🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <MATT.92Nov5105233@physics2.berkeley.edu>, matt@physics2.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern) writes:
|> In article <mcirvin.720987478@husc8> mcirvin@husc8.harvard.edu
|> (Mcirvin) writes about the possibility that we are only living in a
|> false vacuum now and that high-energy experiments might catalyze a 
|> phase transition to the true vacuum:
|> 
|>|> I once opined to Eric Carlson that this was an idea that had been
|>|> insufficiently exploited in science fiction.  He pointed out to
|>|> me that "it would be a very short novel."
|> 
|> And I once suggested to Lawrence Hall that it was a truly wonderful
|> opportunity for rabble-rousing politics---definitely an argument
|> against the SSC that hasn't yet been sufficiently exploited by the
|> project's opponents.
|> 
|> I can just visualize the scene in Waxahachie: thousands of protestors
|> chaining themselves to the gates and throwing themselves in front of
|> bulldozers, holding up signs that say "Save the universe"!
|> --
|> Matthew Austern                   Just keep yelling until you attract a

Ah, if I remember right from the Michigan push to get the SSC, there *were*
detractors that did bring up such arguments.  Not quite as dramaticly as
organized protests, but more a wispering campaign.  There were also a
non-negligible number who got very much in arms over the part of the plans
leading to the beam dump that was labelled "abort".  Hit a "hot button" with
that one; I'm not sure they ever quite understood. :-(

-robert

 Robert W. Hatcher        | 256D Physics-Astronomy    | hatcher@msupa   (Bitnet)
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