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∂HOM Editorial Page Editor↓%2Peninsula Times Tribune%1
↓P.O. Box 300↓Palo Alto, CA 94302∞

To the Editor:

	Mr. Laut Wade's July 3 letter, calling the Stanford Linear
Accelerator Center (SLAC) a waste of money suffers from errors of fact and
mistaken values.  SLAC is one of the nation's three centers of
experimental research in high energy physics - the study of the
fundamental particles that make up the universe and the forces between
these particles.  Such studies are important to humanity for two reasons:

	1. They help satisfy mankind's permanent curiosity about the
world we live in.  While I understand the discoveries made at SLAC
(for example those for which Professor Burton Richter got the Nobel
Prize) only at the level of a reader of %2Scientific American%1, it
is important to me that those who are qualified and specialized in it
advance our collective understanding of this aspect of our world.

	Admittedly not everyone is curious about how the world is
constructed or even cares whether anyone knows about such things.
Moreover, the physics of elmentary particles seems to be
unavoidably expensive.  However, there are arguments for the
narrowly practical.

	2. High energy physics may eventually have practical applications
even though they aren't presently apparent.  Only a few years before
the discovery of nuclear fission, Ernest Rutherford, the founder of
nuclear physics, declared in the 1930s that he could see no practical
application for it.  Today, the completed reactors at Diablo Canyon, once
the Government gets over its panic and lets them be turned on, will
produce 2200 megawatts of power, enough for 600,000 people and more than
24 times that used by SLAC.  If Mr. Wade has a general theory of science
powerful enough to assure us that learning more about elementary particles
will never have practical applications, I hope he will publish it.

	Mr. Wade writes as though energy were a fixed resource and that
the energy now used by 4 billion people will have to suffice for 6 billion
at the end of the century.  Partly thanks to physicists studying the
structure of matter, America can produce all the energy it is likely to
need or want and so can the rest of the world.  Not only in energy but
in every other field, there is no need for poverty or "diminished
expectations" provided we put to use the technology based on fundamental
science.

	Perhaps Mr. Wade has one legitimate complaint - though
not against SLAC.  Exhortations
to reduce the consumption of electricity may be legitimate in times
of crisis, but there is no excuse for them in the long run.
The long term material shortage is of petroleum, and we must replace
its use by other sources of energy.  There also seems to be a mental
shortage of imagination and of progressive spirit.

.sgn