Who’s Got the Bigger One? Missiles, Computers, and Other Nonsense.

There’s a scene in NOISE:77 that always makes me smile.
On one side there’s Gertrud: American, MIT, powerful computer, serious laboratories, and that very Western confidence that, with enough funding, even the apocalypse can become a grant proposal.
On the other there’s Ivan: Soviet, Crimea, a noisy machine, suffocating bureaucracy, and a system where staring at Saturn for too long could probably be mistaken for sexual deviance.
They both run the numbers.
They both reach the same conclusion.
Saturn doesn’t add up.
And that’s what makes it beautiful.
Back in the 1970s, the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in history’s greatest competition over who had the bigger one: missiles, rockets, bombs, computers, flags, egos. A planetary locker room, only with nuclear warheads instead of towels.
The problem is that physics has one deeply irritating habit: it couldn’t care less about this nonsense.
It’s not communist.
It’s not capitalist.
It doesn’t vote.
It doesn’t read opinion polls.
It isn’t impressed by generals.
If a calculation is correct in Boston, it’s correct in Crimea. If Saturn is heavier than expected, then Saturn is heavier than expected—even if that ruins the Pentagon’s day or gives the Central Committee a migraine.

<p class=”p1″>There’s a scene in NOISE:77 that always makes me smile.
On one side there’s Gertrud: American, MIT, powerful computer, serious laboratories, and that very Western confidence that, with enough funding, even the apocalypse can become a grant proposal.
On the other there’s Ivan: Soviet, Crimea, a noisy machine, suffocating bureaucracy, and a system where staring at Saturn for too long could probably be mistaken for sexual deviance.
They both run the numbers.
They both reach the same conclusion.
Saturn doesn’t add up.
And that’s what makes it beautiful.
Back in the 1970s, the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in history’s greatest competition over who had the bigger one: missiles, rockets, bombs, computers, flags, egos. A planetary locker room, only with nuclear warheads instead of towels.
The problem is that physics has one deeply irritating habit: it couldn’t care less about this nonsense.
It’s not communist.
It’s not capitalist.
It doesn’t vote.
It doesn’t read opinion polls.
It isn’t impressed by generals.
If a calculation is correct in Boston, it’s correct in Crimea. If Saturn is heavier than expected, then Saturn is heavier than expected—even if that ruins the Pentagon’s day or gives the Central Committee a migraine.</p>