Fringe Science? I’ll Take Vegas!

Last year, I got a strange call. Thats not sur­pris­ing, because I get lots of strange calls. But this one was strange because the per­son on the other end of the phone was ask­ing me for invest­ment advice, and since I cant quite bal­ance my check­book, Im a strange per­son to be offer­ing finan­cial tips to any­one.
Whaddya think of this firm Ionatron? the man asked, intro­duc­ing him­self as vice pres­i­dent of a bou­tique invest­ment firm in California. He didnt know much about defense or the Pentagon, but he was really inter­ested in invest­ing in this weapons firm, which he thought had big poten­tial.
For those who dont know about Tucson-​​based Ionatron, I first advise read­ing up on Tesla coils. Once you under­stand what a Tesla coil is, youll be about halfway toward under­stand­ing Iontraon, a com­pany that claims to have pio­neered a weapon that will shoot light­ning bolts (Noah has writ­ten some excel­lent posts on Ionatron here and, most recently, here). When news­pa­pers talk about Ionatron, they usu­ally start by talk­ing about Buck Rogers guns or Star Trek phasers. I pre­fer to begin by talk­ing about Tesla coils, which shoot sparks a few feet. Legions of would-​​be inven­tors, up to an includ­ing those in Ionatron, have dreamt of extend­ing those sparks out to tens of meters, or even miles.
I took an hour out of my day to explain to this guy all the rea­sons why Ionatron, even if its tech­nol­ogy pans out, was not likely to be equip­ping the Army with hand­held light­ning guns any­time soon. There were some basic prac­ti­cal­i­ties. For exam­ple, ion­iz­ing the air to make the light­ning bolt go at any great dis­tance is really hard. The power sources needed to break down the air and shoot the light­ning are pretty bulky. And finally, elec­tric­ity, as we all learn in grade school, likes to travel in the most effi­cient man­ner pos­si­ble. That means if light­ning were ever shot out of a hand­held device, youd need a way to ensure it doesnt hit the guy hold­ing it, or the unlucky buddy next to him. Good luck.
Okay, those are the sci­en­tific bar­ri­ers, but then there are the bureau­cratic con­sid­er­a­tions. The Pentagon doesnt one day throw down all its tried and true guns in favor of some fancy sta­tic elec­tric­ity. Theres an entire acqui­si­tion process that takes years, and some­times decades, to field a weapon. So, even if youve really per­fected the light­ning gun, itll be quite some time before the first sol­dier ever lays his hands on it. Finally, you have to ask, are light­ning bolts really any bet­ter than good old-​​fashioned bul­lets? Not always, is likely the answer.
I said all this, but I could tell the guy wasnt lis­ten­ing, because I wasnt telling him what he wanted to hear. Well, he finally said, if theres even one in a hun­dred shot that Ionatron is really on to some­thing, then its worth my rel­a­tively small invest­ment.
Then I real­ized the prob­lem: I was on the phone with a true believer. There was noth­ing I could say that this guy would lis­ten tohis logic was that of the hard­ened gam­bler. Its also the same argu­ment that explains the nearly obses­sive sup­port among some in the Pentagon for the hafnium bomb, a notional weapon based on an exper­i­ment that vio­lated the laws of physics. As I write in my new book, Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagons Scientific Underworld, the true believ­ers grasp on to the most per­verse logic: Any chance that a weapon might work war­rants invest­ment if the pay­off is high enough. In the case of the hafnium bomb, the Pentagon fig­ured that tens of mil­lions of dol­lars was worth the invest­ment if the result was a weapon that could rev­o­lu­tion­ize war­fare.
But the prob­lem in this argu­ment, like with most fringe sci­ence, is that if you fol­low it to its log­i­cal con­clu­sion, youll only invest in fail­ures. Its like argu­ing that rather than putting money in your 401K, you should invest in slot machines, because the invest­ment is low and the pay­off is high. Almost all fringe sci­ence is high-​​risk, high pay­off, so by the logic of the true believ­ers, you should invest in all fringe sci­ence.
People often ask me: whats your favorite exam­ple of fringe sci­ence? I usu­ally tell them, Its the Tesla light­ning gun. Not because its fringe per se (Tesla coils exist and work), but because every few years, some­one mod­i­fies a Tesla coil, declares it the next great weapon, and boom, the Pentagon gives them some money. So, will Ionatron buck the trend (or Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems) and invent a really cool weapon? Heck if I know, but the chance that the Pentagon will any­time this decade buy a light­ning weapon in mass quan­ti­ties is so remote as to be almost nil. So, why not just go to Vegas, put your money in the slots, and have some fun.
And, heck, at least in Vegas, the drinks are free.
– Sharon Weinberger

June 15th, 2006 | Bizarro, Lasers and Ray Guns | 194811 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/06/15/fringe-science-ill-take-vegas/Fringe+Science%3F++I%27ll+Take+Vegas%212006-06-15+16%3A58%3A15david_axe You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.