No More Ice Ages?

"No More Ice Ages" is the second essay in the first F&SF compilation of essays, Fact and Fancy, published in 1962.

"No More Ice Ages" was published in the January, 1959 issue of F&SF.

Here's the first paragraph:
We all know that the radioactive ash resulting from the activities of nuclear power plants is dangerous and its disposal a problem to be brooded over. How different from those nice, decent, non-radioactive, old-fashioned coal-burning (or oil-burning) power plants. We can easily put ourselves into the position of a gentleman of the 25th century moaning thus for the good old days.

Except that the gentleman of the 25th century may well be sitting there cursing the good old days as he pushes his air conditioner up a notch and wishes that nuclear reactors - radioactive ash and all - had taken over a few centuries sooner than they did.

For coal and oil release an ash also and that ash is also puffed into the atmosphere. The ash of coal and oil isn't radioactive, to be sure, it is only good harmless carbon fdioxide, which is already present in the atmosphere anyway.

It is only a minor constituent of the atmosphere, 0.04 by weight, but this comes out into big numbers if all the air Earth has it lumped into the scale. The weight of our atmosphere is 5.70 X 10(15) tons, so that the weight of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is 2.28 X 10(12) (about two and a quarter trillion) tons.

That carbon dioxide, however, is subjected to some tremendous pushes and pulls. For instance, all plant life depends for existence on the consumption of atmospheric carbon dioxide. ...

Lump all the plant life by land and sea (especially the seawhere the algae uses up eight times as much crbon dioxide as all land plants put toggether) and a considerable amount of gas is used up.

... There is a carbon dioxide cycle, with plants using it up and animals and bacteria forming it begin.

... "This warming effect of carbon dioxide is called the "greenouse effect."

After several paragraphs explaining what would happen if the balance of carbon dioxide is shifted one way or the other - and thus an alternation in the average temperature, he continues: "At the moment (1959) we are adding 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the air each year (two hundred times as much as is being added by volcanic action and at least a fiftieth as much as is being added by life activity proper.) And the rate is still increasing..

Asimov predicted that coastal areas could be drowned in a mere 350 years.

... "Unless there is a counteracting factor. But is there? Answer - maybe!)

Asimov then cites some ways the earth could maintain it's balance.

1) As the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide goes up, plant life might luxuriate correspondingly, use the carbon dioxide faster and bring the level down again. [Asimov apparently doesn't foresee de-forestation at this time.]

2) The oceans of the earth could absorb more of the carbon dioxide. However - there's a limit to how much carbon dioxide the oceans can absorb.)

"A somewhat more startling explanation of the beginning of the Ice Ages has been advanced by Maurice Ewing and William Donn, working at Columbia. They blame it specifically on the Arctic Ocean."

Why did the Ice Ages only start 300,000 years ago? "Ewing and Donn say because that is when the North Pole first found itself in the Arctic Ocean. Before then it had been somewhere in the Pacific where the ocean was large enough and open enough to cause no severe snowstorms on the distant land areas.

From Wikipedia
William Maurice "Doc" Ewing (May 12, 1906 – May 4, 1974) was an American geophysicist and oceanographer.

Ewing has been described as a pioneering geophysicist who worked on the research of seismic reflection and refraction in ocean basins, ocean bottom photography, submarine sound transmission (including the SOFAR channel), deep sea coring of the ocean bottom, theory and observation of earthquake surface waves, fluidity of the Earth's core, generation and propagation of microseisms, submarine explosion seismology, marine gravity surveys, bathymetry and sedimentation, natural radioactivity of ocean waters and sediments, study of abyssal plains and submarine canyons.

He was born in Lockney, Texas, where he was the eldest child of a large farm family. He won a scholarship to attend Rice University, earning a B.A. with honors in 1926. He completing his graduate studies at the same institution, earning an M.A. in 1927 and being awarded his Ph.D. in 1931. In 1928 he was married to Avarilla Hildenbrand, and the couple had a son.

He moved to Columbia University, becoming a professor of geology in 1947. In 1959 he was named the Higgins Professor of Geology at Columbia. Dr. Ewing (often simply called 'Doc' by those who worked with him) was the founder (established in 1949) and first director of Lamont Geological Observatory (now known as Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) in Palisades, New York) where he worked with J. Lamar Worzel (gravity specialist), Dr. Frank Press (seismologist), Jack Nafe, and Jack Oliver. The former LDEO research vessel R/V Maurice Ewing was named in his honor.

He divorced a second time, and married Harriet Greene Bassett in 1965. In 1972 he joined the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, and was named the head of the Division of Earth and Planetary Sciences of the Marine Biomedical Institute.

During his career he published over 340 scientific papers. He served as president of the American Geophysical Union and the Seismological Society of America. He led over 50 oceanic expeditions. He made many contributions to oceanography, including the discovery of the SOFAR Channel, and did much work fundamental on plate tectonics. He was the chief scientist on board the Glomar Challenger. He came up with the idea behind Project Mogul (Project Mogul (sometimes referred to as Operation Mogul) was a top secret project by the US Army Air Forces involving microphones flown on high altitude balloons, whose primary purpose was long-distance detection of sound waves generated by Soviet atomic bomb tests. The project was carried out from 1947 until early 1949. The project was moderately successful, but was very expensive and was superseded by a network of seismic detectors and air sampling for fallout which were cheaper, more reliable, and easier to deploy and operate.)

Interestingly, William Donn does not have an entry at Wikipedia.

Check out: The Colder Side of Global Warming. (http://www.colderside.com/)

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"The Unblind Workings of Chance": Only A Trillion

This article first appeared in: the Apr-57 issue of Astounding , according to http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/Essays/other_essays.html. According to Asimov, he wrote it in July, 1956. It was published in an anthology in 1957, Only A Trillion.

The opening paragraph:

The question for discussion is exactly how much luck was involved in the development, on Earth, of life from non-living substances, and, as a corollary, what chance there is of finding life on any other Earth-like planet.

Final paragraphs:

But let's see, is there life on Mars?

Despite all the odds against it, despite the poorness of the planet, the answer seems to be: possibly, yes. At least, the green areas on Mars seem to signify some kind of vegetation. The vegetation might be very primitive and undiversified, nothing like the teeming life of Earth, but it would be life.

And if Mars can do it, it is my belief that any Earth-like planet can do it.

Religious folk will say that, statistically speaking, life couldn't have been created because there's just no way atoms would combine, by chance, in enough ways to create life. Asimov points out that it's perfectly possible, because there are only a few ways that atoms do combine, because of there chemical properties. Some combinations are more probable than others.

"Victory on Paper" (Only A Trillion)

According to Isaac Asimov's Essays, (a site that lists them and what books they are collected in, and reviews them, but doesn't go in-depth as ths blog does), "Victory on Paper" first appeared in the September, 1955 issue of Astounding, and anthologized for the first and only time in 1957 in Only A Trillion.

It is a continuation from his essay which appeared in the February 1955 issue, "Hemoglobin and the Universe."

The Quotable Asimov
None in this essay.

First Paragraph
The key to the answer to the problem of protein structure was found by a Russian. This was Michael Tawett.

In 1906, Tswett submitted a paper to a German botanical journal in which he described a series of experiments involving a new, and, as it turned out, revolutionary technique. Tswett was a botanist who was interested in the colored pigments one could soak out of plant leaves by using various solvents. Among those pigments is xhlorophyl which plants use to concvert solar energy into food and without which life on Earth -- except for certain micro-organisms, would quickly become impossible. Naturally, biochemists were yearning at the time to get at those plant pigments, separate one from another and figure out the structure of each. But how was one to go about separating the unholy mess into individual components? Ordinary chemical procedures simply didn't come close to doing the job.

Topic
Michael Tswett, a Russian, invents chromtography, which separates out the pigments of plants. However, because he's a Russian writing in Russian, and a botanist rather than a biochemist, allowed German biochemists - the biochemists of the age, to dismiss his work. In 1931, German biochemists adopted his method, however.

It was by using chromatography that scientists discovered the structure of protein molecules. Once the structure of these various proteins were known, they could, in theory, be synthesized in the lab. Asimov mentions the work in synthesizing insulin, for exmaple.

Who knew Novacaine is a synthetic form of coacaine??]

Final Paragraph
It took Sanger and his men eight years to solve the "impossible" problem of finding one arrangement out of several googols of possible arrangments. We shoundn't object to giving biochemists a few more years to see what other impossibilities they can knock off.

Note
The anthology, Only a Trillion, was published in 1957 with new material - the Notes, written in 1976. In his Note for this essay, Asimov points out:

Since this article was first written, in March 1955, the various methods for working out the intimate structure of protein molecules have advanced to the point where they have become routine - even automated.... In addition, chemists have been working out the intimately detailed structure of various nucleic acids, the only othr group of compounds to compare in complexity and importance to the proteins.

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"Hemoglobin and the Universe" (Only A Trillion)

According to Isaac Asimov's Essays, (a site that lists them and what books they are collected in, and reviews them, but doesn't go in-depth as ths blog does), "Hemoglobin and the Universe" first appeared in the February, 1955 issue of Astounding, and anthologized for the first and only time in 1957 in Only A Trillion.

The Quotable Asimov
Even the purest and most high-minded scientist finds it expedient sometimes to assault the fortress of truth with the blunt weapon of trial and error.

There is no question but that most or all of the secrets of life lie hidden in the details of protein structure.

First Paragraph
Even the purest and most high-minded scientist finds it expedient sometimes to assault the fortress of truth with the blunt weapon of trial and error. Sometimes it works beautifully. As evidence and as a case in point, let us bring to the front of the stage the hemoglobin molecule.

Topic
Hemoglobin is the chief protein component of the red blood cells.

Asimov goes on to tell of how the hemoglobin molecule is constructed - consisting of a heme fraction and a globin fraction. The heme fraction consists of an iron atom surrounded by twenty carbon atoms and four nitrogen atoms. The atoms are arranged in a "porphyrin ring."

Asimov explains how the structure of the porphyrin rings and their sidechains were discovered. (Asimov confinesa himself to simple arithmetic in his explanations, not chemistry.)

The discovery of the poryphirin ring construction for heme was done by trial and error - there were only 15 possible choices it could be. Asimov explains how German chemist Hans Fischer did it.

But what about for the protein, hemoglobin?

The rest of the essay is all mathematics, as Asimov explains why it would have been impossible to discover the structure of hemoglobin by the same trial and error method that had worked for heme.


Final Paragraph
How did the biochemists do it?

The fact is that straight trial-and-error technique would have been an unbearable trial and a colossal error. So they used other medthods. There are other methods, you know.

Note
The anthology, Only a Trillion, was published in 1957 with new material - the Notes, written in 1976. In his Note for this essay, Asimov points out:

Since this article was first written in July, 1954, chemists have discovered msany details about the hemoglobin molecule.

...

There is no longer any basic mystery as to how the body manufactures hemoglobin molecules, with all the amino acids correctly in place. In 1953, the year before this article was first written, James Watson and Francis Crick worked out the way in which the nucleic acid molecules of the chromosomes duplicated themselves. Other chemists went on to discover how the structure of the nucleic acids was used to guide the formation of chains of amino acids in a particular order. The basic details of all this you can find in my book The Genetic Code.

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"The Explosions Within Us" (Only A Trillion)

According to Isaac Asimov's Essays, (a site that lists them and what books they are collected in, and reviews them, but doesn't go in-depth as ths blog does), "The Explosions Within Us" first appeared in Only A Trillion , in other words it was written specifically for the book, and published for the first and only time in 1957.

The Quotable Asimov
All mathematical treatment of radioactive breakdown is statistical in nature and statistics work more poorly as the numbers grow smaller.

First Paragraph
It is all very well to speak of radioactive atoms that occur in the soil, as I have been doing in the previous chapter. There is something objective and detached about atoms exploding within rocks and soil. But plants grow in the soil and animals live on plants. Is it possible that radioactive atoms may find their way into living tissue and even into our own bodies?

It is not only possible, it is certain.

Topic
Asimov discusses the trace elements in our body, broken down by atom. (We need only a trace of cobalt to survive, but that trace actually consists of several million atoms.)

He also talks about the existence of the radioactive potassium-40 in our bodies. There is three times as much potassium-40 in our bodies as iodine.

"There is always a chance" Asimov comments "...that the unfortunate molecule that finds itself in the path of a free radical (a water molecule with a piece knocked off by a beta particle) may be one of the nucleo-protein molecules called "genes". There are several thousand genes in each cell, each gene controlling some particular facet of the cell's chemistry. If one of those genes is damaged or altered as a result of a collision with a free radical, the cell's chemical is also altered to some extent...this change is called a mutation."

He then moves on to discuss carbon-14, and how much of that is in our bodies, and why that enables us to date dead bodies (as in mummies).

Final Paragraph
This is the same as saying that if you live to be 70, the chances that a particular cell in your body will ever have experienced even a single carbon-14 breakdown in its genes is only one in 260.

So sleep in comfort!



A note
Asimov has a note at the end of this article, pointing out he''d written it in November 1956. He'd written an article on the same topic that had appeared in the February 1955 issue of Journal of Chemical Education. "That, I believe, was the first mention in print of the relationship of carbon-14 to genetics."

He goes on to say, "In 1958, when atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs still went on wholesale, Linus Pauling published a paper in Science (Nov 14, 1958) which commented that the increase in carbon-14 content in the atmosphere would increase the incidence of undesirable mutations. Asimov states he received a letter from Pauling "which refers in most kindly fashion to my article." But he doesn't say exactly what Linus said (and if you read Yours, Isaac Asimov, a collection of Asimov's correspondence, typically Linus only wrote when he was pointing out an error in on of Asimov's articles.)

The Atoms That Vanish (Only A Trillion) 1957

History
There are conflicting data on in what magazine or periodical "The Atoms That Vanish" first appeared. Wikipedia, a useful resource but one that must be verified by outside sources, says it was "first published in Change!, 1957".

But the Asimov Online site says that it was "First Published In: 1957, The Tyrannasaurus Prescription (collection #37)"

All I know for sure is that it appeared in Asimov's first collection of essays, Only A Trillion, which was published in 1957, and has not been included in any other collection since then.

Topic
Asimov discusses radioactive half-life, and gives data on the half-life of various isotopes. (All this information is still valid today.)

First paragraph
I think I can assume that the readers of this book all know that there are atoms which are unstable and which break down by ejecting particles from within their nuclei. Sometimes the ejection of one particle is sufficient to allow what remains of the nucleus to be stable. Sometimes a dozen or more particles must be ejected one after the other in order for stability to be attained.

Discussion
First, Asimov makes a point of talking about percentages and statistics.

Dealing with a large group of objects, however, is not the same as dealing with only one object. Once you have a large group, you can use statistics to predict the future, The larger the group, the more accurate (percentage -wise) the prediction. (My bolding.)

I mention this paragraph because today, in September 2008 we are undergoing are Presidential Election Cycle, and not a day passes that some article, based on the results of a poll, is published. And within the body of the article, sweeping statements are made about an entire group of people, for example: 67% of all White Democrates won't vote for Obama because he's black. 90% of all White Democrats think blacks are lazy. (Those aren't the actual numbers from the article, I'm just making them up, but the gist is the same.)

And yet, if you do down to the very bottom paragraph of the article, you're told how many people participated. In the case I'm referring to above, it was 2,227 people, but typically generalizations are categorically stated to be true, based on a poll sampling of 1,000 people.

And to me, a poll sampling of 1,000 people, when it's a question of what 300 Million people will do, is way too small a sample size to be saying so postively, ALL people think this. ALL people think that. Sure, opinion polls have their place, but the way the poll data is stated is done so in such a way as to sway people to believe something. Otherwise, the sample size would be revealed in the first paragraph, and instead of saying, "All Democrats think that.." they would stay "All Democrats who participated in this poll think that..."

(And, as an aside, Asimov was a Democrat. I'm a Republican.)

But enough of that digression. Back to the essay.

Half-life of Isotopes
Asimov mentions throughout the article some of the isotopes and their half-lifes. There are also several tables which illustrate his comments, (and explains how scientists have come to date the existence of the Universe, and the Big Bang Theory - though he doesn't mention it by that name.)

Uranium-238 - 4 and a half billion years
Uranium-235 - 700 Million years
Thorium-232 - 14 billion years
Potassium 40 - 1 and a 5th billion years
Rubidium-87 - 62 billion years

Riddle me this, gentle reader. (And use the Comment section to explain it to me and other readers.) How do we know that Rubidium-87 has a half-life of 62 billion years?
If the Universe has been in existence for only 5 billion years, how can we deduce how long Rubidium-87 takes to break down?

Final Paragraph
The chances, however, would be 30 to 1 against there being even a single atom of astatine-215 present.

And then there's Wikipedia...
I just checked Rubidium at Wikipedia, and the author of the very detailed article says that it has a half-life of 49 billion years (not the 62 billion Asimov says.)

Only A Trillion (1957)

Only A Trillion (1957) is the first collection of essays that Asimov ever had published. They are not from his Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction essays, which starts with Fact and Fancy (1962).

Only A Trillion

consists of 10 essays and two faux science articles.

Here's the table of contents, and I'll start by discussing the very first essay, "The Atoms That Vanish", tomorrow.

Contents
Introduction
1. The Atoms That Vanish
2. The Explosions Within Us
3. Hemoglobin and the University
4. Victory on Paper
5. The Abnormality of Being Normal
6. Planets Have an Air About Them
7. The Unblind Workings of Chance
8. The Trapping of the Sun
9. The Sea-Urchin and We
10. The Sound of Panting
11. The Marvelous Properties of Thiotimoline
12. Pate De Foix Gras

Asimov's Essays in Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine

Isaac Asimov's essays sritten for Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine began in 1958 and continued until his death. His early essays were straightforward science articles, but after about twelve or so entries, he found his "voice" in which he shared a few personal details before segueing into his essay.

The essays were collected into 22 volumes, plus 4 "retreads" (Asimov on Physics, Asimov on Astronomy, and so on).

1. Fact and Fancy (1962)
2. View from a Height (1963)
3. Adding a Dimension (1964)
4. Of Time, Space & Other Things (1965)
5. From Earth to Heaven (1966)
6. Science, Numbers and I (1968)
7. The Solar System and Back (1970)
8. The Stars in Their Courses (1971)
9. The Left Hand of the Electron (1972)
10. The Tragedy of the Moon (1973)
11. Asimov on Astronomy (1974) - republished from other collections
12. Asimov on Chemistry - republished from other collections
13. Of Matters Great & Small (1975)
14. Asimov on Physics - republished from other collections
15. The Planet That Wasn't (1976)
16. Asimov on Numbers - republished from other collections
17. Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright (1977)
18. The Road to Infinity (1979)
19. The Sun Shines Bright (1981)
20. Counting the Eons (1983)
21. X Stands for Unknown (1984)
22. The Subatomic Monster (1985)
23. Far as Human Eye Could See (1987)
24. The Relativity of Wrong (1988)
25. Out of Everywhere (1990)
26. The Secret of The Universe (1990)

Complete Anthologies of Asimov's Essays

The complete set of Isaac Asimov's essays.

1. Only A Trillion (1957)
2. Fact and Fancy (1962)
3. View from a Height (1963)
4. Adding a Dimension (1964)
5. Of Time, Space & Other Things (1965)
6. From Earth to Heaven (1966)
7. Is Anybody There? (1967)
16. Science, Numbers and I (1968)
17. The Solar System and Back (1970)
18. The Stars in Their Courses (1971)
19. Left Hand of the Electron (1972)
20. The Tragedy of the Moon (1973)
8. Today and Tomorrow and-- (1973)
9. Please Explain (1973)
21. Asimov on Astronomy (taken from the F& SF wnthologies)
22. Asimon on Chemistry (taken from the F& SF wnthologies)
10. Science Past - Science Future (1975)
23. Of Matters Great & Small (1975)
24. Asimov on Physics (taken from the F& SF wnthologies)
25. The Planet That Wasn't (1976)
26. Asimov on Numbers (taken from the F& SF wnthologies)
27. Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright (1977)
11. The Beginning and the End (1978)
12. Life and Time (1979)
28. The Road to Infinity (1979)
29. The Sun Shines Bright (1981)
13. Change! (1981)
30. Asimov on Science Fiction (1982)
31. Counting the Eons (1983)
14. The Roving Mind (1983)
32. X Stands for Unknown (1984)
33. The Subatomic Monster (1985)
15. The Dangers of Intelligence (1986)
34. Far as Human Eye Could See (1987)
35. Past, Present and Future (1987)
36. The Relativity of Wrong (1988)
37. Out of Everywhere (1990)
38. The Secret of The Universe (1990)
39. Robot Visions (1990)