16TH ANNIVERSARY COLLECTORS ISSUE

iTOBER 1994

mi

,,

L-*-

$3.50

onnrui
OCTOBER

EDITOR

IN

1994

CHIEF & DESIGN DIRECTOR: BOB GUCCIONE

PRESIDENT & C.O.O.: KATHY KEETON

VP/EDITOR: KEITH FERRELL
EXECUTIVE VP/GRAPHICS DIRECTOR: FRANK DEVINO
MANAGING EDITOR- CAROLINE DARK
ART DIRECTOR: O.AT-T-IYN MEZZO

29
First

Word

Continuum

By John Polkinghorne

36

Science and Religion

By Margaret Wertheim

Communications

44

8
Sounds

Fiction:

By Jane Bosveld

Margin of Error
By Nancy Kress

10

54

The Roswell Declaration

By

A.

J.

Mary Visions

S.Ray!

12

By Tracy Cochran

Electronic Universe
By Gregg Keizer

Visions of Cosmopolis

64

14
Books

By Anthony Mansueto
Does UFO

By Anna Copeland

fascination reflect our

16

need

80

19

Time

is Nothing
but a Clock
By George Zebrowski

By Torn Dworetzky

20

84

Arts

The Other
Side of the Bloch
By Robert Bloch

Keith Harary

22
Wheels

By Steve Nadis

26
Funds
By Linda Marsa

27
Omni Online
By

Holly

Siegelman

great writer offers

a surprising

24

and memorable message.

89

Awards
By Doug Stewart

The

Fire that Scours

By Edward Bryant

Victor Dricks

Virtual Reality

By

God?

Fiction:

18
Stars

By

for

70

Digs

By Jeffrey Heck

BMHe^ajL..

Interview

.'-..*
.

By Anthony Liversidge

Omni explores the range of

systems be it science, religion,
or otherworldlythat spring from the human mind as we
seek to understand our world.
Cover art by Steven Hunt. (Additional r;r; credirs, page 113)
For our sixteenth birthday,
belief

101
Antimatter

124
Games
By Scot Morris

FIRST IAJDRD
ALONE

NEVER ENOUGH:

IS

Seeing the world through both eyes

By John Polkinghorne
am a

theoretical physicist and

a clergyman. People some-

experience with a coarse-grained

net and there is much of the

highest significance and importance which slips through its

I times think that is a pretty odd

combination, as if had said
was a vegetarian and a butcher.
Aren't science and religion at
I

wide meshes.
In fact,

war with each other, and isn't science winning the battle? Which
side am really on?
do not think have to choose

many

if

am

really

there are

some ques-

which arise from science

but which go beyond its narrow
power to answer, which seem to

tions

sides, in fact,

going

us to point

of

in

a religious

direction. Scientists are greatly

understand the very rich and

varied world in which we live,
need the insights of both science

struck by the wonderful rational

beauty of the physical world as it

and

through their investigations. The

experience of wonder is a fundamental reward for all the toil and
labor involved in scientific research. Scientists are also
greatly impressed by our human
power to understand the physical world. Why are our minds so

to

religion.

Each

is

becomes revealed

concerned

with the search for truth, but they

survey different aspects of our
experience. It is not the case
as many suppose
is
that science deals with real knowledge
of a world of reliable facts, whilst

it

religion trades in individual opinion, which might be "true for me"

but which cannot be just plain
"true." In fact, such ideas are lit-

erally mistaken.

They are wrong about

ence because

sci-

are
never plain, unvarnished observations; to be interesting they
must already be interpreted. That
interpretation requires an interweaving of fact (experiment) and
opinion (theory). That the Geiger
scientific facts

counter clicks
esting;

it

only

is

-pretty uninter-

comes

to life

when

we understand

it to be the sign
a radioactive decay.
Religion, conversely, is concerned with the search for motibelief. Faith does not
involve shutting one's eyes and
believing impossible things because some unquestionable authority tells one to do so. It is the
quest for an understanding of
human experience rooted in wor-

cousins under the skin. Their difference lies in the kinds of quesask and the kinds of
experiences they are prepared
to consider. Science asks the
question How?; religion asks the
question Why? Both are important questions if we want to understand all that is going on.
tions they

"The kettle is boiling because

burning gas heats the water."
"The kettle is boiling because
want to make a cup of tea." do
not have to choose between
these answers. Like science and
I

both are
Science limits

religion,

of

vated

true.
itself

to treating

the world as an object, an "it"

which can be manipulated and
put to the experimental test. Religion is concerned with personal
encounter with that reality which

can only be treated as a

"thou."

religious figures of world history.

In the realm of the personal, testing has to give way to trusting.

Science by itself could never
be enough. It is too limited. Ask a
scientist to tell you all about
music. Wearing his scientific hat,

believe that science and religion both are concerned with interpreted fact, with motivated
opinion. They are intellectual

to

and the

history of ho-

liness represented

by the great

ship, hope,

he

will have to reply, "It is just viin the air." But we all
that there is much more
music than that. Science trawls

brations

know

them

to

we can comprehend
not only the world of everyday
experience which we clearly
formed that

have

understand

to

if

we

are to

survive, but also the strange un-

picturable world of

chanics so

quantum me-

totally different

from

what common sense would lead

us to expect? You could say that
fundamental physics discovers a
world shot through with signs of
mind.

It

is

natural to interpret this

as indeed an encounter with "the

mind of God."' Science is possible because the universe is a
creation,

and we are made

in

the

image of the Creator.

The history of the universe,
which has turned an expanding
ball of energy into the home of
saints and scientists over the last
15 billion years, suggests a purpose at work. An evolutionary universe can be understood theologically as a universe allowed by
its Creator to make itself, as it actualizes the astonishing potentiality

with

which

it

has been endowed.

The goal for every scientist

should be a thirst for understanding
a thirst which will never be
quenched by science alone.DQ

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connnnuruicATiorus
READERS' WRITES:
one

Alien-Nation, another
|

.'.':-.!:^ .:'. '"';':

gH

Eg

for the birds,

and milking the cow

1HLCCRP BATiON
Looking for UFO Answers
was pleased to hear you started
I

vestigating the alien presence

government cover-ups

Birds of a Feather
in-

and the

[April 1994],

The idea of asking the government for

secret files and information is really ex-

open new fields

of study, but will allow more universities
and research institutions to have more
citing. This will not

only

As an amateur paleontologist, found

George Olshevsky's article [June
I

1994] on which came first, the bird or

the dinosaur, fascinating. While his theory is perfectly plausible and solves
some of the questions created by the
birds-are-dinosaur-descendants theories, clearly much more study needs to

you can prove some of the questions

that people have been asking about

be done on finds like Mesenosaurus

and Cosesaurus. guess we simply
have to wait and see
new finds will
support the birds-first theory. Keep up

UFOs and

the great work.

access

to

such studies.

research and hope- that

support your

future issues

in

Good

their existence.

luck.

Jorge Torres,

if

Bill Barbour
Greensboro, NC

Jr.

Miami, FL

AOL:CORWIN3210
Brinning over with

David
mares"

New

Ideas

Brin's "Extraterrestrial Night[First

Word, June 1994] unwitproblem aliens must

official contact with a

tingly reveals the

face

in

making

they arrive when we are

on the verge of either blowing ourselves
up or putting international warfare behind us. it could deprive the human
race of the chance to mature. Add that

new

wdrld.

If

science would instantly become antique, and you have

a prescription fc oad relations. If a race
capable of interstellar travel wanted to
enslave or destroy us, they could have
done so long before now. Why wait to
make contact, unless it is to minimize
to the fact that our

the disruption to Earth-dwellers?

William

Schlosser

Indianapolis, IN

Cash Cow

or Prestige Pig?

Piers Bizony's article, "Politics of

Apollo" [July 1994],

was

accurate, exof many de-

cellent,

and

voted

NASA middle-management

timely.

As one

officials during, the Apollo years,

can
make one minor correction. In discussing funding for the program, Bizony states that "NASA looked like a fat
I

cash cow begging

to

be milked."

In

.ad not for

sorr

cash but

for prestige.

On

the incentive

we graded

evaluation board,

contrac-

based on their previous quarter's

performance. After one contractor got
its second low grade, its senior management was called in and given the
option of quietly surrendering the contract. The Apollo program meant so
much in terms of prestige that these
tors

David Brin [First Word, June 1994] attempts to equate UFO phenomena, es-

managers almost begged to be allowed to continue losing money rather

and other

than disappoint their shareholders by

not being a part of Apollo. The "fat
cash cow" was even bigger and fatter
than we'd imagined.
Charles D. Friedlander

pecially abductions, to elves

mythological wee folks stealing away

people; however, Brin concludes his
piece by shooting himself in the foot.
He begs forgiveness for doubting so
harshly, but says his faith lies in the
more practical approach to proving extraterrestrial intelligence,

He

writes,

",
until then,
remain a big fan of
Keep watching the skies,
guys!" Doesn't Brin find it an ironic
contradiction that some of the best
sightings of UFOs have been reported
by Air Force pilots?
.

the Air Force.

Philip Paul

U.S. Air Force, Retired

Hampton, VA

San Diego,
Got something

to

CADd

say but no time

write? Call (900) 285-5483. Your

to

com-

ments will be recorded and may appear

an upcoming issue of Omni. The cost
for the call is 95 cents per minute. You
must be age 18 or older. Touch-tone
phones only. Sponsored by Pure Entertainment, 505 South Beverly Drive,
in

Suite 977, Beverly

Hills,

CA

90212.

5DUf\JD5
CATHEDRAL DREAMS:
A

and mysticism

synthesis of music, mathematics,

By Jane Bosveld
was an odd and spectacular

Itevent even for a crowd used

to the visual and audio overload of rock concerts by such
luminaries as David Bowie,
Michael Jackson, and the comeback tours of the Rolling Stones.
The band, so to speak, was as
strange as the Cathedral Dreams
music and light show that played
at the Cathedral Church of St.
John the Divine in New York City
on a cool October night.

The brainchild of mathematician and chaos guru Ralph

Abraham, the concert blended
computer images and music with
improvised visual effects con-

ics at Rice University in Houston,

sights into

whose

tradition calls the vibration

electronic cello
nied the visual display,

accompa-

and Peter
Broadwell, senior software, engineer at Silicon Graphics of
Mountainview, California, who
designed the concert software.
The Cathedral Dreams, however, was more than academic
exercise in the interaction of

technology and
ways,

many

art. in

represented the culmina-

it

Abraham's lifelong desire

work in mathematiand his love, of music
As a
of the Lindisfarne Asso-

tion of

to invest his
cal theory

commem-

rious investigation of the religious

hypothesis originator James

Lovelock, anthropologist Mary
Catherine Bateson, poet Wendell
Berry, architect Paolo Soleri, and
the

dean

of St.

John the

Divine,

James Parks Morton.

For Abraham the renewal
religion

growth

is

of

of

essential tor the

a vibrant "planetary

The old religions, he exno longer work. "But we

culture."

and

of

sound.

trolled

by human performers.
Strange mazes appeared on a

plains,

screen only to fade into pulsating

geometric shapes. Fluid images

whatever has inhibited their evolution over the centuries. We

need a planetary religion, a revolution of religion where there
would be a renewal of meaning

reminiscent of stained-glass windows one in the shape oi the

cathedral itself changed colors
and dissolved. Using a specially
designed computer called Ml Ml
(Mathematically Illuminated Musical Instrument), Abraham pro-

grammed

mathematical
formulas which were then transintricate

supercomputer into
video images. In addition to
Abraham, other performers for
the event included Ami Radunlated by a

skaya, a professor of^mathemat-

ham's training as a mathematician made him wonder

there
were a mathematical basis for
if

the vibration metaphor,

if

human

somehow be

understood in the same way as

ringing a bell.
When Abraham returned to

twentieth anniver-

son, other members include microbiologist Lynn Margulis, Gaia

of sight

bell,

thought could

whose

ciation,

dimensions of science. Founded

in 1972 by William Irwin Thomp-

connects
the resonance

meta-

echoes, according to Vedic teachings, through the realm of the

collective unconscious, the eternal wellspring of thought. Abra-

member

orated, Abraham and his colleagues are dedicated to the se-

Using a super-

religious

concentric circles; strike a

and it vibrates in waves of sound;

meditate on a thought, and it

with a spiritual dimension.

sary the concert

computer,
Ralph Abraham

what the Vedic

Throw a pebble in a pond,

and the vibrations' ripple out in
phor.

can prune those religions of

in rites

and

rituals."

Abraham's spiritual journey

in the 1960s during a
walkabout that took him to India

began

where he met a guru with whom

he spent a week on a meditative
retreat inside a cave that had
been home to yogis for centuries.
It

was here

enced

that he

first

experi-

"visual illuminations," tele-

pathic communications and

in-

his professorship at the University of California at

Santa Cruz

in

1974, he began giving seminars

on vibration theory, combining

Vedic ideas with Western mathematics. To visually represent certain principles of vibration,
Abraham had his students build

a macroscope

a device that

amplifies sound

and sends

it

through a liquid solution, causing

to vibrate in patterns which are
then projected via lenses onto a
screen. Abraham asked an Indian singer he knew to sing
it

through a microphone that was

attached to the macroscope.
"His singing produced beautiful
patterns on the screen that were
suggestive of the music itself,"
he explains. "It connected, all at
once: my experience with Indian
music, vibration theory, and
mathematics. Math, music, mysticismall are one."
By the 1980s, video innovations enabled the use of digital

equipment

in

Abraham's experi-

ments with visual music. This work

led him to design the MIMI and
later to Cathedral Dreams and
the hope that visual vibrations
designed in mathematical formutuned
las

can be

beat of

to the pulsating

human consciousness.00

THE ROSUUELL
DECLARATION
TIME OUT:

call for

By A.

accountability by the U.S.

J. S.

government

Rayl

ould you like

if a fly.

IAJ know
sauc

ally

crashed near Roswell

Mexico, back in 1947, as

many UFO buffs now contend? If the government
has knowledge or pos-

session of extraterrestrials and/or their craft? You

are not aione.
A grassroots movement
to find out is now underway,
and you can become a
part of it by signing a copy
of the Roswell Declaration,
a one-page petition calling

the administration to
issue an executive order
declassifying any government information regarding
Roswell, UFOs, and extrafor

terrestrial intelligence.

"This is about getting to

the truth, setting the record
straight once and for all
about what the government
Is

the U.S. gov-

ernment
concealing

vital

information

aboulUFOs?A
grassroots

movement needs
your help
to find out.

knows," says declaration

author and one of the organizers, Kent Jeffrey, an international airline pilot.
Jeffrey

izers

copy
a

and his fellow organplan to deliver a

and

of the declaration

list of

signatories to

all

members

of Congress and
White House.
The Roswell Declaration is
not an endorsement of a
to the

position or belief, but a refor a change in the law.

quest

"Knowledge about extraterrestrial intelligence is

not a matter of national security, but one to which all

humankind should have an

inalienable right," Jeffrey

states. "The primary goal,"
he adds, "is to get the mat-

open so that the

can be determined
One way or the other." Jeffrey hopes that all individuals, no matter what their
ter into the

truth

personal stand on ETs, will

support that view.
Various UFO organizations throughout the world
are doing just that by disseminating the declaration,

which has also shown up

on numerous computer bulletin board services. While
the main thrust of the
Roswell initiative has been
in the United States, it is
gaining support internationally, especially in Great
and Germany.
you would like to take

Britain
If

part

in

this

groundswell

for

government accountability,
just sign the Declaration

on

the facing page, tear it out,

and mail it to the following
address: The Roswell Declaration, Omni Magazine,

324 West Wendover Avenue, Suite 205, Greensboro, North Carolina 27408.
will forward all of the
signatures to the organizers so your voice can be
heard. All signed forms need
be returned to Omni by

We

to

November

30.CXD

THE ROSUUELL DECLARATION

was correct and the Roswreckage was of extraterresOne such individua!

lease

years ago, an
incident occurred in the

weil

southwestern desert

trial origin.

Forty-seven

of

the United States that could have

was Major Jesse Marcel,

significant implications for all

mankind. It involved the recovery
by the U.S. military of material alleged to be of extraterrestrial origin. The event was announced by
the U.S. military on Juiy 8, 1947,
through a press release that was
carried by newspapers throughout the country. It was subsequently denied by what is now
believed to be a cover story
claiming the material was nothing
more than a weather balloon. It
has remained veiled in government secrecy ever since.
The press release announcing
the unusual event was issued by
the commander of the 509th

telligence officer of the 509th

Bomb Group and one

the

in-

of the first

military officers at the scene.

On January 12, 1994, United

States Congressman Steven
Schiff of Albuquerque, New Mexico,
he.

announced

to the press that

had been stonewalled by the

Defense Department when

re-

questing information regarding

the 1947 Roswell event on behalf
of constituents and witnesses. Indicating that he was seeking further investigation into the matter,
Congressman Schiff called the
Defense Department's lack of re-

sponse "astounding" and conwas apparently "another

cluded

it

Bomb Group

government cover-up."

Field,

History has shown that unsubstantiated official assurances or

denials by government are often
meaningless. There is a logical
and straightforward, way to ensure lhat the truth about Roswell

at Roswell Army Air

Colonel William Blanchard,
later went on to become a
and vice chief of
staff of the United States Air
Force. That the weather balloon
story was a cover-up has been
confirmed by individuals directly
involved, including the late General Thomas DuBose who took
the telephone call from Washing-

who

four-star general

ance for all potential witnesses, it

would need to be clearly stated
and written into law. Such a measure is essentially what presidential candidate Jimmy Carter
promised and then failed to deliver to the American people 18
years ago in 1976.
If,
as is officially claimed, no
information on Roswell, UFOs, or
extraterrestrial intelligence is

being withheld, an Executive

Order declassifying
would be a
if

mere' formality, as there would be

nothing to disclose. The order
would, however, have the positive
effect of setting the record
straight once and for all. Years of
controversy and suspicion would
be ended, both in the eyes of the
United States' own citizens and
in

the eyes of the world.

If,
on the other hand, the
Roswell witnesses are telling the
and information on extrater-

truth

does exist,
not something to which a privileged few in the United States
government should have exclurestrial intelligence

it

is

emerge: an Executive Order

declassifying any information regarding the existence of UFOs or

sive rights. It is knowledge of

profound importance to which all.

extraterrestrial intelligence. Because this Is a unique issue of

universal concern, such an action

will

people throughout the world

testi-

would be appropriate and war-

should have an inalienable right.

Its release would unquestionably
be universally acknowledged as
an hrstorfc act of honesty and

fied that the original press re-

ranted. To provide positive assur-

goodwill.

ton,

DC, ordering the cover-up.

Numerous
and

other credible military

civilian

witnesses have

for an executive order declassifying any U.S. government information

/ support the request, as outlined above,
regarding the existence of UFOs or exzraterrestriai intelligence. Whether such information exists or whether it
does not, I feel that the people of the world have a right to know the truth about this issue and that it is time to put
an end to the controversy surrounding it.

jSs"hftS.-'C'!L-d!jr'i!ir:i!s

'!l

,";::pltol>;i

US

fip:i?se~:a:ve

Mi

kncw'ij

ELECTRONIC
UNIVERSE

S^

THE INFO SPACELANES:

The

sucks you

Internet

in like

a black hole

By Gregg Keizer

started so innocently.

all

The

mother of all comnetworks and perhaps

Internet, the

I puter
I

the embryonic information superhighway {an info alley?), was just

too tempting. Twenty million people to talk to, links that leaped
across the globe faster than
could say "gkeizer@rain.com,"
I

enough information

my

to balloon

to the

and my hard disk drives

breaking point. What

would

hurt, just to dip into that

brain

it

and

well

pull

up a bucketful? Or

maybe two?
It

Log on to the
Internet

and download the

latest

Hubble

Space Telescope
discoveries, or

grab

some more

down-to-earth
satellite

images.

hurt plenty at the beginning.

Getting on the Internet is tough,

unless you're lucky enough to
have access already through
your college, perhaps, or your
job. The rest of us
I'm in that

It was as if
had pulled
my thumb from the dike. The
rushing spill of space-science information nearly drowned me.
Like the W3 site at http://-

time out.

with Mosaic as my W3 browser,

could look at on-screen graphics, click my way through menus,
and download files without a
hitch.
blew most of a day reading shuttle mission overviews,
downloading shuttle patch logos,
scoping out future shuttle misI

but only wanted on.

got worse before it got
got connected after finda provider that had a local
I

It

for

my modem

to

needed an arsenal of
software to get between me and
but

the Internet's alien

UNIX com-

mands. (Using UNIX without a

software crutch is a lot like
wrestling on the farm: most of
the time you're in deep muck.)
got Mosaic, a World Wide Web
I

(WWW, W3, or just Web) browser

my Windows PC; got a Go-

for

pher

client;

got a Usenet news-

group reader;
E-mail program.

even got an
was armed for

digital bear.

And

nailed a big one

snapped by Clementhe cheapo probe that

its

fuel in

May.
I

those bulletin board-style collections of messages that stick to a

specific subject.
started reading sci.space.news, which posts
space-related news items like
NASA's daily updates. Then
moved on to sci. space, a
broader group where professionI

and reviewing the history

space program.
Then http://hypatia.gsfcnasa.gov/NASA__homepage.html
hit me. Another W3 locale, it's a
sions,
of the

and laypeople discussed

everything from Clementine's
where to find images of
als

general jumping-off place for all

of NASA.
could search through
what seemed to be every arm of

failure to

NASA's research and development octopus, and vault from

Maryland's Goddard Space Flight

But
couldn't leave. There
was too much hadn't seen, too
many people hadn't talked to or
listened to. was trapped, having
skimmed only a paper-thin layer

Center to California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in a flash. killed

more time digesting their informational meals and spent hours
downloading dessert: planetary
I

and space images

W3

of

all

kinds.

At the JPL
server, for instance,
found some incredible
radar images of Earth taken by
I

first

It

lists of items to read or download

no pretty pictures but
could still point and click to navigate my way from a computer in
North Carolina to another in Norway. pounced on the Space Telescope Electronic Information
System's Gopher at gopher.gsfcnasa.g/oi/ and dug up all kinds of
details about the Hubble Space
Telescope, including its weekly
schedule and a slew of images.
And with the Veronica search
tool,
was able to find several
pictures and even a few movie-

tine,

vice provider, a company that

would get me a first-class connection in exchange for some
cash. Veteran Jnternauts may
look down on newbies like me for
paying for something they get

access number

pher.

accidentally blew

dial,

before.

and connected with Goonly showed menus and

Even that wasn't enough.

wanted news and views now. So
subscribed to a couple of the
Internet's Usenet newsgroups,

ing

weeks

libraries

like clips

it

better.

five

started to get impatient, for

Mosaic took time to fill its screens
all those graphics. So
used
a more direct approach to image
with

crowd somewhere have to do

the scut work ourselves. played
with America Online's Internet
Center, but because
wouldn't
yet let me download files,
felt
like a second-rate citizen. So
went looking for an Internet ser-

free,

Endeavor only,

www.ksc.nasa.gov/ksc.html, the
Kennedy Space Center's W3
server home page. This spot was
chock-full of space stuff, and

the partial eclipse just past. felt

plugged in, part of the in-crowd.
I

from the Internet's surface.

was in trouble.
Next month; It gets even
I

harder to walk away from the

ternet

when

In-

find Star Trek stuff

and people who say they've

been abducted by UFOs.CQ

NUMBERS:
Calculating the mind of

God

By Anna Copeland
an old debate. On one side
It's
stands

God, perfection, the

ideal, the underlying pattern

of the universe.

stands
terial

to

On

the other

human

ingenuity, the maand our own desire

world,

understand by the invention of

The arguments
enough in literary or

analytical tools.

are familiar

philosophical studies, where

ideas, awash in language, spill
and tumble with each other
Discovery
or invention: a

look at

same

recent

boohs
suggests that
there

Is

lot ot tire

iothe
old debate.

engages the reader

in an exploration into the nature of mathematics with an impressive array of

around

and anecdotal evidence

spans centuries and cultures.
glance at the plethora of epigrams including quotes from

tion

personal ads, Spiro Agnew, Em-

the ancient Sumerian

berto Eco, and Muslim sayings

is evidence for Barrow's premise
mathematics indeed reflects
an underlying, cosmic, and con-

lonian cultures or the Incas of

Peru. Sifting through the records
archaeology and anthropology,
rather than the more abstract
works of philosophy that Barrows
favors, McLeish begins with a
straightforward premise. "In confronting and solving a few key

that

his central concei

in
connecting mathematics to huexperience. His investigais organized chronologically
and concentrates on cultures less

frequently associated with math-

factual

that

through the centuBut this debate

penetrates even the
most sober abstract

nective design.

Under the banner

ries.

of Platonic Ideality,

he crusades

for

vi-

realm of representathe language

of numbers. A look at

sion of mathematical

some

recent publications in the history

and theory of mathematics suggests that
the old debate has
plenty of fire left in it.
In e: The Story of
a Number, Eli Maor's
conclusion of his his-

gious." Math, like

God, is an abstract
system that offers
the possibility of

number livthe shadows of

comprehend the totality of

in no way
negates the presence of a timeless
paradigm a par-

tion

harmony

orem. Our inability to

stand outside the
system in order to
it

it.

adise of pure form

and

number

line.

function.

In fact,

our inability to stand

outside the system is

evidence that we did

not create it, In the
end, Barrows argues

less than four units of

the

it-

spite of Godel's the-

the ever-popular n,
frames the question
nicely: "Think of
Of
the infinity of real
numbers, those that
are most important
to mathematics
are located within
.

is

completeness In

tory of a
ing in

"that

self ultimately reli-

man

ematical discoveries, such as

and Baby-

of

problems," he tells us, "human

beings employ 'tools' to discover
and understand reality better,"
Clearly for McLeish, mathematics is an invention, something

created by the human mind.

Though many different cultures

may variously come to the same

conclusion independent of each
other; this

does not indicate

that

there must be a transcendent

ideal, but rather that "numbers
and number problems are sub-

ject to the laws of step-by-step

logic."

Thus mathematics discov-

eries are essentially

human

in-

vention based in the primary

urge "to develop member skills
as efficient practical tools."
McLeish sharply criticizes those
study numbers "in the service of convoluted and inept notions ... of how the universe
had been formed and of the supernatural conditions necessary

who

remarkable coincidence? A mere detail in the Cregrand design? let the

to

reader decide."
To help the reader,
recomtaking a look at a couple of
recent titles: John Barrow's Pi in
the Sky: Counting, Thinking, and
Being (Oxford University Press,
1992) and John McLeish's Number: The History of Numbers and

create and apprehend mathematical structures in the world is

Although Barrow and McLeish

would be hard-pressed to find

merely a consequence of our

own oneness with the world."
John McLeish, an educational
psychologist, has a more downto-earth approach toward the
history and meaning of mathematics. Just as Barrow struc-

How They Shape Our

Lives

tures his inquiry to reflect the

(Fawcett Columbine, 1991).

Barrow, a British astronomer,

cosmic dimensions of mathematics, McLeish structures his work-

a compromise between their respective positions, they would,

however, agree that the future of
mathematics, like its past,
promises to be full of adventure,
debate, discovery, and invention.
They would also agree that numbers add up to a whole lot more
than abstract calculations if we

ator's

mend

that

mathematical

affirm that "curability

for its

continuance."

look at

them

in

the right

way.DQ

DID JEWS DISCOVER THE

NEW WORLD?

Intriguing artifacts raise questions

about North America's history

By Jeffrey Heck

Newark, Ohio,

in

1860,

Incounty surveyor David Wyrick,

an amateur archaeologist, unearthed two artifacts that rank
the strangest ever found
in the United States: two finely
among

made

stone tablets carrying

gious inscriptions

Who made

in

reli-

Hebrew.

the tablets? Are they

hoaxes or genuine religious

relics? More than 130 years after
their discovery, the Newark Holy
Stones, as they've come to be
known, continue to puzzle scientists

and

historians.

civilizations.

Investigators in previous cenhowever, held different notions. A common opinion during

turies,

Wyrick's time

was

that the

mound-

remain divided
on the

were the Ten Lost Tribes

of Israel, who vanished after
being captured by the Assyrians.
A supporter of this theory,
Wyrick came across the Keystone, the first of the Holy
Stones, in June of 1860 while
digging near Newark's 50-acre

origins of the

Octagon Mound. A wedge-

Mysterious

arti-

facts or a

clavBr hoax?

Scholars

Keystone
(above) and the

Decalogue
Stone (right)
found over

100 years ago

in

Native

American earth-

builders

shaped piece

of sandstone, the
Keystone is inscribed on all four
sides with Hebrew that reads,
'The Laws of Jehovah, The Word
of the Lord, King of the Earth,
The Holy of Holies." Wyrick, naturally, considered this proof of the
Ten Lost Tribes theory.

The discovery made headas far away as New York

lines

but shortly after, the Keywas denounced as a fake:

scholar in Cincinnati
proclaimed that the Hebrew was
modern for the stone to be
authentic. Determined to redeem
himself and his theories, Wyrick
and a small excavation party disCity,

stone

A Hebrew
too

covered

in

and above
etched in a
Hebrew found nowhere
else before or since, is the name
of Moses. A condensed version
ure,

November 1860

it,

style of

of the

Ten

Commandments

is in-

scribed in this unique Hebrew on

every surface of the stone.
"A lot of thought went into the
production of this stone," says J.
Huston McCulloch, a professor
of

Wyrick found the stones while

excavating some of the huge
earthen mounds that dot the
American Midwest. Most historians today believe the earthworks
to be the products of pre-

Columbian native

stone box in which lay the piece

of black alabaster now known as
the Decalogue Stone. On the
front of the stone is a priestly fig-

economics

versity

at

Ohio State Uni-

who became so

by the stones

intrigued

that he learned the

to study them
"The letters are evenly
spaced, not crammed to make it
fit. You end the reading of the
at the exact
point that you began."
"When look at the stones,
two things strike me," says
Robert Alrutz, now retired from
Denison University, who, like McCulloch, believes the stones to

Hebrew alphabet
better.

all

Commandments
I

be genuine. "One, the stones diftype of writing. One's

fer in the

more

stylized than the other, a

sort of longhand. But

portantly, the

box

in

more

im-

which the

Decalogue Stone was found

contains holes for no apparent
reason, as if you were going to

stand something up in them

slots as if the two lids were held
together by something.

Who,

he's going
would go to

to fake,
all

if

something,

of this trouble?"

The Holy Stones, however, fail

every possible archaeological
argues Stephen Williams in
his 1991 book, Fantastic Archae-

test,

ology. Their inscriptions are the

ones of their kind known,

and the forms are not epigraphionly

cally correct for the time period.

If they are genuine Hebrew texts,
he asks, why are they not associated with other artifacts of

Palestine at the time of Christ?

Brad Lepper, archaeologist

and current curator of the

Newark Earthworks, also has
problems with theories claiming
that the stones

were produced

by the ancient Hebrew culture.

"If

ancient Hebrews were pres-

ent

in

the Americas, then

we

should find evidence of their settlements: towns, villages, trading

camps, and so on," Lepper says.
"No modern archaeological research project in the Americas
has yet located an ancient He-

brew

settlement."

Who, then, made the Holy

Stones? Lepper believes that the
Rev. John W. McCarty, who
translated for Wyrick the text on
the Keystone overnight, led the
effort to craft the stones.
Today, visitors can view the

Holy Stones at the JohnsonHumrickhouse Museum in Cosh-

Do more artifacts
them lie hidden within the
Newark earthworks? Possibly
mounds have yet to be sysocton, Ohio.
like

the

:ema\ eally oxc rivaled. DO

HE MADE THE STARS ALSO:

The Vatican's astronomers combine cosmology and theology
By

Victor Dricks

J^\top

a 10,436-foot peak

#^^kon

Mount Graham

tion of

The Vatican's

new

Advanced
Technology Telescope on

Mount Graham

in

Arizona will
allow the Church's

astronomers
even fur-

to peer

ther into the

mysteries of the
universe.

Apache tribe considers sacred.

Surrounded by dense vegetation, the Vatican's new $3 million
telescope stands like a monument to man's timeless fascinaheavens. Like the
Native Americans before them, a
handful of Jesuit priests have
come to Mount Graham to pon-

tion with the

der the mysteries ot creation.

The Vatican doesn't acknowlthe Apaches' claim to a
unique usage of the mountain.
"But we're very aware of the his-

first-rate work," says Arizona

State University astronomer
Peter Wehinger. "They are very
fortunate because they are supported by a well-funded organization that appreciates the quest
for astronomical knowledge."
Vatican astronomers bring to

edge

torical

and ecological

signifi-

cance

the scientific community," says

Martin McCarthy, a Jesuit as-

of this site," says the

Reverend Chris Corbally, one of
Vatican astronomers using

tronomer
To do

the telescope. "Our observatory

tronomers with a remarkable new

instrument. At 1,8 meters in diameter, the main mirror of the
Vatican's Advanced Technology
Telescope, constructed by the

six

on land occupied by an
endangered species, and our
is

built

mission

is

a demonstration of the

possibility of peaceful coexist-

ence between religion, nature,

and science."
For more than four hundred
years, astronomers at the Vatican
have scanned the heavens from
Rome. The work of early Jesuit
astronomers provided Pope Gregory XIII with the data he needed
to replace the Julian calendar
with the Gregorian. But glare

from city lights has rendered

stargazing increasingly difficult
Rome, Since 1981, the Vatican
in

Observatory has relied on its

Tucson research base to keep

for 36 years.
this, generous donors
have furnished the Vatican's as-

modbut boasts the most

University of Arizona,

of celestial objects, the

fate of the universePope John Paul has

II

taken a keen interest in, "Our job

is to serve as scientific advisers
pope and help the Vatican
maintain an open dialogue with

to the

tele-

The astronomers have

ready put

and

new

scope also allows the Vatican as-

that

lution,

of

tronomers to make observations

at regular intervals over a long
period of time, usually a difficult
task because astronomers gain
access to premier instruments
for only a week or two each year.

abreast of cosmological develthat could have theological implications, including

topics that

is

erate size
exact surface of any mirror ever
cast for ground-based astronomy, Capable of providing extremely sharp, detailed images

theories about the creation, evo-

opments

Cassiopeia. The Reverend

Richard Boyle is working with

colleagues in Lithuania and Rome
to study a population of stars in
our own Milky Way galaxy, using
a technique called photometry,
which measures the intensity of
light. In addition, the Vatican permits outside astronomers to use
the observatory.
"The Vatican astronomers do

in

southeastern Arizona,
red squirrels, officially an endangered species, scamper across
a clearing the San Carlos

al-

their new telescope to

use. Corbally, for example,
studying a small group of stars
appear to be old, although
in a part of the sky

good
is

they reside

where young

abound. The
Vatican Observatory director, the
Reverend George Coyne, uses
the telescope to peek into starstars

forming regions

in

the constella-

work formal religious training coupled with advanced degrees in' astronomy, and by all
accounts, they've earned considerable respect from their
their

peers.

In fact,

Corbally jokes, the

Jesuits spend so much time

peering through their telescope
and attending scientific conferences that they find it easier to
communicate with other astronomers than with their brothers in Rome, who complain that
their reports can be hard to understand. They operate, Corbally
says, in the same tradition as the

German astronomer Johannes

Kepler, who had strong mystical
and Sir Isaac Newton,
science as a means
God's handiwork.
"Always, the great minds in
science have had this spiritual
dimension," Corbally says. "And
this Is something the Church en-

leanings,

who viewed

of interpreting

courages," Once a symbol of

dogmatic opposition to scientific
ideas that clashed with theology,
in recent years the Church has
sponsored world-class conferences on topics long considered
taboo, such as cosmology and

human

evolution, indicating that

the Church has itself evolved

over the years .DO

VIRTUAL REALITIES
NAKED

NET:
Confessions of a cyberjunkie: four hours a day,

full

baud

By Tom Dworetzky
clever scuzz waxed the games
and got free. They started transferring from the crime server to
the net itself; stealing credits,
running scams, pretending to be
people they weren't. Anarchists.
The only way to keep up with
them was to play their games."
"Waldo."
said finally, "You're
my friend, but junkies lie. If shift
credits, you'll just burn 'em up on
the wires."
He hesitated, deflated; looked
away, then back. "Screwed up,
did. My own damned fault."

Waldo's E-mail
Captain
was ever stranger. So
I

called him right

the

back on

"You sound kinda strung

net.

out,"

said.

"A

little

problem," he clicked

back into the private room off the

lobby of the law forum. "Can't
talk here.

Jump

to the Eighteenth

and

Street BBS, encrypt,

you

I'll

get

there."

The BBS was a

lowlife bulletin

snitches

local, unlisted,

board where

dealers

in

info junk

and hot telecredits would log

on looking for a meet. It wasn't a
place to use a real handle.

Waldo was starting to slobber.

"I'll
buy you dinner," said.
got the waiter, ordered, and gave
I

up the encryptor. Waldo

had exchanged the key,
some time ago. Once
snapped that into the encryptor,
and he did the same, we could
started

and

Crocodile,
I

talk pretty freely. That's

was
"I

why

it

gotta see you

person," he

in

in.

Waldo wasn't the first copI'd heard sounding

strange while covering the citynet for the Daily Surge, the online

friend-source

news source

work

for.

Some-

times odd things happen to VRcops: They get caught up in their

work, then hooked on the life. I'd
run into them on the net late at
night, and they'd tell me things.
But it hit me like a brick when

Waldo asked me

meet him

to

at

the Inn of Five Happinesses Chinese restaurant. Today, most inis on the net. An actual
face-to-face is only for big
and big trouble.

teracting

deals

The restaurant was

dark, but
got to. the corner
realized Waldo looked
booth,
so bad would've barely recognized him anyway.
"You've been using old images on the wire," said.
"Had to, Look at me. I'm
hooked," he blurted out. "The
net's getting me. Sometimes a
week passes and don't know

when

finally

riding through the

is,

it

differ-

ent points of view. I've tried

everything to quit: cold that
timers,
lasted half a day
alarms, automatic disconnects.
even time-locked my computer,
then found a work-around.
Hours, days, nothing else matters not food, real people, noth-

illegal.

typed

what time

games, checking out the

ing.

only live

make
speed
baud rate anyway.
one of those

thoughts

at light

mum

nettime where
the world change
well, the maxiin

"I'm iike

whacking the lever

drugs

until

it

lab rats

for

more

he laughed
bad. I'm just a
gonna break away

dies,"

dryly. "It's really

junkie, but I'm

this time.

Tomorrow

I'll

be

clean.

I've got to quit. Can't pay for ontime anymore. Got no money for
rentorfoQd."

"How'd it get to you?" asked

as supportively as could.
"Working those virtual crime
1

scenarios.

was

in

them

all

the

checking out this or that,

bugs, monitoring to see
that the bad guys were too busy
on the crime server games to
breakaway."
time,

fixing

"Couldn't you just leave

ii

on

auto?"

"For awhile, but then the

htm the money for Waldo's meal.

"Eai this, try to stay straight
for'a few days, then call me."
got up. Waldo would have to
I

face the singularity of his own

off-line experience without me.
At the door glanced back.
Alone in a corner, Waldo carefully
took the hand-held netman out of
his shirt pocket, slipped on the
I

glasses, and adjusted the wriststrap guider.

while,"

Waldo, stay with me a

he said to no one in par-

ticular.

"Sorry Can't right now."

"Don't,

Leaning back into the corner

booth and sliding down
head rested on the banWaldo faded into nettime.
No one would bother him, and he
would bother no one. It would be
just like he wasn't there.DQ
of the

until his

quette,

Got something to say but no

time to write? Call (900) 2855483. Your comments will be
recorded and may appear in
an upcoming issue of Omni.
The cost for the call is 95
cents per minute. You must
be age 18 or older. Touchtone phones only. Sponsored
by Pure Entertainment, 505
South Beverly Drive, Suite
977, Beverly Hills, CA 90212.

He

tried every-

thing to

quittimers,
alarms,
automatic disconnects

fiul

he was hooked.

Ha was

nettime junkie.

ARTS
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GUMBY:
be a blockhead,

Don't

lift

Gumby

your feet to the

beat

By Keith Harary

n a precarious catwalk

deep

inside

ized as either "Prickly" or

"Gooey" in their essential nature,
inspiring two of Gumby's closest

starship,

our soft green hero bat-

clone

tles his evil

an iconic-

in

pals:

ally

maid named Goo. Professor

Kapp, another
based upon a

innocently avoids the

vulgar ruminations of such

more
animated fare as Beavis and

years,

Gumby and

the gang take

lo

the bin screen.

something more

is

compelling about his adventures

than the routine martial arts violence of Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles or the endless-loop plot-

adventures of

lines of Wile E.

friends. For them, the universe

Coyote's

campaign

to

futile

capture

the Roadrunner. If Saturday morning is populated by two-dimensional characters con-

demned

to

repeat the

predictable patterns laid

n ink by their creators, then Gumby and his
pals are from a different
time and place and made
.

of

more

to

"The world according

Gumby," says

nite

creative

stuff.

Clokey, "is an infiplayground." For Clokey,

is the unaffected

Gumby

creative potential

dren,

in all chil-

and the heroic

child

every adult. "The hidden message," he says,

"is that appreciating
fantasy can provide

in

deeper

insights into

how we

experience.:

beyond the
perceptions of

reality

regular,

is

in reference to Mt. McKinley,

which the Clokeys visited on a

Butt-head or Ren and Stimpy,

and there
flexible after

more than 40

Gumby

real-life professor
who wore his Phi Beta Kappa
key wherever he went. A fluffy
white mastodon named Denali,
meanwhile, takes his name from
the Eskimo word for "Great One,"

postmodern world.

Gumby

Still

a rigidly analytical dinosaur

Prickle, and an emotionfree-wheeling, flying mer-

named

sword duel to the death. Art

Clokey's irrepressible animated
clay creation from the Fifties,
Gumby, is standing his ground in
his biggest adventure yet,
Gumby 1, and brings the aesthetics of flexibility to a head for
light

Nevertheless, there is nothing

overtly philosophical about the

Gumby and

his
is

nothing less than a lucid dream

entirely of thoughts,

composed

and magic

is

to

be expected.

Long before the T-1000 of Terminator 2 showed off his milliondollar special effects, Gumby
turned shape-shifting 'into an art

Squash Gumby flat and he pops back into

shape unharmed. Trap him in a
gumball machine, and he turns
himself into a dozen green gumballs to be let out and reassembled when Pokey buys gum. The
secret of Gumby's art resides in
his ingenuity and flexibility and
his ability to respond effectively
to any situation without losing his
of self-expression.

aesthetic sensibility.

..The origins of

Clokey marveled

are a

at

photo' of his father sporting an

enormous cowlick he believed

was a solid bump. This bump,
also associated with wisdom by
it

Buddhists,
gular

later inspired

shape

of

the an-

Gumby's head.

Zen Buddhist philosopher

Alan Watts once told the Clokeys
people could be character-

that

trimentional-animation
process Art Clokey was the first
to apply to mass media enter-

tainment which has since become a standard in the specialeffects arena."

Gumby's first feature film,

Gumby produced on a budget
1,

of $2.8 million,

is

scheduled for
October

national distribution this

Gumby and
now work at computand create their own music
video Take Me Away comby Arrow Releasing.

his friends
ers,

plete with lyrics

Gumby 2

is

by Gloria Clokey.
in the works,

also

with plans to have

Gumby

synthesis of thoughts and images from Art Clokey's life. As a

child,

journey through Alaska.

Most of the more than 200
Gumby episodes are written by
Art or Gloria Clokey, mainly
based on stories told to their children. All are produced and directed by the Clokeys and filmed
in painstaking, frame-by-frame,

ing

Gumby

enter-

psychotherapy and getting

involved

Gumby
Goes

in

politics.

And

children's book,

the

first

Gumby

Sun, is also in development, with an original story

and illustrations by Holly Harman, the Clokeys' daughter.
Given the more rigid constraints of the mundane world,
to the

perhaps an occasional
high

is

Gumby

just the right thing to re-

mind ourselves that reality, according to Gumby, is flexible.OQ

"

UUHEELS
GRIDLOCK TERMINATOR:
Neural nets predict the

traffic

future

By Steve Nadis

The

Atlanta Falcons'
game at the Georgia

Dome winds down

at

same time the Hawks wrap

up their match at the Omni, just
a few blocks away. More than
the

4,000 cars pour onto area

streets, yet traffic dissipates
within 10 minutes. It's nothing
short of a miracle. Unfortunately,
it's all taking place in a computer
simulation at the Georgia Tech
Institute, where a new
program called TERMINUS is

Research

showing

Most

city traffic

lights

keep

is

the

system

to

use neural net-

oblivious to
-

systems

TERMINUS
neural networks

includes

thai sets stoplights

networks

and highway ramps

predict gridlock

and help
head it off.

two

one thai ana-

lyzes traffic data to see where

bottlenecks might occur, another
on streets
to optimize
vehicle flow. "Our system is designed to find a solution that
works for the whole city, not just
a few intersections," Gilrnore
says. "It looks at actual traffic
conditions and instantly adapts."
TERMINUS is trained to recognize the symptoms that lead

will use neural

to

first traffic

works, parallel computers that

mimic the basic structure of the
human brain. The. program was
adapted from software originally
designed to help missiles or
tanks find their targets, "this is
the kind of [military-to-civilian]
conversion President Clinton is
talking about," says project director John Gilrnore.

a rigid schedule.
congestion; smart

its stuff.

TERMINUS
control

gridlock and then to try to

head it off in advance. This is
possible owing to a special fea-

to

ture of neural nets: their ability to

By exposing the network

enough traffic scenarios, it

learn.

to

comes

to identify the telltale

signs that precede congestion.

Here's now ii works: The computer is comprised of electronic
units, neurons, which switch on
or off depending on the inputs
they receive from other neurons.

Each input, in turn, represents the

number of cars on a given stretch
of road. The inputs to an individual neuron are multiplied by a
number called a "weight" and

added

together. If the sum exceeds a threshold value, the neuron is activated and sends a pulse
its neighbors. "When certain
combinations of neurons light up,
means [here's congestion,"
Gilrnore says. "The weights are ad-

to

that

justed after

each new

tesl case,

as the network learns which inputs are the most important conclogged roadways."
The ultimate test case for
TERMINUS would be the 1996
Atlanta Olympic Games, which
tributors to

Gilrnore calls the "biggest traffic

challenge of the 1990s." Before

Games begin, the city hopes
have in place the most advanced traffic-management sys-

the
to

tem

in the United States. The

project will rely on a powerful
computer network to integrate
control of traffic on highways and

surface streets

five

counties

and the city of Atlanta.

TRW, the aerospace

firm over-

En

seeing the project, will install an

integrated network design that
allow various state, couniy,
local agencies that currently

will

and

have

limited

pabilities to

communication caexchange traffic in-

formation so that a coordinated

response can be made. To keep

from becoming obsolete, the

system will have "open architecture," which will enable new software of "intelligent" vehicle and
highway technologies to be "installed as they become available.

TERMINUS

is

among

the

software packages under conit is by no means

a sure bet for the job.
While waiting to check out
sideration, but

TERMINUS

on real

life

city

streets, Gilrnore is striving to

make the simulations as realistic
as possible. He wonders, for instance, how new-car technology
human behavior might affect
the equation. Drivers of "smart
or

cars" have to be
ently,

because

modeled

traffic

differ-

their electronic

navigation systems

them

will

give

information others

don't have, Gilrnore says.

"Your

model also has to account for

drivers who will go ahead,

dumb

no matter what you

them."
Ultimately, he adds, "you'd
like to know everyone's destination." All that information could
be plugged into a giant, central
computer like the one TRW is assembling. Drivers would be advised of the best possible routes,
and traffic lights for the entire region would be adjusted to keep
things flowing smoothly. At that
point, Big Brother will not only be
watching where we go, he'll be
helping us to get there. DO
tell

AIAJARD5
THE IG NOBEL PRIZE:
Some researchers campaign

no? to be nominated

By Doug Stewart
Scientists! Has
Prize

the Nobel

committee

unfairly

overlooked your body

of

work? Take heart! You may have

already been selected to win an
even rarer award: the Ig Nobel

granted

Prize,

to

those few

whose achievements,
words

in

the

of the committee, "cannot

or should not be reproduced."

Named
Two past winners
of the rg

Nobel Prize

for

Peace:

H-bomb developer
Edward
Teller (at right)

and former
LA police chief
Daryl Gales.

an acceptance speech."
The ceremony takes place
each October before a raucous
crowd of more than 1,000, including a smattering of would-be
of

honorees. The on-stage VIPs include a panel of oddly dressed

among them a num-

dignitaries,

ber of genuine Nobel laureates,

as well as a torch-bearer, a harp-

after Alfred

and an umpire.
Ig Nobel Prizes
intended to
says Abrahams, who edits Anist,

The

Nobel's distant cousin

Nobel
co-sponsored

Ignatius, the Ig

aren't

Prize

ridicule,

is

by the MIT Museum

and an irreverent scientific journa!, the Annals of Improbable

Nobel comprizes
this year on October 6
at MIT
across the full
spectrum of scientific endeavor.
The physics prize last year went
Ig

\~^^S

mittee bestows

to a Frenchman who, after

painstaking research, concluded
that the buildup of calcium in
chickens' eggshells could only

be the product

of

voilacold

fusion. A retired engineer

South Carolina

in

copped a mathe-

matics prize for his calculation of

the odds that Mikhail Gorbachev
is
really the Antichrist as
8,606,091,751,882 to 1. Announcing the award, the committee helpfully posted its own

calculations of comparable
odds: Mother Theresa at infinity
to one; Nelson Mandela, 40,000
software tycoon Bill Gates,
The most recent Ig Nobel
Prize in literature went to the 976
co-authors of a paper in the New
England Journal of Medicine. Actually, 976 was a guess; "Nobody
had the patience to count them
all," says Marc Abrahams, the
to 1;

8 to

5.

event's

when

not orches-

ceremonies

in top hat and tails. To

sure a prize
won't jeopardize a
bona fide researcher's
career prospects,

make

Research.

The

trating the

nals

mastermind and emcee.

Journal executive editor Marcia

Angeil gamely accepted on behalf of the authors who, she noted,
"could not agree on the wording

Abrahams occasionsounds out prospective winners in advance. "We have

people actively campaign no! to
receive an Ig," he says, though
he won't name names.
Jay Schiffman, 3 Michigan
ally

electrical engineer, is one Ig

Nobe! winner who didn't feel the

honor

was worth a

bridge. Schiffman
of AirtoVision, a

is

trip to

Cam-

the inventor

hookup

that lets

people drive a car and watch TV

at the same time. The committee
deemed this worthy of a special

award for visionary technology.

Schiffman responded: "Those
MIT kids are still wet behind the
ears. This

isn't like

cold fusion

can demonstrate
Even with a
pornographic videotape, you
can drive in traffic, no problem."
it.

come

Others can't wait to

Cambridge

to

to deliver accept-

years ago, Kraft-General Foods

dispatched 20 employees in a

corporate

cold-fusion

fame

world.

:
'

Penis," that appeared

the Journal of Emerin

gency Medicine. Two

said to be
to

Many people nominate

bosses or spouses. More than a

few, says Abrahams, nominate
themselves. "But their letters tend
to have misspellings, so they're
immediately disqualified. "DO

Know
is

of Ig

name,

a scientist whose work

Nobel caliber? Send

and a

affiliation,

brief ex-

planation of why he or she is deserving (25 words or less) along

documentation to the
Ig Nobel Prize Committee, c/o MIT Museum, j^m
256 Massachusetts $EUL
Ave., Cambridge,
with

MA

02139. Fax
617-253-8994.
E-mail address:

IG@MIT.EDU.
Don't worry;
Your

name

be

held

will

in

strictest confi-

of

is

give a keynote address.

The committee relies on Annals readers for nominations,

wnich'flow in from around the

dence.

Management

invention

even offering

willing to attend,

ance speeches. Among them,

"Acute

its

all wore bright

blue lab coats. Evincing an admirable sense of humor, Pulitzer
Prize-winning psychiatrist John
Mack, honored by the Ig Nobel
committee for his controversial
research into UFO abductions, is
rumored to be considering a surprise address to this year's convocation (an honor extended to
all past laureates). Perennial favorite Martin Fleischmann of

three urologists responsible for a

detailed research report;

Zipper-Entrapped

pick up the

jet to

chemistry prize for

of blue Jell-O;

FURJD5
HIGH-TECH DETECTING:
The case

of

magnetic

fingerprint's

By Linda Marsa
was a scene right out of a
ItJames Bond thriller. After
Ronald Indeck lectured a

year), eradicate industrial espi-

wide" one angstrom

onage, detect bootlegged magnetic recordings, and make it

ticles

of Washington. DC security professionals on noise clutter

on recorded data, an FBI agent
sidled up to him. If the mouthpiece for some gangster alters
incriminating wiretaps, the agent
asked, is there a way of knowing
if the defendant tampered with
or replaced the tapes? "These

impossible for even the most

nimble electronic outlaw to pilfer
information and penetrate protected networks.
Indeck, who's on the engineering faculty at Washington

group

guys have seen too many spy

movies," Indeck thought at the
time. After

all, the electrical engineer's research involved figuring

how to clean up data clutter,

not fingering wise guys. But that
out

seemingly irrelevant question

percolated in the back of Indeck's
mind and ultimately sparked the
invention of a technique that

transform the

formation

is

way

may

electronic in-

safeguarded and

authenticated.

The technique entails using a

simple device that identifies the
unique fingerprints of objects
containing magnetic recorded
ranging from charge
cards, computer disks,
tapes
,

and

old Beatles

to

security entry cards,

electronic passkeys into
computer networks, and
even wiretaps.
Magnetic fingerprint/'

ing could virtually elimi-

nate credit card fraud and

counterfeiting (which costs

consumers, merchants, and

banks more than $1 billion a

in St, Louis, was trying

understand what causes

University

to

media noise on recordings. This

magnetic signal clutter uses up
space and limits recording density and fidelity.
Miniaturization is the touchstone of the information revoluso Indeck wanted to find a
to eliminate or circumvent
so more data could be
into the same space.
He knew that information is
magnetically stored on tapes,
tion,

billionth of

the

a yard

ten "and one

put paris

down one by one

same way,"

Using conventional cards and

minimally modified card readers,
the unique signature

this noise

ther encrypted on the

computer disks or
whatever storage medium you
choose to use by depositing
billions of tiny, magnetized grains
on the medium's surface. These
credit cards,

grains are so small, says Indeck,

"the thickness of a hair might

have one hundred million partiWhen he peered through

an electron microscope, which
has five hundred times the magcles."

nification

power

of ordinary mi-

croscopes, Indeck noticed something quite peculiar: During the

your card

is swept through an
electronic scanner, if the wave
form that comes up correlates to
the original, the transaction is
cleared. Says Indeck, "Every
patch of magnetic medium can

be authenticated."

The potential applications are

staggering. In addition to safeguarding credit cards, this technology could be used on debit
cards, social security cards, driver's licenses,

key cards, mass

any card that

transit tickets

random pattern

stripe.

that creates a
as unique as the

signature that

is

and whorls

human

of a

This signature
or fingeris permanently embedded

print
in

the structure of the recording

medium and because

the weave of fibers

it

like

so tiny,
a piece

is

in

of paper, it cannot be altered or

copied. "It would take thousands
of years to fabricate a successful

forgery," says Indeck. "Nobody

can sit there with tweezers a
couple hundred angstroms

uses a magnetic identification

And with health care reform on the horizon, this could
minimize the illicit use of health
cards, which,

fingerprint.

can be eimagnetic

stripe on the back of, say, a

credit card or stored in a central
data bank that can be accessed
as easily as an ATM. So when

recording process, these microscopic grains are scattered in a

skin ridges

exactly

security device.

way

squeezed

in

Indeck didn't understand the

significance of this discovery
until that fateful meeting in Washington. Since the physical microstructure can be read by a
conventional recording head,
this magnetic fingerprint is easy
to identify with virtually no possibility .of mistaking one for another, Indeck realized he had
stumbled onto an ideal magnetic

in

Canada,

is

cur-

rently

a $100 million-a-year prob-

lem

Ontario alone.
then there are the intrep-

in

And

id computer wizards who purloin

PIN numbers by wiretapping
ATMs and use the numbers to
pull off electronic heists. The fingerprints may even protect unsuspecting neighbors from the

prank delivery of pink flamingos

and neon canoes.DO

onnrui

oruuruE

WANT TO TALK ABOUT

IT?

Omni Online chat sessions range from the

serious to the

silly

By Holly Siegelman

ne evening not too long

ago, several acquaint-

ances gathered on
board their host's spaceship to
talk about science fiction and
fantasy. The conversation
screeched to a halt as everyone's attention focused on a tentacle dangling outside the ship's

window. "Quick, go into warp

speed!" shouted one guest. Another bravely climbed outside
the ship and dispatched the
monster with a harpoon. Moments later, the conversation resumed over grilled space-monster tentacle.

Just another typical Saturday

on Omni Magazine Online,

Omni's area on America Online.
For about a year now, Omni Online has held chat sessions virtunight

ally every night of the week in its

three chat rooms, covering several different areas of interest:
the paranormal, UFOs, science
fiction and fantasy, horror and

dark fantasy, current science

news, and futurism. (Currently,

paranormal chats dubbed Antimatter chats and science-fiction/fantasy chats make up the
bulk of the schedule, taking
place four times a week and five
times a week, respectively.)
Each chat session has a host
to keep the chat from veering too
far off the topic and to ensure
that guests do not violate America Online's Terms of Service,
which define the standards of
online behavior. Before they're
ready to lead a chat, the hosts

must undergo extensive training,

a task handled by Jennifer Wat-

Omni Online's remote staff

coordinator and an extremely
knowledgeable, long-time user of
son,

online services. Like the hosts,

Watson,

who goes by

screen

the
name OMNI Angel, volunteers her
time and effort to Omni Online.
Watson subjects the host candidates to a rigorous, 20-hour

training session. Before "gradu-

must demonknowledge of every-

ating," the trainees

strate their

thing from Terms of Service to

the contents of the latest Omni,
as well as their hosting ability.

The most

difficult

part of host-

maintaining an intriguing
conversation without being either
too quiet or too overbearing, according to Watson. She teaches
the hosts to encourage the discussion without becoming the
focus of the chat. Still, "the hosts
have a wide spectrum of personalities and knowledge," she says,
"and this gives each of the chats
a distinctive feel to it that the
members enjoy"
ing

'

is

In addition,

hosting style and

the feel of the chat vary from

In the Antimatter
chats and the weekly UFO Chat,
the conversation can take on a
topic to topic.

very serious tone as guests

share

their

unusual experiences,

including encounters with

UFOs,

psychic phenomena, and neardeath experiences. Yet a healthy

group of skeptics also attends
the sessions, proposing alternate
explanations for these occurrences. "In Antimatter and UFO
chats, we are dealing with subjects that are in many ways like a
religion,"

who

hosts

says Frank Sewald,

UFO Chat as OMNImember has a dif-

Tensai. 'Every

ferent perspective, which defines

how he

or she views the topic

being discussed."
The science-fiction/fantasy
chats, by contrast, have a lighthearted feel, with the hosts often
holding their chats in imaginary
locations, such as a friendly tavern. "It's not just knowing the
topic but being enthusiastic and
excited about it that makes a difference in the room," explains
Miriam Nathan, who hosts both
science-fiction/fantasy and Antimatter chats as OMNlQuest.
Themes in all the Omni Online

chat sessions vary from week to

week. In science-fiction/fantasy
chats, for example, recent sessions have covered authors from
Larry Niven to Anne McCaffrey,
as well as ideal casts for film versions of favorite books.
For Antimatter and UFO chats,
"I try to pick topics in the news
currently," Sewald says. Recent
sessions have dealt with the face

on Mars and coverage oi the

paranormal by tabloid TV news
shows, among other subjects.
Whatever the topics, Omni
Online's chat sessions have
proven to be one-rat the most
popular facets of the service,
with

many

"regulars" returning

night after night. "The real virtue

of the interactive forum,"

says

Marilee J. Layman, who hosts

This Week in Science Chat as
OMNI Muse, "is being able to
talk real time about a subject
you're interested in with people
all over the country who are also
interested

in

that subject. "DO

Each

of

Omni

Online's

15 active
hosts has a

dis-

tinct style,

which influences
whether
chatters end up
discussing

The Hitchhiker'?

Sam to the
fiafewortherote
of

women

science

in

fiction.

cQruTifuuunn
FINDER OF THE LOST ARK?
The

lost

ark

may

rest in

an

unlikely spot. Plus, our planet's getting dusty,

and how

to

prevent back

injuries

Could the lost ark of the

covenant the actual ancient chest into which
Moses put the tablets of the
Ten Commandments lie
today in a small church in

Aswan. During the seventh

century B.C., when the
apostate king Manasseh
ruled in Jerusalem and had

Ethiopia? Very possibly, at

least in the opinion of British

ful

journalist

replaced the ark in the temple with a pagan idol, faith-

Jews took the ark to

A colony of Jewish
mercenaries had been livsafety.

Graham Hancock,
the case for

ing on Elephantine for some

time, so Hancock argues
that island might well have

who makes

the Ethiopian claim in The

Sign and the Seal: A Quest
for the Lost Ark of the

Covenant. Hancock, a former East Africa correspondent for the Economist,

spent the better part of

Ethiopian holy

its construction by Moses, through

enshrinement by Solomon in his temple in Jerusalem
its unexplained disappearance sometime thereafter,
finally to the church of Saint Mary of Zion in Axum,

story of the ark from

its

and
and

Ethiopia,

where Hancock believes

it

rests today.

Outlandish as it may seem, the Ethiopian claim to the

ark is quite old. As early as the thirteenth century, the
Ethiopian chronicle Kebra Nagast recorded the legend of
the ark's coming to Ethiopia, and European explorers
from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries reported the prevalence of the tradition among the
Ethiopian people. Even today, every church of the
Ethiopian Orthodox rite contains a tabot, a replica of the
which holds a central place in church ritual.
Despite this long history, Hancock is the first to undertake
a rigorous analysis of the Ethiopian claim. "There has not
been any serious study of the loss of the ark of the
covenant," he says, "nor has there been any serious atSo the
tempt to investigate Ethiopia's claim to possess
original ark,

it.

field

was completely

According

to

Hancock,

this

legend

is

not

liter-

ally true, but it contains a core of truth: The ark was

brought to Ethiopia, he says, sometime toward the end of
the fifth century B.C. Before that it resided in a Jewish

temple on the Egyptian island

of

Elephantine, near

been an attractive haven for

the ark. Around 410 B.C.,
however, the Jewish population on the island came
into severe conflict with the
Egyptians. The Elephantine

temple was destroyed, and the Jews of the island seem

have vanished. Hancock believes they carried the ark
south along the Nile and into the highlands of Ethiopia.
Hancock conducted much of his research in Ethiopia itself, while that troubled nation was constantly torn by
conflict between a dictatorial government and a number
of well-organized rebel groups. Whatever his evidence,
though, it might still seem unbelievable that such an ancient and mythical artifact could have existed undiscovered all this timeand that a journalist such as Hancock
could succeed in unraveling the mystery where centuries
was his amaof scholarship had failed. But to Hancock,
to

it

teur status that

made

his insights possible.

reasons nobody has done

because

it

this before,"

demic

"One

of

the

he believes,

requires synthesizing information from a

different subject areas," research not

conducive

specialization. Professional timidity

may

lot

"is

of

to aca-

also have

prevented some scholars from solving the puzzle. "It's really quite dangerous for their careers," says Hancock.
"Because of the nature of the object, they tend to stand

back from

it

with a kind of fear that

topic, their careers

open."

The Kebra Nagast tells how Menelik, son of King

Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (an Ethiopian, according to the chronicle), brought the ark back with him from
Jerusalem, and this tale is widely accepted by the people
of Ethiopia.

men provide

clues for the recovery of the lost ark.

three years researching the

possibility, following leads from northern France to Egypt,
sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East, tracing the

will

if

they publish on this

be ruined."

All in all, Hancock makes a pretty persuasive c

many of his points are supported by independent sensars but unless the Ethiopians allow researchers :c

examine the object they guard so closely, his speeutotions will be very difficult to prove. Hancock admits ~r<c
his case is "a compilation of strong circumstantial artdence," but he feels it's strong enough at least tc loalenge other investigators to put his hypotheses to the
test. ROBERT K.

J.

KILLHEFFER

caruTiruuunn
16 pairs of muscles convergdown onto the mouth.
"We found how the posi-

ing

tion of

these muscles

changes

in

relation to

each

whether for a smile,

a pout, or a kiss," explains
plastic surgeon Elaine
Sassoon, a member of the research team at the time
other,

experiments that required both to respond

girl in

to spoken English commands.

Soon, Kanzi coujd combine abstract symbols, called
lexigrams, to tell researchers what he wanted food, TV,

or other activities.

The lexigram experi-

of the investigation. "This

hadn't

been appreciated

before. After lip-repairing operations, everything looked

fine

when

the patients were

asleep, but they might

not be able to use their mouths
very well when awake.
"The information we
now have is potentially useful for operations for cleft
lips, skin cancers around the
mouth, and facial paralysis," she adds.
Ivor Smullen

".

there

is

nothing wrong

with She world. What's

is

A KISS ISN'T ALWAYS

JUST A KISS
The

kiss has enchanted romantics and inspired

poets for centuries, but its
mechanics have eluded
scientists.

One

TEIN PER

two orbmuscles in a

bonobo

guage Research Center

cerns that the

Georgia State University

because

plastic-surgery researchers

crucial to

have revealed that a kiss

consists of the squashing of
a pair of muscles with a Jshaped cross section, unique
to humans.

But the scanner investigation, backed by the examination of 50 dissected

heads, revealed much more
complex movements, with

OMNI

12-year-old

of

which was no more than a

nice try. Now, by means
of an animated scan of the
human head, British

30

Miller

responding to rote conditioning. Kanzi couldn't see

who gave him commands,

and each sentence was
new to him. Kanzi must envi-

of a teacher's pet at the Lan-

of

surgically reconstructed
-

"
it.

not being influenced by

verbal cues or simply

has become something

STEAK.

movements

lips look unconvincing provided the impetus for the

study. Conventional books on
anatomy have depicted a
two-dimensional, doughnutshaped ring of muscles,

icularis oris

state of contraction,"

at

Henry

ensure that the ape

was

chimpanzee named Kanzi

POUND

THAN A T-BONE

Plastic surgeons' con-

juxtaposition of

way of looHing

ments involving Kanzi were

performed under rigorously controlled conditions
to

APE OVER MAZES

LOCUSTS CONTAIN
PERCENT MORE PRO31

tum-of-the-

century physician defined it as "the anatomical

our

wrong

THE RING-TAILED CAT IS

NOT ACTUALLY A
CAT BUT IS RELATED TO
THE RACCOON.

such movements.

of his

uncanny

a cartoon monkey through Pac-Man-like

mazes on a video screen.
ability to track

Psychologist Susan

Savage-Rumbaugh hopes to
learn how much of Kanzi's
dexterity with a joystick comes
from random luck and how

much
far

from an

ability to

enough ahead

to

plan

man-

Video game champ? No,

game chimp

video

sion the routes available to

mazes, and
Savage-Rum-

his target in the

this ability,

baugh

believes,

is

related to

euver the target through the

the planning abilities need-

mazes. She turned Kanzi

loose on mazes after he kept
pace with a two-year-old

ed to construct tools and

grammatic sentences.

lexi-

George Nobbe

RED ALERTYOU
HAVE MAIL!
Colleen Murphy's invention

seems so simple that

she was amazed to learn
from the U.S. Patent

one had ever

invented a mailbox alert
system quite like hers: an individually coded, batterypowered, signaling system
that works like a hotelroom message light except
hers tells you when your
Office that no

box contains

mail.

"A similar invention ran

wires from the box and

hooked them

an alarm
clock," she says. Her
into

device, however,

needs no

wires, instead,

relies

on a small radio transmitter

one-fourth the size of a

sounds for 1 seconds

and a light goes on until you
hit a reset button. The sig-

the mailbox.

TV remote mounted inside

Whenever

the door opens, it sends a

pulse to your house or

most country houses

house apartments.

it

apartment, where a buzzer

MAMMOGRAPHY
digital

mile,

The

mammography

imaging system that

dispenses with x-ray

about a quarter
to reach

enabling

Mail Alert, as

The

light-detector

2D million individual pixels,

each 30 times smaller than
the period at the

three-year, $3.28-million col-

this

laboration involving sci-

Lawrence

Liver-

National Laboratory,

the University of Toronto,

and

Fischer Imaging in Denver,

Colorado. They believe their

new imaging system

Murphy

which uses sophisticated charged-coupled

devices (CCDs), can record

breast cancer.
That's the goal of a

more

or pent-

array,
film

altogether could revolutionize the diagnosis of

entists from

of

it

breast cancer, thus reducing the need for invasive surgery as well.

GOES HIGH-TECH
A

nal carries

will

produce clearer images

using less radiation,
more accurate and

of

her gizmo, has

all the requisite postal
requirements. Murphy,
lives in Easton, Connect-

who

came up with the

idea when she tired of so
many futile trips to the
icut,

end

of her longish driveway.

radiologists

much

of visual detecvery subtle differences in contrast in earlystage lesions, particularly in

younger women with

denser breasts," says JeanPierre Georges, Fischer

Imaging's marketing vice

president. Livermore

technology

images

applications, but

directly in digital

form, they cart be

com-

puter-enhanced, permitting
diagnosis of potentially

cancerous lesions and

tu-

mors

far smaller than

those detectable by current

mammography techniques.
ital

"The advantage of a digsystem is- that gives

it

better

means

tion of the

sentence. And because

the system records the

allowing

far earlier detection of

end

At the moment, Murphy

dubbed
met

originally

developed the
for

weapons

CCDs have
also found their way into
equipment used for surveillance and space exploration, as well as some advanced camcorders.
Digital

mammography

has other tangible benefits,

Georges claims. One of
these is the use of comput-

is

seeking a financial
backer to help her launch
and manufacture the
still

device.

Murphy hopes

to

be

able to market the Mail-

consumers for about

$50.George Nobbe
Alert to

er-assisted diagnosis to
help scientists locate suspicious areas in breast tissue. Another benefit of the
technology is the ability
doctors will have to transmit

images

to

remote loca-

tions via the information

superhighway
vide

to pro-

mammography services

for rural areas.

clinical

prototype

of the diagnostic toe

requires

Food and Drug

Administration approval,
should be ready by
year's

used

end and could oe

in

studies

routine
in

clir.ica!

a haif-dazer. med-

ical settings

by ne>C yeat

Georges says.
George Nobbe

"

CDRJTimuunn
lever, and in half a second,
a roof-mounted rocket, with
a 1.7-second burn time,
pulls out a pressurized deployment bag containing
a 1 ,600-square-foot nylon
canopy and suspension
lines. The chute fully inflates
in about five seconds.
The company is working
on systems for larger,
four-seat aircraft weighing
up to 3,000 pounds, and
GARD, which has won FAA
certification, could one

day be used on much

larger

aircraft, according to
Johnson, who notes that
NASA has long used
parachutes to lower 150,000-

PARACHUTES FOR
PLANES
A company called

Ballistic

Recovery Systems has

developed the ultimate in
aircraft safety systems
a huge parachute that can
safely lower a whole
plane

to the

ground, pas-

sengers and all.

"The planes don't usually
come down unscathed,
but the people do," says Dan
Johnson, marketing manof the St. Paul, Minne-

ager
sota,

company.

Its

GARD,

or general aviation recovery

device, can float a

645-

damage,
The 43-pound system

operates on the same principle as rocket-propelled

ejection seats on military aircraft.

Incase

of trouble,

the

pilot just pulls

32

OMNI

shuttle- rocket

motors

to earth for reuse.

EVERY MINUTE, A
HURRICANE RELEASES AS

MUCH ENERGY AS 400

20-MEGATON H-BOMBS.

a cockpit

Johnson claims.
The system costs just
under $5,500 for a Cessna
150, with installation costs

George Nobbe

"Getting old isn't

ail

that

Now, getting younger

would be something.
Groucho Marx

great.

we cannot

may

blood,

the

body loses

also loses iron,

it

which the body stores

as ferritin, explains research
physician Jerome Sullivan
of the

Veterans Affairs

Med-

ical Center in Charleston,

South Carolina. People with
little

be a

or no stored iron are

less prone to heart attacks,

says Sullivan, who originally published the hypoin The Lancet in
1981, "My research suggests stored iron is an

thesis

high

a
any case,

seem

large increase

attacks

protect against heart

When

Stampfer. 'Yet

J.

rule out

effect. In

there doesn't
of;

attacks.

in

to

heart

in

people with

ferritin levels."

But that's missing the

whole point of the
hypothesis, Sullivan contends. "Measuringthe

magnitude

of risk that high

confers won't
us as much as finding
how people with

ferritin
tell

out

Jow or no ferritin do. How

do they compare to
people with high levels?
Are they protected?"
Until research produces
conclusive results, Sullivan
says, people

may want

to

lower their stored iron

"Men and women

extremely strong risk factor"

Studies by Finnish

levels,

cardiologists published

pause may protect themselves simply by donating blood under med-

in

1992 lend weight to

theory. Researchers ob-

late

his

served middle-aged men

years and found that
who suffered heart

those

past the age of meno-

ical supervision. In fact,

they

may

lower their risk of

heart attack to the level

woman

attacks had the most stored

iron. Investigators con-

of

cluded "is a risk factor for

coronary heart disease."

Donating blood three

times a year should main-

it

The antidote

is

simple:

a menstruating

during her fertile years."

tain ideal ferritin levels,

bearing age experience

through menstruation,"

Jim O'Brien
HBHB ^^H
^^^is^^Br
*. ^tH

Sullivan says.

,^

Sullivan adds.

regular bleeding. "Not

a big blood

what

situations,

adding another $300 or so.

tigator Meir

modest
It's a notion that Count
Dracula would approve
Losing blood regularly

for five

"Theoretically, if you
push out enough cloth, you
can recover anything,"
he says, explaining that one
square foot of nylon can
lower one pound of plane. Already used in ultralight
and kit-built planes, which
do not require FAA certification, GARD has saved 77
lives in potentially fatal

pound Cessna 150 to earth

even when deployed from
altitudes as low as 300 feet.
The nose gear generally
suffers the only

pound

TAKE MY BLOOD,
PLEASE

loss, similar to

women

of child-

Early last year, however,

evidence emerged that

seemed

to contradict his

A Harvard
study detected no link between elevated ferritin
levels and heart attacks.
"What we found does

HraHKjl
kJaB

"

IHk/*'

hypothesis.

not

seem

to

support the

iron

hypothesis," says inves-

Wi

:*BJPB?

^BH
^h

w"

^rf

^r

t^r

Donating blood

HH

may prated

against heart attacks.

coruTifuuunn
THAT DARN DUST
BUILD-UP

on earth by the trillions.

But they're not extraterrestrial

beings. Rather,

they're tiny extraterrestrial

dust particles dropping

to earth at the rate of

40,000 tons per

estimate
sity of

about

year. This

comes from

Univer-

Washington astron-

omers Stanley Love (now

By measuring the sizes

the craters, there-

hour.
of

It's been confirmed. Outerspace invaders are landing

at

the University of Hawaii)

searchers determined both

the rate of influx and the
sizes of falling particles, the
bulk of which measure

thousandth of a meter)
in diameter and weigh less
than one hundred-thousandth of a gram.
"In atypical year, almost
all the weight of material
falling on earth is in the form
of small, submillimeter
dust,"

Love says. By compar-

and Donald Brownlee, who

ison, meteorites

arrived at the figure after

to only

studying part of the Long Duration

Exposure

Facility

(LDEF) a satellite that spent

almost six years in orbit
from 1984 to 1990.
Love and Brownlee
analyzed 13 LDEF panels
whose surfaces pointed
space. They iden761 impact craters

directly into
tified

formed when cosmic dust

particles

slammed

into

the panels at velocities of

about 27,000 miles per

to rough calculations by University of

Washington planetary scien-

of

Conway Leovy. That

may be enough to balance

may not have been the case

during earlier epochs."
Steve Nadis

year according

tist

the estimated 40,000 tons

incoming dust. Leovy

says the gain and loss are

currently close, but that

less than a millimeter (one-

amount
a few tens of tons per

year. With this slow but

steady drizzle of dust, plus
the occasional thud of a

meteorite, our planet

to

seems

be gradually putting

on more weight
However, it's losing some
weight at the same time.

The earth loses some matter

when upper-atmosphere
gases, primarily hydrogen,
drift off into space. This

gaseous escape adds up

only about 50,000 tons a

to

IT'S

A REAL

IN THE

PAIN

BACK

An

improperly designed
workstation hits a worker
right in the

lower back,

a fact borne by workmen's

compensation claims
that cost companies untold
millions each year. But a
lumbar-motion monitor designed at Ohio State University's biodynamics laboratory could reduce the
number of such cases by
enabling employers to
analyze whether employees'
working conditions
could put them at risk of

lower-back problems.
To complete the analysis, a worker must wear
the harnesslike device, mar-

keted by the Chattanooga

Group, during the working
The four-pound deis tethered to a laptop
that records
data received from sensors
strategically placed along
the device's exoskeleton.
"The 'sensors provide
three-dimensional motion
analysis of the spine,
since it is those muscles that
day.

vice

computer

are most frequently

in-

volved in back injuries,"

says the Chattanooga
Group's Ed Dunlay. "They
record each motion a
worker makes and its effect

on the lumbar spine."

The computer's software

compares the workers'
and turns and their

twists

varying speeds to a data-

base

of risk profiles

from

over 400 industrial

jobs installing mufflers

an auto plant, for example, or lifting

at

cases

of

in

soda

bottling facility.

Consistently high profiles

would

alert

employers

need
be redesigned, says
a

that workstations
to

Dunlay, adding that

midwestern

bottling plant

and several car manufacturers have done just

that.

George Nobbe

Tapping

into spinal analysis

may prevent back injuries.

Seize the

Power of Merlin
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ie the window the sky .meets the sea,

ng a panoramic
,

vista of

San Francisco Bay.

Robert Russell is talking to his graduate

about a conjunction of "another sqrt: the
of theology and cosmology and the com-

its

tiorisf

of

ws

and
scien

round shared by science and religion.

jsefl, a gently spoken man whose boyish
suggest considerably fewer than his 47

the e

both a physicist and a trained theTo many people, the idea of a physicistmay seem like a contradiction in

insigl

is

n.

>gian

p between science and religion

.

Eschewing

no
need
is

same
to tal

is

a -state

this divisive view, Russell is

a growing body of theologians

dentists for whom religious faith and

at the forefront of

in

alternative to Jerry Falwell."

Berkeley, California, the

leading international center

The American public must be

able to see religious thinkers

in

this interdisciplinary field.

who

Located on the quiet and

campus of the Graduate

fornia at Berkeley,

CTMS

its

The notion

to,

science and

of,
'

discoveries.

that religion

is

intrinsically antithetical to

is

among

science

an interdenominational array
including

trenched

situated appropriately

opposed

are neither

nor ignorant

leafy

Theological Union (GTU),

near the University of Cali-

is

very deeply en-

in modern America. In
1992 Russell was invited by
then-Senator A! Gore to be
one of a group of scientists
and theologians to advise him
on a Joint Statement about

of seminaries,

Jesuit, Lutheran, Episcopalian,

and American Baptist schools,

a Center for Jewish Studies,
and an Institute for Buddhist
Studies. In addition to his
work with CTNS, Russell is the
in-residence professor of
theology and science at the
GTU, where he teaches future
clergy and priests and

the Environment.

draft ver-

sion of the statement contained a sentence which

declared that science and
religion had "always" been at
war with one another. Pointing

supervises doctoral students.

out that historically this simply

In many ways, the Center

Theology and the Natural
Sciences was a response to

to

wasn't

Russell's

own

personal history.

As a graduate physics
dent
had

the potential to
if

be a

tists

Sagan.

he was also ordained as a minister

the United Church of Christ. This exotic combination

him to membership in the Society of Ordained

entitles

Scientists,

Anglican

an organization started by British biologist and

Peacocke. Having completed his

priest, Arthur

doctorate, Russell spent several years teaching physics at

Carleton College but soon realized he wanted to bring the

two sides of his life together in a more concrete- way. That

need, he felt, was not unique to himself but was also shared
by others who longed for a rapprochement between the

and the

spiritual

scientific.

Russell's intuition, however, ran counter to the more

popular notion that science was the enemy of religion, and
religion a blinding light in the face of scientific rationality. By

way

of anecdote, Russell explains

what

is

at stake for the

CTNS. A debate between an astronomer and a

Christian was mediated by Ted Koppel one evening on
Nightline. The astronomer clearly wanted a serious
work

of

discussion about the religious implications, of his. work, but

opposing him was Jerry Falwell and so the debate went
nowhere. Infuriated by the kind of religious rhetoric which
associates science with Satan, Russell says that he
"determined there and then that one of the goals of the
CTIMS absolutely must be to provide the media with an

33

OMNI

was a

small but sig-

Historically, the

or competition

noring such advice, at the

time he was gaining a masters in science from UCLA,
Russell also was studying for a masters of divinity at the
Pacific School of Religion. In 1978, the very same day he
received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of

same

in

"It

nificant victory," Russell says.

first-

only he could

jettison his Christianity. Ig-

California at Santa Cruz,

managed

bate with some of the scienpresent, including Carl

stu-

the Seventies, his

thesis supervisor told him he
in

class scientist

true, Russell

have the wording changed

from "always" to "often"
though only after heated de-

for

separation

between

sci-

ence and religion is a rather

recent phenomenon. In the thirteenth century when
Europeans rediscovered the science of the Greeks,
theologians such as Thomas Aquinas and Robert Grosseleste enthusiastically co-opted the ancients' knowledge of
nature

and

purposes. Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln

chancellor of Oxford University, used the newly

for religious

first

revived science of geometric optics as the basis for his

metaphysics of light, in which he proposed that light was the

medium by which God spreads his divine grace throughout
Under the influence of Aquinas, science and
theology in the late Middle Ages were woven into a
harmonious synthesis wherein science's first duty was to
serve Christianity. Indeed, the belief that science should
serve faith endured till the eighteenth century. Copernicus
and Kepler both saw their cosmology as an anagogical
the universe.

pursuit;

and

Galileo notwithstanding,

Newton himself once

wrote that nothing could "rejoice" him more than that his
science should be used for the purpose of demonstrating
the existence of a deity.

However, since Newton, the relationship between the two

cultures has seriously disintegrated. Contrary to

what many

popular histories would have us believe, the split between

science and the church does not date to Galileo but to the
Enlightenment. Nancey Murphy, chair of the CTNS board
and associate professor of Christian philosophy at the Fuller
Theological Seminary

Pasadena, California, explains that

in order to keep religion respectable in the scientific age
"liberal theologians redescribed theology in such a way that
in

became

This Month on

irrelevant to

From

it."

the late eighteenth century, religion

was reformulated so that rather than

having "cognitive content" it merely

"had to do with symbolic expressions
of

human values and

that sort of thing."

other words, religion was disconnected from the domain of empirical

conversely,
In

knowledge, and

Thursdays 8PM

science

was disconnected from the domain of

morality and spirituality. That split has

not only proved psychologically dissat-

Glowing up the Dunes Hotel.

isfying to

many

Murphy

is

it

people, according to

philosophically insupport-

Wow however, she says, "we're at

a position where we've got the intellectual tools to argue that theology and
science should not be kept in waterable.

tight

incompatibility

Rube Goldberg contest

re-mopping the world

since its inthe board of directors is

respected particle physicist Carl York,

and this year's visiting research fellow
is George Ellis
a world expert on
space-time. Ellis, professor of applied
mathematics at the University of Cape
Town and a visiting professor of astron-

omy

Queen Mary College, London

was president of the Interna-

at

University,

tional Society of

General

Gravitation from

1988

Relativity

to 1992.

First

views or living color

of the forbiddingly titled text,

and

He

is

Hawking

also co-author with Stephen

electron microscopy. Plus:

The Large

Scale Structure of Spacetime.

where Hawking seems to relish

to highlight God's irrelethere is no moment of creation,
no need for a Creator Ellis is
a Quaker who sees in the foundations
Yet

Dolphin family groups

&

theTacoma Morrows Bridge

the

chance

vance
there

if

is

physics manifest signs of a

providential deity. Rather than being an
oddity, however, Ellis tells me he is following in a noble tradition. He points
out that-Arthur Eddington, the first
champion of general relativity after Einstein, was also a Quaker. It was Eddington who organized the famous
of the latest

rirying rootage or earth-

akes. Plus: Death Valley's

sterious Devil's Hole

&

1919 test of general relativity which

corroborated Einstein's prediction that
light bends as it passes by the sunthereby demonstrating the inherent
curvature of space-time. Similarly
Georges LemaTtre, the first physicist to

take seriously

Discguery

relativity's

prediction of

an expanding universe, was a Catholic

physics
and faith are far from incompatible.
priest. Clearly then, front-line

One

most fruitful relaongoing partnership

of the Center's

tionships

is

its

its

Rome,

implica-

tions for theology. Last year's topic, for

instance, was chaos and complexity,

while the 1991 conference was centered around

quantum cosmology and

the laws of nature.

In

addition to the Di-

vine Action conferences, the CTNS is

currently undertaking a major project to
look at the theological implications of

studying the ethical and social implications of this seminal endeavor, the

CTNS

ception. On
Charles Townes, who in 1964 won the
Nobel prize for physics for his contributions to the development of the laser
and maser. Another board member is the

v\

aspect of science and

fact thai

in

and religion is belied by the impressive

array of Christian scientists (in the literal sense of that phrase), who have
attracted to the

ular

between science

compartments, and

The

in

whom they hold joint biannual conferences under the rubric of "Divine
Action in the World." Each conference
brings together scientists, theologians,
and philosophers to talk about a partic-

Human Genome Project the international effort to decode the set of

genes contained in human chromosomes. Although many groups are now

they really can't be."

been

with the Vatican Observatory

with

the

CTNS is the only organization which

has received National Institutes of
Health funding to look at the theologiOn top of these academic
activities, the Center offers public lecits visiting fellows and also
provides training and guidance for
cal issues.

tures by

all denominations
in the form of workshops and seminars
about science and its interaction with
Christian faith. CTNS, which also publishes both a quarterly scholarly journal, The CTNS Bulletin, and a monthly
newsletter, has. over 500 members from

Christian ministers of

all

over the world.

From the point of view of faith, Russays, there is an urgent need "to

sell

empower the church to take seriously

its own message" in the age of science. In other words, theology must be
kept relevant to the times. That point
was also stressed by William Stoeger, a
Jesuit priest, astrophysicist at the Vati-

can Observatory, and member of the

Board at CTNS, who has been one of
the chief organizers of the Divine Action conferences. "No religion which is
enculturated into the Western world
can afford to ignore science," he tells
me. "It plays such a major role in our
culture today." Stoeger points out that
much of the language we now use, and
even the very terms in which we think,
are deeply influenced by science, so if

religious people ignore this fact and

"continue to rely on categories of

thought from the Renaissance or the

Middle Ages, then religion comes to be
seen as an anachronism." Stoeger believes that if concepts such as God as
Creator are going to continue to make
sense in the late twentieth century, then
it

needs to be articulated

within the_

larger cultural context, a significant

part of

which

cosmology.

is

We

modern science and

need

specifically just

to

be able

to

see

"how God could be

working within the natural processes

revealed by contemporary science".
For this reason one of the CTNS's
primary strategies has been to take on

physicists' knowledge of the fundamental constants of nature as evidence

a providential designer. According

for

to

contemporary physics, many

of the

relevant to traditional Christian concerns,

For instance Russell has shown that

basic constants of nature, such as the

and the protonneutron mass difference, appear to
have highly providential values; if these

Hawking.'s "no boundary" cosmology

indirect but important relevance to

seems

highly theoretical topics

like

quantum

cosmology and show how they can be

has

the doctrine of creation ex nihiio. Being

of service to the faithful

was

hardly

Hawking's intention despite his muchquoted closing line about knowing "the
mind of God." the famed British physicist's stance is deeply antireligious. Yet
Russell believes Hawking's cosmology
resolves a long-standing theological
dilemma: How could a temporal universe have been created by a timeless
deity? By offering a model of the universe which has no definitive beginning and where time gradually emerges
as a distinct phenomenon, Russell

says Hawking has provided a scientific

analog for the Augustinian view that
God created the universe with time
rather than in time. Since in Hawking's
model time arises out of something ontologically prior,

it

in

itself

becomes

part of creation, just as Augustine sug-

gested

in

the

Similarly

fifth

century.

George

Ellis

has used

fine-structure constant

values were even slightly different, it

unlikely that a universe compatible with the biological evolution of

in the construction of nature points to

the hand of a purposeful "Designer,"

emphasizing the importance of ethical

issue Which, he claims," cannot be
meaningfully included in a world view
based solely on physics." Though their
work differs significantly, both Russell
and Ellis argue that physics has "both

and restructured" traditional

theological positions. Far from making
religion seem redundant, Russell says
criticized

contemporary science can provide

"scope and

insight for faith."

Quite apart from the psychological

need many people feel to integrate the

two cultures, there are increasingly urgent practical reasons why the religious community cannot continue to

WORLD PREMIERE

life

would have formed at all. Ellis employs

this as the basis for an updated version
of the old "argument from design"the
idea that the apparent purposefulness

ignore science. Here the relevant field

not so much physics as the biological sciences particularly genetics,
is

is now generating a whole slew

technologies with profound theologiconsequences. Hence the CTNS's

which
of

cal

interest

in

the"

Human Genome

stresses that with respect to genetics

they are "not an advocacy group there
to take a particular position," rather the
"to help

those

a position of moral voice to

make

purpose
in

of their

work

is

more informed decisions." He sees the

CTNS's role as being one of helping
the religious community to understand
what the scientific issues are and how
to talk coherently about them in a theological context. Just how to do that is
by no means obvious, for as Ted Peters
points out, the Bible

is

notoriously silent

on the subject of DNA.

Peters is a tall, loose-limbed man
with a relaxed manner and easy grace
is more evocative of the range than
the pulpit, but his voice was undeniably made for public speaking. Deep,
at once
resonant, and animated,
imagine he must deliver a thrilling sermon. As a professor of systematic
theology at the Pacific Lutheran Theo-

that

WONDER

Explore the edges of science...

and beyond!
The phenomenal, talent of a savant sculptor. A visit to Morocco's
"meeting place of the dead." A parrot with a 100-word vocabulary.
Find yourself in the zone where science and mystery meet.

Every Thursday 8 PM

Project

their three-year grant from the National Institutes of Health. Russell

and

et/pt

FICTON BY NANCY KRESS

{fe.

PAULA

CAME BACK

IN

A BLAZE OF GLORY,

HER INSTITUTE UNIFORM WITH

ITS

PSEUDOMILITARY

MEDALS CRISP AND BRIGHT, HER SPINE STRAIGHT AS

AN ENGINEERED

DIAMOND-FIBER ROD. tfe

HER HEELS CLICKING

UP

ON

THE SIDEWALK

FROM THE BOTTOM PORCH

MY

LAP.'

ife' PAULA'S FACE

THE BLEMISHES

STEP,

HEARD

AND LOOKED
I

A CHILD

ON

WAS GENEMOD NOW,

GONE, THE SKIN

FINE-PORED,

THE CHEEKBONES CHISELED UNDER GREEN EYES. #fe

BUT

WOULD HAVE KNOWN

WHERE.

#& NO

MATTER

WHAT

THAT FACE ANYSHE DID TO

ILLUSTRATION BY ANITA

KUNZ

IT.

.-

'

"Kaci:'?'

"Paula."

herd disbe ef

loi v<) r.v

sa

d.

"KaronT friie lime didn't answer.

The eh.lc. m y oloes-. Iwjstod
my
!

COLLECTED

ir

.v-stc 9>e the

visitor.

It was the kind of neighborhood

where women sat all morning on

porches

stoops, watching children

:'

pi;iy nr: vie

pn-r: ()(;

sidewalk. Steps sagged;

(;d;

small front lawns were

scraooc ba-e by

wed 'fig

cast'C

feet

and

tricycles

Women

pools.

and

lived a

few ooors down from their mothers,

oath of ircn growing heavier every
year lhe'c were few men. The ones
here were cidn't seem to stay long.
sa;d. "hpw did you find me?"
'li vj-v.-.r't hard," Paula said, and
knew she n dn't understand my smile.
t)i course
wasn't hard.
had never
nui'idijo i' should be. This was
I

it

j-\:y.'. ll.u-r.

me

time

y the first

in

nearly five

P-iuiahad looked.

year:; thai

so".ehuw The major resuts cnec-;

"
out obv.ci.s y
Obviously- Ine
media had .p;ii v years exc a ~ irg
over '.ne r*\ai:ir !csi..tH.
b j: there
off.

She Icwced her perfect body onto

porch steps. My little girl, Lollie,
from my lap. Then Lollie
'i.t cupped hands and smiled.

'

SIXTEEN

FROGS FOR
YOU.
YOU BOILED

EIGHT
OF THEM.

THE
OTHER EIGHT
WERE
CONTROLS

TO
REDUCE THE

are

some odd

of

the

opened

:ry hoy, lady?"

"Ve'y ace," Paula said. She was

eying ha'd lo hide her contempt, but
could sod it. For the sad imprisoned
1

frog, for Loll e's dirty face, for the

ya'd

for

way

tne

worn

looked.

"Karen
Paula said, "I'm -ic;re
because there's a problem. W*-i :>
proieor More specifically with V\i. :;nti<jl
lorm

jlas.

we

think.

lar.OHSwnibler

With a portion o*

code from

ago. wnr you were

five

l'ie

years

set Lollie down and wen: nside.

o r cr ed in her crib. Her diaper
reekeo
put a pacifierin he' -ci.^i
an: ctHo'ed her in my left arm. W.'i iw.
I

scooped Timmy

'fro'"

fi's

cd t m
a little.. carried both babies oack *c
the porch, deposited Timmy ir \r.c
portacrib, and sat down next to Pau:a.
"Lollie, go get me a diaper -iorey
And wipes. You can carry yo:r i'cc
he didn't wake,

jos:

inside to get them."

went; she's a sweet- rw-.jren

Paula stared incredulously at tit?

Lollie
kid.

unwrapped Lor i's diaoe' and

Paula grimaced and slid farther away
"Karen
n rc yni; '^to-irc re re'
twins.

This

\z

important'"

"I'm listening."

"The -wiocomputc
''m omn'i

some

her voice, "there are

in

unforeseen macrolevel developments.

We're not sure yet that they're tied to

nanocomputer

the

we're trying to

protein folds. What.

do now

is-

cover

the

all

.variables."

"You must

working, on fairly

be.

remote variables

if

you're reduced to

asking me."
"Well, yes,

have

do

to

"Yes."

we

are. Karen,

that now?'
scraped the

do you

shit off Lori with

one edge of the soiled diaper. Lollie

danced out of the house with a clean
one. She sat. beside me, whispering to
her frog. Paula said, "What
,"
need
what the project needs
said, "Do'you remember the
summer we collected frogs?' We were
maybe eight and ten. You'd become
fascinated reading about that
experiment where they threw a frog in
boiling Water but
jumped out,- and
then they put a. frog in cool water and

,-

it

gradually increased- the temperature to

boiling until the stupid frog just sat
there

instiut:ti-::-c:; .;'<

and

died.

"Karen

arm

was about right.

Paula continued, and heard

"Also,"

the strain

When

nano-

Twelfth generation

"I

right

the proteins

"

still with us
"A o'Obom,"
repeated. Irsdc no
"
house, a bjby wailed. "Just a r-iryte

crib,

in

nanocomputer attached to each

assembler replicates itself every six
months. That was one of the project's
checks and balances on the margin of
error. It had been five and a half years.

Q?.7vr. a: nor

"See

foldings

twelfth-generation

assemblers;" Twelfth generation. The

Remember?"

."
.

collected sixteen frogs for you,

and when found out what you were

going to do with them, cried and tried
let them go. But you boiled eight of
I

to

them anyway. The other eight were

controls. I'll give you that proper
scientific method. To reduce the
margin

you said."
."
"Karen
we were just kids
put the clean diaper on Lori. "Not
all kids behave like that. Lollie doesn't.
But you wouldn't know that, would you?
Nobody in your set has children. You
should have had a baby, Paula." She
barely hid her shudder. But, then, most
of the people we knew felt the same
way. She said, "What the project needs
is for you to come back and work on the
of error,
.

same

small area you did originally. Look-

ing for something anything you

might have missed in the proteincoded instructions to successive gen1

erations of nanoassemblers."
"No,"
"It's

said.

not really a matter of choice.

The macrolevel problems

Karen.

It

looks

I'll

be

a new form

like

frank,

can-

of

Unregulated replication of some

cer.

very weird cells."

"So take the cellular nanomachinery
crumpled the stinking diaper
out."
I

set it out of the baby's reach.

Closer to Paula.
"You know we can't do that! The

and

project's irreversible!"

"Many things

are irreversible,"

Lori started to fuss.

said.

picked her up,

opened my blouse, and gave her the

She sucked greedily. Paula
glanced away. She has had nanomabreast.

in her perfect body, making

Her breasts
never look swollen, blue-veined,

chinery

it

perfect, for five years now.

will

sagging.
."

"Karen, listen

"No

you

"Eight years

listen."

said quietly.

ago you convinced Zwei-

was only a minor member of the

research team, included only because
was your sister. I've always wondered,
by the way, how you did that were
you sleeping with him, too? Seven
years ago you got me shunted off into
gler

the minor area of the project's effect on

female gametes

which

about because

it

nobody cared

was already

clear

there was no way around sterility as a

side effect. Nobody thought it was too

high a price for a perfect, self-repairing

body, did they? Except me." Paula
didn't answer. Lollie carried her frog to

carefully in
and set
said, "I didn't mind working
on female gametes, even if it was a

the wading pool

the water.

it

backwater, even

was used

to

if

you got star

after

it,

all.

As

billing.

kids,

you

were always the cowboy; got to be

the horse. You were the astronaut,
I

was
ber?

the alien you conquered.

One Christmas you used up

the chemicals

and then
"I

Remem-

in

your

first

all

chemistry set

stole mine."

don't think

trivial

childhood

inci-

."
dents matter in
never
"Of course you don't. And
minded. But did mind when five years
ago you made copies of all my notes
and presented them as yours, while
was so sick during my pregnancy with
Lollie. You claimed my work. Stole it.
Just like the chemistry set. And then
.

you eased me off the project."

."
"What you did was so minor
"If it was so minor, why are you here
asking for my help now? And why
would you imagine for half a second I'd
give
to you?" She stared at me, cal.

it

?f-

jfifP^J! ~"
^M]^^^

Larry

Rivers,

ArtW

tfer

Artist; P/oisso, Mi>es, (.oner?

Guccione, Three Women

josef Levi,

^i^lt ^ F "--/

Still Life

at

and Offspring, 1992. Courtesy, Marlborough Gallery

a Round Table, 1962. Courtesy,

with Matisse and Raphael

II,

Ambassador

Galleries, Inc.

1991 Courtesy, O.K. Harris Gallery

.

27,

1994 -

JANUARY

Roy

Lichtenstein, Hk/

ktenstem, 1992.

1980- Private Collection-

David Hockney,

Courtesy, Sidney Janis Gallery

Kzd Grooms, Bed Time for Raitscbenberg,

Parade with Unfinished BacMrop, 1980. Courtesy,

The

1991. Courtesy, Marlborough Gallery

Virginia

Museum

of Fine Art

NASSAU COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART

"ART AFTER ART"

SEPTEMBER

Tom Wesselman, Si

1,

1995

ONE MUSEUM

DRIVE,

ROSLYN HARBOR,

NEW YORK

11576

"

culating.
stared back coolly. Paula
wasn't used to me cool. I'd always
been the excitable one. Excitable,
flighty, unstable
that's what she told
I

Zweigler.

security

Timmy fussed
up,

nursing

still

my

up with

free

in

risk.

how

stood

and scooped him

arm. Back on the steps,

ments, to cultivate the right connections. And, of course,

was still
under the delusion we were partners.
I

juggled Timmy to lie across Lori on

lap, pulled back my blouse, and
gave him the other breast. This time
Paula didn't permit herself a grimace.
She said, "Karen, what did was
wrong. know that now. But for the sake of
the project, not for me, you have to
I

just didn't realize

.'"

"You are the project. You have been

from the first moment you grabbed the

headlines away from Zweigler and the
others

who gave
Young

their

to that work.

life

Scientist Injects Self With

Per(ect-Cell Drug!' 'No Sacrifice Too

Great To Circumvent FDA Shortsightedness, Heroic Researcher Declares.'
Paula said flatly, "You're jealous.
You're obscure and I'm famous. You're
."
a mess and I'm beautiful. You're
"A milk cow? While you're a brilliant
researcher? Then solve your own research problems."
"This was your area ..."
.

"Oh, Paula, they were all my areas.

did more of the basic research than
I

you

did,

and you know

it.

But you knew

it

was a barracuda

partnering a goldfish."

From the wading pool Lollie

'."
watched us with big eyes. "Mommy
.

my

'Lovely

to position yoursell with Zweigler,

present key findings at key mo-

to

his portacrib.

Lori,

"It's

okay, honey.

Mommy's

not

at you. Look, better catch your

he's

changed, Karen."

"But I'm not angry. Not any more.

And you never knew what

was

like

"I

knew you never wanted a

.

never the

She

tac-

same

after that."

said, "I'm dying, Karen."

My

true.

"It's

machinery

cellular

is

enzymes. For five years they replicated

perfectly and now. ... For five years it
all performed exactly as it was prosaid,

to

."
.

does."

"It still

Paula sat very still. Lori had fallen

juggled her into the portacrib

asleep.

and nestled Timmy more comfortably

on my lap. Lollie chased her frog
around the wading pool. squinted to
I

see

Lollies lips

if

were blue!

choked

Paula

Paula end up with what was yours

and what was mine, too?"
"Because you were distracted by
baby shit and frogs!" Paula yelled, and

turned my head from the nursing

babies to look at her.

scien-

eighteen months ago.

He sends money. It's never enough.
"I wanted a scientific establishment
that would let me have both. And
wanted credit for my work. wanted
what was mine. How did you do it,
left

was. Paula

like that.

watched her stab despera way to retain the advantage.

seized it

to seize the offensive.

running wild. The nanoassemblers are

creating weird structures, destructive

yard. David

really

make admissions

first. "You should have left David alone.

You already had Zweigler; you should
have left me David. Our marriage was

grammed

before. You never bothered to know."

life. Not the way
did. You always
wanted kids. Wanted
this." She
waved her arm around the shabby

tific

saw how scared she

ately for

A way

mad

frog-

hopping away."

She shrieked happily and dove for

the frog. Paula said softly, "I had no
idea you were so angry after all this
time. You've

didn't

tical error.

grammed

out,

to

muck up

".

in

cares

about

ovaries. Only fourteen per :

cent of college-educated

survey
ma'gin

pro-

."
.

"Nobody, much
women's

"You

the assembler machinery

the ovaries to

women want

Recent
Less than one percent

their lives with kids.

result.

of error."

you actually sabotaged

of women have been

hundreds

in-

."
jected by now, maybe thousands
"Oh, there's a reverser enzyme,"
.

"Completely effective you take

before the twelfth-generation replication. You're the only person that's been
injected that long. just discovered the
reverser a few months ago, tinkering with
my old notes for something to do in what
your friends probably call my idle domestic prison. That's provable, incidentally. All my notes are computer-dated."
Paula whispered,, "Scientists don't
said.

if

it

ctothis

."
.

"Too bad you wouldn't let me be one."

."
"Karen
"Don't you want to know what the reverser is, Paula? It's engineered from
.

human

chorionic gonadotropin. The

pregnanGy hormone. Too bad you

never wanted a baby."

She went on staring at me. Lollie

shrieked and splashed with her frog.
Her lips were turning blue. stood up,
I

laid

Timmy

next to Lori

in

the portacrib,

and buttoned my blouse.

"You made an experimental error
twenty-five years ago,"
said to Paula.
"Too small a sample population. Sometimes a frog jumps out."
went to lift my daughter from the
I

wading pool.DQ

"So

much

for the

good life. "

n March

New York's

21, 1994,

ended with

pious tableau:

this

News

eleven o'clock Eyewitness

solemn, modestly dressed

Egyptian immigrant family and their friends crowd an

apartment in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn,

up

reverently at a glistening

Mary. With detached amuse ment, the

that this icon, which the Boutros
family bought
in

Cairo,

is

in

a church

weeping

oil

era cuts to an exotic,

gift shop
The cambearded figure

tears.

in a long, black cassock, identified

as a bishop of the Coptic Orthodox
Church, a sect of Christianity hailing
from Egypt. He assures the greater

the merely curious, crept

pilgrims

the sign of the cross and, enraptured, stand before the icon

divine

that

is

people across

driving

the country to sites

like

Bensonhurst.

April, the icon was- said to

Byhave stopped weeping

a type
ful

dripping

of vegetable oil
but the faithcontinued to come. Most, even

In

have the holy

icon

mixed with

oil

olive

from the
oil for

the

Mina Yanni,
priest at the church and a compact
bundle ol energy with a gray beard
and merry eyes. Indeed, visitors
dipped balls of cotton into a jar of
this "blessed" mixture, a thick,
greenish liquid carefully placed
below the icon. Olive oil was added
to the icon's

own

secretions, Father

Yanni explains, when the real

vegetable oil ceased its flow. "Of
course it's a miracle," he adds. "This
is a message from St. Mary. She
wants people to have good relations

with the Lord."

is

just

in a volcanic
miraculous events and

a backyard

who

pilgrims," says Father

TV

of

continued

We

the newsroom, the

In

doll-

Brooklyn's oily miracle

the latest eruption

surge

apparitions involving the Virgin Mary.

Byzantine-style halo.

Back

anchor smiles in a who knows

, kind of way. The story was clearly
meant to be a footnote on the richness of life in the Big City. What the
news team didn't count on, however,
was the tremendous longing for
religious experiencefor first-hand
contact with the miraculous and

But

head of hammered copper,

bowed down under an elaborate
like

York audience that a miracle

has indeed occurred.

New

up the

as if it were alive.
would reverently make

aisle to the icon

The

Mew

in

Marlboro Township,

Jersey, an apparition of

Mary

galvanize thousands

to

persisted

in visiting

the property

even after the local bishop issued a

statement declaring that the vision

was unproven

at best. In the

the bishop's office

had

to

end,

persuade

the visionary to post a "No Trespassing" sign to keep people away.

And an even

rarer

phenomenon was

reported at

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

in suburban Lake
Ridge, Virginia. There, a young

Catholic Church
assistant priest,

and

of

James

Fr.

developed stigmata

wounds

Bruse,

the bleeding

Christ on

his wrists, feet,

chest. In his presence, said the

faithful, statues of the Virgin Mary

wept, people were healed, and
rosaries changed from steel to gold.

all

of them staring

copper icon of the Virgin

Jesus and

TV anchor announces

the angels

have gotten

What on
on?

earth, or off

most

on a soybean-oil storage tank

longing seen

Fostoria, Ohio;

in

on a formica tabletop

in a junkyard in Barrett Station,

Texas; and even in a billboard
picture of a forkful of noodles in
Atlanta, inspiring the moniker,
"spaghetti savior." Angels, meanwhile, have engendered a whole

new

industry, with sales of angel

books, calendars, and video tapes

flying off the shelves, Reports of

angels are so numerous that a

Waquoit, Massachusetts, group
called Twenty-eight Angels has
even set up a 24-hour hotline, 1800-28-ANGEL None of this should
.be

surprising. According to

recently published Gallup poll,

believers abpund; Eight out of ten
Americans surveyed said that
miracles are granted by God.

In

it,

is

going

the end, the visions,

into the act as well. In recent

years, for example, thousands of
people have reported seeing Jesus

especially those involving Mary, are

passion and
the visionaries
the site of a Mary-

striking for the

themselves.

and

vision,

in

Visit

mother, and

This

people yearncompassionate

you'll find

ing for the all-caring

for

ready to battle the forces of evil.

That army, mostly Catholic and conservative, is seeking reassurance,

moral certainty, and personal

mystical experience sometimes
hard to achieve through the organized religions

we have

Paul

chairman

a professor of religion at the University of Kansas and the author of

Encountering Mary (Avon),

Kurtz,

today."
of the

Com-

mittee for the Scientific Inves-

the divine.

mother and child reunion,

Sandra ZimdarS-Swartz,

states

is

nothing less than "a quest for the

pristine order the world has aban-

tigation of

Claims of the Paranormal

(CSICOP) and author of Transcendental Temptation: A Critique of

Religion and the Paranormal
(Prometheus) sees the trend as a
dangerous throwback to the dark
days of medievalism, when the

doned. To the visionaries who actually behold the apparition, Mary is

seen as a tender and concerned
mother who calls her children away
from the brink of disaster," says
Zimdars-Swartz. "To the larger
group following the visionaries from

quest for scientific knowledge

seemed to falter and then fail, "If any

camp

every motive and utterance, But

camp, Mary is the leader of

a mighty army of spiritual warriors
to

promise is held out

people will flock to

for

an

it,"

Kurtz says.

afterlife,

"People who visit these apparitions

and weeping statues will be
suspicious of their

when

it

comes

political leaders'

to these apparitions

MARY VISIONS: A VIRGIN IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS

Article

by Tracy Cochran

Apparitions of the

Mother touch

the faithful and!

haunt the landscape of Suburbia, U.S.A.

Illustration

by Marvin Mattelson

and these visionaries, they exercise no

skepticism at all."
Yet Zimdars-Swartz feels that the
hugely popular trend of encountering
Mary, like other religious movements of
the past, should not necessarily be
viewed in logical, or literal, terms. "The
phenomenon," she says, "shows skeptics and believers alike the limits of

own beliefs."
These Marian visions have long

their

challenged our

beliefs. In the twelfth

century, according to Zimdars-Swartz,

devotion to the mother of Jesus blosin Western Christianity. Until the

nineteenth century, she adds, most
such reports were private, one-time afThen in 1858, in the foothills of
the Pyrenees in the French town of
Lourdes, a young peasant girl named
Bernadette Soubirous saw a series of
apparitions of a young woman who

somed

fairs.

was

quickly judged to be the Virgin

Mary. To this day, pilgrims pour into
Lourdes to partake of healing waters
that the blessed Virgin
left

Mary reportedly

To

this day, pilgrims

brave rocket

fire

stream into Medjug.orje. And one

man's pilgrimage in the late 1980s
opened the door for Mary in a most unlikely place
the suburban community
to

Marlboro Township,

of

land of split-levels,

and barbecue

Mary

New

Jersey,

swimming

pools,

grills.

appeared

first

to

Joseph

Januszkiewicz in his Marlboro backyard. Just after dark one night

Januszkiewicz, a diminutive 56-yearold Polish immigrant, walked out of his
tan ranch house and knelt before his
blue-eyed statue of the Madonna,
bought to commemorate his trip. Suddenly, there she was, hovering above
the blue spruce trees just off the
back patio. Astonished by the apparition, he yelled to his wife, who ran out
and sprinkled holy water all around
just in case it was some demonic trick.
The Virgin Mary is said to have smiled
at this piety and perhaps, in acknowledgment, began visiting Januszkiewicz
like

Italian

stood

man had

in line to

statue inside a

boughs and flowers. People

hugged and greeted each other, in low,
excited voices and fingered rosaries
and prayed with eyes squeezed shut.
The pilgrims looked like the range of
people you see in a mall: young parents in stone-washed jeans pushing
with pine

a few muscular guys in undershowing off tattoos, groups of recrayon-colored sweat-

strollers,

shirts

tired ladies in

and tight halos of permed white

They all watched the sky as it
deep celestial blue.

suits
hair.

turned a

"You heard what happened last

night, didn't you?" asked an elderly
lady

in

moon

a white cableknit cardigan. "The

split in two."

"We- didn't hear about that," said a

in a windbreaker snapped up

woman

we saw a big
colored ring spinning around the sun."
!

to her chin. 'But last time

clockwork.

It

as a sign.
all the public appari-

wasn't until darkness fell and

Januszkiewicz came out

Of

and knelt

tions of Mary, however, the

sighting in Fatima, Portugal,

THE VIRGIN

was

MARY BEGAN APPEARING TO

SUBURBANITES IN THE

II

COMMUNITY OF MARLBORO, NEW JERSEY,

shot.

The most dramatic of several mass sightings at Fatima

occurred on October 13,
1917, when some 70,000

LAND OF

people stood in the pouring

watch three shepherd children
who were allegedly seeing Mary, A
good portion of those onlookers rerain to

ported this strange sight: Just before

noon, the rain stopped and the sun appeared as a flat, silver disc that suddenly plunged toward the earth and
stopped just short of crashing, then
rose back into the sky, resuming its
normal brilliance. Just as amazing

and widely reported the clothes of the

onlookers, drenched by the heavy
downpours, were instantly dry. After 13
years of investigation, the Catholic
Church announced that far too many
classes and categories of people had
seen the phenomenon for it to be a collective illusion.
Finally,

the

SPLIT-LEVELS,

SWIMMING POOLS, AND BARBECUE

most recent and perhaps

the most controversial apparition (it still

hasn't been approved by the Church)

today makes its appearance in Medjugorje, a tiny mountaintop village in

Bosnia. In this remote, war-weary spot,
six visionaries have been seeing and
receiving messages from the Virgin
Mary for a decade.

GRILLS.

"Look
1992, the apparition that
sometimes calls herself "the yellow
rose of peace" instructed the devout
gray-haired immigrant who worked as
a draftsman to tell others what he was
seeing. She promised, he reported, to
appear to him after dark on the first
Sunday of every month. Januszkiewicz
told and people came in droves.
Though Januszkiewicz refused to
talk to the press, his suburban altar
was open to all. On the balmy June
Finally

evening

in

visited, five to six

thousand

people had gathered. The Marlboro

Township police" had closed the roads
discourage people from
coming, so thousands of us walked two
miles down lanes that bordered horse
farms, lugging coolers and children
to parking to

and aluminum

chairs.

It was still
light when my husband
and got to Januszkiewicz's yard. The
scene had all the palpable excitement
and anticipation of an outdoor concert
I

before the show.

People sat waiting

kets

move?" Far

rows on blan-

They stood

in

in

at that planet.

the back, an oid

See

it

woman

was praying

in Italian with her arms

stretched out like a cross, her palms
open to the sky. When it was over, thousands filed out of Januszkiewicz's yard
and into dark country roads, guided by
the swinging flashlights of Marlboro

Township
It

was

police.

the light of faith that led

some

of these pilgrims from Marlboro to another great American suburb, Lake

Ridge, Virginia. There,

St.

in

Ann Seton Church, statues

Elizabeth

of the Virgin

weep in the presence of a

young, mop-topped, mustachioed
priest, Father James Bruse.
are said to

Could they be weeping for the conhidden in the soul of Lake Ridge,

flict

where people drive luxury cars with

mobile phones and decorate the front
doors of their neat colonial and ranch
houses with wreaths of berries and
twigs? Indeed, the houses and lanes in
this growing, affluent community were
planned and

in

or folding chairs.

at his shrine,

however, that a frenzied

sort of hunger swept the
crowd. "Look, look, over
there! Do you see it? It's
showering gold." A scream
and another scream, and
hundreds of flashbulbs
srartec: popping off, aimed
at the TV antennae over
the house, aimed at the
blue spruce trees, aimed
at the stars themselves.

IN THE LATE 1980s,

may be the most mysterious

and the most revered. Indeed,
Pope John Paul has actually
credited the "Lady of Fatima"
with saving his life when he

portable toilets that a dedonated. And they

pray at the Madonna
trellis arch decorated

line for the

vout

cision that

laid out with

seems

rolling Virginia

at

military pre-

odds with the

Many of the

landscape.

X-Files online.

The Truth

is

Here, X-Philes. Delphi. Internet Centrhl for The X-Files.

Chht with The X-Files

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33

people who

live

here, those

who pour

into St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church to

see Father Bruse, are highly trained
professionals who work for the military,
and they practice

the FBI, and the CIA,

a simple, conservative brand of

Catholicism that doesn't go in for the
mystical. It's fair to say that as a parish
they personify Jung's definition of
psychic dissonance: Technologically
sophisticated yet spiritually fervent and
innocent, they fill their homes with
state-of-the-art

computers and

folk art.

Highly mobile, they idealize a rooted

country life that has nothing to do with
the high-pressure, transitory lives they
really lead.

Yet

it

was

in this

buttoned-down

community in December 1991, that Father Bruse began bleeding from the
wrists and feet. For months, few outside the inner circle of priests and

knew what was happenBishop John Keating instructed

Boise's family
ing.

Bruse's superior, Father Daniel Hamilton to quietly have Bruse checked out

by both a

psychiatrist

and an

internist;

both judged
to be normal. In March 1992,
however, the gold-painted, fiberglass
after careful examination,

Bruse

Madonna in the sanctuary of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church reportedly

began to weep in front of some 500

people, and the cat was out of the bag.

From' that day to the present, thousands of people have descended on
the church hoping to see a statue
weep or receive a blessing from Father
Bruse. As time passed, miracles were
reported to abound: Visitors were said
to be healed and witnesses saw the
spinning suns associated with Mary
since Fatima. And in the presence of

Father Bruse, countless statues of the

Virgin Mary (including a tiny statue inside a woman's purse, said to be
streaming with tears) could be counted
on to weep.
The balmy spring Sunday attended mass, the spare, modern church
was overflowing with people hoping to
see the four-foot-high Madonna beside
the altar weep or catch a glimpse of
I

bandaged wrists of Father Bruse.

"We don't live in Jesus's time, when
great Roman armies surrounded us
and we had to watch what we said," inthe

toned the bearish Father Daniel Hamilwho challenged his congregation

go out into the world and "bear witness to the truth of the Lord."
When the service was over, howa small crowd flowed out not to
spread the word, but rather right down

ton,
to

ever,

to the altar, to the

tificial-flower

Madonna

with her ar-

crown. "She helps

me

feel

God's presence," said one welldressed woman from New Jersey who
had been to Marlboro as well.
Standing nearby, church member
Hall, a spritely, middle-aged

Nancy

hornemaker with a pixish-salt-and-pepper bob, added that the Lake Ridge

miracles have in fact drawn people
back to church, "and think that's
pretty neat.
tend to be a skeptic, so
I'm not quite decided about what
think," says Hall. "But
indeed this is
all really happening, and it seems to
be, it's because God had to do something to get people to listen. It seems
that we've gotten to a point where
something dramatic needed to happen
I

if

to

get our attention."

The Church itself has withheld judgment and, true to form, has delivered a
noncommittal response. Indeed, the
Chancery of the Diocese of Arlington
reacted to the Lake Ridge phenomenon with this cautious statement: "In
this particular case, there is no determined message attached to the reported physical phenomena, and thus
there is no ecclesial declaration to be

made at this time. As always in similar

cases, the Church recommends great
caution in forming judgments and advises against any speculation on the
causes or possible significance

of the

Pick-up Suit

From Cleaners

Make Dental Appointment

Call

Mom & Dad

Take

Home Report Tonight

for People UJiiofepforaifiG

talmTira,

ptaTilM-M
The Voice

It'"

pocket-sized note recorder.

It

replaces

those

ail

lists

you've been making with tapeless computer chip technology that

you press

lets

back

later on.

For those

come

a button, record brief reminders,

It's

who

along

in

thin,

like

it's light,

to stay organized,

For a store near ijou call:

Schedule Tee Time

Change Oil This Weekend

was

not shared

at the tiny Coptic Church

in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.
not a miracle," queries Father

by the priest
of St.

George

"If it's

Mina K. Yanni, a jolly figure in black

robes and a round black hat, "how
have gotten there? It's a
message from St. Mary who wants all
people to be one."

could the

oil

Father Yanni gestured toward a middle-aged woman with a wide smile and
hair the color of sunstruck

copper who

pose, downcast

in

private supplication,

look Byzantine but her face

is

distinctly

Western, as pale and delicate as a

porcelain

doll.

Looks can be deceiving. Father

Yanni leads the way to his office. He
holds out a notebook that contains

handwritten accounts of personal

miracles attributed to the weeping'

IT"

BOO 999 J5ZZ

ext. Zl

Call Florist Today

the pain of his sciatica after he rubbed

his back with a cotton ball dipped in

Bruse. "I sent mi^iv- ;-.;iic-;r missive and

got no reply," says Nickell. "There was
no independent outside investigation of
any of that phenomenon. They refused

the oily tears.

to

of a

test,

man

the

amazing story

who- experienced

relief

from

point out the results of a recent

conducted with 'the blessings of
itself, before the icon's drip-

the Church

had disappeared: The "holy"

had been a form of vegetable oil,
had been determined. Could it be,
ask Father Yanni, that he has been the
ping

oil

liquid
it

victim of fraud?

He doesn't

was standing

in front of- the icon at the

upstairs altar "Talk to her," he said.
"She's Roman Catholic but she comes
here everyday."
love her. She's so
"I can't help it.
beautiful," the woman agrees, her accent vintage Brooklynese. Painted on
metal in gentle hues of blue and white
and tan, the icon depicts the Madonna
looming up between two church towers. Her elaborate gold halo and her

Anniversary Friday -Don't Forget

Madonna, including

This guarded view

the biggest thing to

it's

years.

\$) VOICE

reported events."

and play them

and no bigger than a credit card.

agree.

of fraud," he tells me.

own
of

eyes. This

was a

"I

"I

am

not a victim

saw

it

with

my

miracie."

Yet investigator Joe Nickell, author

for a Miracle (Prometheus)

Looking

and a member

of CSICOP, has
amassed plenty ot proof that the fraud
theory may hold water (not oil), after all.
"Approximately one hundred percent of

claims of weeping icons are pious

hoaxes," says Nickell. "There are
dozens of ways it can be done but the
simplest and most common way is just
to apply fluid. A person pretends to
brush the tears away and they just
apply more. Oil may be used instead of
water because it lasts longer."
Moreover, Nickell says he has tried
repeatedly to meet and examine the

phenomenon surrounding Father

let a team from CSICOP isolate the

weeping statue so we could see if it
wept if was under guard. The whole
it

thing, including the stigmata,

is

ex-

tremely suspicious.
"If someone alleges a miracle, the
burden of proof is on them," says Nickell. "But they won't let outside investigators examine the statues and the
stigmata. Why?"

some
phenomena may be

While Nickell concedes that

apparition-related

than flat-out hoax (aim a

One-Step into the sun and you
get a photo of a "golden door"),
he is horrified at the gullible groupthink that dominates apparition sites
like Marlboro. "I call it the 'Medjugorje
virus,'" he laughs. "It's a social contaillusion rather

Polaroid

may

gion,

and

it

can be

frightening."

What's frightening about

nomenon according

this

to Nickell

phe-

and

other critics is the sometimes savage

believers fend off skeptical inquiry.
"Credulity does not diminish with edu-

way

cation," says Nickell. "People like the

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

parishioners at

Church may be educated

exacting and skeptical in
CONTINUEDONPAGE110

to

be very

their work,
61

cause of controversy, a controversy

which extends to the very existence of
in question. Like God, the
divides our society into believers

the object

UFO

and nonbelievers, cautious hopefuls

and equally cautious agnostics. But
whether we beiieve in the UFO or not,
its presence in our culture clearly has a
great deal to tell us about ourselves
about where we are as a species and

transcends the daily intercourse

human

of

original form, the

its

be

advance

far in

of

our own,

it

nonetheless, something which beings

like ourselves might eventually be able

UFOs really do exist, nor

does
require such existence.
merely asks what we can learn from

to create.

possibility that
it

the

It

phenomenon regarding
human civilization.

the current

state of

While the biological and metaphysical explanations vary and contradict

The UFO

stories of attempts
to "reverse

literature

"

is,

where we are going. This kind of culobservation does not rule out the
tural

to distinguish

existence.

it is necessary to point out

the symbolism surrounding the
differs from other
of religious symbolism. At least in
UFO was a machine, a technological artifact. While
the technology which it embodies may

This said,

how

UFO phenomenon

types

is full

of

by the government

engineer"

UFO

propulsion

systems. If only we could get our

hands on a piece of their equipment,
little bit of Yankee in-

then, well, with a

.

a single individual ever could.

Even our intellectual history is
one of endless struggle to
make what we. know of the
world fit into a larger pattern

INTO BELIEVERS

the scientific establishment.

there are those who see in the
a sign of hope and a catalyst for
growth, and those who sense someand profoundly destructive.
The dominant response to the UFO
in the larger culture has been one of
tentative, hopeful anticipation. Broad
layers of the population either believe,
or want desperately to believe, that the
UFO represents the real presence of a
superior technological force, probably
from another star system, interaction with
which is a catalyst for human social
hostility to
Finally,

UFO

(and

science," with unified field

theories

CAUTIOUS HOPEFULS AND EQUALLY

WHETHER OR NOT WE

But our desire for unity and

is,

ogy and ecology disci-

religia,

which means to reconnect, religion is

the process by which we strive to link
ourselves to the divine or cosmic order
of things. Similarly, salvare, to save,
originally meant to make whole. Salvation, the ultimate aim of religion, is the
moment of reconnection with God,
with Christ, with the Universe, with the
Sublime, it is a moment of mystery and
reverence, terror and fulfillment. It is the

of

connection, touching,

and becoming a part of something

something outside of us and

very different.

Whatever the physical

UFOs and aliens may be,

it

reality of
is

easy

to

see the religious dimensions of the

phenomena. Carl Jung, as early as the
1950s, noted the resemblance of flying
saucers to the mandala, an ancient
symbol of wholeness and salvation.
More recently, tales of abduction and
alien encounters suggest that finding
the Other a being from beyond
con-

nects these experiences to our underneed for contact which

lying religious

66

OMNI

universe as a system of externally related atoms, to-

LOT

clearly expressed than in our need for

religious experience or under-

alien

THE UFO HAS

perhaps,

nowhere more

standing. Derived from the Latin

experience

BELIEVE,

and complex sys-

theory, "holistic" biol-

plines which are pushing

us beyond the old worldview which regarded the

CAUTIOUS AGNOSTICS. BUT

of significance.

completion

spiritual) progress.

This trend is connected to

a fascination with the "new

AND 'NON-

tems

BELIEVERS,

re-

thing evil

genuity.
Similarly the aliens
even
one another, there seems to be at least
as their "otherness" has intensified
one constant about our nature as over the years and they have manihuman beings and that is that we are fested such paranormal powers as the
not alone. We have a drive toward
ability to walk through walls, to levitate,
wholeness and completion which is apand so on have remained finite, huparent in everything we do. For inmanoid beings who have real limitastance, we join together in intimate
tions and who, in some inscrutable
union and produce a new
whole, the child, We live in
groups because we can acLIKE GOD, THE UFO DIVIDES OUR SOCIETY
complish more together than

among these

sponses along three distinct axes,

There are "those who believe that the
UFO comes to us, whether from an r
other star system or another dimension, and those who regard it as merely
a product of the collective psyche.
There are those who interpret the phenomenon in language which is drawn
from the scientific tradition, even as
they stretch the limits of official science, and those who express open

TO

TELL

seem

way,

to

US ABOUT OURSELVES.
need us as much as we

need them.
All this

suggests that we humans

are beginning to see ourselves as real

participants in the process of creating
unity

and organization. Where older

myths regarded humanity as the plaything of the gods, or as the essentially

powerless subject

transcendent
divine sovereign, the myth which has
emerged around the UFO treats huof a

manity as a real partner in the creation

of a cosmic society. The scientific and
technological advances of the postwar

period brought wfth them grave dangers to be sure. But they also made it
possible, for the first time, for humanity
to

end

its

garthbound existence,

the heavens and return to

journey,

our

and

own

merits, to

to

tell

to visit

of the

imagine someday, on

and through our own

become citizens of the great

efforts

heavenly city.
There have, however, been a number of distinct and even mutually opposed reactions to the- mythic character of the UFO phenomenon. It is

ward an understanding

of

the "relationality," holism,

and self-organizing charis, at the
same time, a desire to respect scientific norms, and to avoid explanations
acter of the universe. There

which lack

scientific credibility.

Probably the clearest and most

powerful expression of this vision came
not from the UFO movement at all, but
rather from Steven Spielberg, whose
two films, Close Encounters of the Third
Kind, and E.T. both articulated and
gave iorm to powerful popular images
of the phenomenon. In Close Encounters, a series of UFO sightings disrupts
the

stifling

routine of small-town

the loveless marriage of a

and
com-

life

utility

pany worker, drawing him and a newfound companion into the Wyoming
wilderness for an encounter with
benevolent aliens whose mother ship
descends from the skies like a technological New Jerusalem. He is chosen
over the best and the brightest to accompany the aliens on a journey into
the heavens. The score by John
Williams
cultural
Built

is

a clear expression of the

at work in these films.

myth

around a series

of

complex and

often highly

abshacl variations on the

theme from Pinocchio,

it

relies

on a

common cosmic connection echoed in

the refrain, When you wish upon a
star/Makes no difference who you are.
Moving out from this mythic center,
there are two other trends which see
the UFD as a sign, or at least an expression, of hope, but differ in their attitude toward official science and thus
in their willingness to regard the phenomenon as objectively real. On the
one side are the secular, humanistic
skeptics closely aligned with official
science, such as the cosmological
principles championed by Carl Sagan.
These skeptics share the UFOIogists'
quest for an inhabited universe, but regard UFOIogy as little better than a
modern superstition. Contact, when ft

comes, will be in binary code and will

be received by a large radio telescope
operated by a consortium of universiThe message will be interpreted
by an interdisciplinary team of scien-

ties.

and conveyed to the secretary

general of the United Nations.
The hard science approach here,
however, is not devoid of a sense of
awe at the vastness of the undertaking
of establishing contact. Keith Thompson, while conducting research for his
book, Angels and Aliens, visited with a
tists

sounds

scentist working on the SETI proiec: in

the California desert. "He was a Harvard Ph.D. -type, cream of the crop,"

treat the philosophical implications of

Thompson

the

recalls, "and he sat there

told me with an almost religious
kind of astonishment, how many chan-

and

nels they

had open, and how much

were

the heavens they

At the other

those

end

of

searching."

of the

reject more or less comare willing to ignore, the lim-

its of official science. Rather, these

believers borrow scientific concepts to
explain social psychological phenom-

ena. David Stupple,

in

an

article

pub-

lished shortly after his untimely death

in

1983, documented the continuities be-

tween the Theosophical movement and

the UFO coniactee and channeling
cults which developed in the 1950s
and 1960s. Not infrequently UFO
groups in the theosophical tradition will
see themselves as drawing out the implications of new developments in relativity and quantum mechanics. Much of
what Charles Spiegel, currently director
of the Unarius Educational Foundation,

phrases such as "The universe

an inner-dimensional energy system," or 'The mind is a giant computei
running off of this system," of "We misuncersiand the universe if we think
only of the finite factors of the infinite
says
is

new physics.
The bibliographies

are

sur-

accounts which

of Unarius tracts

with references te Desqartes

filled

Spinoza, and Einstein. Indeed,

Dr.

who received his degree in

psychic therapeutic science from the
Unarius Academy of Science, wrote his
doctoral dissertation on the political
Spiegel,

spectrum are

who

pletely, or

creative intelligence"
prisingly like popular

Confedwhich had been transmitted to

structure of the Interplanetary

eration

him by the chief scientist Alta of the

planet Vixail. He informed me that his
immediate predecessor, Unarius cofounder Ruth E. Norman, had recently
made her "transition" to a nonatomic
state where she functions as the
archangel Uriel. One Unarius film depicts the trials of an aborigine contactee who suffers persecution at the

hands of his tribe's high priest whose

name, interestingly enough, just happens to be"Seti."
More recently, theosophical conand channeling cults have given

tactee

to New Age interpretations of the

phenomenon which are less audaciously offensive to a scientifically
trained audience, but perhaps even
more profoundly at odds with the whole
scientific enterprise than their theosophical
Ethnobotanist

way

predecessors.

and psilocybin guru Terence McKenna

in his book, The Archaic Revival,
UFO is an idea intended to
confound science, because science
has begun to threaten the existence of
the planet. At this point a shock is necessary for the culture, a shock equivalent to the shock of the resurrection on
Roman imperialism " This shock is
being applied by the "overmind ... a
level of hierarchic control being exerted on the human species as a

writes

that "the

whole.
Our destiny is not ours to
decide. It is in the hands of a weirdly
democratic, ameboid,; hyperintei igent
superorganism that is called Everybody." Where the technophiles sock
wholeness in a continuation of the scientific project of our own civilization,
the New Age movement rejects the
.

whole enterprise

of rational

knowledge

and technocratic control in favor of a

religion centered on the maxim "let go
and let the UFO."
This theme of letting go has also
found resonance among evangelically
oriented abductees. Betty Andreasson
Luca,.the subject of several books by

UFO

investigator

Raymond

Fowler, told

me that her abducdon expediences had

taught her "how real God is and how
he is in control of all things." Even
those abductees who regard their experience as a catalyst for growth report

fear and resistance which they

overcome only through what amounts
an act of religious submission to
initial

to

their captors.

Whitley Strieber repeat-

edly challenges the right of his captors

abduct him and perform medical operations without his consent. Their
to

"We have

reply:
after

the right."

It

is

only

he has accepted this that he is

come to. terms with the experi-

able to

ence and

learn from

lated,

it.

Not everyone, however, sees in the

a sign of hope. Once again the
and perhaps definitive, per-

UFO

original,

ception in this regard comes from popular culture rather than the UFO
movement itselt. Ever since the publication of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds
and Orson Welles' famous broadcast of
the same, we have had a fascination
with alien invasion. We are desperately
afraid that we are being taken over by
a force more powerful than ourselves,
the motives and modus operandi of
which are too complex to be apparent
to merely human reason.

The

notion that the

somehow

phenomenon

is

malevolent cuts across the

between technophile and technophobe, and even across the lines between believer and nonbeiiever. Visions
of a technological New Jerusalem find
their counterpart in an emerging counlines

AN

termyth of secret invasion by gray

aliens from Zeta Rettculi, who are
breeding hybrids in underground
bases hidden beneath the mountains
of New Mexico. Colorado, and Arizona.
This countermyth has found resonance
both among abductees who. far from
feeling healed and challenged by their
experiences, are more inclined to say
that they have been raped and vio-

ORIGINAL

and among

political

conspiracy
a history of

theorists convinced there is

secret contact between the aliens

and
a secret government centered in a
high-level group known as the MJ-12.

One

partisan of the Reticulian inva-

John
Brandenburg, who claims to have
worked on directed energy weapons
and other space defense projects. He
says that the "Star Wars" program in
which he served was actually intended
sion hypothesis

is

physicist

E.

as a defense against the Reticulian invasion. His prescription: "God, GUTS,

and Guns." GUTS refers to the Grand

Unified Theory of Science which he

hopes will "allow us to control gravity
with electromagnetism." He has also

proposed a "Rainbow Declaration"

which declares that "on all matters concerning extraterrestrial peoples," the
nations of the earth "shall be as one."
The theme

of political conspiracy,

FIVE-PART

however, is not confined to those who

believe we are actually undergoing a
secret alien invasion. William Cooper,
author of Behold the Pale Horse, is a'
former naval intelligence officer who,
like

several former. military intelligence

and defense research personnel,

claims to have been shown documents
relating to government contact with extook
the documents at face value. Gradually, however, he came to the conclusion that the phenomenon is one great
big hoax, "exclusively of human oribeing
designed to bring into
gin ..

traterrestrials. Originally he, too,

One World government." The religious

overtones of the phenomenon are all
part of the plot. One World government
requires a New Age One World religion. Mr. Cooper, whose answering
machine informs callers that they have
reached something called the "Intelligence Service," traces this conspiracy
back to John Dewey who, according to
Cooper, noted that the prospect of exmight serve to
unify earth's warring nations. The conspiracy, so the argument goes, is promoted by a secret government which

traterrestrial invasion

includes the Trilateral Commission, the

Council on Foreign Relations, and
other organizations.
CONTINUED ON PAGE

1D

MINI-SERIES
what's on

pur

mind.

Breakthrough theories

and 3-D animation

provide an extraordinary

new view

of the brain.

Premieres Sunday,
October 2
Continue; Monday,

9pm &

Opm

Tuesday,

et/pt

10pm ET/FT

fepuery
EXPLORE YOUR
o.

WORLD
For

mots information,

calf 1-BD0-

They say no man ever died of an idea.

Maybe not. But plenty have died for ideas,
and know from the family genealogy that
my own ancestors helped contribute to that

FICTION By

EDWARD

BRYANT

much

That wasn't what or any of us were

as we plummeted through the floor
I

Cenozoic Era and crashed into

Reptile City. Down through the time of great
dying into the Cretaceous, down past the

machine was out

that the

of control.

Haugen turned toward

Rick

the rest of us

from the right-hand seat. "Captainl canna

hold her together!" He was such a wise-ass,
I

New

for science-fiction thrillers.

But something happened.

The rate of vibration changed. was like

deep dentai drilling when the guy with the
tools gets all the decay out and slacks off on
smelled something
the machine controls.
burning, even as, somewhere deep In my
It

Victorian

elegance here. It was like watching a bunch

of VCR clocks being reset after a power
crunch. About as exciting, too. The digital
readouts flickered backward. Only the
bone-cracking vibration told us physically

mammal

allosaur's claw.

finer theoretician"

like

king of the tyrant lizards and straight toward

the Jurassic. Whoever had rigged the
chronometers on the central panel of the
time machine hadn't paid much attention to

No

imagined, a scurrying

a virtuoso concert pianist.

in our plunge changed. Out of
frustration, she brought her hand up over
her head, fingers convulsing, and slammed
the fist down on the control panel. The crash
echoed in our enclosed, bathroom-like
space. There were no sparks that's only

thinking

Pal's version of Wells.

Mary ("No

Scientist) played her-fingers across the

console
Nothing

of the

George

tike,

cau 9 nt under an

sorry state of affairs.

THE
FIRE

THAT

gut,

felt

our collective

reality

change.

didn't seem to be
saw a few green
fast.
on the board, but couldn't tell what

The chronometers
reading out quite as
lights

they signified.

And

we

then

crashed.

It

was

fine dentist's

again.

Com-

even then. The

Scottish brogue

dritt

wasn't even that

ing the

good.

your hard-drive
straight
into

At the time,

bined with shov-

head

of

wasn't paying

a disk rotating

much

at high

attention

to Rick's
hell

it

humor

bravado or however the

or

should be defined,

just stared, fixed

on the unspooling millennia, and wondered

if it would hurt. Dying, that is.
This was like riding an elevator car

and unbraked down an infinite

shaft.
knew something had to be

uncontrolled
elevator
at the
All

bottom, but

knew was

that

wasn't quite sure what.

we

weren't going to stop

being the time of the

Permian extinction and the great Pangaean
at our floor, that floor

supercontinent.

But

didn't count

TIME TRAVELERS Reeeeeoowww- the

my
'

HELL
FIND THEY MUST

girl

PERSONAL GOES

in

my

say,

"I

out.

heard Lacey, or maybe

it

love you."

to the smell of sulfur, the sight of

cascading sparks rolling down torn sheet

metal, and the sound of frying circuit
boards. If it wasn't hell, it was close enough
I

was still strapped

into

my

seat, but the seat

was canted forward so that was

down into something couldn't a:
It looked like a bowl of rec
meat. Then realized it was the top of Rick
Haugen's head with a large circle of bone
removed, wanted to vomit, but also knew
didn't want to throw up into my colleague's
I

looking

first identify,

the

She gripped my left wrist in

thought her fingers
her right hand, and
were beginning to fracture the small bones
seat beside me.

beneath my wristwatch.
On Lacey's other side, Chuck Furtado
abruptly screamed. It keened high and thin,

woke

itself

from the office"

But not before

called her "the

And then blacked

was me,
I

Mary Clarke was the senior scientist in

charge, and she got to occupy the seat
beside Rick. Mary was a great theoretical
physicist, but
had to help her reset her
digital watch after the spring time-change.
"Dear Jesus, oh God, please save us!"
That was Lacey she turned livid when

at

lining of

Cretaceous!"

MAKE
PEACE WITH

scream ripping

scour the inner

to

skull.

Rick kept yelling into the communicator

mike plugged into his ear. "Mayday! Do you
copy, HarriKon Base? Mayday! Mayday!
We're crashing somewhere in the

THEIR

on Mary,

began

insides

TO A
CRETACEOUS

speed.

skuil cavity.

PAINTING BY
ERNST FliCHS

swallowed

sound returned and

registered

its

all.

it

realized

hadn't

absence. "Robert? Robert,

can you hear me?" Someone punched

me in the arm and jerked away irritably. "Robert,
think you're in shock.
Otherwise are you okay?"
twisted my head to the side. My
neck hurt. Lacey had gotten out of her
seat and was standing balanced on a
red-striped case of medical supplies.

sections.

She grabbed me in a clumsy embrace and started to cry, her dark,

my

conditioner

her.

"I

effect.

sundown. There
to be seen of the sky,
concussive sounds that

distant detonations.

like

think

my

hill."

CRASH

AND

SITE.

MY

EYES BURNED

like

"I'm

Captain

ter.

a toupee.

supposed
Kirk,"

be Bones, not

to

said Rick's funereal tone.

spinning. "Who's

"Me," said Rick, "but

I

is

chuckle sounded like death, "I'm the

rock star, remember? Geology's my
bag. Neurosurgery in a mirror isn't my
idea of a good time.
wouldn't know
my right hemisphere from my left."
"It's not going to be neurosurgery,"
I

said. "Just

some

sewing."

out a ghastly groan. Lacey

hand on his left shoulder,

let

put one
stretched her arm to reach his right
shoulder.
could see she wasn't looking at his ruined head. But her lips
I

moved

silently. Prayer, no doubt.

"Mary," Hurtado said. "Mary's the

other medic. Where'd she go?"

I

finally

looked around us.

We

were

all on a slight slope that steepened

rapidly into a rugged lava wall. The
time machine wasn't in terrific shape,

and mainly

lay

"Yeah,"
said. "Where the hell's
Mary?" Then realized that it wasn't just

crumpled

the senior scientist

Her seat was gone

in

figure this

can handle." His

in

ragged

who was missing.

Ragged holes

too.

showed

the floor of the control area

where the bolts had torn loose.

The terrain dropped severely away
on that side of the wreckage. Lacey
stayed with Rick. Chuck Furtado and
stared gingerly over the side of what
looked ever more like a real precipice.
I

"Don't look good."

nodded agreement. "We ought to

check downslope. Just in case."
"I think we got some rope somewhere," said Furtado. He turned back
toward -he time machine.
"Never mind," said.
had seen a
glitter of aluminum along with a flash of
blue jumpsuit about ten feet down. It
was all obscured by the deepening
shadows and the rough-edged juts oi
I

cooled black lava.

"You first?" said Furtado.
"Okay."
felt

started

my fingers

looked,

saw

slip

down

the chair into place.

ON THE TITANIC.

WATERPROOF DOORS

My own mind was

way beyond what

and the stressed aluminum

made a perfectly good litFurtado and wrestled
Then

CAVITIES

SEEMED TO CLOSE OFF

LIKE

got the best medic training?"

Rick

MY SINUS

STARTED TO WATER. ALL

The new voice was Chuck

Furtado's. The systems analyst held up something that
looked

We

Mary

think'll

said.
sighed and
mind. "Okay,
get her back up the
decided to leave
in her chair since she
was already strapped tight

made up my

A WIND-BANK

let's

and

said,

failed us, too.

"Whatever you

CUE,

It

Lacey

it

got the rest of him."

bub-

since

out of a grave.

"Mercy,"

that,

she was going to

like

work,"

thought might
."
have been "Lazarus
"Hey,

me

alive

OF SULFUROUS FUMES ROLLED THROUGH OUR

was Rick's
a message wafting

something

got to

had been.

back's broken, too," said

of prayer.

ON

voice, like

we

of the

more than a matter of minutes.

touched her throat below the relocated line of her jaw and wasn't sure
be

de-

think he's dead."

"No, I'm not."

wasn't so sure about

didn't look to

said.
at the partial

after

and out
her teeth

can't just leave her."

presumably

much
rolling

Rick.

"We

in

Chuck and exchanged looks.

Lacey put her hands together in an atti-

same

just close to

heard

sounded

was

part

whistled

wound where

tude

was

wasn't

The rough

Mary. "Whoo-ee," said Furtado, "she's

pretty bad." But she was

could even feel a pulse.

Furtado crossed himself and his lips
moved like he was uttering a prayer.
doubted it would work for him any better than for Lacey. Old man Harrison
had presided over a prayer breakfast
and a solemn ceremony to invoke
God's protection upon the time machine.
could hear the snap and pop
of cooling wreckage above us. Obviously the metaphysical fix hadn't been
in, But then secular engineering had

it

the wreckage scattered below.

up

to close off

waterproof doors on the Titanic.

There was a yellowish halflight illuminating everything, but

couldn't tell
it was all the crap
in the air, or

"I

seemed

sinus cavities

could have snavca

it.

bling

"Thanks,"
said, and got off
helped her up.
"Rick's hurt bad," Lacey

was so edged,
with

alive. Air

whether

glanced

air,

messed up

like

"Hey, hold on,"

said. "Help me
down from the seat. can't do anything
trapped up here."
"Jesus," she said. "Jesus, give me
strength." When
tripped the safety
buckles,
slumped down against her
and she helped break my fall toward

the

above Tranquility Base.

At least we had air, -though the at-_
mosphere wasn't terrific.
On cue, a wind-bank of sulfurous
fumes rolled through our crash site. My
eyes burned and started to water. All

With about the

the sulfur stench.

capitation.

we'd main

the Apollo lander run out of fuel about

my

face.

shampoo and altook away some of

familiar smell of

mond

like

just dropped to the rough

rock surface. The image in my head
was what would have happened had
ten meters

hit me again.
said, "Just stunned.
"I'm okay,"
Don't slug me again."

curly hair crushing against

me

to

about twenty feet

and then

She

The

looked

It

tonal, zed

down

Mary's headrest.

Then, with Furtado pulling from

above and me shoving from below, we
manhandled chair and dying woman
back to level ground.
Lacey left Rick to come and hover
over our leader. 'What can we do?" she
smoothing Mary's blood-soaked
hair back irom her eyes.
"Mot much," said-.
"Pray," said Furtado.
Lacey prayed, lips moving silently.
said,

Mary said something. Her eyes

ITckered open, stared, and she spoke

some of which could make out

bent close. " they come?" she

again,

as

said.

"Who?" said.
"From base," said Mary. "Did they
right
" She coughed
up bright
I

come

we crashed?"
"Sorry," answered. "No one came."
." Mary closed
"Then they're not
her eyes. "They can't find us, or
maybe
She coughed harder,
"
painful, wracking.
they all died at
"

red blood.

right after

the slope.

on the stone.

the blood. Mine.

When

The rock

waited while the systems

analyst scrambled back to
the wreckage and found
the rope. He tossed a loop
secured it around
to me and

"

"

So we were on our own. Nobody

the other end."

"What do you mean?" Said Lacey.

"Won't they

come

for us?"

Mary didn't say anything. So far as

tell, she was dead now.
couldn't
hear her breath bubbling through the
I

could

thicker blood. "What she meant,"

"is

thai

"But they didn't."

shook my head. "Chances

the permutations of Lacey's

somber words echoed in my head. At
this point,
figured the four of us were
I

about as lost as human beings ever

had been. And maybe ever would be.

are,

unstrapped Mary Clarke's body

from the control chair and wrapped her
in plastic sheeting that had protected

some of the crated supplies. We set

her on the downwind side of the crash
site. Then we set about building shelsince it was getting cold. Furtado
constructed a minimal lean-to
around Rick Haugen's chair. He made
clear he didn't want to be moved.
ter,

Chuck Furtado spoke up. "Whatever

knocked us out of the time stream
might have just been a bounce from
some event up at HarriKon Base.

and

Mary's right. They might all be dead."

"They can't be," said Lacey. She
stared at me. "Nobody would know."

Nobody would know. She was

This whole mission

right.

had been clandesHarrison

damn his
Christian soul and his Libertarian head

for

Old

man

hadn't wanted a word

commerce

of this

leaked

to

Naturally

the government.

He

held the battery lamp while

Furtado took Rick's hands not that
I

would make any difference because

it

of

only after The sswSng

nally

nodded

looking

off,

some

for us," said Furtado,

he was trying

like

to smile

bravely.

expect

"I

enough."

put the

need it soon
case down by some

we'll

of the other stores.

"You want to know where we are?"

glanced back at Chuck Furtado. He
hunched over what looked like one of
I

our laptops. Battery power.

"I

it

Then

was

it

session that found the drug-case.

gave Rick a jolt of painkiller and he fi"Save,

We

they' won't."

tine.

All

said

any time-traveling rescue party would have shown up about

ten seconds after we crashed. That's
the neat thing about time travel."
to Lacey,

knows.

think

a hundred

can guess,"

said. "Within

years or so."
"You're being a smart ass," said Furtado. "Listen up. When
said where,
million

and Lacey sewed the

top of his head back on.
don't know
did it. Probably it would have
been just as practical to cover his cra-

meant

plastic wrap, but

seemed
the right thing to do.
Rick didn't feel much of it, but every
in a while, as Lacey drew a
tight, he would jerk from
up and cry out. Lacey
his cry with a little sob, then
brought the needle around for another
pass. It seemed to take forever, but

you're pretty much right." Furtado

tapped the keys a few more times and

his paralysis

nium with

it

like

it."

"Probably pretty close

why we

to

where we

left."

"Allow for a

little

precessive

squinted

at the 'screen.
coordinates.

He

drift,

but

rattled off

remembered all too well the cold fusion

And time travel turned out to be
a viable process, he wanted to make

once

some

threaded knot
the shoulders

damned

echoed

"Okay,"
said. "Wyoming, The
southwestern desert. Rock Springs?"
"Thereabouts. We're about in the
middle of the Green well, what'll be

flap.

if

sure the HarriKon Corporation

had its hooks sunk firmly

theD.O.D.gotwindof
it.

in

long before

the

Green River Formation."

GREAT MOMENTS

SATIRE BY ERIC JAY DECETIS

True enough. A ways a long

ways up the line in the Eocene, this
would all be under water, The Green

River Formation held one of the biggest

deposits of iossil fish in the world. The
layer was a half-mile thick and con-

tained something like 12 billion fish.

After Jurassic Park had rekindled public interest in the very distant past, entrepreneurs, with the blessing of the
state, had started mining fossil fish for
the collecting trade. It was a boom
market. But beneath the vertebrate fish
laye's ofhe". older Iroastres waited.

At

after

it

was almost completely black

darkness

because

fell.

of the

could see no stars

smoke and cloud

and

cover. To the side

had no way

of

knowing what compass direction that

was, just that it was neither up- nor
could see a dull orange
downhill
glow at an indistinct distance.
guessed was volcanic activity,
Before dusk, the smoky curtains
had parted briefly and thought I'd
seen some greenery maybe a klick or
two distant. If there were lurking

it

carnosaurs, they weren't making their

presence obvious; suspected they really wouldn't spend a hell of a lot of
time foraging too close to neighboring
I

vulcanism.
Since there

apparent

to

be no imme-

life

mal blanket and a rolled towel we

could use as a pillow. Chuck Furtado
curled up close to the feet of the nowsnoring Rick. Lacey and prepared our
I

bed a dozen feet away.

The corporation would never have
allowed lovers to be assigned to this
pioneer expedition, but then they never
knew. Who would have expected a romantic liaison between one of Mr. Harrison's most trusted aides and some
scuzzy contract paleo jock? The romantic and the realist, the skeptic and
the devout. Who would have thought it?
It

had

mones.

and could count on spending my own

great extinction in hell. Hell. She

Modem?

was a
in her memos. Like
Fodor destination.
The problem was, Lacey had soft,
curly hair
wanted to feel tucked up
under my chin while touched the
capped

it

it

length of her firm

body with the

little

me. It was only a few minutes

laying eyes on her at an orienseminar that knew wanted a
laying on of hands. And much more,
figured old man Harrison would look
dimly on one of his recent scholarly acquisitions opting to follow his dick
after

first

tation

to

be chemicals. Phero-

And Lacey
summary

both

circling

each

We made

a great deal of

Explore

should
didn't.

OMNI Magazine

Lacey risked
and damnation for

Well,

firing

me.

The

first

time

we made

love,

Lacey

on America

spent an hour in fervid prayer, begging

absolution from God. After that, though,

she loosened up quite a lot, though

time together she
to keep tight hold of the staurolite cross she wore around her neck.
That cruciform Georgia stone, Lacey
enjoyed pointing out, had been created by God. Dark brown, it looked like
don't think she ever took the
blood.

Online

when we spent

FREE

tended

silver necklace off. Lacey unconsciously polished the dull stone befinger.

It

reminds me of home, she'd say when

reminded her of the mannerism. Home
was Conyers, distant even among Atlanta's more remote suburbs. Lacey
told me about the old part of Conyers,
I

10 Hours!

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worlds of scionce. ^oience liction. and the
future Willi info mi n ..on x:c. insights :rom

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month's

readers

issue.

OMNI's

when

and entertaining

the trains passed.

loved her. It
don't know why
wasn't just her body, though that always cxci.ed me nightiiy. There had to
be something in the reality that she
possessed things never could have,
and maybe the opposite was also true
I

for her.

had no roots not since left

was,
real sense of where
I

homeno

Lo other

sibling publication,

Magazine.

,"us:

if

my

dick were a

lips

and my arms and

profound
her life still had a solid structure of
which could only dream.
She'd told me about pine and
kudzu, red clay and dogwood Looks
like a blizzard, come the spring. Once
had visited her at home. felt the
distraction,

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or had been, or was going. Lacey, on

the other hand, had a plan, and a past.

And even

Talk

on interactive message boards or

send e-mail to the OMNI staff Participate

in Uve conferences and evenos. and enjoy

and the railway station converted into a

community theater; but the tracks were
still active, and so the actors had to
freeze in place during performances

my

don't know.

We'd spent weeks

other like wolves. It was clear we had

nothing in common. She thought Amy
played Ministry
Grant had sold out,
discs in the lab and didn't- bother with

headphones.

back to the Permian. Probably

have stuck with the fossils. But

tween thumb and index

seemed

apart from us, we

finally decided to try to sleep without
the need of a sentry. There weren't
even any insects in evidence. Smart
bugs. We each had a lightweight therdiately

Own A

clusion from the ranks of the rirjiieous

rather than tracing his favorite fossils

hungry.
first

to out-

nastyfun of each other.

She even said outright at one point
was surely well on the way to ex-

that

rest of

At the rate things were going, we'd

probably be among them.
"You two want some supper?" said
to Furtado and Lacey.
"Don't forget me," said the mostly
inert Haugen. Already fossilizing, but
still

scon esca ating

iigl'lhoai'tec

right

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breeze. saw all the yards full ol dogs,

pickups, refrigerators and junked cars.

"There are people," said Lacey

Lacey ducked her head down

below trie edge of the thermal blanket
and tucked up against my neck and
upper chest, Her words were muffled
as she shivered. "Robert, He'll save us.
know He will. But in the meantime,
don't mind admitting it. I'm scared to
I

death."
I

could

tell

those capped

letters in

her voice and knew she wasn't talking

about our boss at HarriKon.
kissed

image
it.

of Rick's hair,

twisted

Lacey's

my neck

and

a
her cheek.

ear,

tried to forgot

little
"It'll

and kissed
work

out,"

maybe

two.

isn't

but

it,

4004

felt

B.C.,

Then she said, "God. created man

when He created dinosaurs, Both must
exist out there. The people may be
primitive, but I'm sure they will help
if

we behave peaceably."
"God damn it!" Lacey

us

baby Earth."
"They were found," said Lacey.
is

on

this

"They found fossil evidence of people

along with the dinosaurs."
"No," said. "That was all a hoax. Or
it wasn't, it was sloppy research and
I

if

"Tomorrow morning," said Lacey.

fix up some sort of fitter or
travois. We can take turns carrying

"We can

.vi?hf.il

thinking."

"You're wrong," There

ORU

:Ve botn ncocod Ihc warmth, the

Lacey was just wearing her long
and worked up above
She moaned and put her
hands around me. And as en-

teeshirt

it

her breasts.
small

tered her, thought heard Lacey whisker again. "You're wrong."

I

The last thing I'd rememberer:; before

slamming down into a broken slumber
was the small scream as Lacey came.
The first thing heard as fell out of
sleep was another scream. This one
wailed with fear, not pleasure, fear and
pain and the knowledge that death
stsiked close by
came awake blinking, irying to exI

stiffened.

said, "Can the creationist tripe! There

are no people. We're them. We're all

knew better. Where we were

marooned, didn't give any of us any
odds on living much beyond the week,
said, but

clamp down on

kiddo. There are no people out there.

Just dinosaurs, and that's about it."
Lacey was silent for a moment.

there

miliar.

heat.

tried io

the flash of anger. "This

the top of her head, flashing a quick

in-

sistently.

was a

found sureness and strength

in

pro-

her

Rick."

myself from the tangle that was

Lacey and the thermal blankets, and
saw death was indeed standing above
Chuck Furtado, Against a hellish light
that presumably was an eastern suntricate

rise,

a saw-toothed silhouette bent

down and nipped at the man on the

ground.
was bipedal and quick, a
It

"Where are we going to go?" said.

"We can walk out of here. There
have to be people, there must be
I

help."

"There are no other people,"

said.
"This is the beginning of the Cretaceous, maybe the end of the Jurassic.
There'sjustus."
I

"No, you are."

mine.

don't

know what

She looked up at me and looked

down at her. Sparks could have
jumped the gap. kissed her and her
I

responded. There was no-stopping

after that. We both needed comfort and
reassurance that something was slill 'alips

head higher than man-sized, and then

the scythelike claw behind each
I

saw

filled

ruscular log. Fo.' (he barest moment

admired the slock biological engineer-

remember,
ing of the deinonychus
had never before seen a dinosaur in
the flesh
and then tried to confront

the predator that planned to breakfast

on the systems analyst.
"Get away, you son of a bitch!"
screamed. knew we had ooth a Remington pump-gun and a 30.06 hunting
rifle packed somewhere in the supplies.
didn't know where. There was a
steel bracket that had come off the
control panel down by my foot.
picked it up, whirled it around my
head, and hurled it as hard as could
at the deinonychus. It was luck, not
skill. The bracket slammed into the
I

drew the
a few moments.

side of the reptile's jaw, but

creature's attention for

it

Then, as though deliberately malign,

ignoring me totally, the deinonychus
rurneb back to Furtado, raised its ngh".
and sliced down through fhe

foot,

man's abdomen. Chuck Furtado

screamed one more time, The cry sank
moan,
The deinonychus snapped at the air
and looked almost like was grinning.
Then it grabbed one of Furtado's feet
and began dragging his body out of
to

then nothing.

it

our campsite.
in row something else
a disemboweled gauge,
think. The
reptile hissed around Furtado's foot,
I

but didn't relinquish

its

prey.

head bumped on stone as

body disappeared off toward the
east. The panting of the deinonychus
dice away.
realized Lacey was holdFurtado's

his

ing onto

me for dear life.

"Don't

go

after

it,"

she said.

"Chuck's dead. There's nothing

we can

do."

"You can get

me some

was Rick Haugen's

breakfast."

go

It

TV reception

Gef

"Life's gotta

yon never had

before, ivith the

...

Antenna Multiplier

He giggled

voice.

from his upright chair.

only S29 25 *

still

on."

But

for Rick,

going

life

was obviously

not

gave him some

washed down with

Lacey and

well.

of the dry rations,

water from the precious stocks. When

made him stop.
shot him up with more of the chemical
balm, but could see the supply was
running low.
looked at the suture line around the

he chewed, the pain

lined
You won't
but you are

it il"

tern,

if

vou are anniented

riot

that

you could never tmiov

ir.e.,

(he

you

will

to

a.

cable

now get TV

before. Inside

its

reccf

plastic

;a small technic

n';r,'v

Muliipliei

and

ill

static,

and

ions that were until

br:

ving shadows. In

eliminate any outdoor

'' needs no outside power
gets :ts
pheric or seo.ir.ipliiL constraint;;!. The Mali ;;.'.':'
' or dio teleusiO" -*<i :Kelf, l.o
"V.nce" riiJ-.t through voi:r TV sot. You riace the Mi'Hiplirr
iron a isearbv table, or tan" it on the wall. And, of course, you car; bid your messy anc
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in new -.tations or. multioand and short-wave receiver?, tor new- enter iain.'.n en alternatives

iihle to

i'.

had

set

in fast.

Angry colors and disgusting

fluids

top of his

skull. Infection

flushed vividly every time he tried to

move his jaw, and facial muscles
tensed.
"I'll look for the antibiotics," said
Lacy quietly. After a while she came
back from crawling through the wreckage on hands and knees. She held a

few white tablets

her

in

hand.

left

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"Things spilled during the crash," she

said.

"I

found these."

"Are they antibiotics?"

"Trust to His

they're not,

will,"

said.

she answered.

"If

don't think they'll hurt

him."

185 Berry

"Bullshit."

But

St.,

San Fra

forced Rick to swal-

too, figured it
low two of the pills.
gave him the last
couldn't hurt. Then
I,

of the painkiller.

He died before dusk.

We'd taken turns watching over him
turned out, Lacey
during the day. As
found a good graveyard while was
busily sorting and cataloging our expeit

rescjrces wnile still keeping an

eye on Rick. I'd found the rifle and
shotgun, but the ammunition remained
among the missing. discovered
enough food and water to keep us
dition's

going for a few more days. even

found an envelope full of inspirational
literature for the businessman. Perhaps
I

we'd need

kindling.

About midday and against my adLacey had gone over the hill the
same direction taken by the deinonychus making off with Chuck Furtado's
body. By my watch, she was gone for
less than hour. She returned excited.
vice,

"There's water," she cried. "There is

a stream we can drink from."
"Did you try it?"
"A little. Trouble is, the water was full

fl

Vacation for foe Mind, Bodq. Spirit

Bring n friend.

Moke some new

sunset with o brand

of bodies."

must have looked startled.

She laughed. "No, Robert, not peo-

ones. Stay up

new fried. Ask

n total

all

night Sleep

stranger la rub

want when you wont and os much os you wont,

l-'s

oil

'til

noon. Hove a

pifirj

&

Soul.

":iis is

hdonism

II

Watch a blozing

colodo.

an yoti back. Water-ski. Scubu and

ol induccc.

ond there

sail.

is

Ear

what you

no place

like

if.

ple. Small dinosaurs. A lot of dead

ones, but don't know how or why.
They probably came there to drink and
something happened to them."
"Must make for a pretty rank waterI

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hole,"

a ways.

It

tried the water. There's

what tastes

but I'm

still

alive."

more, I'm not

we

since

you've both got so much strength."

looked away. "I never saw him after
never talked to him before
left home.

said.

walked upstream

"I

gets better.
lot of

like

for

thirsty for

the

first

his son,"

time

deny

got here."

nodded. "We can hunt the dinos

dirt,"

said Lacy.

stared at her. "So?"

"We can bury Mary there. Chuck

found most of him on the way.
The deinonychus must have gotten
too.

Lacey

said.

self

looked at my inventory sheet,

"We've got a couple of shovels here. Is
what you want us to do?"
"'Dust to dust'," she quoted. "It's the

faith.

to her.

So we

said,

"I

faith that

you could match up

his. Maybe
was the same
Same hymn, different lyrics."
it

us. There's

same

time

no way

dropped mine.

to

was

said harshly,
"I don't think so,"
"We're here. And there's no god to help

that really

was wrong

"It's just a matter of faith," she said

"and rinding the purpose in all this."
We locked gazes. She dropped her
gaze first. The truth to tell, it was about

the

went for a late walk, rough

Some of the
cloud cover seemed to blow off to the
east and we were able to see by the
light of a very large and beautifully
bright moon. This time we didn't go to
the burying ground or the adjacent dinosaurs' graveyard. We went the other
direct on, toward the eventual sunrise,
toward the molten glow that tonight
was more cherry than last night's orange. It was the wrong direction to en0>:"!NIJED ON PAGE r?

Lacey and

back

against

tired."

right thing,

"It

him."

Turning,

walking another road."

"Maybe," she said. "Maybe not."
She spread her arms, taking in this
whole, raw, prehuman world, "I think
maybe you were just trying to find your-

for food."

"There's

he died."
"You even pretended you weren't

mineral content,

She grinned. "What's

out."

terrain notwithstanding.

think."

did

it.

She and

spent about

twenty minutes lugging Mary Clarke's

body to the stream bank. Then, while
Lacey dug shallow graves, went back
and picked up what could of Furtado.
There wasn't a whole lot, and it didn't
fill a garbage bag. The deinonychus
obviously hadn't gone away totally

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wasn't concentrating.
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"Just stay perfectly

still,"

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izing too late

"I

But when we returned to camp after

our burial detail, we found Rick Haugen with his eyes wide open his
mouth, too but no life left in him.
"We'll bury him in the morning,"
acsaid. Lacey stared at
cusatively, thought. "What?"
"I try to understand you," she said

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said nothing.
"Robert," she said mournfully, "I researched you pretty heavily after we
I

first

made

love.

I'm not a

dummy, you

know."
said, al"So what did you find?"
ready suspecting what would hear.
Lacey stepped closer to me, "I used
watch your daddy," she said. "Well,
listened to him on the radio. Then
saw him when he preached on the
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strongest, fire-breathingest, most
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Dept3091j

TIME
NOTHING BUT A

IS

CLOCK
There is no time. There never
was any time, and there never
will be any time. Time as a
separate thing does not exist.

Language

itself

seems

to

ARTICLE BY
GEORGE
ZERROWSKI

defy

PAST,

Phrases such as "the beginning

of time," or "when time began,"

PRESENT. ANB

There

may be

psychological impossibilities.
Are these kinds of statements

merely strange and curious

verbal train wrecks, or do they
hide realities that may be even

more

bizarre to our everyday,

casual

way

of taking things for

granted? Minds as diverse as

those of Immanuel Kant, Kurt
Godel, and Jorge Luis Borges

have

in

FUTUREA DEFINITION
OF TIME.

different varieties

of time, as there are differing

kinds of infinities, but "time
always was, is, and ever shall
be." To imagine a time without
time, a space beyond space
eventless time and the sheer
nothingness of purely empty
space seem to be logical and

one way

or another

reality of passing
Science has developed a

denied the

and dependent on an observer's

motion. The question today is
not whether time
is

our attempts to understand time.

serve only to reinforce our intuition that time is forever, that it

could not have had a beginning.

a property of space and matter,

ILLUSTRATION

BY
JEAN-FRANCOIS

PODEVIN

how

about

hobbled by the

is still

fact

we cannot completely

cape the

historically

es^

developed

ideas about the nature of time

that

linger in our minds.

still

These ideas are a mixture of

intuitions and inherited notions
that steer our thinking in the

manner

incomplete computer
We cannot wipe our

of

programs.

minds completely clean and

we

real but

ability to think

But our
that

think fresh

is

time real?

time

about time because

a syswe do
Even the

find ourselves inside

tem

of

space-time which

not fully understand.

metaphoric conceptions

oldest,

of time have the virtue of capturing

some aspect

of

how we

experience time, or what

imagine

What

it

we

to be.

the history of our con-

ceptions of time shows is

one idea after another was

and found

to

how
tried

be inadequate,

the growth of experimental

physics put restrictions on what
until

view that denies Newton's

we could imagine about time, in

favor of what we could say

conception of time as an absoas

experimental evidence.

time.

lute container, in favor of time

about

it

according

to the

best

As with concepts of space, the two

main intuitions about time are: that time
is an absolute, eternal container in
which all things happen; and that time
is nothing by itself, and cannot be understood apart from physical processes. Variants of absolute and
relational theories of time have attempted to assimilate or accommodate
each other's features in a variety of ways.
For example, perceived time is- a
local experience of change, but
agafnsl an absolute background time.
Human beings feel time passing because our bodies are running clocks.
Stop all such clocks and eternity {another kind of time)

will

remain.

In

other

words, our time is a kind of illusion, requiring perceiving minds and running
body clocks to experience events, but
is nothing by itself. There is a tendency
to have absolute time somewhere in
the background while remaining true to
time's specific, observed aspects.
A purely relational theory of time
goes one step further by claiming that
it

makes no sense

monads, mental

ing

no extension

entities that

have

wilhoui having Io create something oul

into which everything has been

programmed by God, and even though

The only problem with it is

can be no empirical verificaits truth outside of a priori reasoning, We may, however, be able to
create such a universe ourselves in the

monads are windowless, their programmed experience includes every-

there are aspects to Leibniz's psychol-

or duration.

Monads, beings

of nothing.

and me,

like "you

are indestructible, eternally existing entities,

thing that

will

ever .happen to us,

all"

we call perception and fellowship

of other monads. These prog-arnmee'
experiences interlock without ever

that

meeting, to give us the world

in

which

we

think that

receive a telephone

we know,

we see

a tree or

call. In this sir king,

,-;i:\s'.he:.ically unified monism, all problems of explaining space and time are
seemingly abolished.
The time we experience in Leibniz's

physics is simply the length of the program given to us by God. We are literally on tape, experiencing a given
world as if we were seeing it in the ordinary way, but the live world from which
it was recorded does not exist. There is
no world outside the program that was

that there
tion of

virtual realities of

ogy

was

imaginative constructs, psychological illusions that illustrate our need to end the

is

useful; out

less subjectivist than Leib-

niz. For him space and time are the

forms that mind puts on things-in-themseives, as they exist outside our perceiving minds and these noumenal
things have no spatial or temporal
qualities in themselves. The universe
we see springs into being only when

minds work, unconsciously, on thingsas-they-are, in what we call perception.

is not an arbitrary universe, since
we cannot simply invent what we perThis

ceive, but only things-in-themselves

are absolutely

real,

and

unfortunately,

unknowable.

seems to
same idealist

Albert Einstein

in

which the foreground time we

experience flows, and that all

conceptions of eternity and

absolute time are merely

cyberspace. And

may one day be

kidding.

Kant

to talk of

absolute, background time,

that

today's scientist would naturally conclude that in his monadoiogy Leibniz

MONADS, BEINGS

AND

LIKE

YOU

belong to

ME, ARE ETERNALLY EXISTING ENTITIES,

INTO WHICH EVERYTHING

PROGRAMMED

solute, eventless duration, like

EXPERIENCE

is

a
of

events, especially in the

special theory's denial of

HAS BEEN PROGRAMMED BY GOD. THEIR

questioning process. Ab-

this

school, in which reality

subjective ordering

simultaneity for greatly

separated
observers.
Clocks separated by one
light-year, for example, can
never be' known to be syn-

a universe outside the uniINCLUDES EVERYTHING THAT WILL HAPPEN TO US.

verse, simply makes no sense
chronized, because comat all, no matter how much it
munication between the
teases our imaginations. At
clocks is limited by the
the very least, there is no empirical
deposited inside each monad.
have
speed of light. Similarly, events that
way, direct or indirect, to demonstrate
the perception programmed into me of
mighT aopear simultaneous to two obsuch a reality.
another person; and that person has
servers who are close together, will apTo imagine time flowing, to think of it
one of me; we dovetail perfectly. A crepear not to be so to a third observer
as a separate entity apart from everyated world is unnecessary; this is the
who is moving away from them at some
thing else, is at the very least a marvel
created world, and as real as it gets.
large fraction of light speed. But this
of abstraction, a long leap away from
seemingly subjective feature of the
And in the naive realist's sense, it is as
given experience in which time is felt
muGh outside of us as any world of special theory is set aside in the genspace-time and matter would be, since
as weighing heavy on one's shoulders
eral theory, in which the geometry of
or fleeting, in short supply, or as dragis bestowed by an OLlside agency,
space-time is presented as a literal
ging. The Monadoiogy by Gottfried WilThe attraction of Leibniz's world is
Newtonian reality that serves to explain
helm Leibniz completely opposed the
that it seems to provide all the fundagravity. Einstein believes in a real uniabsolute
verse
Newtonian conception of
mental answers as to what the universe
outside our minds. To stress the
apparently SL.biectivist features in his
space and time, in which space and
is made of
mental objects and how
time are real, infinite containers in
it functions;
but-this merely pushes
Work is to forget their grounding in
which everything happens time being
back the demand for explanation,
physical fact.
an infinite container of duration, and
since these mental objects require at
Subjectivist, or idealist, tendencies
space an infinite container of extension.
least as much explanation as any rnain the history of physics are important
For Leibniz, Sir Isaac Newton's
teria reality in the ordinary sense of rebecause they emphasize, however
space-time was inexplicable. His alterality, nothing exists at all, everything
strangely at times, the importance of
native to Newton's absolute space and
being made of mental substance. One
the observer, the entity that experitime was a radical relational theory that
is reminded of James Jeans's famous
ences the scheme of reality. We strug
did not have to explain space and
remark that "The universe begins to
gle to differentiate between what is in.
time, gravity's action at a distance,
look more like a great thought than like
us and what is out there; or more propmatter, energy, or any of the real things
a great machine."
erly, between what we imagine the unithat a physicist must deal with; for
Leibniz's universe is the perfect simverse to be and what it may in fact be.
Leibniz, reality is made up of pre-existulation, a way of having a universe
Entropy, or time's arrow, flows in one diI

il

82

OMNI

CONTINUEDONPAGEI-

ESSAY H LIVING BY THE RENOWNED

m
AUTHOR ROBERT BLOOH

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROBERT SEBREE

I've

been

ing

about

it

I'm

going

to

and

ranting

rav-

for years, but

about the overpopulation prob-

here at

60

during the past

hard for

my desk

me

reader attention. But

time

it's

is all

not

fact,

that

fiction.

years of a professional writing

I've been dealing

In

my

or vice versa. I've

least
In

the body count of

that's

my job.

roll

left

piece of paper into the

typewriter, load

and

it

with words,

the words kill peoplethis time when do it. I'm

myself, and it's not
a story anymore. It's real.

Only

killing

just

I'm going to die.

it's

yet. I'm

of us,

is,

I'm not

don't

want to live
enough to

for-

just long

be around

for

George Burns's

00th birthday.
All right,

I've

got a

one.

enough of that.
Get a life.

it

might be a good

me

to

Having

lived

a long

time,

me

of

inertia

have

so many

of life's simplest pleasures.

not prepared Like

never mastered the

suppose,

producing a piercing,

I'm
of

art of

tried,

my

to think

think,

about,

no exception.

In spite

professional pre-

occupations, there's very

right am. And

anyone who isn't afraid
he
or she has found a way around
the problem. Becoming a
vampire might be nice, but how

Damn

we

most of us, because it

something we're supisn't

posed

think

now to accept
and

when

you know you're going to

be dead soon.
And because you 're

do you go about

instant coffee

it's difficult

of the

of dying is crazy, unless

but every one

idea for

Not as much as

the way.

scared.

cagey about exactly

roa 1 Have

months, weeks

agrees

in

things you think about

all

real

centerfold, but her staples

These are some

and on-

got me. They're

pretty

cheated

The problem

in

ever

and other pets without

got

of internists,

They would be

that stalling

Soon,
ready

most

that

who wants to
an evening dress

easy, and

Get a death.
Just what do we know
about death, anyway?

cologists.

all

tech-

it's

a vam-

isn't ail

any of them. once attempted sex with a Playboy

mechanics

And

it,

he made house calls.

his absence I've had
on the machinery and

to rely

my

modern

didn't call back,

existence

Let's get real.

gastroenterologists,

have never molested

for

maybe
I

to think of

pire's

sides,

dogs, cats, canaries,

as well

Come

harboring carnal desires for

agree that

total

my

owned

were wiped out in my speculative fiction, and nobody

But

instead of pajamas? Be-

or knowingly

system.

tumors, but instead

supernatural horror work-

sleep

done hard drugs

ingested garlic into

only too happy to dispel false

fantasy

gotten into gaming, haven't

So much
nology, and

physician, but at

tales, entire populations

can

in-

a child,

career

and dying. Scores

have perished in my murder mysteries and suspense
stories, hundreds more

always

prognoses,

Fu Manchu may
been your choice for

not have

and blood type we will return

your call as soon as

just

than yesterday's tender loving

a family

with death

my fingersor

ears.

and today's high tech isn't

necessarily of more value
care. Dr,

new to me.

For most of those 60 long

succumbed

fu-

very

Granted, the medical

practitioners aren't
fallible in their

Not that the subject

matter

Is

my

have never operated a

computer or seen the light
at the end of the carpal tunnel.
I've missed out on learning how to play a musical instrument, or even a guitar.
I'm hopeless in sports, never
I

very

near indeed.

years,

to believe that

another

story opening designed to attract

wiggle

And

once, the doctors

at

ture they foresee

every workday

I've sat

this is not just

this

all

me there won't be

many tomorrows, and the

Sitting

it's

able to snap

things

the near future

tell

Soon.
as

in

off

tomorrow, or sometime

now,

I'm going to die.

put

tlnate, to
until

lem, personally.

just

I've

now

do something

But now that I've a

personal interest In the subtis.

ject,

time

decided

to find

it

was

high

out what to expect

Here's what the experts

it?

but can't say

little

ever bothered to learn

about the actual rigors of mor-

had

much success. All that my

long-distance phone call pro-

offered:

When you

die,

your

heart stops. But the

technically alive for

duced was, Thank you

for

still

calling Castle Dracula.

We're

three or four

more minutes.

sorry, but ail of our blood-

Digestion occurs for the

suckers are busy right now.

next twenty-four hours. Blood

THINK ANYONE WHO ISN'T AFRAID OF DYING

for several hours,

then

settles downward so that the body's

downside is darker and more mottled;
if the body lies face upward, the face is
pale. Rigor mortis takes place in from
two to six hours, depending on circumstances, and reverses two or three
days later, By this time the stomach is
bloated with gas. The flesh decom-

poses, the veins and skin turn blue,

and black. The

the cornea

purple, green,
tissue turns to

eye

UNLESS HE OR SHE HAS

EST HOW DO YOU GO ABOUT IT? I TRIED, BUT CAN'T SAY

remains viable

to

IS CRAZY,

FOUND A WAY AROUND THE PROBLEM. BECOMING A VAMPIRE MIGHT BE

jelly,

no longer

is

melt

clear, the

softer
of the

eyes begin

sockets.

The

away from the

lips,

in their

skin pulls

legend hasn't got the answers,"

If

maybe it's better to try history. After all,

when you get right down to
history is
it,

one long death report.

Sample; In China, in 1640 a.d., the
warlord Chang Hsien-Chung killed
30,000,000 people in less than a year
really just

in

Szechuan Province

area was transformed

range

of

The entire
a mountain
hands, feet,

alone.
into

body parts

Sound
read

it

incredible? Yes, but

again

it

consolation here; not from forensic

medicine, organized religion, or disorganized corpses in history.
So where to learn the lessons about
dying and how to die? In the end (a
term which is no longer just a figure of

speech

heads, torsos.

sounds

pretty dull,

if

you

too-

roots
in

to

no

feel

me),

fiction

which

must return to my own

and drama, the areas
and worked all
I

I've lived

these years.

seems to me that the

British and the Americans
are the real masters of
It

leaving a grin. Bacteria thrive,

worms

NICE,

HAD MiCi SUCCESS.

recodec message. Sorry, but we don't

have that information at the moment.
Our Fritz is down.
Not much information, and no

horror, only

hunger. Maggots are moving

deathbed drama, though

mouths, devouring decay.

they had to learn their

techniques through trial and

Yetch!

going

I'm

But

be cremated.

to

The

details aren't important.

body

an

just

is

me

real

I_

the end, forensic

in

What

happens there?
And according

falgar':

you don't stay inside

comes

out,

choice

of

looks

after

its
it?

picked
In

it.

who

welfare,

fect,

reached in the film Citizen

Kane as Orson Welles whispered "Rosebud" as a last

pro-

Here's an answer

at

random;

northern India,

Bodhgaya.

is

in

the cemetery of

Kshetrapala, the Guard-

Dead. A demon with blue

a yellow face, bristling orange
three bulging red eyes, and a

ian of the
skin,
hair,

four-fanged

grin,

he

is

clad

in

a corpse

and meaningless. We don't know

who Chang Hsien-Chung was, and not
we can't really care. History
has reduced him to the same anonymity as that of his 30,000,000
dull

knowing,

victims,

and they too remain statistics

human beings whose
we can share. Aside from

skin

and a tigerskin loincloth. He is

mounted astride a huge biack bear,
in one hand and a

rather than

carrying an axe

the health hazard provided by those

skull-cap of blood

mountains of cold cuts, there's nothing

here for us to care about. We don't
what happened,

So much

for

the other hand,

well as out,

protection?

in

the other,

your security guard.

if

On

you're dead- inside as

who needs this kind of

And think of the hassle

sufferings

know

and it's
army of vicany answers.

or why,

not likely any of that vast

tims

will

return to give us

you'd get with the animal lovers after

Call Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory

they heard about tigerskin loincloths

and ask if he can restore any of those

body parts to life, and all you'll get is a

and

riding

66

OMNI

on bears.

makes perand perfection was

But practice

part

what

Who

tects

from the mouth of Stan Laurel.

after

me

and you have a

another million
of

at Tra-

this line of dia-

much
more appropriate coming
logue would have been

versions-telling you

becomes

wounded

"Kiss me, Hardy."

Obviously
to

million different religions,

you're dead. The

A good example

error.

mortally

the

-exterior;

interior.

is

would be Lord Nelson's last

words to a captain when

word, revealing himself to

be a sledophile.
Though not all of us can
expect the sentimental sendoff of a
Little Nell or get yanked to heaven by
stagehands who pulled the stunt (and
ropes) for

examples

Little

Eva, there are easier

to follow.

Nobody ever died

better than the

the early days of sound film.

them breathed their last in
a clean double or king-size bed
in a handsomely furnished bedroom of
a town house, a country manor, or
even a noble palace. Generally
propped up on pillows, and extremely
well-lighted, the moribund usually had
British

Most

in

of

luxury;

time to deliver bits of wisdom and

philosophy before quietly expiring all
this, mind you, without a single tube or

Dominate the mind.!:

Dominate the world!

ft-

Ullilll

.1
g

PSYCHSTRON
he USSR, they
research into

it's

up

to

you

to find

it!

AS,.

inJTERVIElAJ
irte

with physicist Frank

Tipler
Christian's,

and
one

his wife at

New

of

Or-

and

leans's finest restaurants,

something becomes very

clear:

Caution is not his style. The

gusto and verve with which
Tipler consumes haute cuisine lathered with rich sauces
and rounds oft the meal with a
challenging dessert,

is

sive. His cholesterol

may be

impres-

count

the red zone, but

in

be

isn't concerned. "As you

know," he guffaws cheerily,
"my Omega Point theory pre-

dicts

we

Tipler

will all live

shows a

forever."

similarly un-

fettered appetite for ideas.

"Good

scientists," he says,

We

"have chutzpah.
ing to ask

are

will-

any question what-

soever." Even so, few of his

peers would dare

to

make

the

fantastic claims put forth

Tipler's just

in

published Physics

of Immortality. Using only

math and physics, Tipler
builds a theory about the universe from the beginning to
the

end

of time, predicting the

existence of God, resurrection

dead, and life everlastone and all.

Enough to blow most crackpot detectors right off the
scale. Yet Tipler is no softhead baking mysteries of
quantum physics into New
Age marshmallows. A tenured
full professor at Tulane Uniof the

ing for

versity,

a reviewer

for Nature,

and an established cosmologist, he is "widely known for

important concepts and theorems in general relativity and
gravitation physics," accord-

ing to the

grand old man

of

cosmology, astrophysicist
John Wheeler

of Princeton.

Tipler's last book,

The An-

thropic Cosmological Principle,

published

in

1986,

was a

PHYSICIST

PROPOSES A THEORY
OF ETERNAL
THAT YIELDS GOD.

LIFE

PROFESSION:
Physicist

and cosmologisi

PLACE OF
BUSINESS:
Tulane University,

New

LA

Orleans,

BOOKS WRITTEN:
The Physics of Immortality
(Doubleday, 1994)
TheAnthropic Cosmohglcal
Principle (Oxford, 1986)

THEORY

ONE

IN

"God, a personal being

who created

the

universe out of nothing,

exists, loves us,

and

will

one day

us

all

resurrect

to live

heaven

in

forever."

EVIDENCE FOR
THEORY:

TAKING THE SPACE-TIME VIEW, YOU SEE THE WHOLE UNIVERSE, FROM THE
END OF TIME, FROM THE ULTIMATE FUTURE GOD COMING INTO EXISTENCE.

Principles of physics

SEX IN HEAVEN:
because
most of us want
and the beings' of the
far future will be
nice and let us have it. It's"I'm predicting

it

it,

a small part

BEAUTY AND

WISDOM:
our

adjust

ages .and make a few

improvements

in

our

physical-appearances,

It

advanced age

47.

think

some

my

book,

will

.disagree with

many

of

my

colleagues

ON

REALITY:

"The fundamental

computer

is

theultimate

level of reality,"

from MIT and the University

Point,

He suggests the Omega

with a cartoon of Tipler

and

Point

riding a

magic

car-

As we

pet, scribbling

away

with

This time brickbats

were

singularity
a boundary point
where space-time curves to
infinity and ceases to exist
computational power will

flying.

hurtle

toward

this final

was completed.

rise

so high that future be-

ings

will

ture at the

Max Planck InstiMunich when the

in Germany

beings.

tute

ever

in

book appeared

this spring, but the invitation

was rescinded
ute.

at the last min-

The fax read: "Dear

some amount of
.

speculation

is

stimulating, but

you have gone too tarso

in fact,

of

science might
"I

far,

the public reputation

didn't

know

suffer."

differential

equal ens could be so controversial,''.

Tipler cracks.

"I

in

re-creaie

And we

previous

all

will

live for-

a virtual-reality heaven.

Now
and

Maryland, he did post-

of

doctoral work at Oxford and

3-3'keley, before arriving at

Tulane

the equivalent of God.

is

friend invited Tipler to lec-

Frank

my

assessment."

telligence with infinite knowl-

some

papers

"o be an as:roohys
cist. But he's always been a
polymath, reading widely
across disciplines and Into

the history of science. and

theology. After graduating

away,

Barrow

wanted

the uni-

million trillion years

Immortality

intelli-

eventually ex-

life will

edge by the Omega

have been made

was 20. Though
when they see

Goo

the lecture] even once."

Tipler predicts that

pand throughout

verse, growing to infinite in-

the end of existence

of

mental improvements
since

[in

gent

of science."

hurled before the Physics of

my

20 rather than
current

any serious scholar

Still, he couldn't

wss-Vi going to mention

shake a sense of "some

snake oil being peddled."
The page was ornamented

be

certainly prefer to

I'd

D. Barrow,

John

prompted the reviewer in

Nature to say the volume
deserved a place "on the

too, while we're at

it.

cosmologist and as-

British

trophysicist

shelf of

of the infinite future."

"We can

shocker. Co-authored with

47, Tipler

raised

abama.
project

in

His

was a

first

science

letter written in

first

to

earth satellite

were then being publicized.

Von Braun's secretary replied,
regretting he had no rocket
fuel for Tipler

By age

five,

on

Tipler's class in

to

him

in his of-

fice and at Christian's, He

chose the restaurant partly
for

cuisine and partly be-

its

cause
is

of

its

name. The

typical of Tipler,

irony

whose

idea of his work as serious

fun

is

contagious.

Anthony Liversidge

was born

whose plans

launch the

in

ward talked

Andalusia, Al-

kindergarten to Werner von

Braun,

1981.

in

sat

global relativity and after-

as requested.

he knew he

Omni: Are you a crackpot?

Tipler:

don't think so. But

no crackpot thinks he is,

right? An astronomer once
published a
for

list

of the rules

determining a crackpot.

Well,

if

you read Darwin's

Origin of the Species, you'll

find

he was a crackpot by

some

of the criteria. I'm very

conservative scientifically. I'm just

changing the boundary conditions in
cosmology from the beginning of time
to the end of time.
accept all known
I

physical laws, and just

change the

point of view.

Omni: What

is

the

message

of

your

book, Physics of Immortality?

Emmanuel Kant claimed

Tipler:

the

three fundamental problems of meta-

physics are: Does

God

exist?,

Do we

have free will?, and Is there life after

death? turn those questions of metaphysics into problems of physios, and
solve them, answering yes, yes, yes.
I

how I'd summarize my book.

Omni: Aren't you confusing physics

That's

metaphysics?

with

Tipler;
cally

The

is

typi-

about turning insoluble problems

into

problems

of

physics and solving them. Like one of

Kant's problems: Has the universe existed forever, or only a finite time? Kant
this was fundamentally insoluble too, and had a purported proof of
this. But in this century, we've turned
this supposedly hsoiuule metaphysical
problem into one of physics and solved
it, to find the universe is 10 to 20 billion
years old. I'm just taking the next step.
thought

My
that

And

only by physics.

Omni: Reductionist belief? Why do you

yourself a reductionist?
Because believe everything
can be understood on the basis of
physics and almost everything on the
basis of our currently understood
physics. If the Einstein field equations
are correct, and you know the initialdata, then you know everything about
the future. If you know the initial conditions at any time, you know the conditions at all time. That's standard
Laplacian determinism. You put initial
or final boundary conditions into equacall

and compute the results,

Omni: So are you a scientist or theolo-

tions

gian, or both?

history of science

metaphysics

of

physics.

Tipler:

is that a problem
can be solved can be solved by

reductionist belief

Tipler: Like

am

of the Ameri-

a natural theolo-

gian, saying the only thing you'll learn

about

God

reductionist statement of physical real-

What the average [Christian] religious person with no knowledge of

physics hopes for will n fact occur.
Omni: Won't physicists give you a hell
of a lot of trouble?
Tipler: Yes, surely. But
never leave the
realm of physics. This view, that the
basic tenets of religion can be explained by physics, has been held by
all great Chris! an Ihooiogians.
quote
St. Paul to that effect
the basic attrib:

utes of
light of

based
of

most leaders

can Revolution,

ous science takes a 600-paco book:

But can turn every single word into a
ity.

derives from nature

rather than from what

itself,

He chooses

to

purely on Aristotlean physics,

ot

tablished by natural
Catnolic dogma.

God can be esreason is Roman

Omni: What leads you to predict we

all be raised from the dead and

shall

reveal to His prophets.

live

Omni: What does your theory tell the

man on the street?
Tipler: Reducing the Omega Point theory to one sentence, it is this: God, who

Tipler:

is a personal being who created the

universe out of nothing, exists, loves
us, and will one day resurrect us all to
live in heaven forever. Now defending
this outrageous statement using rigor-

God can be seen by the natural

reason. St. Thomas Aquinas

his five proofs of the existence

God

That the existence

forever?

We're fundamentally of no importance in the gigantic scale- of things.

only mention -resurrection as a trivia
aside at the end of a lecture on the
I'd

As a

physics.

physicist, I'm interested

showing how powerful this theory of

the future can be in constraining the
past. To understand the physics of past
and present, you must anchor your
frame of reference on the future.
develop that technically. You can only understand what's going on now if you
impose boundary conditions at the end
of time. Omega means final, as in the
Bible's "I am the Alpha and Omega."
in

The Omega Point is the point

end of time, and the fact that

at the

it is a
point has significance in my theory, because
means unlimited communicaend of time, without which
life vojld cease to exisi.
The standard model of a closed universe does not end in a single point,
it

tion at the

but a three-dimensional sphere. My

theory says no, it has to be a single
point. It's difficult to test,
admit, which
I

why put a question mark as to

whether or not it's called a prediction
is

Let's

do a quick

calculation of the rela-

tive physical sizes of the future

past.

ume

We compute

of the past light

mensional part
extending back 10

conethe

of
to

into universal history

four-di-

universe

the

20

billion

and

that with the region outside

years

compare

it.

The

cal-

volume of our fu30,000 times larger than

our past, even using a small estimate
for the s ze oi ihe universe.
If life is to continue forever,
certain
properties of the universe must be
fixed now. Take the solar system. It's
perfectly consistent with Newtonian
culation tells us the

ture is at least

The ws(M.M0ofMWf//

and

the space-time vol-

Not everyone gets to

meet

..and

kill

his maker..,

him

.Origin

I
JEH^jgl

"! JACK HERMAN

->|i{nil

BRUCE LEMONS

-S JOIN UPTON

SEGHAUES, LANCE GROOMS 8 JAMIE llll

mechanics to assume the earth is the

center of the solar system. But it's
hopeless mathematically: You'll get a
complete mess when you try to analyze
it. But if you make the
sun the center,
becomes trivial. The simplicity
of the underlying physics becomes
clear if you adopt the appropriate coordinate system, I'm doing the same
thing to the universe as a whole, saying
that anchoring your frame of reference
on the ultimate future enables you to
understand the past. If you try to understand the future by the past, you'll
get a mess you can't possibly interpret.
Omni: Doesn't the real world have too
the math

many unknowns

to project

very far into

the future?

Assuming life goes on forever

enormously constrains possible futures. Chaos is the technical term for
Tipler:

the instability you're referring

don't

know everything

slightest errors amplify

ther into time,

and

to.

If

you

precisely, the

as you go

after a while

can't predict anything.

Coupled

far-

you

to that

the unpredictability of living beings.

They have free will, and you can't preis

what they're going

to do. If I'm
however, on the large scale these
two sources of unpredictability cancel
each other out, and you get predictability. The Einstein equations allow

dict

right,

chaos, so you can predict the

for this

c':"g-:-ocale structure of

the universe.

Omni: Surely we may blow ourselves

and the planet to bits, and your eternal
life

postulate with

Tipler:

verse
bit

My
is

is

to

deterministic.

more subtle after

free will
let's

if

it

assume

tainly

accept the

The
all,

situation

there'd

were completely
it's

would be

uniis

be no

true. But-

state.

close to the
eternal

Omni:
Tipler:

it

the

those of Einstein or
or not we're going to blow ourselves to
bits was locked into concrete 20 billion
years ago. There's no contingency in a
deterministic space-time; everything
was fixed at the beginning of time.
In the quantized Omega Point theory, this determinism is only approximate. We have free will, and can blow
ourselves to bits. But If we do, there
must be at least one other intelligent
species in the' universe that does not
blow itself up. Our destruction is unlikely now. Instead, we'll begin interstellar colonization next century,. after
which the destruction of the earth won't
matter to the postulate.
The Omega Point theory is that life
goes on forever, and as a consequence, the universe is closed, with its
final state a single point. That it is a
point is imp'ied by life going on forever,

this ultimate final

far

is infinitely

It

even though we

cer-

mechanics were
Newton. So whether

deterministic, as
if

because that means communication

must be unlimited as you approach the
Point. In subjective time,, an infinite amount of thoughts are thought

Omega

between now and

it.

strategy

life.

Is

will

final point,

Infinitely

away, and thus,

be resurrected

we

long

will still

have

life,

God a He?
say He when

referring to the
Judeo-Christian God.
use He/She in
the Omega Point theory. don't want to
I

there.

want personhood
But sex as we Know
is a pecu-

liarity

of eukaryotic biochemistry, not of

use

It,

because

it

any fundamental personhood.

Omni: So He/She doesn't exist now?
from our point of
view. Taking the space-time viewpoint,
you see the whole universe at once,
from the end of time, from the ultimate
future. From our point of view, He/She
is coming into existence. From God's
point of view, He/She is drawing the totality of reality into Himself/Herself as
time goes forward. God's point of view
is ultimately the more fundamental of
the two; but we have to look at things
necessarily from our point of view.
Omni: Why do we care
life ceases at
Tipler; That's only

if

the

end of time?
You have

Tipler:

to

be very

careful

in

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cosmology when

talking about measuring time. There is no time that all clocks

measure. Your clocks depend on the
environment. Newtonian mechanics
doesn't use the earth's rotation as its
clock. If it did,
would be logically impossible for the earth to slow down. But
until Newtonian mechanics, the earth
was the fundamental clock.
it

Right now, we're using proper time

it is proportional
in the pres-

because

ent environment to atomic time, which

can vaguely be thought of as the vibraan atom. But in detail, proper
time is a ridiculous time scale to use
near the final state. Atomic time is inappropriate nee- aincuiariliss where there
are no atoms. There
use subjective
time, which is measured by the number
of individual thoughts you have. The
end of time is infinitely far away: An infinite number of thoughts will have been
thought between now and this ultimate
state. We will be brought into existence
again near the final state, and will contion of

tinue to live forever

That's

in

subjective time.

why we should be

interested in

the far future as human beings. As

physicists we should be interested in it

because most of reality is there!

Omni: How will life spread throughout
the universe?
Tipler:

It's

physically possible to build

space ship

that can go to the other

side of the universe if you use extreme
nanotechnology. And secondly, we
have to realize everything this desk,

human

mates of the upper bound

how

humans is a pattern of
information. In principle, you can get
the whole of the pattern, which is the
human, and code it inside a computer.

powerful a machine
a human, M3 i5 bits

The

this building,

mean

Omni: What does

life

text? People like

Schopenhauer

talked of a

force or

life

in this

conhave"

be emulated by a
computer.
will

be

suffi-

give
of

esti-

required: for

of information.

123
will need 10
bits, as
Roger Penrose was the first to compute.
As you go into the future, the

entire universe

amount

of information

storage diverges

123
to infinity. Eventually, however, 10

will.

No such things!
Omni: So you can write all the informaneeded to reproduce me or you

Tipier:

tion

some other place or time, and send

across the universe?
prefer to use the term
computer emulation. An emulation is
an exact simulation, an absolutely perfect copy. Everybody's computer emulates other computers, although the
average person is not aware of that. In
any running computer there are several
computers there. All but one of them
are virtual computers, perfect imitations of other computers. Writing comrrtaxfe into your machine, you see the
physical machine, but in reality an emulation of another computer exists inside this machine. But it exists only as
it

Tipler: Exactly.

being, indeed the entire visible

universe, can

ciently powerful

bits of information.

Using physics, specifically the

Bekenstein Bound, you can prove a

be insignificant in comparison
computer capacity of the
So in the far future the whole
present universe will be emulated
bits will

to the total

universe.

using a tiny fraction of total computer

capacity. If this is done by our descendants, once they've taken over the universe and gained control over its
resources, they will emulate into the future the universe as it now exists. We
would come into existence again the
present universe at a higher level of implementation, just as inside my computer there is a virtual machine, and
possibly a virtual machine inside that, a
hierarchy of implementation.
Omni: But will this "event" be only an
information emulation, not an actual
physical one.
Tipler: The event will be the present reality, but at a higher level of implemen-

'

tation.

No experiment conducted

inside

the simulation could distinguish between the emulation and the real thing.
An emulation is -the thing being emulated, an exact simulation in every conceivable respect.

Omni: Sitting here, how do we know we

are not an emulation?
We don't. We could be an emulation in the far future. Anything you
have now will be there then. You'd think
as you do now. Beings that are perfect
copies are no longer copies. They are
Tipler:

the beings. Right

now we

being run as a program:

are

One

in

effect

state of

the universe succeeds the next as

we

move

forward in time. You can do that

as a computer emulation. There'd be
no difference in our experience now,
and as our emulated selves, until beings in the far future start to change the
emulation such as moving us into a

different environment.

Omni: How can people exist as emulaand retain control over their existence? Explain that!
How do you know you have
control now? From a higher level of implementation you'd have no idea what
the universe is at its most basic level.
tions

Tipler:

In the far future you'd never deal with

the base computer, only with the emulation. You are inside the emulation.
How do you know you're not part of it

now? You

Now

don't.

given their power to improve

life situation, would the beings of

the far future permit us to exist in all.
misery? No. They'll improve our
lives very rapidly. That's my argument.
grant you it's weaker than the argument that the power will exist to bring
the present universe back into existence. That can argue on the basis of

odd outperform fm

the

this

luxury

s kuiopce.tt

fit

Fujiyama Ceramic Pen

still

only SS^"'

I'll

physics. The second step is ultimately

a sociological or biological argument,

an estimate
future

of

be motivated
are

now

how

the beings in the far

I'd claim they'll

actually act.

will

to

emulate us, just as we

emulate the first living

trying to

cells, our ultimate ancestors.

Omni: What is your definition of the
soul that's resurrected?
Tipler: Like the average person,
define a soul as the essence of the
human beingthe difference between
a corpse and a living being. But unlike
many, use physics to tell me that the
fundamental difference between a living being and a corpse is a particular
program being run on the body, most
I

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importantly the brain.

Omni: A robot could have a soul?

You only doubt it now

because we don't have a computer or
program powerful enough. This concept of soul is not unfamiliar to Christians if they go back to original
theology. St. Thomas Aquinas followed

.!

Tipler: Certainly.

iB5 Berry Street,

San

Francisco,

CA94107

Aristotle in defining the soul as the form'

of activity of the body.

meant what we now

By form

Aristotle

call pattern. Activ-

ity means it's in motion to distinguish

from a corpse. Activity is what mean
by pattern: information being coded in

Thinking of buying a

it

the body. The activity is, in essence,

natural selection. A person is a pro-

NordicTrack or Soloflex

gram you can talk to, that can convince

you it is like you.
Omni: Hasn't a lot of information about
each person and his or her life been
preventing this future emulation from occurring precisely?
Tipler: That won't stop us from resurrecting the past. A crucial consequence of my free-will theory is that we
lost forever,

cannot know everything happening

now. But the future being will know
something about the present, just as
you know something about Schopenhauer.

historian

home gym?
After trying the Gravity

ft

7 nut of 10

Don't
sad

tiiey

make

would now prefer

tikiylji! Gravity Edge.

would define the past

as the collection of all histories that's

consistent with what he knows in the
present. Thus you'd make emulations
of all those possible histories, and the
real person would be included as one

emulate all
you don't know prewhat happened, all possible universes consistent with the future's

.;.,.

..

.,

...^

,,,...,.

.::/.. ':

..

of the emulations. You'll

possible variants-

if

cisely

knowledge of the present visible

verse, and guarantee the current
verse

Omni:

is in
If

mistake!

uniuni-

your collection.

you are going

to

fill

virtual

95

399

v.:

..

.:.;:. '::

'

cBF^p^vrr^
1-800-592-EDGE E ,o5

world with zillions of slightly varied

copies of me as am now, why would
be delighted?
Tipler: You want to know if this specific
you will be there? That is guaranteed!
Omni: Yes, as one possibility of myself,
I

not

zillions.

mere

Tipier: Zillions of realities, not

But these

possibilities!

are here now,

pretation of

if

zillions of

yous

the many-worlds inter-

quantum mechanics

is

cor-

accepted by many physias now, you

unaware of these other
yous. But this particular you will conrect,

as

is

it

cists. In the distant future,

will.be totally
tinue to exist.

Omni: If life is information, the existence of eternal life is only the eternal
oxisience of information.
and it's being coded; information processing going on forever is
a reductionist way of saying life going

Tipler: Yes,

on forever.

Omni:

Is

that

why some people keep

extensive diaries, do great works of

or

art

deeds?
It's

is

not there.

isting.

An

extraordinary event that

affected him as a child, but was unmentioned in his journals and no one

is

not

now

ex-

That Schopenhauer can return

existence only if the entire visible

universe of the late nineteenth century
is emulated in the computers of the far
You have a very limited form of
immortality when you try to live forever
through your works.
Omni: How will we eventually take overand control the universe?
Tipler: It won't be Homo sapiens. If our
into

species has a typical mammalian lifewill live only a few more million
years. Our descendants
probably intelligent robots
will use rockets to expand from our present isolated point in
the universe to eventually engulf the
whole. Then we can use the universe's
time,

it

to force it into patterns we want.

doesn't have to be us; somebody has
to make it. It will be able to engulf, pattern, and control the whole universe
and must, to survive.
Omni: It seems impossible for any life

chaos
It

to control galaxies.

Tipler:

one way of seeking immortality. Schopenhauer, in a shadow sense,

stiil exists in your mind. But all aspects the full power of Schopenhauer

Tipler:

else thought to recover,

future.

Chaos

allows a

to amplify, after

little

a while,

nudge here

an enorImagine a row of
to

mous change there.

dominoes, each of which

is

slightly

domino

Omni: Wl at about oss of energy?

Tipler: Then the system is not chaotic.
According to general relativity, the system is chaotic. The universe will expand to a maximum size and then
contract because it's closed. But by
moving matter slightly here' and there in
just the right pattern, you can force the
universe

collapse at different speeds

into certain patterns.

to

and directions

fire a projectile so that

moves by
a larger object whose orbit is slightly
deflected by it. This builds up from
planets to stars to whole galaxies. That

You

is

it

how

the

game

is

As the size
goes to zero,

played.

of the collapsing universe

gravitational energy the ultimate

source of energy goes to infinity.

Omni: How did you first formulate this

theory of yours?
Tipler:
read Freeman Dyson's, "Time
Without End," published in the Review
of Modern Physics, in which he asked
the question, Can life go on forever?
thought he was insufficiently reductionI

ist,

didn't

go the

full

way

in

reducing

life

define life as something

coding information preserved by nat-

to physics.

Molecular biolog:si Colin

ural selection

the next and so on

Cairns-Smith, of the University of Glasgow, and zoologist Richard Dawkins at

nudge

the

larger than the next. This

hits

until you .have a gigantic stone pushed by that slight

of the first domino.

Oxford, have come up with essentially

same definition, What unites us is
our fierce reductionism. We don't want
a definition of life locked to the DNA
molecule, because you can imagine a
life form that is not. If an E.T.-\\ke creature came in a spaceship, and his
chemistry wasn't DNA-based, we'd still

want

to call

him

alive.

Investigating whether

forever

was

life

can go on

the start of the

Point theory. Concluding that

go on forever

in

Omega
life

can't

an open universe,

said, Let's look at a closed universe.

any physicist would say, Of

is closed
course not. If
will expand
to a maximum size and recontract. As
Initially

it

it

get smaller, the temperature

will get hotter and hotter, and as it approaches the final singularity, the temperature will go to infinity.
Any human will obviously be incinerated and crushed to zero volume. But
is it possible for information to be encoded as you go into that final singuit

starts to

The singularity is on the boundary of space-time. You approach, but

larity?

it as
long as you are in
space-time; but the energy is going to'
infinity. Information is always encoded

never reach

as occupied or unoccupied energy levels. There are discrete levels of en-

ergy

a gap

between one

level

and

As you approach the singularity, all you have to do is make sure the
energy levels that encode information
are at higher levels than the tempera-

the next.

AfUTinnATTER
UFO UPDATE:
The

devil's design;

UFOs as war toys

for

anqels of the dark

ry of

UFOs? The

first

came

tr

V sav,

from

KmBBBbB
the spot." Despite this ghost-

and

evil,

with

imple, or leaving scars

Wmfflmwm
rid

juctees. For Pacheco

Blann these seemingly

ingible clues

"We

are dealing with

itelligent beings,"
.

meant UFOs

lation alone.

whatever cover they can."

and Blann. a

in Catholic,

'

"So

>

ling

not of our world but interacting

sligion.

It

is

our belief that what

io,

reDutation

is

considerable. Pacheco. 49.

5d States Air Force, during
geting of

Minuteman

missiles and the tracking of satellites for the

North American Aerospace Defense Commandhich keeps watch on enemy craft that pose a
to the United States and Canada. He was
chairman of the mathematics department at the
Air Force Academy before retiring as a lieutenant
ballistic

it

doubts about wL.

evil." Pacheco adds,

in

free

years, then

worked as

in

the

will

much UF

the evil nature of

disregard of

citing the aliens'

will.

order to undermine traditional Christianity-"

Early comments on Blann and Pac

have been positive but not without rt
is firm and tl.

"Their grasp of the data

plausible," says philosopher Michael

aning

"When these beings discuss God, they

set themselves up as the true savior of humankind

human

...

3P

phenomenon must

be Dre

All

is

flawed. Yes, there

is

G
a

__, but this does not imply satanic

kinds of people are critical of, even hostile
.

league with the devil?

to. th

don't think so.

PATRICK HUYGHE

AfUTIfUlATTER

advertise to the gen-

take sperm from p

frequent

probably disaointed local resident

ceptable sample, whi

could add up tn a*s n

as $2,600 a \
But why does the
I

...

...Jl,"

says Evan

ik target onl
college students? "If

a patient

Follas.

Laboratories, th ._
idical lab

WRONG

THE

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or junkies, are desperate[y trying to return to the

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on the physical, emo-

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the

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LOCAL ATTRACTION.

initial

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a person

the media attention

In fact,

was so

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kind of

opening week, Follas invited the general publie

bility

the possi-

of a true spiritual

and the press

inside.

Unfortunately,

i**

of

many

people,"

she says,

West

his

sperm

has, the better

Our
he adds,

sells.

bestsellers,"

intense that

drags him or her farther

away from

addictive spiral that

more education

someone

runs the sperm bank.

hirr

sees no difference in
the sperm, he admits that
"the

that after

taste of spiritual

possibilities,

," says Follas, "but

a college junior

Although Follas

HAS BECOME A LUCRATIVE

expansiveness

initial

is

INDIANA'S SHOF
MALL SPERM BAN,^

high. "But the ironic thing,"

she notes,

enters
a Grof,

Thirst
" 'Harper

of

provided by the

jne

^^^^^^

be they gamblers

"are

donated by Indiana
University medical stu-

dents." Anita Baskin

Le

Gr

addiction.

Once

addicts

little

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i

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kes you feel as though

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In Grafs view, many ad-

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derness hiking,
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covery

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Keith Harary

community, from which

we

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center level features

VA archways

central reacto

THE PLASTIC SAUCriRS

SPORT A HATCH
DOOR AND TINY SEAT;

ayS
-

guard.
id

provided by

OR

ALIEN FIGURINES.

8l
Nellis Air

Range

1989.

in

ager

of plastic kits.

"We
it."

im might

mean

such deep black aircraft

as the Stealth Bomber ai

craft

many

in

the

RAISING THE DEAD

;

at

:38

23, 1991.

observe the scene while

his body lay dead.
But that's not quite
what happened. Selzer did

lW
|

"sl

But after

Mortality,
"

out

vital

signs
it

wiites, his

back

to

gestion:

body shi

life.

The sug-

single

ire,

if

'iT

radianl

light,

it

an angelic

pelling th
life

after

death

is

lo

many

theology can you use to support your

position?" For himself, Peters says "as
look at ihe Hebrew scriptures and the
New Testament, don't see any basis

SCIENCE & RELIGION

Seminary (one of the GTU famPeters is head of ihe CTNS's

Human Genome Project research
team, which comprises geneticists,
theologians, and ethicists. One of the
most troublesome issues his team has
had to tackle, he says, is that "DNA
has already acquired a sort of tacit
logical

for arbitrarily taking

ily),

this

sacraiity in our culture." He points to

the fact that Jeremy Rifkin, the tireless
advocate against germ-line genetic en-

gineering, launched a petition which

human DNA ought not to
be tampered with on principle. Although Rifkin himself has no particular

declared that

commitment to religion, he convinced a

large number oi church leaders to sign
his petition. He was able to tap into a
deep well of religious sentiment which
has come to surround the famous spi-

is

DNA and

just isn't in there. But for

that's

gians

saying

where heaven and earth meet.

where
it

is

it

seems

essentially

to

It

some reason

.fall.

For theolo-

an old question;-

How does God relate to the world? In

this case, does God relate to the world
through DNA?" There are no easy answers, and Peters is the last to suggest
there might be. Indeed, he says, his
team has been working on such questions for three years now and they are
really just beginning to understand ihe
full scope of the problem
let alone
having any solutions.
Another thorny issue the CTNS-HGP
team has come up against is the prob-

"we are violating the sacred

when we get in there with our wrenches
and screwdrivers."
But, Peters continues, "You can
raise the question; Who says DNA
ought to be sacred? Where does that

of genetic determinism. As researchers have pinpointed increasing

numbers of specific genes for
Alzheimer's disease, cystic fibrosis,
colon cancer, and so forththere has
been a growing feeling in many quarters that human beings are nothing
more than biological machines programmed by our DNA. That view is becoming especially prevalent now that

come from? We would like to be able to

say to religious leaders: What in your

about genes

ral

molecule

ters puts

the feeling

that,

as Pe-

it,

'

lem

some

scientists are also starting io talk

for behavioral traits

ThUS i54l CAPTAIN

fi \m

is

mv

kd,

such

as aggression and alcoholism. From a

theological perspective; genetic determinism is untenable because
leaves
no room for free will and therefore undermines the very foundation of ethical
behavior. If we are merely machines
programmed by our genes, then there
is no such thing as genuine human
freedom, and we cannot be held accountable for our actions in the eyes of
God or, for that matter, by the state.
Traditionally, genetic determinists
it

have been opposed by those who

argue

that the environment also plays a

role and that living beings are a product of nurture as well as nature. Yet Peters says his team has become
"dissatisfied with this two-term approach" and that some of them are
starting to suggest "there must be
three parts to this: your genes, your environment, and finally, your self." After
all, "it is the self which makes decisions," be it the decision to get up
every morning and run five miles or to
murder your mother. "But where does
this self come from? Is it merely a produci of genes and environment? It
doesn't look like it. That's where we feel
we're going to have to work in order to
understand real freedom rather than
just indeterminacy."
The issue of human freedom, or free

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will, is

one which Peters sees as

crucial

not just for the religiously minded, but

for society at large.

we come

If

to re-

gard ourselves as entirely programmed

by our DNA, then anyone could walk
into a courtroom and plead innocence

on the grounds

that their

genes com-

pelled them to commit the crime. In

fact, Russell tells me later, that is already beginning to happen. The question of biological

determinism raises

the whole question of

bility;

human

responsi-

When, how, and why can people

be held accountable

for their

Peters points out that this

is

actions?

an issue

which theologians are uniquely qualified to help us grapple with "because

human freedom has been a major topic
for us for 1 ,500 years. We have thought
quite a lot about this."
Nonetheless, dealing with such questions in the light of the

new

genetics

is

no piece of cake. With a laugh that

sounds like the first rumblings of a volcano, Peters tells me his team has
"forced David Cole, [their molecular biologist], to look at

Only S14.99

DNA and

tell

us

where the genetic bases for human

is." They want him to look at
rates of genetic mutation and the like
and "tell us where in all the science
is room for free will." The purpose
is not necessarily to come up with con-

Crete answers, a task Peters acknowl-

edges as probably impossible, but

people turned up

to listen.

Similarly, at last year's

to

meeting

of

begin to explore seriously this crucial

boundary beTweer sc erce and religion.

the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), there

were several sessions devoted to science and religion. Again they were
packed out. The sessions were so popular it is rumored some scientists were
annoyed and voiced the opinion behind the scenes that this was unsuitable material for the AAAS. But not all

theologians must start somewhere.

If getting theologians to take science seriously is one-half of the equation, what about getting scientists to
take religion seriously? In many ways
us,

is an even harder task, for as

Nancey Murphy notes, we live in an
age which has "very positive attitudes
toward science and very negative attitudes toward religion especially in the
academic world." Yet like all the people

this

spoke to, Murphy believes that times

are changing and that both the general
public and the academic community
are becoming more open to religion.
As anecdotal evidence, she tells me
that a year and a half ago she was invited to sit on a panel at the University
I

Berke.ey with Australian

and Roger Penrose to discuss the interaction of sciof California at

physicists Paul Davies

ence and

religion.

when she was a

doctoral student at

that very institution, Murphy says such"

an event would never have taken

attitude toward conventional. religion

place.

was

In

the Seventies, the prevailing

disdain, but

scientists feel that way. Both Charles

Townes and William Stoeger told me
they have seen a much-increased interest about religion from their scientific
colleagues in recent years. Stoeger
says that those who are publicly committed to their faith are finding that they
"can be a theological resource within

the scientific community." Surprisingly

perhaps, he also expressed the view
that "there are a fairly large
scientists

some

now two thousand

number

of

who are religious believers at

One of the principal roles

level."

he sees

for the

CTNS

"is to

be an

invi-

tation to them."

Twenty years ago

there

OMNI

week

strain of

With the geneiic revolution already upon

freedom

106

and

each.

R, or send $14.99 plus S3. 50 (S8.00 outside U.S.) shipping a:

o Corp., Dept. R, 108 New South Road, Hicksville, N.Y. 118C

ar

In

to

getting the scientific

open up

community

to religion, the question of

credibility becomes paramount. David

Cole suggests that a key factor is getting highly respected scientists'involved in the discussion. "They don't
necessarily have to agree with theolo-

gians,"

he says, "they

willing to

This
Ellis

engage

in

just

have

to

be

serious dialogue."

is where people such as George

and Charles Townes prove invalu-

able to the cause. If a Nobel prize-winning scientist can be a devout Christian, then religion can't be entirely anti-

Nancey Murphy

thetical to science.

is also where Davies and

Penrose are making a difference. "The

believes this

fact of their scientific legitimacy

makes

the theological questions that they

raise

seem

both legitimate and interest-

ing to other scientists."

some

Ironically,

scientists willing to

engage in theological issues, tread

rather too heavily and too na'ively on
theological territory. To suggest, as
Hawking does, that physics might obviate the need for God is not only to
make invalid claims for science, it is
also a misunderstanding of the role of
God. The Christian deity has never
been just a material creator, but always
first and foremost a spiritual redeemer.
As Stoeger and Ellis describe it, the
unwarranted extension of physics into
areas in which it was not designed to
go "drags both serious scientific and
serious theological research into disrepute,

and

in

particular

damages

the im-

clearly constitutes an invaluable resource to decision-makers.

Yet

in

spite of

dilemma

of

how

how

our

in

to

lives.

To date much of the CTNS's work

has been highly academic, a fact Russell says has been due to the initial
need for the Center to establish its
credibility. If one is going to build
bridges between two sides of a chasm,
it is essential that they be structurally
sound. Having established their own
"soundness," Russell hopes in looking
to the future that the

to

CTNS

will

be able

do a good deal more public

reach

both

scientific

to the religious

quests for speakers

to

number of readdress reli-

gious groups, colleges, and science

departments, as well as community organizations. Russell, for instance, is
one of the speakers touring the country
this fall on a lecture series sponsored
by the John Templeton Foundation and
the American Scientific Affiliation. An-

measure of success for CTNS is

government is beginning to
cast an eye their way. In a country
which is trying to maintain world leadership in science at the same time that
other

that the

fundamentalists are gaining increasing

political power, a group that is conversant with both science and religion

culis
is

oldest institutions dedicated to promotamong scientists and

theologians. This fall, for instance, the

Crvcago- Cente will sponsor a lecture
1

'

and

series of nine scientists

five theolo-

gians on the theme, "The Epic of Cre-

and Religious Perspecon Origins." And there will be a

ation: Scientific

tives

for ministerial

and

Review by Andrew Wheeler

As you might have guessed
from the evidence so far (and the
word "Advertisement" up top),

must confess: do work

The Science Fiction Book Club.

reviews.
for

ic

journal of science

religion

in

the

Zygon is co-published by the Inon Religion in an Age of Science

(IRAS), another Chicaqo-based group
dating back to 1960. Among recent
conference topics addressed by IRAS
are: truth and reality in science and religion, thermodynamics, entropy and
value, and even gender bias in science

like.

But

agreed to write them, that

honest, so

and

does

In-

not specialize

be

I'd

only review books that

personally read and liked.

Maureen Birnbaum

is

book

you'd have trouble finding any-

where

else.

was published by

It

Swan Press in trade paperback,

but most stores probably won't
it. That's a shame, because
you might guess from the title)
very funny. Both editions have

stock
(as

some

nice interior art (by different

artists),

but

SFBC

think the

Ken Kelly,
more of it.

"by the great

And

there's

But, of course,

it's

you buy a book

that

is

art,

better.

the story

for, not the

pictures (nice as they

may

be).

Prep-schooler Maureen (don't

call

her Muffy) Birnbaum was some-

how

transported from a Vermont

slope to the planet Mars, where

ski

she met the hunky Prince Van and

learned she

religion.

While the Center of Theological

quiry at Princeton

when

did insist,

world.

stitute

of tell-

you more about books we think

ing

you might

it's

and

These reviews are our way

students on

Ministry" taught

in conjunction with representatives

from four Chicago-area hospitals.
The Center also houses the edi'oral
offices of Zygon: Journal of Religion
and Science, the only referred academ-

out-

and the

communities. Already they

are receiving a growing

weave the two

GEORGE ALEC EFFINGER

these aren't completely unbiased

ing a- dialogue

"Generics, Faith,

not to replace either, but to learn

SWORDSPERSON
BY

new course

have both forces co-existing

to

The Chicago Center for Religion

and Science traces its origins back to
the early 1950s, making it one of the

portant discussions which have recently

and theologians." Russell stresses the need fdr

respect on both sides. The aim of a dialogue between religion and science is

MAUREEN
BIRNBAUM:
BARBARIAN

to

modern-day

in

tures together. And while the CTNS

the leading institution of its kind, it
importantly not the only one.

begun between

scientists

what would appear

be an obvious need

America, the CTNS, a nonprofit organi

a constant battle simply to
Stay afloat. "If funding wasn't an issue,"
says Russell, "I could imagine a whole
team devoted to the physical sciences
and another to the biological sciences." Most importantly, he envisages
that with further funding they could
"branch off into other religions" and not
just serve the Christian community,
since people of every faith who live in
the modern Western world face the
zation, fights

was almost

as good

sword as she was at shopThe only problem was, after

with a
ping.

the study of science and religion, it

nevertheless, evidence of growing

she teleported back to Earth (for

desperately needed changes of

interest in "intelligent faith." In addition

clothes), she couldn't get back to

in
is,

addressing the crosscurrents with

science and technology, the CTI also
tackles political, social, economic and
to

other cultural issues.

It is the work of all of these organizations to begin to reconcile the critical

and facts. It is a
resource which ought to be available

divide between faith

not just to Christians, but to us

all.

DO

Margaret Wcnhsiin'n kirincnming book.

The Ascent

of

Mathematical Man,

about the history oi physics and reliwiii be published in 1995 by Times

Books, Random House.

gion,

Mars and Van. Oh, she could

teleport herself other places,
right (the

the

all

core of the hollow Earth,

moon and Sherwood

among

Forest,

but she just

others),

couldn't get the hang of steering.

The funniest thing about the book

is
it

Muffy's voice;
here, but

if

can't reproduce

you've ever heard an

East Coast rich

girl

you'll

know

it

instantly.
It's

Fiction

available

from The Science

Book Club on

pp. 58-59.

Tfe Avtagt

VquT work
terrifies

Ths
o-P

idea

each new

creation ernbodymg

a li"Pe
bogg/es

o-f

my

its own

ART CUMINGS

measured

the top qua.K's

mass

lfllTER\/IEUU

Ferrnilab

ture of the environment.

the top quark has mass is to enable us

predicted this two years
to live foreverl
ago in a paper sent to Physics! Re-

How do you

Omni:
of

prove the existence

God?
If

you do a consistent physical

God just falls out. He is there

analysis,

way, not just

cover our ignorance. Any cosmology with unlimited progress will end
in God. In Exodus, God says to Moses
out of the burning bush that his name
is "Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh" which in Hein

an

put

intrinsic, essential

in

to

brew means
So the Bible

"I

will

itself

be what will be."

can be interpreted
I

the ultimate future. My

mathematical theory tells us that the ulso it can
timate theory is "personal"
be called "God" because all personthat

God

is

alities

verse
more,

acting together will drive the uniinto the ultimate future. Furtherwill

it

be these future persons

who will resurrect us.

Omni: What of your predictions,
proven,

Tipler: I'm looking at the totality of reality.

at 174 plus or minus 17. If my approximations are right and a certain mecha-.
nism near the f'nal stale sxisis, the reason

back your theory?

will

One was the mass of the top

quark, the particle finally found at the
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

Omega

predicts

plus or minus 20

its

mass

at

it

185

billion electron-volts.

Hubble constant a measure

for the

of

the rate of expansion of the universe at

the present time and thus a greater
Inferred age of the universe than many

cosmologists expect. There's an inconsistency in current measurements of

the

Hubble constant. My most

ing prediction

boson,

the

is

220 plus

at

mass
or

interest-

got

it

keep

".o

power of my theory, it's essentia: to

be an expert in particle physics, global
general relativity, and computer science. You don't need to know theology.
Omni: Will the referees of the Physical
Review Letters now fall down and beg

full

your forgiveness?
Are you kidding?

Tipler:

Does water
memo-

flow uphill? People have short

ries for their

mistakes. These referees

are anonymous' and can make all sorts

mistakes and ignorant comments,
of

and

it's

no skin

off their

noses. But the

of the

Higgs

referees are particle physicists,

minus 20

billion

am a

relativist

mass

disciplinary.

ern science

crucial particle

never been seen and many thedoubt it exists. The large hadron
collider now under construction will
find the Higgs early next century.
Omni: Why are some scientists so
it's

orists

apoplectic at your theory?

am disturbing a political agreement between theologians and scien-

Tipler:

their "ields s

Tipler:

from the Higgs boson, so it is the

in the standard model.

electron-volts. Every particle with

But

if

Tipler:

this April.

view Letters, but it was rejected. One of

the referees wrote it was. "clearly refuted by experiment. The estimate from
the CERN (European Center for Nuclear
Research) inciicxes is going So be 150,"
My book also predicts a lower value

tists

Omni: How have fellow physicists reto your book?

So far, mostly with silence. They
don't want to come out and oppose a
theory that's not obviously wrong, but is
important if it's right.. To appreciate the
acted

and

or don't take

and people won't

that poli-

listen, isn't

not physics?

tics,

Tipler:

It

worries me.

say

in

my book

explicitly that physicists don't act that

way.

Now am
I

do.DQ

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is

in your field but an expert in

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Omni: But if you present an argument

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new world

of

MAEY VISIONS

refuge

in a divine mother.
But the same theory

plain the

emergence

of

sionaries: middle-class

but they're indoctrinated to believe that

wrong

it's

to question anything in the

realm of religion. They seem to compartmentalize science and religion in

their brain, and if you dare to introduce
the two worlds together for examination
side by side, you will get hostility and
rage and the conversation will be
To Father Yanni, however, shouting
the devilish voice of skeptics

Mickell

a notion with which

priests agree, "Person-

odds

with the religious unity incorpo-

more positive versions. However,

there is an underlying need even in
these conspiracies to connect the individual experience to a larger whole.
rated

in

The conspiracy

theorist searches for the

will make his experience
world a coherent whole. The inwho maps out these

pattern which

Benedict Groeschel, director of the OfDevelopment for the

of New York and the auA Still, Small Voice (Ignatius),
the guide used by the bishop-appointed commission that investigated

from knowledge of the conspiracy. Indeed, one often gets the sense that many
conspiracy theorists actually hope that
there is a secret government operating
behind the scenes, holding together
what often seems like an increasingly

brown paper from

"Why would

don't ask people to

tell people to

come

It

is

saturated

it be fraud? We
pay money here.

go

to their

to ours.

We

own

are not

merchants here. We give people the

word of God."
By now others, including a gaggle
of teenage girls with backpacks and
expensive sneakers, have joined the
watch them
ladies in the pews. As
drink in the Madonna,
strikes me that
I

it

am witnessing a divine version of the

much-publicized "search for the inner
presence of the icon, the
I

child." In the

ultimate mother,

compassionate and
be

all-seeing, these worshipers could

"reparenting" themselves, releasing

abandonment and abuse. In
her presence, they cannot feel isolated
or worthless or alone. By visiting here
every day and putting her picture up in
every room at home, these believers
may be creating their own miracles of
psychological and physical healing
feelings of

rebirth.

"Why don't you write about the people," a man in Virginia said angrily.
"That's the important thing."

In

a way,

angry parishioner is right. Whether

oil or the blood or the visions are
miraculous or fraudulent, earthly or
heavenly, the phenomenon is answering a deep human need for an intimate

that

the

contact with the divine.

When Jung studied the phenomenon, for instance, he theorized that
such collective visions were created
when human fears or fantasies were
projected from the unconscious in a
powerfully concrete symbolic form.
Jung believed that the visionaries
themselves were often those least in
touch with the contents of their unconscious, the least accepting of their
deeper longings and fears. This may
explain why, traditionally, so many of
the Marian visionaries have been troubled, vulnerable peasant girls seeking

no OMNI

is

this

UFO

represents a Rind of resurgent Yankee individualism that seems

at

secret networks,

tears a tiny piece of

and

Marian vision
many devoted

might appear that

it

phenomenon

also not very impressed by some of the

stigmatics around," opines Father

We

church, don't

tasies shared by the whole community

symbolic projections erupt.

Outwardly

sort of negative reaction to the

He

the back of the picture.

oil.

ally you couldn't get me to walk across

the street to see a weeping statue. I'm

to the icon. "Here, look at this."

with

like

VISIONS

He bounces
and leads the way back

the thing to do:

is

out of his chair

also ex-

This less-than-holy nature of the

abruptly terminated."

down

may

modern-day viAmericans who

cannot reconcile the worldly, skeptical,

conscious parts of their
minds with their deeply emotional religious longings and fears. With no other
outlet for the ecstatic or apocalypticfantasies in their unconscious fanscientific,

fice of Spiritual

Archdiocese
thor of

the apparition

in

Marlboro.

"One must remember

of the

telligence officer,

and

fractured

that interest in

humble people's religion," Father Groeschel states.

"We have lo have respect for the religion of the ordinary, humble person
who, in a naive way, seeks to have his
faith affirmed through tangible phenomena. Many times people who are
oppressed think of apocalyptic possithis kind of thing relates to

is

the high priest of this

comes

peculiar antireligion. Salvation

What

are

fragile social reality.

we

to

make

com-

of this

plex range of responses to the UFO?

When he first addressed the phenomenon in the 1950s, Jung wrote that the
presence of the UFO signaled fundamental changes in our culture the
passing of one era and the beginning
of another. This is indeed what is happening. Science is beginning to grasp
the " relational ity," holism, and purposeful self-organizing complexity of the

because they are better than the

which they live. People must

bilities

world

in

put aside this childlike

try to

spirituality.

The great Christian mystics,

for in-

stance, were most concerned with personal religious experience, prayer, and
the well-being of others.

dom impressed by
volvement

They were sejcrude in-

this rather

reports of extraordinary
phenomena. Though some reports of
miraculous phenomena are very impressive, they do not qualify for the
highest level of spirituality."
Despite their seeming sophistication, adherents to this "simple people's"
faith are decidedly middle class these
in

days
seems, and scattered across
the landscape of Suburbia, U.S.A. In
this endless outpost of civilization as
it

we know

it,

there's

for spirituality,

a collective longing

and a sense

that the old

down.
a general disillusion

authorities are breaking

"I

think there's

ment with institutions these days," said

Sandra Zimdars-Swartz. "People are
disillusioned with everything from the

establishment to the Roman

Catholic Church. In times like these,
scientific

people tend to seek reassurance.

what seems to be happening at

That's

these apparition sites. And yes, people

have a tendency to emphasize these
experiences. "DO

New

universe.

technologies enable us

dynamics
end our earthbound in-

to tap into the self-organizing

of matter

and
go

fancy and

means

to

New

out into the cosmos.

of transportation

and communi-

cation have drawn the planet together

into

one

tightly knit,

interdependent
images
which lie at

global civilization, (he powerful

of holism

and

integration

the heart of the UFO phenomenon

serve as a testament that we are be-

coming

real participants in the

life

of

the cosmos.

Ed Conroy, author of Report on

Communion, says that the UFO is "a
mirror of individual and social psycholpeople tend to get the UFO
ogy
experience they deserve." A careful
.

look

in

this mirror

can

tell

us a

the

lot

ways in which we are growing and becoming whole, and the ways in which
we are still fractured and even disintegrating. What do you see in those
wheels ot light over the high desert,
spinning against the starry sky? A New
Jerusalem? A pale horse which heralds
apocalypse? Or the memory of very ancient dreams clothed in a technological

symbolism which speaks

with which to

come true?DQ

make

all

of

new

tools

our dreams

many things.
And don't know how one subject

FIRE THAT SCOURS

led to another.

show you the Presbyterian

"Did
Church when you visited? " said Lacey.
I

TALK BACK!
1-900-2855483

counter plan':; And wo ooth hoped we

wouldn't encounter any other, larger organisms.
After a while, we came to a series of

do

the.

at

Omni have always been

in

the forefront of

imagination.

Now we

said.

"I

was

luckier than

fifty

or

sixty others."

"What were you thinking

of?" said

Lacey.

bring you the latest

breakthrough

packing
blew,"

promoting innovation and

think they could

mused.
Lacey looked at me questioningly.
"I was about an hour away from
in toward St. Helen's when she

job,"

We
.

St.

in

said,
"I may be a paleo drone,"
"but I've always been fascinated by
I

THE OMNI EDITOR

LINE,

a direct link
to our editorial staff, offers

in

the

shaping of Omni.

"You sound like Rick." Lacey giggled. It was ihe first time she'd
sounded like anything other than death
since last night, "is that a Star Trek
joke?"

shook my head. "The god Vulcan

basis for the naming of volcanoes. I've always liked the innate
of these direct pipelines between the surface and the core."

message

for

our

you can

listen to

messages

left

by

other readers.

We want to

hear from you

why

in

it

stared at
about?"

and your

Omni or

if it's

about our
magazine in general.

here to

make

And then

like

talking

don't think there's any

between your outer

my

lover. "I'd

little

those."

said.

faith.",

the ground shook.

We

future.

We

hope

to hear from you soon.

cried for a long time for those uni-

"I

"Didn't that say something to

about religious zealots?"

you

"Just some, of us," she said, smiling

all."
I

finally said. "Did you think

dition?"
needed to be babysat?"
She shook her head violently, "Old
Mr. Harrison felt like he needed his personal and corporate interests safeguarded. He trusts me." Lacey
hesitated, and then smiled. "And yes.
guess did think maybe you needed
someone to take care of you." The
I

smile

Silence lay there for a while.

guess it is im-

left.

"There's another thing.

portant lo

me

to find

was."

brief.

us,

some

down toward
"I

think
I

"This

time to get back to

and

up

at the molten rock.

"The

fire

about

it,"

said.

The

ground again shook.

if

men

said.

faith,"

lived

"Never

she said.

know we will pack out of here,

think we will find God's chilboth human and reptile."
still

snorted

Lacey moved closer

that

you taught me one thing. Now

don't put an s"-on the end of that r
word anymore."
"I'd like to teach you more," She
leaned up close. Her warmth seemed
subsumed into that of the landscape.
"At least

out

Alley Oop,"

dren,

said.

For a moment, Lacey resisted, starscours," she said. "That's Revelation."

"Not in the version read." grinned.

isn't

has to do with

"It

"And

us.
it's

"We'll talk

1-900-285-5483

into plain

"Cute."

About a thousand feet above

of the dully glowing lava
slopped out of the bowl and oozed

was

future of the magazine of the

was a

corns," said Lacey.

with the dinosaurs."

ing

sure

a part of the

been turned

horns. They'd

held on to each other, but the temblor

camp,"

is

all

core," said

like you to be more like one of

She gestured at Ihe cones.
"That sounds pornographic,"

TheOMN! EDITOR LINE

that you have an opportunity to

become

"What are you

her.

"Sometimes
connection at

concerns

a current

issue of

your personality

isn't

that?" said Lacey.

Lacey laughed. "Have a

whether

was quiet for a while. thought

about how a unicorn becomes a horse.
"Why'didyou come on this fools' expe-

self

a specific article or feature

happened when

"It

leenager. People in Conyers thought

the unicorns were occult." She shook
her head. "Stupid. All the artist meant
to show a symbol of the Christ."
She snuggled against me. "Community
made ihe church take the window out.
When the glass was put back, the unicorns were stilt there, but with no

was

gently. "Not

"So

LINE, and

be asked

will

churches."

have the window," said

drama

you

Editors, or

Lacey.

to

was the

Call the

OMNI EDITOR
to leave a

"Used

you the opportunity

to truly participate

lots of

ber."

old horses."

vulcanology."

interactive publishing:

me

one had the unicorn window."

shook my head. "I don't remem-

"This

volcanic cones. "They're not

Helen's, but

(95 per minute)

"You showed

my

to

me, her nip-

touched

She
one index finger to my lips, drew it
"But even
back when started to bite
was wrong," she said, "and I'm not.
." She laughed and
Even
was
was a completely happy, utterly sincere
sound. "Now there exists what was
ples touching

chest.

it.

if

if

it

taught. Creationism is proved. Man

does live with the dinosaurs." She
kissed me again and again and again.

(95(! per minute)

PET INC., BOX 166

HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA 90078
Must be 18 or older.
Touch-tone phones only.

Later that night, huddled

in

our thermal

canned
hand as poammuni-

blankets around a container of

heat, with shovels close to
tential

weapons because

tion hadn't

turned up,

we

the

talked about

dreamed

dreamed a
still remembered the
when awoke early in

that night.

nightmare and
scenario vividly

the Cretaceous dawn.

Then

crawled naked out of the

tumbled blankets. For a while

hunin the brownish half-light,

and urge-driven as any palesavage. stared at Lacey sleeplooked with sorrow at the
I

kered there
as

filthy

olithic

ing.

sweetness

of her face.

would miss her. And because

knew there was no other life than this
one we both inhabited, would miss
I

her

infinitely.

And
I

then

killed her with the shovel,

as

could.
quickly and mercifully as
wished there were enough of the
painkiller left to put her to sleep. But
she made only a few sounds before
she was quiet. Her breathing slowed,
hesitated
stopped. When my lover
was dead, hurled the murder weapon
as far from me as could.
howled at the alien, empty sky, at
my world without Lacey. All this because of a dream? That nightmare now
frayed when concentrated on it. When
looked away with my mind, the images came back. couldn't bear to ignore them. If did that, then would not
I

The bodies had gone first. Then the

equipment. There might still be some of

Chuck

be able to live with the reality of what

had just done.
The dream:
The paleontologists, graduate students, day workers, all excavating the
streambed. Skulls, femurs, ribs, al.l
I

would have

that

was

It

of

everything

back into
had come.

And now
sition.

it's

time for the

it

millennia. Di-

by time.
then the other remains. The

And

human bones, intermixed in the same

stratum, indisputably dating to the
Jurassic extinction.

would not be

solely the

let

hands,

is

only one matter

named
I

tunnel

down

really

oannot

left.

ment

to the heart of the

feel the

The

of

mummyskin.

cried. "Lacey,"

heat

it

took.
know
had food and
it

water from the twentieth century.

started refilling containers from the
I

stream, and scavenging .meat from

reptile carcasses.
ate and drank just
enough to keep going, because didn't
I

know how much

was simultaneously

poisoning myself.
Most of my time was devoted to the

tins

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I'm not sure how long
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Lacey. And of the symbol she wore

around her neck.
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supermarheed and dispatching photographers. The greater effect

would be elsewhere.
And that could not bear; not knowing there was something
could do to
It

ket tabloids paying

eather products can be used to

snowflakes before the book is halfway

to the lava.
toss the canteen and the
tarp used to drag the odds and ends
discarded at the first.

world.

dead 140,000

know, but was the concession was

willing to make to being a scientist.
see the pages flame into burning

chemist's minerals, jutting out of the

clay. Here a corythosaurus, there a
struthiomius. Plate-backs and tyrant
kings, three-horned faces and arm repfootprints, filled in

dispo-

final

throw the shovel into the crater.

hopelessly,
I've kept

Then the journal

stand poised on the brink of

nosaur

could

gone, burned and melted

the anonymity from which it

all

coming to light. The fossil remains,

bone transmuted to stone by the al-

tiles, all

be

to

take.

I'd

disposed

find.

the

in

some anonymous deinonychus

somewhere, but
I

bones

Furtado's smaller

belly of

the risk

fiery pit.

killed her.

endless treks to the volcanic cones.

rigged slings and sheets to carry as
much as could. clambered up the
side of the nearest cone, feeling the
magma heat burning through my boot
soles, fighting my way to the crater's
edge and looking down into the closest
could
equivalent to total destruction
would shove my load,
find. Then
piece by chunk by bit, over into the

TIME

IS

which we have seen is conditioned by

an entire museum of past speculations.

NOTHING

CONTINUED FROM

P(

rection only,

cause precedes

effect,

and our given subjective reality cannot

change that. And yet we are also part
of the universe, and our efforts of understanding must increasingly take that
fact into account.

Our bodies are clocks, set by evolutionary circumstances to a certain bio-

We

logical rhythm.
live in a vastly
bigger clock, the universe, which is
running down toward disorder and heat
death at a vastly slower rate than our
body clock. Conceivably, the universeclock may be rewound after the big
collapse. The infall of matter after the
universe has reached its greatest ex-

and

tent

gravity pulls

it

back may be

the rewinding process by which entropy is defeated, at least for another

cycle. Or the universe may expand forever, growing colder and slower, never
to

be rewound.

What we

call

The constraints of general relativity,

quantum theory, and wave mechanics
compel us to reject the containerlike
character of absolute space and time,
and say that time cannot be abstracted
from physical events, that in fact it is
profoundly a part of an expandingspace-time, and that time apart from

standing.
at rest,

is

tual illusion; only the specific

space and time may

aspects

and

are real. Absolute, eternal,

infinite

they are not

on physical
not what experimental
exist;

logical impossibilities; but

grounds,

this is

What

the

our universe

TIME

IS

quality? But

was

ing outside of that

against

ONE OF THE CLOCKS, MEASURING ONE

KIND

TIME.

ANIMALS
IT

haps

change within
In Plato's view, time
comes into being through our incapacit.

to grasp everything at once. Succession and change "are the moving,

and imperfect, image of eternity." Time
is a relationship that we have with the
ity

universe; or more accurately, we are

one of the clocks, measuring one kind

Animals and aliens may meadifferently. We may even be able

change our way of marking time one
and open up new realms of expein which a day today will be a

of time.
it

day,

rience,

if

we

space-time machine,

toroidal

which generates in our minds a sense

space and passing time. Our bodies
are complex patterns of space-time,
according to Rudy Rucker, and are in
fact time machines, retaining aspects
of the past and guessing at the future.
of

The
its

superiority of today's science, with

experimental and mathematical

methods, over the colorful speculations

past is obvious from this extelevision program
Northern Exposure:
"Some think time is a wheel, turning

of the

change on the

forever."

"Some
"I

think time

think time

is

is

stick to general relativity,

."
.

The

first

orful;

of time that are restricted to physical

Let's try again. Imagine a small

wind-up toy car at absolute rest. Someone winds it up. It runs a distance and

and plausibly descriptive mathematics, even though

theory, experiment,

114

may
OMNI

is

of explanation.

and temporal

in-

not satisfy naive intuition,

formidable tools are required.

stops.

The distance

it

runs, from

guing confusions. Metaphors and similie at the basis of all language, and
may be thought of as qualitative equales

tions, written inside a vast system.

Crude and evocative they

are, from a
mathematical view.
Mathematical equations isolate un-

known

when

quantities

and make them work

in a relationship with better defined

terms that we do know. They can express dynamic, observed relationships,
but they don't tell us what the terms
except what they do in

are, at bottom,

the relationship. We learn the number

value of an unknown, but not what it is
in itself. The answer is always in terms
is

sense and intuition are detwo statements are colthe third is without hope. More

feated.

quantum theory, and wave mechanics,

we can give answers about the nature

they

enemy

spatial

us deeper into wonder,

sometimes productively,
and sometimes into delicious, intri-

something

of

river."

just time

Common

million years.

But

reality.

it runs up
seeks to
because a

simply beyond all

reason. Imagination leads

DIFFERENTLY.

science uncovers.
We live in a vast spherical, or per-

that

for us to do, both

and psychologically. To avoid
imagine a necessarily existing

'some sort, requiring no beginning or end, though a lot may

sure

finity is

AND ALIENS MAY MEASURE

eternity of

to

in

proliferation of entities

the

OF

term

infinities,

eliminate them,

logically

we

time its supporting background, and there is noth-

absolutely nothing,

no time, or space, or matter; and

OR MORE

WE ARE

seems impossible
this

is it?

anything else is speculaand imagining. What of time outside the conditions of our space-time?
There may not be any, and this might
absolute time
be all there is. Or
reigns there forever, in an absolute, infinite-superspace, giving our

time. This kind of time

there

what

we can know;
tion

Science, when

ACCURATELY,

set of equations? That's the only time

will

us must be real in order to

support the different kinds of
must always be there. The alternative
is to imagine a time when

illustrates, in strenu-

ditions of our universe.

RELATIONSHIP

THAT WE HAVE WITH THE UNIVERSE;

be a different kind of time.

Somewhere, there may be an
eternity that our intuition tells

above

ous fashion, is that time, like space and

must be expressed as part of a
relationship whose terms cannot be
defined independently of the relationship. Time is not understandable as a
separate entity. It is a quality that
emerges when we have the initial congravity,

time began with

ferent kind of time; what

after

mean-

either

beyond our horizon of underIn a universe where nothing

motion and the perception of
causal order (cause precedes effect)
may be said, fancifully, to create the
experience of time for observers as a
piece of iron generates a flow of electricity when it cuts through a magnetic
field. We can only know time's aspects,
but not time itself, which is a concepingless or

the expansion of our universe.

The time before that was a dif-

comes

may be

that space-time

starts to when it stops

that's time,
created by the movement of the car
through space, even though we used
the word when, the time-term, which
means we assumed time as we tried
to describe how time is_generated.
What happens between stopping and
starting is time. Time comes into being
whenever a clock is started
it

."
.

in this

is

not a

else. "Time in itself

computable sentence,

view.

The answer

to

tion tells us: This

scientific investiga-

is

the

way

it

is,

be-

cause we have repeatedly observed

and measured
and made predictions
that come true. From many imaginative
and speculative possibilities we have
it,

found ones that hold

in

our experience

breakthrough

DECEMBER. 4 -6, 1994

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&

2010
(an experiment being a form of organIn

our universe, time

pari of the causal order of events

and that's what time is. as (ar as we

can say, events following one another
in a sequence. Our clocks may seem
arbitrary, but every kind of clock we
have devised seems to measure the
same time, and their imperfections in
what the. true measure
should be, allowing us to make corrections. Whatever kind of clock-time
scale we use, Galileo's inclined plane
experiments will come out the same.
Our clocks are limited by the fact that
we are inside nature and cannot make
transcendent observations. Clocks are
part of the systems they attempt to
measure, and they do so with relative
objectivity; despite being a convention,
they are genuine time scales. Tranfact point to

scendent questions

fail to

produce

specific or useful answers, which

is

not

the case with the experimental-mathematical "in terms of" method of scienlific

Dr.

Featured presenters include over 100 leading

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We can find this same "in terms of"

method in every aspect of our lives. In
an equation or a love affair, the specific
context generates all significance.
ask transcendent questions,
of a eosmological or ideological kind,
we feel that they don't fit in with our exWhen we

medical anti-aging therapies

Technology

is

NEVADA

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ized experience).

PARK RESORT

LAS VEGAS,

perience. In science, the richness of

specific terms derived from observa-

measurement, and experiment, as

well as from what may seem to be arbitrary definition, gives us better equations to manipulate, from which we can
tion,

make

better predictions to test; and

these seem to be vindicated, the

when
more contextual knowledge we accumulate. Pull on a thread and a whole
arm of the suit may unravel. This is a
limitation of living inside a system, and
lacking the luxury of an unconditional
viewpoint.

One is led to suspect that there is

nothing to answer in a transcendent
question such" as "Why is there any"What is there outside the
universe?" Time and gravity are described in a context, and there is nothing beyond it. We must not expect an
answer that will tear back the universe's stage set and reveal the works
behind the pretty scenery, so that we
can say, once and for all, "So that's
thing?" or

what

it

was

all

along!

How

curiousl

would never have thought it!" wonder

whether we would be satisfied faced
I

if

with

such a revelation, and

it

was

something specific and disappointing,

end to all further questing
and curiosity.
putting an

The best

introductory insight

know

into the nature of time comes from

Hans Reichenbach's The Philosophy of
Space and Time: ".
time is more
fundamental than space, the topological and metrical relations of which can
be completely reduced to observations
of time. We shall finally recognize that
.

time order represents the prototype of

causal propagation and thus discover
space-time as the schema of causal
connection." He goes on to say that the
most general assertion about spacetime is that "at all times there exists a
space-time coordinate system" which
distinguishes lirn&like and spacelike directions,

and

that this

by the world-lines of

is

"accomplished
While it is

light.

true that science abstracts from

tional

content

logical analysis

emo-

order to proceed to
... it is also true that

in

science opens up new possibilities,

which some day might acquaint us with
emotions never experienced before."
"And yet what can there be," we
continue to ask perversely, "beyond the
quantum mechanical wave function
that may someday be written down to
describe a multiverse in which the
electron takes every possible path?"
Newton's laboratory table, perhaps, on
which our multiverse sits enclosed in a
crystalline sphere, dreaming that it is
everything .DO

"

"On the other hand,

think a simple hint of

hope

is

more

hellish-

GAfWES
CONTINUED FROM PAGE
that the

WHY

121

other, that

Earth

him

WHY was

is

the

cally significant

ber of power.

me
is

that Omni'a
numerologiis a num-

because 16

It's

the

number

fourth power,

first

be a power in
two different ways 4 and 4 2 Sixteen
is the only number that can be written
as a b and b 3 where a and b are different. In addition, a 4 x 4 square has an
the

first

to

area

and a perimeter

square

in

of 16;

it's

the only

which the two numbers are

the same.

power sports, 16 pounds is the

minimum weight for the men's shot put
and hammer, and it's the maximum
weight for a bowling ball. Each pound
In

is further subdivided into 16 ounces. In

the competitive battles of chess and
checkers, each player starts the game
with 16 pieces.
The center of power in the United
States is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,'
the address of the White House. The
house number begins with 16, and the
street begins with P, the 16th letter of
the alphabet. Truncate one zero from
1600 to get 160, then another to get
16. Add these three numbers together
to see the numerological significance

reveals the purpose and sense

ol creation

32nd

nessee is the 16th state.

There are 16 member nations

jaw,

and

tion

College in Alamosa, Colorado, he

teaches and has his office in a 16sided building (how
there?), right off
office

number

many

Highway

of

160.

those are

Even

#136 pays respect

sum

of the

man's reason tor being

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FFonn

fUEiru

Omni

onnrui

Visior

nine reprinted stories from

books
QnnruisMisioNs

Omni

magazine plus a new story

from Joyce Carol Dates.
Dunn, Howard
Waldrop, William S. Burroughs,
Harvey Jacobs, James P. Blaylock,
Octavia E. Butlet, Marc Laidlaw,
and Michael Swanwick.
McAllister, J.R.

Omni

Visions

Two includes

Omni magazine from 19B5

Some

to

'988

of the authors with

stories in this

volume are Robert

Silverberg, Barry N. Malzberg.

...Another fine collection."

Frederik Pohl,

SF Chronicle

YES!

builders traditionally

leave 16 inches between studs in the

a house.
Zerger says his hexadecimal devocomes naturally. At Adams Stale

wall of

the number 16: It's the

bers from 1 to 16.00

alters a ttmugnt-nroi/akliw

commentary en the universe ami

and

Dan Simmons.

the

powerful North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), humans have 16 teeth

each

REVELATIONS

TO: OMNI Magazine

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CREDIT CARD HOLDERS

(twice

in

and what He expects

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Perhaps the two greatest president

were Abraham Lincoln, the 16th, and
16). FDR, first elected to the office in
1932, was chosen by the people to
serve 1 6 years (four terms).
Musically, there have been "Sixteen
Candles," "You're Sixteen," and "Sweet
Little Sixteen." "Sixteen Tons" was a hit
for "Tennessee" Ernie Ford, and Ten-

his
to

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Custom Bound

for this country.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, the

only the third planet in

inhabitants the Creator Himself

SIXTEEN. Mathematician Monte

Zerger writes to assure
anniversary this month

is

the entire universe to

than 2,000 years.

in

man here and what

of

universe created and how

sun-

the image on
and cast it on the
wall? If so, it worked far better than
they could have dreamed, beguiling
observers and even scientists for more

and

is

expected

one caused the

somehow picked up

light

the back of the mirror

Send mo

Omni

Visions One
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them in common a vulnerathe biographers who could

with their own version of a

thing with

BLOCH

bility to

come up

its subject was no longer

dispute what was said. preferred to tell the truth as saw it, rather
than be Griswolded like Poe or De-

life-story after

wire dangling from their bodies.

Way

to

go! Nowadays it seems like most people perish more messily, by taking a
bullet in the belly and falling off a platform or high balcony in a warehouse;
driving a car, they either explode in a
fireball or crash through a plate-glass
window.
Of course, they aren't given much of
a chance to prepare. In less violent
times and fiction many of the char-

around

acters had

enough advance notice

to

before starting to

decompose.
There were several popular approaches to the theme, in print and on
screen. One was the "Now can really
appreciate" reaction, knowing that one
I

was seeing
last

doing something

or

time ever. Then there

was

for the

only

"If

could go back and tell him/her/it how

sorry am." But perhaps the most popI

ular was the "One last time"

in which blackface
vaudeville performers sang
about seeing their dear old

theme,

Mammy down

Lovecraft.

like

At the time

knowing

portunities

had no way of
be few other opto add to what I'd

naturally

me

left for

so there was a lot omitted.

didn't have much to say about personal or political beliefs and convicand after what's happened to me
now, this seems probably like the last

written,

tions,

chance

may have

express those

to

moment

at the

is,

seem

all

all

can

these

that impor-

offer

by way

of

philosophy is that think human beings

are wonderful on the individual level;
it's when they act as a group that the
mob becomes a monster. As to perI

sonal attitude, I'm an

elitist;

the Found-

IT

NATURAL TO WRITE

SEE

ONE MORE TIME,

YOU

it

it

happens

somebody

else it's comedy, but

it happens to you it's tragedy.
few years ago put down some of
what know in an autobiography. But
Once Around the Bloch was not primarily intended to be an instruction manual. Writing my autobiography was fun.

when

Living
was not -always that entertaining.
Actually,
was writing in self defense. As a longtime fantasy writer
was aware of my eminent colleagues in
the field, and while couldn't compare
it

my work
or an H.

to that of
P.

an Edgar Allan Poe

did share one

Lovecraft,

gets around

one more

once the

is let' out of the body-bag

people
am.
calling to inquire how
Actually they won't all be all that curi-

cat

will start

ous about me; what

want
is about a visitor called Death.
Death will be coming to our house
an indefinite stay, but while he's
there this unwelcome guest must be
treated as a member of the
to

they'll really

know

for

What's it like, living with

Death twenty-four hours a
day? Does he make spe-

IF

demands on our attenhousehold routine, disturb my

tion, interfere with

comfort,

LATER,

HOPE.

may have, sincerely beall men are created equal,

ing Fathers
lieved that

but apparently none of

them bothered

reading the New England Journal of

Medicine to find out about genes.
don't think
suffer from delusions
of grandeur about my own status. All
my career has been spent as an entertainer in the ranks of what is currently
labeled "pop culture.""
can handle that, but as an elitist
refuse to equate my work with tagger
I

that sense isn't

commodity. And
experience has taught me only what
teaches everyone in time; lend and you
lose a friend; today's confidant becomes your enemy tomorrow because
is

common

I'm writing this,

And that's what will

make the callers curious.

to

why

natural to write

only to say goodbye.

AN AUDIENCE

you know too much; when

seems

if

change

the

ways

Do we worry
about him constantly, keep
him first and foremost in our
thoughts night and day?
Right now can't give full answers to
these questions but expect to be able
to do so soon, Very soon. One thing is
eat or sleep?

sense.
learned

it

ONLY TO SAY

GOODBYE.

Of feeling pain,

and of not feeling anything at

all. Of what
know and of
what don't know.
One would think that after a long
lifetime, I'd at least have learned a little
something to pass on to future generations, a little counsel, advice, or just
I've

that's

and
time,

SEEMS

'''

all

Maybe

hoping can stick around long enough

get a reaction from the news. Or
maybe it's because I've spent the last
six decades writing for an audience

to

common

it

cial

shtik about Swiss

banks doesn't help me when

But

York

arranged to run a big four-column spread

about the old man. Barnum was so
pleased when he saw that he perked
up and lived for several more weeks.

SPENT THE

AND

and doing

necessarily a

New

Evening Sun, and the next day they

family.

I'VE

while secretly yearning to visit

dear old bank account

plain

to his boss, the editor of the

Once word

Funny thing
tant. Practically

LAST SIX DECADES WRITING FOR

over in Switzerland.
But never mind. Vaudeville
is dead, and
soon will be,

he told a reporter the thing

he most keenly regretted about dying

that he'd not be around to read
any of his obituaries. The reporter went

was

sentiments.

things no longer

their

I'm frightened.

that there'd

final illness

Virginny

in

Camped

if

compose themselves

to

already clear we don't look forward to

having him around. And we'll be anxious for him to depart, except that

when he leaves he won't go alone.

He won't go alone, but he won't take
all of me 'with him, either. A part will still
until paper crumbles,
dissolves, and memories fade.
By the time these
somewhere
and
someplace, may meet again. Any-

remain behind,
iiim

Who knows?

graffiti,

the designer-label art displayed

on 50-pound bags of steer manure, or
Snoop Doggy Dog.
Dealing with such trivia is scarcely a
hot-button item with me, but putting
such statements down on paper helps

things happen, you

the noises emitted by

way,

distract from my stomach-churning

awareness that pain hurts more than

Robert Bloch is one of the true masters

of horror and suspense fiction and film.
In six remarkably productive decades
he has written in virtually every genre
and style. The most famous of his books
is Psycho. The least of his books are better written and more carefully crafted
than most of what fills our bestseller
lists Keith Ferrell, Editor

anything, only so

much sand can be

ted into an hourglass,

where
on

and

that

there's a toe-tag with

fit-

some-

my name

it.

Reminds me of a story about another entertainer: master showman and

egomaniac

P.

T.

Barnum. During

his

or

it's

I,

nice to think so.

See you later.

hope.DO
I

GAfWES
FISH BOWL:

bronze basin spouts water and Omni turns Sweet 16

By Scot Morris
Last month

presented

which casts an image

of Buddha on the wall when
the sun is reflected in
it.

Equally mysterious

is

Washbasin Fountain,"

a curiosity from the Ming

Dynasty (1368-1644). The design cast on the bottom

and up the sides shows four
spouting
relief

fish,

raised

can become

I've

measured some over 20

inches above the water's
surface. The four antinodes,
where the vibration is
strongest, correspond to the

the

"spouting bowl" shown

here (below, left). It's a recent reproduction of a
"Fish

(below, right)

air

the curious "magic mirror,"

in

on the bronze bowl.

Fill the tub with water,

wet your hands, rub the handles slowly and rhythmically, and soon the bowl begins to drone. With a little
practice, you can get this up-

four fish

shown on the

bowl, creating the impression

that the fish are spouting
water from their mouths just
as they are in the picture.

Joseph Needham, who first

described these bowls

Science and

in

produced by the

lines of

spouting water

the design,

in

which continue about

halfway up the sides of the
bowl.

was

at different angles.

We now know

he

tricked, like virtually eve-

effects,"

found that an inverted alu-

minum wok
best,

tive

They crafted the basins

so that each one has four
"hot spots"even if the
bottom has no design. The

where

face, concentrated at four

points around the rim. Then

the water begins to "boil"
and splash droplets into the

that

nate at

bell to reso-

as
you can gel a champagne
glass to sing by rubbing a wet
finger

As

its

natural tone, just

around the

rim.

the bowl resonates,

ripples form

on the water's

sur-

fish

serve as red herrings,

hypothesis

bait for the false

somehow an image

lid

though

worked

it's

nothing

like

as spectacular as the
bronze bowls."
Dalgety has acquired
the bowls mainly for interac-

ryone else who first sees

one of these, by the ingenious
Chinese bronzemakers
who first created these bowls.

side-down

reproduce the
Dalgety says, "I

"In trying to

Civilization in

Crw7a(1962}, speculated
that the spouting effect was

costs $470, postpaid, by

reality.

got the bowl in the photographs from James

Dalgety, a puzzle collector in
Somerset, England, who
has experimented with similar bowls from China for
12 years. He says that, while
most bowls spout at four
points, some will resonate at
six or eight points if you
rub the handles harder and

science centers in
England, though he sold two

Reuben H, Fleet
Space Center in San Diego,
to the

visitors line

up

to

"resonant bowls"
from China. Dalgety will
the Chinese bowls by mail
order, but they are not
cheap. The one shown, about
16 inches in diameter,
try out the

sell

money

ternational

He has

larger

in-

order.

and smaller
and he

sizes available,

continues to sell magic mirrors for $75. Contact:

/Enigma Designs, Manmead,

North Barrow, Yeovil,
Somerset BA22 7LZ, England.
speculated last month
about the secret of the magic
mirror and mentioned that
the consensus of every Western scientist who has
examined is that the design
cast on the mirror's back
I

it

determines what image will

reflect from the front. But
in the mirror
showed here
last month, the reflection
is entirely different from the
design on the back of the
I

mirror. Is

it

possible the an-

bronzemakers have
modern science with
another deliberate trick,
like the fish designed onto
the bottom of the bronze
bowl? Did they add a design
cient

fooled

to the mirror's back, identical to

the reflected image,

precisely to lead observers

to

theorize incorrectly