaded boardrooms and executive suites en masse. The Rofsky-Silberman effort in blazing a new trail in the travel business should be a reminder to American business that profit-making enterprises can operate with a conscience and with an authentic concern about the environment and health. The Better World Travelers Club's business plan is based on the concept that profit and the public interest can be compatible goals in our enterprise system. For more information on The Better World Travel Club |
| Mysterious "Wet Patch" Appears on Jerusalem's Western Wall | 2 comments |
 14 Jul 2003 @ 00:06Mysterious "Wet Patch" Appears on Jerusalem's Western Wall One of the world's most revered sacred sites - the Western Wall in Jerusalem - is the focus of fevered speculation after apparently springing a leak. "Perhaps God is opening up a path for peace and people will feel this and move towards it," Rabbi Menachem Fromann For five days now people have been gathering to wonder at a small damp patch that has appeared on one of the giant stone slabs that mark the last remnants of the temple built by Herod the Great and destroyed by the Romans more than 1,900 years ago. The Wall - known for centuries as the Wailing Wall because it was there that Jews bewailed the loss of their Temple - is part of the most sensitive religious complex in the world. Above it lies the area sacred to Jews as the Temple Mount, and to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif. It was Ariel Sharon's visit there as Israeli opposition leader in September 2000 that marked the start of the latest wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence. The phenomenon is undeniably unnatural - it is now the height of summer in Jerusalem and there has not been a drop of rain since May. The rabbi responsible for the Wall, Shmuel Rabinovitch, told the Jerusalem Post newspaper that perhaps it was weeping at the current situation in the country. Apocalyptic Some mystics take a more apocalyptic view of the damp patch -saying it could herald the arrival of the Jewish Messiah. "There is a prophecy that everybody knows, that states that when water comes through the stones of the wall it presages the advent of the Messiah," Rabbi Menachem Fromann told the newspaper. "Perhaps God is opening up a path for peace and people will feel this and move towards it." But the mystics may be disappointed - more pragmatic observers say the water probably comes from a leaking hose in the enclosure above the Wall. Rabbi Levi Lau of the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem suggested contacting the Israeli water authority. More > |
| Quantum Wormholes Could Carry People | 1 comment |
 14 Jul 2003 @ 00:06An older story but a goodie.... Quantum Wormholes Could Carry People By Charles Choi New Scientist May 23, 2002 All around us are tiny doors that lead to the rest of the Universe. Predicted by Einstein's equations, these quantum wormholes offer a faster-than-light short cut to the rest of the cosmos -- at least in principle. Now physicists believe they could open these doors wide enough to allow someone to travel through. Quantum wormholes are thought to be much smaller than even protons and electrons, and until now no one has modelled what happens when something passes through one. So Sean Hayward at Ewha Womans University in Korea and Hisa-aki Shinkai at the Riken Institute of Physical and Chemical Research in Japan decided to do the sums. They have found that any matter travelling through adds positive energy to the wormhole. That unexpectedly collapses it into a black hole, a supermassive region with a gravitational pull so strong not even light can escape. But there's a way to stop any would-be traveller being crushed into oblivion. And it lies with a strange energy field nicknamed "ghost radiation". Predicted by quantum theory, ghost radiation is a negative energy field that dampens normal positive energy. Similar effects have been shown experimentally to exist. Delicate balance Ghost radiation could therefore be used to offset the positive energy of the travelling matter, the researchers have found. Add just the right amount and it should be possible to prevent the wormhole collapsing -- a lot more and the wormhole could be widened just enough for someone to pass through. It would be a delicate operation, however. Add too much negative energy, the scientists discovered, and the wormhole will briefly explode into a new universe that expands at the speed of light, much as astrophysicists say ours did immediately after the big bang. For now, such space travel remains in the realm of thought experiments. The CERN Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland is expected to generate one mini-black hole per second, a potential source of wormholes through which physicists could try to send quantum-sized particles. But sending a person would be another thing. To keep the wormhole open wide enough would take a negative field equivalent to the energy that would be liberated by converting the mass of Jupiter. More > |