million rads. Also, the sulfur-eating marine worms that I mentioned, they were not selected randomly either. They live entirely at the ocean bottom where no ultraviolet light can get and where they are quite well insulated against radioactivity in the environment. So for those reasons I still say that many forms of life would survive, and its clear from past mass extinctions like the Cretaceous-Tertiary event that many forms of life have survived in the past what were probably more serious events than a nuclear war, although it's quite true that the radioactivity was not a component of such events in the past.
Questioner: As a scientist, would you deny the possibility of water having been changed into wine in the Bible?
CS: Deny the possibility? Certainly not. I would not deny any such possibility. But I would, of course, not spend a moment on it unless there was some evidence for it.
CHAPTER NINE
CS: There was one question that was sent to me in a letter to my hotel, which was signed, 'God Almighty.' Probably just to attract my attention. It said that the writer's definition of a miracle would be if I would answer the letter. So to show that miracles can happen, I thought I would answer the question. The question was a straightforward and important one, often asked: 'If the universe is expanding, what's it expanding into? Something that isn't the universe?'
Well, the way to think of this is to remember that we are trapped in three dimensions, which constrains our perspective (although there's not much we can do about being trapped in three dimensions). But let us imagine that we were two-dimensional beings. Absolutely flat. So we know about left/ right and we know about forward/back, but we've never heard of up/down. It is an absolutely incoherent idea. Just nonsense syllables. And now imagine that we live on the surface of a sphere, a balloon, let's say. But of course we don't know about that curvature through that third dimension, because that third dimension is inaccessible to us, and we cannot even picture it. And now let's imagine that the sphere is expanding, the balloon is being blown up. And there is a set of spots on the balloon, each of which represents, let us say, a galaxy. And you can see that from the standpoint of every galaxy all the other galaxies are running away. Now, where is the center of the expansion?
On the surface of the balloon, the only part of it that the flat creatures can have access to, where is the center of the expansion? Well, it isn't on that surface. It's at the center of the balloon in that inaccessible third dimension. And, in the same way, into what is the balloon expanding? It is expanding in that perpendicular direction, that up/down direction, that inaccessible direction, and so you cannot, on the surface of the balloon, point to the place into which it is expanding, because that place is in that other dimension.
Now up everything one dimension and you have some sense of what people are talking about when they say that the universe is expanding. I hope that that was helpful, but considering the auspices of the writer, you should have known it anyway.
Questioner: A program from the Reagan administration was over the television last week. Mr. Paul Warnke stated that Star Wars [the Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI] would fail.
CS: Well, maybe I should just say a few words about Star Wars. Star Wars is the idea that it's dreadful to be threatened with mass annihilation, especially at the hands of some people you've never met, and wouldn't it be much better to have an impermeable shield that protects you against nuclear weapons, to simply shoot down the Soviet warheads when they're on their way here? And as an idea it's an okay idea. The question is, can it be done? And let me not quote the legion of technical experts who believe that it is nonsense. Let me instead quote its most fervent advocates in the American administration, in the Department of Defense.
Let us imagine that the Soviet Union does nothing in the next few decades to improve its offensive capability; it leaves everything (a very unlikely possibility) at its present offensive force- that's ten thousand weapons. Ten thousand nuclear warheads. Let us give the benefit of the doubt to the exponents of Star Wars and imagine that instead of 50 to 80 percent they can shoot down 90 percent of the warheads. That leaves 10 percent that they cannot shoot down.
Ten percent of ten thousand warheads is (an arithmetical exercise accessible to everyone) one thousand warheads. One thousand warheads is enough to utterly demolish the United States. So what are we talking about?
Questioner: Do you think that your people will go ahead?
CS: Why do something so foolish? A very good question. And here we are getting into murky issues of politics and psychology and so on, but I don't believe in ducking questions-I'll tell you what I think. I think that the alternative is abhorrent to the powers that be. The alternative is that you negotiate massive, verifiable, bilateral reductions in nuclear weapons, which would be an admission that the entire nuclear arms race has been foolish beyond belief, and that all of those leaders-American and Russian and British and French-for the last forty years, who bought this bill of goods put their nations at peril. It is such an uncomfortable admission that it takes great character strength to admit to it. So I think that rather than admit to it we are looking at a desperate attempt to have still more technology to get us out of the problem that the technology got us into in the first place. The ultimate technological fix. Or, as it is sometimes called, 'the fallacy of the last move.' Just one more ratchet up the arms race, please let us have it, and then everything will be fine forever. And if there's anything that's clear from the history of the nuclear arms race, it's that this isn't the case. Each side, generally the Americans, invents a new weapons system, and then the other side, generally the Soviets, invents it back. And then both nations are less secure than they were in the first place, but they've spent a charming amount of money and everybody's happy. Now, there's no question that if you wave a trillion dollars at the world aerospace community, you will have organizations, corporations, military officers, and so on interested in it, whether or not it will work.
And I'm sure that this is a part of it. But it's not the main part. The main part is a tragic reluctance to come to grips with the bankruptcy of the nuclear arms race. In the United States, it's eight consecutive presidents, something like that, of both political parties, that have bought it. Most of the people who run the country are advocates of the nuclear arms race, or have been in the past. It's very hard to say, 'Sorry, we made a mistake,' on an issue of this size. That's my guess.
Questioner: I think for the first time yesterday President Reagan offered to share the technology of SDI with the Russians.
CS: It's not the first time. He's been saying that all along.
Questioner: Yeah, but isn't it perhaps preferable that the joint efforts of the great powers be extended for perhaps defensive matters rather than the offensive weapons that have occupied them for so long?
CS: No, I don't agree. We're talking about a shield. Let's imagine another kind of shield, the contraceptive shield. Let's suppose that the contraceptive shield lets only 10 percent of the spermatozoa through. Is that better than nothing, or isn't it? I maintain that that's worse than nothing-among other things, for giving a false sense of security. But on the idea of sharing the technology, this is an administration that will not give an IBM personal computer to the Soviets. And we are asked to believe that the United States will hand over the eleventh- generation battle-management computer, which is decades off, and which will be so complicated that its program cannot be written by a human being or any collection of human beings. It can be written only by another computer. It cannot be debugged by any human being. It can be debugged only by another computer. And it can never be tested except in a nuclear war itself. And this we will hand over to the Russians? In either case, if we believed it would work or if we didn't believe it would work, I can't imagine the Russians saying, 'Thank you very much. We will now have this as the principal mainstay of the security of the Soviet Union, this program that the Americans have very kindly just given over to us.'
Nor can I imagine that the United States, after taking a sober look at this idea, would turn over the security of
