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Bold innovation or terrible idea? Your guide to the experiments that only sound scary—and the lab work you truly should lose sleep over

Posted 1.2.10 at 11:52 pm 0 Comments

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Suitcase Nukes
Jon Proctor
Scientists are trying to develop pure-fusion reactions—bursts that don’t require uranium or plutonium to ignite—for clean energy. But they could also usher in so-called low-yield nuclear weapons that emit very little radiation and could be both small and difficult to detect.

WHY, GOD, WHY? The civilian rationale is that pure-fusion nuclear power could supplement, if not replace, fossil fuels and conventional reactors. And the era of widespread nuclear weapons development is largely over. A 2008 report by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society and the Center for Strategic and International Studies recommended extending the life of old nukes with upgraded warheads and onboard microsensors for quality control (rather than building anything new). But if scientists happen upon pure fusion, who knows what they might do with it?

FEAR FACTOR Nuclear weapons are scary. The U.S. has already created small “bunker-buster” nukes that can penetrate underground targets. But weaponized pure fusion would require miniaturizing lasers or other trigger technologies that currently involve building-sized equipment.

Of course, pure fusion may also be impossible. According to several reports, including declassified information from the Department of Energy, weapons scientists have tried and failed to pull it off since the 1950s, and funding for the research was banned in 1993. But Jeremy Tamsett, editor of the Journal of Strategic Security, says the 2004 Defense Authorization Act repealed the restrictions. And this year, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will attempt to create pure-fusion reactions with lasers at its National Ignition Facility.

WORRY METER Medium
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Mars Attacks
Jon Proctor
Rovers and probes have provided some info on Martian soil and climate, but scientists want to bring a chunk of the Red Planet down to Earth on what’s called a sample-return mission. Uh, remember The Andromeda Strain? What happens if some freaky virus comes back on NASA’s planned 2018 sample return?

WHY, GOD, WHY? Martian probes can’t carry the full spectrum of scientific gear and monitors to the dirt, but they can bring the dirt back to instruments on Earth, buying time and flexibility for testing. And when it comes to Mars rocks, scientists love time and flexibility. Researchers spent more than a decade studying the Martian rock known as the Allen Hills meteorite (and found possible fossil evidence of life). If and when we bring back a coffee-cup-size sample from Mars in 2018, it will also need Earth-bound scrutiny.

FEAR FACTOR NASA’s Planetary Protection division (“Our mission is to prevent biological cross-contamination”) plans to house everything in a special receiving facility on Earth similar to a level-4 biohazard-containment lab, the most secure kind. “The only thing that would be of concern is something that can replicate,” says Margaret Race, a principal investigator with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute who focuses on contaminants and planetary protection. “If it’s radiation or toxins, we can deal with that.” She believes the Mars sample could be just as vulnerable to Earthly microbes as people might be to any Martian germs. “We’ve gotten very good at biocontainment,” Race says. “If something goes wrong, we could just autoclave”—sterilize—”everything.”

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Gallery: Scary Science

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