xiv
PREFACE
STUDYING THE IMPOSSIBLE
Ironically, the serious study of the impossible has frequently opened
up rich and entirely unexpected domains of science. For example, over
the centuries the frustrating and futile search for a "perpetual motion
machine" led physicists to conclude that such a machine was impossible, forcing them to postulate the conservation of energy and the three
laws of thermodynamics. Thus the futile search to build perpetual motion machines helped to open up the entirely new field of thermodynamics, which in part laid the foundation of the steam engine, the
machine age, and modern industrial society.
At the end of the nineteenth century, scientists decided that it was
"impossible" for the Earth to be billions of years old. Lord Kelvin declared flatly that a molten Earth would cool down in 20 to 40 million
years, contradicting the geologists and Darwinian biologists who
claimed that the Earth might be billions of years old. The impossible
was finally proven to be possible with the discovery of the nuclear
force by Madame Curie and others, showing how the center of the
Earth, heated by radioactive decay, could indeed be kept molten for
billions of years.
We ignore the impossible at our peril. In the 1920s and 1930s
Robert Goddard, the founder of modern rocketry, was the subject of intense criticism by those who thought that rockets could never travel in
outer space. They sarcastically called his pursuit Goddard's Folly. In
1921 the editors of the New York Times railed against Dr. Goddard's
work: "Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action
and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum
against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled
out daily in high schools." Rockets were impossible, the editors huffed,
because there was no air to push against in outer space. Sadly, one
head of state did understand the implications of Goddard's "impossible" rockets-Adolf Hitler. During World War II, Germany's barrage of
impossibly advanced V-2 rockets rained death and destruction on London, almost bringing it to its knees.
Studying the impossible may have also changed the course of world
PREFACE
STUDYING THE IMPOSSIBLE
Ironically, the serious study of the impossible has frequently opened
up rich and entirely unexpected domains of science. For example, over
the centuries the frustrating and futile search for a "perpetual motion
machine" led physicists to conclude that such a machine was impossible, forcing them to postulate the conservation of energy and the three
laws of thermodynamics. Thus the futile search to build perpetual motion machines helped to open up the entirely new field of thermodynamics, which in part laid the foundation of the steam engine, the
machine age, and modern industrial society.
At the end of the nineteenth century, scientists decided that it was
"impossible" for the Earth to be billions of years old. Lord Kelvin declared flatly that a molten Earth would cool down in 20 to 40 million
years, contradicting the geologists and Darwinian biologists who
claimed that the Earth might be billions of years old. The impossible
was finally proven to be possible with the discovery of the nuclear
force by Madame Curie and others, showing how the center of the
Earth, heated by radioactive decay, could indeed be kept molten for
billions of years.
We ignore the impossible at our peril. In the 1920s and 1930s
Robert Goddard, the founder of modern rocketry, was the subject of intense criticism by those who thought that rockets could never travel in
outer space. They sarcastically called his pursuit Goddard's Folly. In
1921 the editors of the New York Times railed against Dr. Goddard's
work: "Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action
and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum
against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled
out daily in high schools." Rockets were impossible, the editors huffed,
because there was no air to push against in outer space. Sadly, one
head of state did understand the implications of Goddard's "impossible" rockets-Adolf Hitler. During World War II, Germany's barrage of
impossibly advanced V-2 rockets rained death and destruction on London, almost bringing it to its knees.
Studying the impossible may have also changed the course of world