SCIENCE SCIENTIFIC, MILITARY AND POLITICAL

THE implications of the Sputniks fall into two clear ae ~ - By J. H. Bradley classes, the purely scientific ‘and the military. Scientifically, we now know far more about the high atmosphere, the cosmic rays and the properties of the sun than was feasible before.

The predictions of the rapid fall of Sputnik I made a few days after its launching were not sour grapes—they showed the upper atmosphere was far less dense than we had supposed.

There is a curious conflict. between the immediate correct predictions of the Soviet scientists about Sputnik I and the curves of atmospheric density published in Priroda a few months before, which agreed with Western measurements.

Really sour grapes, however, was the prediction by a speaker on the American CBS network that no results from the sputnik would ever. be released, some five minutes after the first Moscow broadcast giving cosmic ray. measurements!

The broadcast was part of an exchange series with Moscow radio, and was duly relayed.round the world, ' This ‘dirty hunk of old iron’ which ‘anybody can throw -—inte-the sky" may also allow. measurements on the variation of density in the core of the earth, though Sputniks well outside the atmosphere are needed here, and the observations are of extreme difficulty.

It will be possible, by international co- -operation, to check certain predictions of two rival schools (the. Dingle and McCrea schools) based on the Special Theory of. Relativity.

The question is this: whether time is the same ‘on. bodies which separate and come together again. The answer is by no means obvious, but many Western physicists use formulae wildly in situations they were never intended to apply to.

Important military implications are contained in the phrase ‘once the importunities of certain aggressive ideologists had been swept aside’, used by Hyman Levy in the Humanist of December 1957.

Clearly the Russians have fuels and guidance systems far : ;

more powerful and accurate than anything we have any idea how-to make. for the orbits of the Sputniks. were announced before they could have been measured.

Perhaps the new fuel may mean that missiles can be put in holes in the ground in instant readiness. The Soviet claims for the world air speed record, and to. have a plane which can fiy round the world without refuelling, strongly suggest such a fuel.

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' Of course, nothing was said about the payload carried by this plane. any more than by the American plane which can fly 7.000 miles.

It is hard to find any important scientific field in which the USSR is not well represented. This contrasts with extensive technical backwardness, and disposes of the idea that to date they have been copying ready-made foreign achievements.

A recent symposium in the American periodical Science shows a new, objective attitude to Soviet science, though there are still such legacies of ignorance as the denial of any Soviet work on a branch of physics called neutron diffraction.

The Sputniks have dangerous political implications in the

West. American newspapers shamelessly denied the availability of information which was being printed in the Manchester Guardian for all the world to see.

Some of them are still discovering that the USSR ‘recently’ issued a stamp commemorating Sputnik I—ten weeks after its publication.

Long and bitter struggles must now take place. not oniy by Wesiemn nations seeking their independence from the USA, but between those who practise the methods of McCarthy and those who have sober scientific regard for undeniable achievements.

In the light of Comrade Khrushchew’s speech at the Belgrade airport was this not a revisionist statement? Would it not be correct to characterize James Klugmann’s book ‘From Trotsky to Tito’ as the work of a man seriously affected by revisionism?

The question is of some importance since Comrade Klugmann is stil] educational director of the party. To our knowledge he has never politically analysed his revisionist book.

Presumably he will be entrusted with the task of educating us on the recent ‘declaration’. although we fail to understand how a person who has not corrected himself politically can correct others. How does this line up with the principle of ‘criticism and self-criticism’?