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Sept. 5, 2008
Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: What does 'doing the right thing' entail?
Caroline B. Glick:
The master strategist
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Ron Kampeas: Biden, Palin take lead in clash on Mideast issues
Bruce Dancis: With humor as their weapon, the Three Stooges took on Hitler
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Caroline B. Glick: Calling Israel's bluff
JWisdom: Wandering in Wonder by Rabbi Mordechai Becher
August 29, 2008
Rabbi Berel Wein: 20/20 sightlessness
Caroline B. Glick: When history is not repeated
JWisdom: Blessed or Cursed: It's Really Up to You by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky
August 28, 2008
Steve Lipman: A Comeback for the 'Jewish Jordan'
Jeffrey Weiss: Researcher reports 'intriguing' diabetes breakthrough
August 27, 2008
Rabbi Zecharya Greenwald: Removing the perfectionist's mask
The Kosher Gourmet
by Emily Nunn: Summer harvest linguine
JWisdom:: The Missing Link in Spiritual Life by Rabbi David Aaron
August 26, 2008
Yaffa Ganz: Grandma gets lessons in staying cool
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: The Dems' 'soft' jihadist
JWisdom::
Today: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Plague of indifference
August 25, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist
by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: A friend is bearing a silly grudge from a supposed wrong. What recourse do I have?
Daniel Pipes: Barack Obama through Muslim Eyes
JWisdom:: The knowledge you need to overcome your insecurities by Malka Schulman
August 22, 2008
Rabbi Berel Wein: Life's essential ingredient
Caroline B. Glick: Dominos anyone?
JWisdom:: Actually, Do Sweat the Small Stuff! by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky
August 21, 2008
Today in Biblical History
by Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Popularization of Kabbalah: 20 Menachem-Av 1558 CE
Jonathan Rosenblum: Lessons from the Beyond
JWisdom: : The Olympian within is rooting for you -- yes, you! –- to go for the gold
August 20, 2008
Jonathan Tobin: Misleading Platform Platitudes
The Kosher Gourmet
by Linda Gassenheimer: Chicken Salad with Asian Dressing
JWisdom: The Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith: America's Defense of the Jews --- Until WWII by Rabbi Nosson Scherman
August 19, 2008
Dennis Prager: If the Almighty doesn't exist
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Obama's Islamist problem has nothing to do with his upbringing
JWisdom:
Think your life is messed up? by Rabbi David Aaron
August 18, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist
by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Business with Friends
Diana West: Roars About Russia, Bare Whispers About Islam
JWisdom: Relationship agony: The real cause by Malka Schulman
August 15, 2008
Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: To love the Divine
Caroline B. Glick: Georgia, Israel, and the nature of man
JWisdom: The Truly Righteous Don't Demand Entitlements by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky
August 14, 2008
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Confessions of broken spirit
Libby Lazewnik: The Numbers Game
JWisdom: Six Questions You'll Be Asked in Heaven? - Uh - Let's Just Take One for Now! by Gavriel Aryeh Sanders
August 13, 2008
Jonathan Tobin: Georgia should be on their minds
The Kosher Gourmet
by Linda Gassenheimer: Go Greek: Pair flavorful lamb kebabs with a hearty salad
JWisdom: Human hybrids aren't science fiction by Rabbi David Aaron
August 12, 2008
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Bless us
Daniel Pipes: The West's Islamist Infiltrators
JWisdom: From Sadness to Gladness: The Route from Tisha b'Av to Rosh Hashana by Rabbi Mordechai Becher
August 11, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist
by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: A Jewish view on fair pricing
Caroline B. Glick: Ignoring failure in Gaza
JWisdom: 'Communication' Is Not The Answer! by Malka Schulman
August 7, 2008
Rabbi David Gutterman: A Continuing Story With a Sustaining Goal
Rabbi Berel Wein: Mourning and morning
JWisdom: Yes, we are still in exile by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky
August 6, 2008
David Ashenfelter: Government made military engineer's life a living hell because of his faith, Defense Department report documents
Jonathan Tobin: Speak the Truth; Defeat the Lies
JWisdom: Jewish Spirituality: Fusion or Confusion? by Rabbi David Aaron
August 5, 2008
Chris Leppek: Church/state wall beginning to crumble?
Paul Greenberg: Exit Olmert (no encore, please)
JWisdom: Serenity: Make the commitment by Rabbi Zelig Pliskin (Read by Gavriel Sanders)
August 4, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Am I taking advantage of another's psychological quirk?
Andrew Silow-Carroll: A black and a Jew walk into the White House…
JWisdom: The Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith: Edward R. Morrow visits the ‘living dead’ by Rabbi Nosson Scherman
March 22, 2007
J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)
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Jewish World Review
August 25, 2004
/ 9 Elul 5764
Wouk's fiction reveals facts of science, politics
By
Tom Siegfried
In the famed novelist's latest, answering arcane questions about the origin of the universe could unleash knowledge with unforeseen power to transform modern life
http://www.jewishworldreview.com |
Though truth is often stranger than fiction, fiction often has a way of telling the truth.
Science fiction, of course, often tells the truth about the future. Fiction about science, on the other hand, can reveal interesting truths about the past. And that's what Herman Wouk tries to do in his new novel about "A Hole in Texas."
For those who weren't paying attention a decade or so ago, the hole is near Waxahachie, in Ellis County, where physicists had hoped to construct the grandest scientific instrument in history, a giant atom smasher powerful enough to probe the origins of the universe. Called the Superconducting Super Collider, or SSC, it would have fired bits of atoms at blinding speed around a 54-mile racetrack tunnel, smashing them into one another with enough impact to create particles previously only imagined.
Physicists hoped the SSC would produce an extremely elusive and mysterious particle named the Higgs boson. To oversimplify, the Higgs is the missing piece in the master puzzle encompassing the blueprint for the universe. Without the Higgs, modern science's understanding of the particles and forces making up the cosmos doesn't quite make sense. Without the Higgs, it's hard to explain even why the known particles possess any mass.
Understanding the universe's origin and the physical basis for existence seemed like a good idea in 1988, when Congress voted to build the SSC. But by 1993, with the tunnel only partly dug, political winds had shifted. Congress killed the SSC, and the Higgs remains undiscovered to this day.

Wouk, famous for "The Caine Mutiny" and "The Winds of War," tells of the SSC's demise via fictional characters who suffered because of the government's snub of science. But he places his plot not in the past but present day, in order to examine the possible perils of governmental shortsightedness. In Wouk's world, Chinese scientists report that they have discovered the Higgs boson, throwing the U.S. media into a frenzy over the possible Chinese monopoly on the "boson bomb."
Much of Wouk's tale is right on target, as his characters articulate the goals and dreams of physicists faithfully. And he captures the mix of personalities and political machinations that guide the supposedly dispassionate decisions about science policy. Also, the chief villain in this novel is, naturally, a newspaper reporter (a political reporter out for scandal, bamboozled by the science). On the other hand, Wouk suggests that the discovery of the Higgs boson was covered in The Dallas Morning News with an AP wire story, something that would have happened only over a certain science editor's dead body. And he seems a little confused over the difference between scientific journals and magazines.
Nevertheless, his story sheds a lot of light on society's misunderstandings and mismanagement of modern science. When it comes to science, politicians don't know what they're doing. Of course, when it comes to politics, scientists apparently don't know what they are doing, either. Science and politics are like matter and antimatter, annihilating explosively whenever they meet.
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Wouk's book contains hints about how to narrow the science-politics gap. The main strategy seems to be sending the book's star scientist, astrophysicist Guy Carpenter, to mesmerize an ex-movie star congresswoman with seductive tales of Higgs boson history. With Saganesque style, Carpenter links the quest for pure knowledge pursued by the ancient Greeks with the practical payoffs from modern day technology.
The Greeks jump-started science, he explained, by asking a simple question: What's the smallest thing that exists?
"By seeking and finding an answer we got the Bomb, we got nuclear power plants and submarines, we learned how the sun and the stars shine, and there were huge benefits in medical fallout," Carpenter wrote to the congresswoman.
Today, he said, the Higgs search is at the heart of the quest to answer a similarly deep question: How come anything at all exists?
Answering that question may or may not produce a payback comparable to the spinoffs from understanding the atom, Carpenter acknowledged: "It's the essence of basic research, you see ... , that its outcome is unknowable."
So it was nonsense when a fictional Peter Jennings reported on TV that it was "known" that the "boson bomb ... will exceed the destructive power of the H-bomb, as the H-bomb exceeds gunpowder."
In fact, Higgs bosons would be worthless for making bombs. If you want to outblast H-bombs, you need to make Q-balls, hypothetical blobs of "SUSY" particles (short for supersymmetric). Many physicists believe that SUSY particles lurk throughout the universe. But to produce them on Earth, you'd need a giant atom smasher, like the one that Congress killed. So it's not nonsense to suspect that answering arcane questions about the origin of the universe could unleash knowledge with unforeseen power to transform modern life.
Of course, even if SUSY particles and Q-balls do exist, it's unlikely that the SSC or any other conceivable technology could turn them into bombs or power plants or power sources for submarines. But Q-ball technology might make a great science-fiction story or Herman Wouk novel.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washinton and the media consider must reading. Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Tom Siegfried is science editor for The Dallas Morning News. To comment, please click here.
© 2004, The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services
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