Science: Low on Horror

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Every now & then some pseudo-scientific jack-in-the-box pops up with an alleged death ray. Nearest approach to a real death ray is the 19-million-volt stream of subatomic particles produced at the University of California by Ernest Orlando Lawrence's giant new cyclotron. This 225-ton machine, whose operators shield themselves by water-tank barricades, can kill white mice and destroy cancer cells at popgun range. Installed in a front-line trench it would have less effect on an enemy soldier at 50 feet than one well-aimed rifle bullet.

Bombs laden with disease germs, another persistent bugaboo of modern warfare, are shrugged off by bacteriologists. Man, they say, can culture and concentrate disease organisms, but it is hardly likely that he can start epidemics in civil populations unless he reproduces the conditions, many of which are still unknown, which make natural epidemics possible.

Adolf Hitler, in his speech at Danzig last week (see p. 20), uttered a dark hint that Germany possesses a secret and unique weapon. This threat stirred Professor Archibald M. Low, A.C.G.I., M.I.A.E., F.C.S., F.I.P.I., F.R.A., F.R.G.S., F.G.S., D.Sc., Ph.D., F. Inst. Arb. to retaliate. Professor Low is a British television pioneer and jack-of-all-science who worked for the British Government in the last war, invented a wireless control gear for torpedoes. After some scientific snickers at death rays and bacteriological bombs, Professor Low growled: "Whether Hitler has any horrors or not to produce at the moment—and I am of the opinion he has not—I can truthfully say that if Britain so desired she could at this very moment out-horror Hitler."