Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific...

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 304 pages
• Published by: Nation Books May 21, 2007
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 156858329X
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1568583297
• Book Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Weighs: 7.2 ounces

From Publishers Weekly
The Pentagon's fascination with fringe science is old news, writes veteran defense reporter Weinberger in this incisive study, but the Bush administration has pushed it to new levels of wackiness. After reviewing our government's pursuit of antimatter weapons, psychics and telepathy, she focuses on a "nuclear hand grenade" that may cost billions and seems certain to fail. Before the War on Terror and the avalanche of government money for advanced new weapons, few paid attention to physicists who said they could harness the energy of unstable atomic nuclei, or "isomers," through a wildly expensive process involving atomic reactors. But in recent years, a group of fringe scientists aided by defense industry insiders has convinced the Pentagon that America's post-9/11 survival depends on developing an isomer bomb. While proponents compare it to the Manhattan Project, opponents point out that independent researchers have not been able to duplicate the results attained by isomer enthusiasts, and that many assumptions behind the bomb contradict the laws of physics. Though Congress canceled isomer bomb development in 2004, the Department of Energy found $5 million to continue the research. (July 1)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
That the Pentagon wastes billions of dollars on outmoded or ineffective weaponry has been old news for decades, but Weinberger offers a new dimension. Editor of the magazine Defense Technology International, Weinberger has previously worked for the U.S. State Department and the Systems Planning Corporation, and she uses her insider's understanding to expose the flaws in weapons design through a case study built around a device called a hafnium bomb. The idea for a handheld weapon with the explosive power of a nuclear bomb begins in the mind of a pseudoscientist who makes more headway with the Pentagon than seems logical. "All it took," Weinberger notes, "was a used dental X-ray, a few die-hard supporters, some farfetched claims of a new arms race, and the Pentagon thought it was on its way to the next superbomb." The episode seems outlandish enough to be satire, but alas, it's true to life. Weinberger injects humor into the saga, but comedy pales in light of the potentially deadly nature of the proposed weapon. Steve Weinberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld (Hardcover) This book details the history of a project aimed at liberating the energy held in an excited energy level, an isomer, of the hafnium-178 nucleus. If you had a mass of these nuclei and could succeed in liberating the energy from them simultaneously, for example by starting a chain reaction, you would have a bomb whose power is comparable to that of an atomic bomb. Some of the obstacles in the way of making a hafnium bomb include lack of a good method for producing quantities of the hafnium-178 isomer, the difficulty of handling the material which is radioactive, and a dispute over whether the triggering of a chain reaction can be done at all. I did find the story fascinating. Unfortunately, the explanations provided for the nuclear physics were often misleading or wrong. What can you make of the statement " ... anti-hydrogen--hydrogen with a positive charge." In fact, anti-hydrogen is the anti-matter equivalent of hydrogen. While hydrogen has a positively-charged proton and a negatively-charged electron, anti-hydrogen is composed of a negatively-charged antiproton and a positively-charged positron. There are more than a few instances in the book of the use of analogies or explanations that are not quite right. If you are a nuclear physicist, then you can tell what the author is trying to say. If you are not a physicist, then you are misinformed. The book would have been much better if the author had gotten one of the many nuclear physicists that she interviewed to proofread the book before publication. For an excellent book in this area, I recommend "Plutonium: A History of the World's Most Dangerous Element" by Jeremy Bernstein. Comment (1) | | (Report this)