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AstrophysEd 



Do you know what famous critical mass was assembled in Cleveland! 



by Roger L. Welsch 



A few years ago, physicist Stephen 

 Hawldng amazed the world of publishing 

 by producing a runaway best seller, 

 putting him right up there with literary gi- 

 ants like Norm Schwarzkopf and Howard 

 Stem. A couple of weeks ago I finally got 

 around to buying a paperback copy of 

 Hawking 's A Brief History of Time: From 

 the Big Bang to Black Holes, a primer in 

 astrophysics for the popular market. I am 

 now ready to talk with you about the book, 

 even though I haven't quite finished it, 

 putting me right up there with millions of 

 other book buyers. 



To begin with, you should know that the 

 word astrophysics is a combination of as- 

 tronomy and physics, NOT astrology and 

 physics. Astrology is a belief system based 

 on mystic mumbo jumbo with no demon- 

 strable, substantiating basis in observable 

 phenomena, whereas astronomy has an n 

 instead of an / and an m instead of a g. 

 (There is an even bigger difference be- 

 tween physic and physics. Briefly, physics 



can be the plural of physic, but physic is 

 not the singular of physics, a confusion 

 Hawking promises to explain in a later 

 book.) 



Hawking's lesson for us in A Brief His- 

 tory of Time is that while we once thought 

 all matter was composed of indivisible el- 

 ements, and then indivisible atoms, and 

 then indivisible neutrons, all matter is ac- 

 tually made up of indivisible quarks 

 (meant to rhyme, sort of, with "quart," but 

 which, for reasons that physicists who ex- 

 plain the universe cannot explain, has 

 wound up rhyming, sort of, with "smart"). 



These quarks come in several "col- 

 ors" — red, green, and blue — even though 

 quarks have no color in reality, if they have 

 a reahty. Quarks are further classified into 

 six "flavor" groupings — up, down, 

 strange, charmed (which may explain why 

 no one ever goes to a dinner party thrown 

 by an astrophysicist), Szechuan, and 

 cherry-pistachio — even though cherry- 

 pistachio has no flavor in reality and 



ir^i-r' i.^ """ 







Szechuan has more than enough to make 

 up for both of them. These taxonomic sys- 

 tems have been constructed by astrophysi- 

 cists, famous for their quirky (rhymes with 

 "quarky") sense of humor. 



The important thing to remember is that 

 astrophysics operates (or operate) primar- 

 ily within scientists' minds, each step de- 

 pending on the theoretical soundness of 

 the theses leading up to it, a kind of intel- 

 lectiial pyramid scheme, illegal in most 

 states of the Union but still permitted in 

 astrophysics. The point is, no one is more 

 surprised than physicists when a couple of 

 centuries of theory are suddenly mani- 

 fested in some actual, observable, physical 

 event — for example. Silly Putty or the 

 atomic bomb. 



As you can imagine, everybody in 

 physics circles was considerably relieved 

 when SUly Putty resulted from the critical 

 mass assembled in Cleveland and the A- 

 bomb popped up, so to speak, at Alamo- 

 gordo. Except maybe for Edward Teller, 

 who still seems disappointed by one or the 

 other of these outcomes. 



At any rate, almost everything in 

 Hawking's book is based on his fertile 

 imagination and logical speculation, with 

 almost no visible evidence or proof. This 

 appears to differentiate his work from fic- 

 tion, which is almost always based on ob- 

 vious, demonstrable fact. In another way, 

 however, physics is a lot Uke fiction or in- 

 come tax calculating, in that when there is 

 a conflict between the world and an intel- 

 lectual construct, the author adjusts the 

 world to fit an imagined plot. 



Take black matter, for example. As fate 

 would have it, the most recent and popular 

 theories in physics just don't work. It's not 

 as if there are some loose tiireads around 

 the edges; the theories don't work at all. If 

 they did, the universe would instanta- 

 neously fall in on itself or fly apart. Now 



24 Natural History 2/94 



