A Step Farther Out (21 page)

Now image a neutron star in an orbit tilted with respect to the plane of the floppy disk Every half-orbit the neutron star crashes through the disk, producing x-ray bursts. A
lovely
idea.

Alas, it's almost certainly wrong: there are many sources of x-ray bursts, and it's just hard to believe that anything as unlikely as crashing neutron stars are
common,
even in our queer universe.

Let's try another theory: flash-burning. Take one neutron star. Let hydrogen fall on it. The hydrogen accumulates on the surface, slowly building up until the neutron star has an "atmosphere" a few millimeters thick The density increases sharply until it hits the critical point, and bang! Every few hours there's a hydrogen bomb enveloping the neutron star.

Far out, right? Yet those theories were described at a meeting of the super-orthodox AAAS. Now let's look at one "neglected" theory.

* * *

Dean Drive: science fiction readers must know about that. Norman Dean was a crackpot inventor. Many years ago he built a gadget. (He also took out a patent; on that, more later.) Dean claimed something that sounds very reasonable, hardly far out at all: that his mechanism "converts rotary acceleration into linear acceleration." After all, a rotating object does have acceleration, right? Acceleration is acceleration, right? Thus to convert from one to the other violates no conservation laws.

Now that's an attractive concept. Take an electric motor (Dean used an ordinary quarter-inch electric drill) as the source of rotary acceleration; hook up to the Dean mechanism; and lo, you have a spacedrive. Very attractive, because by installing a Dean Machine in a nuclear submarine we'd have a spaceship already built!

Now Dean did build a machine. It did
not
lift itself off the floor. Observers agree on that much—and that's about all they do agree on. The machine shook and shimmied and jumped up and down, and there was a famous photograph of Dave Garroway shoving a piece of paper under the machine. Also, John W. Campbell Jr. reported that he'd seen the apparent weight of the Dean Machine, as measured on a bathroom scale, appreciably decrease when the gizmo was turned on, to be restored when it was switched off. G. Harry Stine reports that he felt the machine push against his hand; push hard, and when it was turned off the push wasn't there.

Unfortunately, that's about the sum total of observational evidence. Dean never let his machine be examined by anyone else. However, the story doesn't quite end there.

Not long ago Harry Stine published an article about the Dean Drive in that other magazine (the one with rivets). Robert Prehoda (DESIGNING THE FUTURE; Chilton, 1967, among other excellent books) and I were discussing Harry's article (Harry is an old friend of Prehoda's) and it came out that Bob Prehoda had tried to buy the Dean Drive back in the early 6O's. At the time Bob was representing the Rockefeller family, so the ability to pay real folding money wasn't in question. I knew of a couple of other aerospace firms who'd also made the effort. The stories were remarkably similar: Dean wouldn't let anyone examine the machine. He wanted a million dollars and a Nobel prize up front:
then
you could play with the gadget. No one was going to put up that kind of money without seeing the gizmo in operation. There are just too many ways the reported results could be obtained without anything new. For example, if you jump up and down on your bathroom scale at just the right frequencies, you can fool the scale into thinking you're either lighter or heavier than you are; its response time just can't handle that non-steady weight.

Prehoda had also known Dr. William Davis, USAF colonel and successful inventor, who had worked out a physics theory which, supposedly, allows the Dean Drive and other "reactionless" drives to work. "Spacedrive" Davis spent a lot of time promoting what came to be called "Davis mechanics," and although his practical work made him a good bit of money, he acquired an unenviable reputation among theoreticians. Harry Stine worked for Davis and built several gadgets supposed to test the Davis theories.

Davis is dead. Norman Dean is dead. John W. Campbell is dead. And neither Prehoda nor I could get out of the back of our minds a simple fact: Gregor Mendel discovered genetics but the results lay unused from 1868 to 1900 because no one wanted to listen to this crazy abbot Could something similar be happening here?

We doubted it, but it did seem reasonable to try to get all the data together in one place before everybody who actually saw the Dean Machine, or tested Davis's theories, went off to Murphy's Hall. We decided to invite Harry to Los Angeles to confer with some other people on how best to test this whole concept once and for all. Understand: none of us, not one, really "believes" in spacedrives; but the concept is so blasted important and the consequences are so far-reaching, that surely it's worth a little effort?

So who do you invite to such a conference? What's needed are people with minds that are "open," but not minds pierced with gaping holes; with enough knowledge of physics and math to follow the arguments; and enough scientific integrity neither to bite on the idea simply
because
it's unorthodox nor to reject for that reason.

We ended up with: Robert Prehoda, chemist and propulsion systems expert; Larry Niven; Dan Alderson, astronomer and computer scientist; Robert Forward, physicist and gravitation expert; G. Harry Stine, engineer and gadgeteer extraordinary; and myself. It was an interesting lunch. Something may come of it. And the result illustrates precisely the point of this chapter.

The general reaction was simple. Davis's theoretical papers are interesting, but not terribly valuable. They assert that there's something wrong with physics. Okay, and maybe there is; but contemporary physical theory has a lot of scalps hanging from its belt. Maybe it needs changing, but not without some convincing evidence; and mathematical theories
are not evidence.

That's what I've found very hard to get across to people. In order for a "Dean Drive" or the gizmos postulated by "Davis mechanics" to work we really do have to throw out a very great deal of very fundamental physical theory. You
cannot
simply "convert rotary acceleration into linear thrust" and remain consistent with what we think we know. Spacedrives are just
impossible
given current theory. If you want to move a ship in inertial space, you have got to throw reaction mass out the back end, and that's all there is to it.

Now, sure, theory can be wrong. Einstein did his thing, and Newtonian physics has never been the same. We've yet to come to the end of the changes wrought by quantum mechanics. Moreover, what with 100 and more elementary particles kicking around, many believe that physics is
due
for a restructuring along the order of the changes rung in by Einstein.

But note: Einstein didn't generate his theory out of pure math. Far from it. His contributions came in explanation of
observed
phenomena that simply couldn't be explained by Newtonian concepts. The change in the perihelion of Mercury; the photo-electric effect; the Michaelson-Morely experiment; all
these
said, loudly, that there was something wrong with physics and it was time to get up a new theory.

Davis, on the other hand, played about with math and came up with "predictions" absolutely impossible within present physical theory. Is there any wonder that no one takes them seriously? Now a working "Dean Machine" would change all that. If you can actually build a gizmo that produces thrust without throwing mass overboard-even a
tiny
thrust—then there's nothing for it: physics is in trouble, and new theory
must
be found. Without such evidence, though, there's simply no reason to revise physics theory. After all, the "orthodox" stuff works quite well. It fits the observed universe.

Now: there remains Harry Stine's memory, after all these years, of that machine pushing against his hand. One result of our conference was a consensus that if the Dean Machine did not work, it at least did not employ any of the common means of producing spurious results. It didn't have feet that periodically touched the floor, and such like. That doesn't mean it worked the way Dean said; it just means we don't know how the result was obtained.

Then too, when Harry Stine was working for William Davis, Stine built a couple of gadgets (see Harry's
Analog
article for details) that gave results you certainly wouldn't have predicted in advance. They
may
be explainable in "normal" theory, but they are a bit queer, and they do fit Dr. Davis's theories.

The upshot of our meeting was this: the theoretical stuff can wait. What's important is that Harry Stine, as one of the few men now alive who actually saw the Dean Machine and also worked with experimental gadgetry to test Davis mechanics, get his
experimental results
into proper form and publish them.
That's
what's important.
Evidence.
As Bob Forward observed, once the plans are published, one of these days a research physicist will build the apparatus: and if several different labs get the results Harry did, and have no conventional explanation for them,
then
it will be time to trot out the theories. "One good experimental result is worth a thousand theories," Forward said; and he's right.

Back in the old days a number of us built Dean Machines from the patent specifications. We had technicians and they had to be paid between jobs; might as well use them to test new ideas. None of the gizmos worked. I now know of four that were built. Harry Stine can explain that: Dean, being, uh, highly suspicious, didn't describe his actual gadget in the patent. Of course that's stupid, because a patent protects only what's disclosed, but it's very much in keeping with what's known about Dean's personality.

Harry says the actual Dean Machine was the gol darndest collection of springs and slipclutches and mechanical linkages he's ever seen in his life. He also says it pushed hard against his hand, and he'll never forget that. Harry thinks Dean had something. The question is, can it be reproduced? Did it "work" as Dean thought, or did it merely act strangely? There are ways to test that, unambiguously. Until that's done, though, theory is not relevant.

* * *

So it's that simple. It isn't that the "establishment" won't
listen,
as so many would-be theorists insist; it's that the newcomers insist that physicists
only
listen. They have nothing to
show.

Now I get all kinds of blueprints and plans and equations from my readers. Those who send them assume, I hope rightfully, that (1) I know something of what science and technology is all about, and (2) I try to keep an open mind. I'm willing to listen.

But please, all of you who have new ideas, keep in mind what I said earlier. If you have plans for a perpetual motion machine and you really believe it will work—why build it! Don't send out plans only and then complain that "nobody listens." Of course nobody listens; it takes a lot of effort to spot the flaw in a very complex device (one I was sent ran to fifteen pages of drawings) but the chances are good that the flaw is there. I don't care how good a theory you have to prove that you can get energy out of your swimming pool; but I care a lot if you have built the device and it works.

Experimental results. Build the device. Make it work And
then
if nobody listens, something can be done. Certainly "orthodox" physics doesn't know everything. I've said myself that I believe (emotional bias only; I have no evidence) that we'll someday build faster than light ships, and yes, I suspect there might even be "spacedrives."

But we won't find them from blueprints. It takes evidence. Once you've got that, you'll find plenty of people to listen.

First, let me establish something. When I go to Cal Tech I do not expect an experience out of H. P. Lovecraft. Horror may be interesting at the proper time and place, but it's not very pleasant as a total surprise.

It started peacefully enough. Dr. Robert Forward, the Hughes Research gravity expert you've heard of here and other places, called to ask if I would be interested in meeting Stephen Hawking. Since Hawking is thought by important physicists possibly to rank alongside Newton and Einstein, it took perhaps five milliseconds to think over the proposition. I didn't even need to look at my calendar; nothing I had planned could be that important.

A week later Larry Niven and I drove over to the California Institute of Technology. It was a bright spring afternoon. . .

In order properly to tell this story I must now give some personal details about Professor Hawking. I've consulted his friends, who assure me that he doesn't mind.

Stephen Hawking is quite young, early thirties at the oldest. He is a resident theoretician at Cambridge University, and he yearly produces marvels in astronomical theory, particularly in the field of black hole dynamics.

In
"Fuzzy
Black Holes Have No Hair" I described Hawking's marriage of quantum mechanics to Einstein's classical relativity theories to produce the startling prediction that black holes are unstable. He is also responsible in large part for the so-called laws of black hole dynamics. An important man indeed.

Alas, Professor Hawking suffers from a nervous-system disorder which severely impairs his speech and confines him to a wheel chair. Those who attend his lectures are warned that they must listen closely; he can be understood, but only with difficulty and concentration. Of course this would be true if he spoke with the oratorical clarity of William Jennings Bryan to such bards of the sciences as Larry Niven and me, so we were prepared to be doubly confused.

Cal Tech's architecture is a neat blend of Old California and modern LA; arched thick-walled Monterey-style buildings with large shaded porches alternate with steel-and-glass towers and clean-lined functionalism. It sounds horrible, but the effect is actually quite pleasing. It's a nice place to be, especially if you're looking forward to hearing one of the truly great men of our time.

The lecture was in a small modern slant-floored room of the type sometimes called lecture theaters; the sort of classroom lecturers like. The tiered seats let everyone have a good view of the speaker and his demonstration materials, and give the speaker a good view of the audience.