Ronald E. McNair Building Dedication Symposium, "The Space Frontier: 'Hanging It Over the Edge'" (12/5/1986)

[CHIME MUSIC]

BROWN: Today, with this morning's symposium and the ceremonies this afternoon, we celebrate the life and honor the memory of Dr. Ronald E. McNair. Ron McNair earned his PhD in physics here, and we at MIT are very proud of him. Ron's life, which was tragically cut short, was marked by heroic accomplishment, courage, and dedicated service to his country. His record stands as a model for all young people to emulate and has brought great honor to his family, his friends, to this institution, and indeed, to the whole country.

As most of you know, at MIT, we have a Center for Space Research, which shares a building with the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. And in the MIT tradition, this building has been known as Building 37 for the past several years. During the past year, there has been a groundswell of opinion that this building should be named for Ron McNair. Before this day is finished, Building 37 will officially become the Ronald E. McNair Building.

I extend a warm welcome to all of you for this morning's symposium. And I'm especially pleased to welcome Ron's family and his many close friends who are here with us this morning. All of you, of course, are invited to attend the dedication ceremonies this afternoon and the reception which follows. And now it is my pleasure to introduce my colleague Professor Gordon Pettengill, the Director of the Center for Space Research, who is a chairman of this morning's symposium. Gordon?

PETTENGILL: Thank you, Gene. This morning, in a program to commemorate Dr. Ronald McNair's interest in advancing science, as well as his deep interest in understanding how science affects man's outlook, we will hear from four speakers, all addressing a theme that was close to Ron's heart-- the space frontier.

Unfortunately, I was not able to know Ron directly. But from reading things that he has written, talking to people who knew him, his personal philosophy has come through very clearly indeed. This philosophy is, on the one hand, to think clearly, to exercise one's intellect, and to do careful planning-- all of that's essential-- but at the same time, to push hard against the frontiers of knowledge, to take chances where they are necessary, and in fact, to hang it over the edge.

This last phrase, which is included in the symposium's title, was a favorite of Ron's. I gather that it originated in the surfing and mountaineering communities-- perhaps otherwise as well, I don't know-- where it epitomizes the daring that's necessary to make one's mark, even if it leads to danger. In Ron's case, it translates as a need never to let well enough alone, never to sit back fat and happy, as it were, and always to perceive and accept a new challenge. I'm sure that this theme, which is so characteristic of Ron, will surface again and again in the ceremonies today.

As Dean Brown has just said, Ron had a very strong involvement with MIT, coming here first on an experimental program for talented undergraduates and then later returning to earn a doctorate in physics based on research in the application of lasers to spectroscopy. His was an educational success story in every way.

We'll hear more of Ron's personal life and recollections of people who knew him well in this afternoon's ceremonies. But in this morning, we're going to highlight those interests of Ron's which involve more of the scientific and the involvement of man with science. We will hear a series of talks revealing how an inner drive, fed by the excitement of research at the frontier, has propelled scientists to reach out for an understanding of the heavens. We hope that some of this excitement and wonder will be felt by all of you.

Our first speaker this morning is Institute Professor Philip Morrison, well-known for his wide-ranging interests in all the works of man, including extraterrestrials, too, if we can only find some.

[LAUGHTER]

He suffuses the discussion of any topic with a tangible enthusiasm that I'm sure most of you already know. He's backed by a distinguished career that covers many, many years, 20 of them at MIT. And from this perspective, Phil has a solid base on which to seek new insights and ways of describing things, which we'll be hearing more of, I'm sure. It's a compliment for me to say that I never quite know where his talks are going to lead, and the one this morning is no exception. Phil, what do the heavens declare?

[CHILD WHINING]

MORRISON: Gordon, I'm sure many people know what the heavens declare. It's, of course, a literary allusion to one of the strongest parts of the framework of our speech, the famous translation of the Bible which goes to the 17th century by that wonderful, probably the best of all committees, appointed by King James.

And in Psalm 19 of David, recommended to the chief musician, as everyone knows, the text of the 17th century translating the poetry now 3,000 years old tells us, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge."

This, for me, is one of the most eloquent statements of what I think must be the chief source of the scientific temper in our species, which goes back far before even the poets of Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, deep, deep into the archaeological past, which we're only beginning now to grasp and understand.

It seems quite plain-- and this quotation has it almost explicit-- that the order of the world, the sense that there is some kind of order, pattern that we can perceive, has at least as one important source. Of course, the motion of the game, the beat of the heart, all those things have their rule. But the succession of day and night, the succession of the seasons, which we are all, from the beginning, so characterized and so marked, must have been one of the great stimuli to look for order in other parts of the world and of our experience. And I think that's almost unquestionable. That is the oldest.

So in some sense, the astronomical rhythms, which are not, after all, evident, self-evident-- many jokes in all cultures explain how the sun is not so important as the moon, because the sun is out by day, when you don't really need it, whereas the moon--

[LAUGHTER]

This sense of causal relationship between day and night and the position of the heavenly luminaries, that's the sort of thing you don't teach in the schools. But there's no question, that's a fundamental kind of understanding of an abstraction which everybody knows, because that comes to the child in a curious way. And we have that idea. And so I think this is quite important.

By the time you have gotten to richer body of scientific material or proto-scientific material, say, with the philosophers of Greece, who are so well-documented-- that's probably the only reason they stand out for us. They are well-documented. We have their writings. And we know very well that they saw a commanding order in the heavens.

And it was so grand for Aristotle that he and his followers divided the universe of our experience into two, dually, and said, "Here below, motion is haphazard and faltering and turbulent and chaotic. But above, it is circular, the most perfect of forms. Here below, matter is earthy and dull and multiple and impermanent. But there, it is shining. And here below, things are born and die. Things wear away and degrade and change and go. But up there is perpetuality."

So they said, "The heavens are characterized by-- they are circular, shining, and perpetual. And here on Earth, our experience leads to the other sort of phenomenon." And that is not a bad division of the world. It is the beginning of a theoretical understanding. I believe, and I will say, that most of what we now know makes it deeply wrong, and we'll see how clearly that is. But it's wrong only in the sense that all initial approximations are wrong if transcended by a higher understanding, but right in its essence.

Yes, the heavens are different. But no, it is not that we are that different, because we, too, are in the heavens, circling around on a planet like the other planets, just as shining and circular, perpetual as they are. And it was the 17th century, the enormous rise of science in the 17th century, that gave the strongest enrichment of this idea, which was not the novel idea of the 17th century, but which blossomed then.

On the one hand, the Earth was a planet and therefore shared these qualities. And on the other hand, the planets were not that distinct and different in another creation from the Earth, but no part of the same. "The moon was a place," said Galileo, and the crater he could see he compared to a plain in Bohemia, flat and encircled by high mountains. And how could he say that? For the very best reason-- he could lay eyes on it. And he carefully watched the sun rise on the mountain landscape of the moon in the winter between 1609 and 1610 from Florence and Padua.

For the first time in the world, people could see enough detail to recognize that sunrise and sunset on the moon were parallels to sunrise and sunset in the mountains of Italy or Czechoslovakia. And of course, now the astronauts see the sunrise and sunset as they circle the world. But it's the same sunrise and sunset in a way which I think everyone clearly understands. So it's not identically the same, but it has the same basis, the same origins, and the same geometrical and temporal description.

He saw also that Venus was not the shining point that would have to be required if all planets were just like that. Venus showed phases like the moon to his telescope. And he knew the moon, of course, displayed phases, as the ancients had known, as we always have known.

And so for Aristotle, the moon had to be a boundary place. It shared something of shining circularity and perpetuality, but not all. It shared something of the Earth. It was in between. Beyond the moon were the heavens. Below the moon was the Earth. The moon was on the frontier. And so, of course, we have made it in our time. The moon is still the only place reached by human beings beyond this Earth.

The next unification was, of course, the remarkable-- came very suddenly at the end of the same century-- the remarkable rise under Newton, with a great deal of help from Hooke and Huygens and the others, who produced the idea of gravitation, universal force of attraction between all bodies of matter, not only sun and Earth, not only Jupiter and his moons, but of course, Earth and apple, as everyone knows from the old, perhaps true story of the fall of the apple.

But I find it quite striking-- as I'm interested always in this extension of these notions-- I find that quite striking to recall that it took about a generation, generation and a half, before the royal astronomer, Sir Nevil Maskelyne, verified what Newton in his book, of course, had to recognize, what all the physicists then admitted and knew-- that the bodies that draw each other here on Earth, like the book and the-- not the Earth-- but the book in my hand have a tiny force between them if Newton is to be right.

Why is this force insensible? Why don't we notice it? Why is attraction restricted to the heavens or to the Earth, the great ball of the Earth, against everyday things? Only because of quantity, only because the force is so small.

And it was Maskelyne who first had the brilliant idea and carried it through, actually-- others had proposed-- that if you made very careful surveys on either side of a mountain-- he chose a mountain in the highlands of Scotland-- and moved from one side of the mountain to the other and used your telescope very carefully and your plumb bob very carefully, you could measure the fact that the plumb bob would incline ever so slightly towards the mountain, a mountain being about the smallest object that would give enough force to be detected by the instrumentation of that day.

And it worked, and it worked, and he could measure the density of the mountain compared to the density of the Earth and so on. And from then on, we have not gone without the direct knowledge, now an everyday experiment, not still an easy one, in the laboratory to show that lead balls do, in fact, attract something else in the laboratory. And of course, it doesn't have to be lead.

But this sense of universal gravitation and the laws of motion that went with it unified the motion fully for hundreds of years, the development of the heart of mathematically aimed science-- that's to say, physics and the other natural sciences-- from the time of Newton from 1700, let me say, until approximately 1950 or '60, but without yet that final unification, which is to say, yes, we now recognize the Earth must be a planet. It must be shining, circular, and perpetual, so to speak. And the planets share the same earthiness that we have. We are all one universes, single.

I am very moved by the eloquent account that Galileo also made, though he was not the first-- da Vinci did the same-- to describe the evidence for the shining quality of the Earth, not, of course, by going into orbit, as people now have seen it, but by looking for the reflection of the Earth light upon the moon.

In his careful account of that and his analogies and comparisons and so on, innocent very much measurement, but using plenty of arguments derived from walking through the streets of Florence and watching the sun shine on different surfaces, he was able to show quite conclusively that the so-called old moon in the new moon's arm phenomenon is a phenomenon of earthshine from the clouds to the east of your observation point. And this is, of course, now nicely demonstrated. We have no doubt.

And so when first the satellite went into orbit, a little cranky thing of 100 or 200 pounds, with the errors of the designer and the fingerprints of the machinist still on it, and then finally, human beings, men and women, also went into space, the final unity was established. It was not just mathematical. It was not just in the laboratory. But it was realized in everyday way. And that has had a great impact, I'm sure, upon the imagination of most people.

See, what I am talking about is not the specific things of astronomy, but the hold upon our own minds, the way we see the world, which all over the world has been dominated by these regularities and generalities that come from the pursuit of our place in the wider universe, that which we call astronomy and all its aspects.

So I feel that the unity of motion and force was sort of the second thing that we have. And its implications for everyday life, of course, are manifold, as an engineering institution bears witness. Newton's mechanics are taught just about in all departments.

The next remark I want to make is the universality of matter, the unity of matter in the universe. Again, that was hard-won information. But signs were there. I just recently saw a beautiful analysis and photograph of a dagger owned by the Mughal emperor Jahangir about 1600, in which is folded in the middle of this wonderful dagger, beautifully inscribed, is folded a small piece of meteoric iron from a meteor that fell on the Punjab and was rushed to the emperor.

They said it was something-- it came in a bolt of lightning. But it was obviously marvelous. And iron and stars have a name very much resembling each other in many languages. And probably, the sign of this heavenly sent iron has had a big effect on the imagination of people.

So there was some feeling that matter was not just here, and the mountains gave the form of the matter on the moon. When you see mountains, you know they're rock, though you don't really know that they're rock. They might be something that resembles rock. And indeed, the scholastic critics of Galileo made much of this possibility and talked about glassy coverings and many other things I shan't bother. But the simplicity of the story really made its way known.

And, as I think all people who've studied some physics know, from these ideas of meteorites and pieces of iron, the spectroscope, which itself derived from the rainbow and from the color sense of human beings, who can distinguish colors so well with the inborn gift of eye color, which most people have-- not all-- was demonstrable as a means of analyzing light itself. Without getting any sample from light itself, you can penetrate the matter, which is the makeup, the composition of the source of the light.

A truly remarkable effect, so that an exposure of a few photographs, or even looking with the eye in the spectroscope, is the same as getting a teaspoonful from a distant star and taking it to the chemist-- in fact, on the whole, rather better. It probably takes much more than a teaspoonful.

And we learned, then, that not only is it formed the same way-- not only is matter earthy and so on everywhere-- with, of course, the exception that the sun is not. It's incandescent, and we understand that now. But matter, too, on Earth can become incandescent fleetingly. And so the sun is incandescent fleetingly. But fleetingly for the sun is a good matter of 10 billion years. So we have to understand these adjustments to the inborn human scale and human abilities.

But it is the same stuff, the same chemical elements. And from the word, you recognize-- the word helium comes, of course, from the Greek Helios, for the sun. And helium was an element discovered first by a spectrum in the sun and not known on Earth, but unmistakable, even in the poor state of atomic knowledge of 1870 or '80 when it was discovered.

The keen astronomers of those days said, "Yes, this is another atom. We don't have this on Earth." And it was found 25 or 30 years later in terrestrial samples. And of course, now it's a commonplace of the stores and the birthday party. But it is really quite wonderful.

It's lost to Earth, mostly. We have it in very rare amounts because of its unique chemistry. It has no chemistry. And therefore, the Earth lost it in early days. The sun is still 10%, 5% or 10% helium. The great planets are largely helium. Helium is a very common constituent of the universe. And we find, in fact, that the universe and everything we see is hydrogen and helium.

In fact, you can say that the universe that we can see in all bands, from the lowest frequency radio to the gamma rays, everything we can see is pretty much made and has the marks of hydrogen, technical-grade hydrogen-- a little helium, yes, and a certain amount of 2% impurity to allow for oxygen and iron and all the rest. Then you have a pretty good description of what the universe is made of. You could buy it, you know, in some chemical warehouse, a technical-grade hydrogen. They would sell you this mixture. And from that, all is made, all that we see.

And of course, a wonderful sense of unity, and in addition-- and in addition-- a sense of simplicity, of youth, of the pristine. Because if we ask, what characterizes hydrogen, and then what characterizes helium as a lesser secondary element, you find they are the simplest, the lightest, the least complex of all the stable atoms we know. And therefore, they suggest the processes are developing from simplicity to complexity.

And this is a sign they have not yet gotten very far. And it's a very important sign and was a cornerstone of contemporary effort to understand the origins and fate of matter and of ourselves with matter and is not, of course, without its criticism today.

And I want to close with that, because, of course, we're looking forward always. We're not just looking backward. That is one of the great virtues of the scientific temperament, not always to its benefit, but it is a part of its temperament. We look forward. We look to the edge to see what we'll find.

And I simply want to close by saying there are two discoveries of the past 20 years-- one, perhaps, the past five or 10 years and one of 20 years ago-- now quite elaborated so that they're almost-- perhaps not entirely-- almost beyond doubt.

The first is that by looking at radiations, which we never expected to see-- radiations in the microwave domain, the millimeter domain, very hard for us to measure-- it became plain that the radiation that came from the dark parts of space between the stars and between the galaxies was much greater in amount, only hard for us to see, not made for our eyes, than all the radiation that came from stars.

When we examined this with detail, we found the remarkable, still unbelievable property to me, but unquestionable-- its uniformity, is beyond comparison. We know of no natural phenomenon in the celestial scale so uniform as the so-called thermal background radiation. It is accurately the same in all directions, day and night, summer and winter, north and south-- you name any way you want to call direction-- comes from behind all the stars and galaxies.

And it must go back to a time when the universe was still simple, still uniform, when it had not made the complex, lumpy structures that we call galaxies, stars, planets, meteorites, people. And this sense, again, of turning from the simple to the complex is part of the story, which at least adds to the strength of the intuition we got from the pristine nature of hydrogen and helium.

And then, as I indicated, not all is well. Not all is so clearly understandable and a huge success. We are thrown into tremendous doubt and uncertainty by a wonderful discovery, which is now hard to doubt, hard to-- on the superficial level, we may not understand it. But the fact seems to be true.

All that visible matter that glows to us in all these wonderful spectral bands, some of which can be seen from the Earth itself, some of which you have to go into space to see, all of those seem to bring us news-- we now have gravitational evidence-- the news that we get by electromagnetic radiation is news of only maybe 5% or 10% of all the mass that is out there, if we interpret the data in the most likely and simplest way.

Most of the galaxies are mostly made of dark matter, so far invisible to all our instruments and detectable only by their now absolutely certain effect on the orbiting of the bright objects that we see orbiting around galaxies, which are little sample stars and nebulae that perform their orbits. And from those orbits, the physicists, the astronomers can make out what mass is causing them to gravitate.

And that mass is simply too large to be accounted for by adding up all the stars and all the dust and all the gas and all that we see by a good factor, not just by a little bit, which we'd certainly expect, 'cause there must be something we don't see. No matter how well you see, there's always a little more you can see if you had better light. So we expect a little bit. But the fact it was not a little bit, but probably a factor of 10, is now the largest quandary, the largest challenge, I think, which is before us. We'll try very hard to find out what that stuff is.

It's, of course, just possible there's something wrong with our explanations. Our law of gravity is wrong. Our laws of motion are wrong. That might be true. Many people work in that direction. I'm not excluding that possibility. But I am saying what most people believe, that there looks as though, for the first time, the wonderful guide that says, "As it is here, so it is to some degree above," may be failing us.

We may be entering into a domain where we see that what we see is only a decoration upon a vast, dark region of gravitating matter, probably leftover from an early and much simpler condition, but a condition that we simply don't yet understand, because our laboratory techniques and our natural explorations have not yet given us a sample of the kind of matter we see there. Or maybe they make hints of it in the highest energy laboratories. We don't know.

That's the kind of problem which is fascinating to contemplate. That's the kind of problem whose solution many members, though perhaps not I, of this audience will see. And what an exciting time it will be. And this is the domain of astronomy to which the McNair Building and the hard work of many engineering and scientific colleagues at MIT and around the world in the past decades have contributed-- not a new, but as the last step-- the latest, not the last-- the latest step in that chain of human understanding intuition for which I think Psalm 19, a psalm of David, is a very good introduction.

[APPLAUSE]

PETTENGILL: Thank you very, very much, Phil. We're not really in a situation to entertain questions this morning. So I won't encourage that. We're a little short on time. But if there were a really outstanding one, obviously, you're going to ask it anyway.

Our next speaker is university professor Charles Townes of the University of California at Berkeley, someone who is also very well known here, having served as MIT's Provost from 1961 to 1966. Professor Townes is probably best known as the father of the laser, for which development he shared the Nobel Prize in 1964. His participation here today is highly appropriate, not only for his comments on astronomy and for man's role in space, but also as a representative of South Carolina, his home state, where Ron grew up.

I note also that as MIT provost in 1963, Professor Townes played a very important role in arranging for and fostering the construction of the Space Center building that we are today dedicating to Ron's memory. Charlie, I think all of us are curious about your talk this morning. Its title, "Man and Creation," would seem to cover a lot of territory, so--

[LAUGHTER]

--have at it.

TOWNES: Should I just use that, or?

PETTENGILL: Whichever.

TOWNES: Well, I'll use that, then. Thank you very much, Gordon. I am very pleased to be here to participate in this occasion to honor Dr. Ronald McNair and dedicate the Ronald McNair Building. I never had an opportunity to meet Ron McNair personally. 'Course, I know his work in laser physics and his distinguished career as an astronaut.

But there is also this other special reason I feel a very close affinity for McNair. He and I are natives of this relatively small state of South Carolina. We both have the red clay and the sand of that state in our blood, and I share the communities and the atmosphere which nurtured him. Of course, being black, he had more external hurdles to overcome than I did, and I think we have to respect him all the more for his accomplishments.

Ron McNair's life and the building which will be named for him has been dedicated to understanding the broader universe around us. That's an imposing assignment, but it's nevertheless not completely out of touch with reality. To me, it's always been a profoundly challenging thought that we here, the recent creations of the universe, seem to be able to understand as much as we do about its workings and its history.

We've discovered many, certainly not all, of the processes which long ago brought about our own creation. And it's particularly fantastic that we seem to have found this clear evidence, which Phil has mentioned, for the very origins of our universe, the Big Bang, going back in time some 10,000-fold beyond the origin of anything resembling ourselves. And that this creature's mind can begin to understand its own creation is quite startling. Logical or not, we even presume that man's mind has a chance of understanding itself.

One hears increasing talk of the anthropic principle, that the laws of the universe had to be almost precisely as they are in order for anything like us to exist. On the one hand, this can be taken just as a tautology. Since we exist in this universe, it must be of a style so that we can exist. it's obvious. On the other hand, the existence of man clearly required a particular arrangement of universal laws and constants and even their fine-tuning.

Another startling situation-- startling to me-- is that we now find ourselves increasingly co-creators in this universe. Shakespeare's Hamlet exclaimed, "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty!" And I don't think he was just talking about the current number of professors.

[LAUGHTER]

"How infinite in faculty! In apprehension, how like a god! And yet"-- and he continued on-- "and yet"-- to talk about some of his own personal uncertainties. So it's this infinite faculty on which I want to comment, but also the "and yet" part.

Now in some sense, all parts of our universe interact with each other. And in this interaction, each plays its role as a creator. This is evident all the way from the rather fuzzy principle of Mach, which says that the nature of space must be determined by what's in it, to the detail and intricate role of each bit player in forming and modifying its own ecological surroundings and niche.

Nonetheless, mankind shares an increasingly larger role as creator, affecting not only his own life and being, but having ever more responsibility for the nature of much of our planet. And we are about to launch into new responsibilities concerning both our own nature, through understanding of modern molecular biology and genetic engineering, and through space exploration, even the larger universe beyond our own planet.

Now this is an open universe, one for which the future is not innately determined and one in which, through science and applied science, we are becoming more and more of these co-determinants of that future. The uncertainty principle, which is relatively new, but has, for some time, nevertheless freed us of any idea of a complete determinism. We still fail to understand anything like free will, while nevertheless being instinctively convinced that somehow we possess it.

In any case, there's no doubt that the effects of mankind's intellectual power and his actions are playing an increasingly powerful role in creating this world around us. And on the scale of planet's history, even on a scale of mankind's existence, this role is rather new and very rapidly accelerating. We need only be reminded that all of our written history is no longer than about 70 human lifetimes. And modern experimental science is perhaps no older than the length of, say, five human lifetimes.

Much of the role of this unusual creature, man, comes through his understanding, his "noble reason," in Hamlet's terms. And yet, and yet, in spite of all our reason and science, our foresight as to what the future holds is, in very important respects, fuzzy and uncertain. This is part of the nature of creation. New ideas are indeed unforeseen. So we move headlong along and usually with great anticipation into a world we really don't yet know.

The uncertainty and the struggle of creation is easily illustrated. Lord Rayleigh, the great English physicist, who should have understood aerodynamics as well as anyone of his time, was quoted as saying, quote, "I have not the smallest molecule of faith in any kind of aerial navigation other than ballooning." And this was only seven years before the Wright brothers took off from Kitty Hawk.

Lord Rutherford, who was also, perhaps, the outstanding expert on the nucleus of his time, was able to say, quote, "Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine." And this only eight years before Fermi produced and his team produced the first sustained nuclear reaction.

Well, whole committees of wise men have often been no less fallible. At the request of President Franklin Roosevelt, a commission which can very reasonably be said to have represented a collection of the best minds and the senior statesman in science and engineering of the time tried to assess the future developments in science and technology which might affect American society and economy over the subsequent decades.

Their report, issued in 1937, had some interesting things to say. But the most interesting is what the distinguished commission members missed. Because they missed antibiotics, which had already been discovered, but weren't appreciated. They missed nuclear energy, which came only four years later. They missed radar, jet aircraft, rockets, space exploration, our trips to the moon, computers, solid-state electronics and all its ramifications, lasers and quantum electronics, molecular biology, and of course, modern genetic engineering. So they made a list of the most exciting technical developments of the following decades. That's what they missed.

Creation necessarily pushes us into the unknown and often into controversy, frequently, into danger. Ron McNair recognized and, I think, caught that very well in his phrase, "hanging it over the edge," 'cause it is the edge of the unknown. Creativity also doesn't often come from this general wisdom of the time and committees, but rather, requires individuals more than usually devoted to an idea and willing to accept uncertainties and risks.

Creation often depends on individuals who are willing to take that extra effort to be unusual and to take these risks. Ron McNair was himself one of those who had the intellectual and the physical vigor and courage to go beyond the ordinary to the extraordinary. MIT has, of course, provided its share of creativity during the recent past. And we can look at those who are associated with this building we talk about today, who've added to our understanding and the world's new technology.

The people in that building will be creating new things which are different, but which nevertheless will parallel past discoveries here-- the discovery by Bruno Rossi and his associates of X-ray sources outside our solar system, the distinguished work of George Clark in this area, the discovery by Alan Barrett and his associates of the first molecule in space by radio techniques, Stark Draper's very striking development of inertial guidance or Bridge's sounding of interplanetary plasmas, Gordon Pettengill's first explorations of the surface contours of Venus, or the exploration of human physiology in space of Larry Young and his associates.

Now new knowledge has two sides. One, the basic science side, is primarily cultural in nature. Discovery and understanding give us a breadth of view and inspiration, satisfaction of our innate wonder and intellectual drive, and a sense of creative achievement towards some of our most universal goals and ideas, which are really our most lasting monuments.

But there is also the application of knowledge, particularly scientific knowledge, to individual and social use, which is technology engineering. These two sides are, certainly in modern times, closely knitted together. And perhaps they always were. They depend on each other in intimate and crucial ways. The importance of the cultural aspect is no less real because it's not so measurable and concrete. Nevertheless, it's clearly the technological aspect which most directly will be changing our lives.

I was a graduate student when this Roosevelt commission made its report. And recognizing all that's happened in the intervening 50 years, one can wonder what to expect 50 years from now, when-- I'm a little confused. Here we are. What to generally expect 50 years from now, when the students who are here at MIT today have an opportunity to look back over their careers and over their lifetime. What will be those discoveries of the future?

Now with my previous remarks, obviously, I have to resist any vain attempt to make specific predictions. Nevertheless, there clearly are fields where exciting new discoveries are imminent, one concerning the ultimate and micro structure of our universe associated with particle physics, another, the rapidly developing understanding of biological systems in all their intricacy and beauty, including the ultimate challenge, the human mind to understand itself.

Most pertinent to our dedication today is the exploration of the rest of the universe-- that is, the universe which is outside our own planet, but at the same time, so intimately tied with its creation and history. And how are these new discoveries to come about? And where, in fact, is man as a creator taking us?

I think there are two extreme views towards this change and towards the future. One comes from fear and uncertainty, or at least reservation about the beneficence of any change in our society, changing the things around us. This was constantly manifest in the early days of exploration of our Earth. And new territories were looked on not only as barbarous and wild, but desolate and useless.

Columbus, for example, was called in his time the "lord of the mosquitoes." And it was really only about 100 years ago, Secretary Seward was pressing the United States to purchase Alaska and being joked about, and Alaska was called "Seward's Icebox" and "Seward's Folly." I think this type of view might be cast in terms appropriate to today's dedication by a story of a little old lady who complained, "Why does everybody want to go off and explore space? Why can't they just sit home and watch TV like God intended?"

[LAUGHTER]

At the other end of the scale is the flights of fancy, for example, as illustrated by science fiction, which uses magical ways for everyday men and women to zip back and forth across our galaxy and visit multi-peopled planets-- magic because they defy basic scientific laws. Somewhere in between these, we'll see the future.

Clearly, a creation of the future must obey the laws of the universe. But within these limits, the possibilities facing young people of today are really enormous, as developments over the last 50 years certainly illustrate. I believe these possibilities are not going to be defined by our cold calculations or what we know how to do and can show as practical and comfortable at this point, but rather, they will ultimately be determined, probably, by human aspirations as much as anything.

It's partly for this reason that science fiction, which often reflects humanity's dreams, has elements of truth and impressions about the long-term future which are completely missed by many of the careful attempts to consider present practicalities. Our aspirations are critical for mankind's creations. It is in this light that I expect the most recent report from the National Commission of Space is probably basically correct, that our species will be exploring space both to understand what is there and make new living and working areas for humans.

Commission comments that the solar system is our extended home, proposes as basic parts of the space program that it should advance understanding of our planet, our solar system, and the universe, but also should explore, prospect, and settle the solar system. Now is this ladder practical? Perhaps not, certainly not immediately. But it is consonant with basic scientific laws and a prominent aspect of mankind's aspiration. And I believe such aspirations are fundamental to the nature of man and his role in this creation.

They already say that sending brave pioneers into space and, with time, advancing human knowledge and technology will make much of what is difficult quite practical. Of course, there'll be powerful changes back here on Earth, our home base, associated with advancing technology, probably many of them quite surprising. There'll be major steps in the conquest of pain, disease, hunger, division of energy supplies and other facilities for increasing mankind's scope and activity. And how wonderfully each of us can think of this and envisage new creation, increased human capacities, and progress. Mankind, how infinite in capacity! How infinite in faculty!

And yet, and yet, there are also aspects of man's creations and aspirations which hang over us like a cloud. They raise critical questions about the value of our creations, even the viability of the species, questions which might variously be called moral, ethical, religious, or perhaps philosophical.

It says, what are we really all about? What kind of responsibility have we as individuals or as a group towards this participation in creation? What kind of relations and what kind of organizations do we establish for this generation of humans? What kind of economics, politics, human freedom, or personal attitudes towards others? There is, of course, the question of war.

But there is much more. There is this noble reason that man's understanding provides additional power over our environment and over our fellow creatures. What type of responsibility do we accept for them, or presently, for the rest of the universe? As we understand and can increasingly modify biological systems, including the human species itself, how well prepared are we to have these new powers fit into some ultimate scheme of responsibility?

Specifically, what striking new technological breakthroughs will occur is never clearly foreseeable. Yet the general direction of science is quite clear-- that is, the direction of increasing power, and hence, increasing responsibility, and ever more urgency in these ultimate questions of who we think we are and what our real aspirations and prospects as a species.

These are really troubling and difficult questions. They are not new, but they've become more poignant than ever. Creation has its real dangers. These questions are certainly not new to MIT, which has been notably involved in problems of society and the humane use of technology. MIT also provides an exceptional atmosphere for the interplay of ideas from different disciplines and of the academic with the practical. So it's a good place for this laboratory and for the exploration of our universe and man's future.

Such questions and considerations were also clearly prominent in Ron McNair's thought and his own deep religious commitment. So as we rename this important laboratory to honor him, let's also honor his aspirations and appeal, which is expressed here, the booklet you have. His appeal, which, in his words, says, "Truly, there is no more beautiful sight than to see the Earth from space beyond. This planet is an exquisite oasis. Warmth emanates from the Earth when you look at her from space. My wish is that we would allow this planet to be the beautiful oasis that she is and allow ourselves to live more in the peace that she generates." Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

PETTENGILL: Our third speaker this morning is Dr. George Carruthers, senior astrophysicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. Following the receipt of his PhD from the University of Illinois in 1964, he joined the Naval Research Laboratory, where he remains today.

I was interested to note that, from his biography, like myself and others at MIT, he had training in nuclear physics at one time, which he has abandoned in favor of the wide horizons of astronomy. Dr. Carruthers is widely known and respected for his research in ultraviolet astronomy. He received the Warner Prize for this work from the American Astronomical Society in 1973.

Far ultraviolet astronomy requires an observing platform well above Earth's atmosphere. Otherwise, the rays are absorbed. And it was this requirement that made it natural for him to call on his training in astronautics engineering, and place instruments in space using both suborbital rocket flights as well as Earth-orbiting spacecraft.

Dr. Carruthers has been an active participant in the National Science establishment, having served on various boards of the National Academy of Sciences and NASA. And he has been especially active in the affairs of the National Technical Association, a professional society for minority scientists and engineers, in which he also plays a very strong role currently as editor of the NTA journal. This morning, he will describe the future of astronomy from space. Dr. Carruthers.

[APPLAUSE]

CARRUTHERS: Good morning. I'm very thankful and honored to be here today and to participate in this dedication ceremony in honor of Dr. Ronald McNair. I regret that I never had the opportunity to meet Ron personally, although I had heard much about his remarkable accomplishments. And I'm thankful that I had the opportunity to meet some of his family and some of those who went to school with him when he was here at MIT.

Today, I'm going to be talking about the future of astronomy from space. I might mention that that was one of the major objectives of the shuttle mission in which he last flew, which had an objective to observe Comet Halley, which returns to the vicinity of the Earth every 76 years.

Astronomy is the study of objects outside of the Earth, as Professor Morrison mentioned, such as the sun, planets, stars, and galaxies, and differs from other physical sciences in that its measurements are obtained mainly by remote sensing of electromagnetic radiation, which is emitted from or reflected from the object under study, rather than by direct experimentation or in situ measurements by sending a sample to the chemist. If I could have the first slide and the lights down.

What we are showing here is the range of the electromagnetic spectrum. One normally observes visible light, which ranges from the red to the blue. But that's only a very small portion of the entire range of the electromagnetic spectrum, which ranges from extremely high-energy X-rays and gamma rays through the ultraviolet, through the visible, and through the infrared and down to the long-wavelength radio, radiation.

Now one of the problems is that classical astronomy has been limited to those wavelength ranges which penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. That's basically only the visual range and the radio range. Large portions of the infrared radiation and almost all of the ultraviolet, X-ray, and gamma ray radiation is totally blocked by the Earth's atmosphere and therefore is totally inaccessible to ground-based telescopes. Therefore, astronomy has been the science which has benefited perhaps most from space-based observations.

Now this next slide shows in more detail what I was mentioning previously, that the visible range and the radio range penetrate down to sea level. And therefore, ground-based optical telescopes and radio telescopes are quite productive. But in order to observe in the ultraviolet and the X-ray ranges, one has to go to extremely high altitudes-- above 100 miles altitude, typically-- in order to observe most of the radiation coming in from extraterrestrial objects.