Crank It Up, Beaker!

The question I encountered earlier about whether we can slow hurricanes with ice  reminded me of when I worked in the public affairs office of Fermilab, a national physics lab outside Chicago. The lab is home to the most powerful particle accelerator in the world, but people would occasionally call us with wildly non-particle-physics-related questions and suggestions. I fielded one call by a man arguing that we should look into preventing cases of summer heatstroke. His idea: store up snow during winter and give it to those without air conditioning in the summer. Now, I’m not a physicist, but I had some immediate ideas as to why this scheme might not be the panacea he suggested–collecting, refrigerating, and redistributing millions of tons of snow would prove intractably difficult and expensive–and I naively tried to share my reasoning with the caller (who apparently was a regular.) He remained unconvinced, and I promised to pass along the enterprising imagineer’s insights.

My favorite call at Fermilab went like this:

"I don’t know if I’m talking to the right person, but I
have big news. I have evidence that there are other realities. Death is
not real. When people die they just pass into another reality and don’t
realize that they’re dead. I, for instance, have died many times. I am
walking death. I’ve died 25 times… drinking a gallon of
antifreeze,taking downers and alcohol, cocaine overdose, getting hit by
a car…"

Now, if I had my druthers, I would have
been able to indulge this man, listen to his theories, poke at them,
ask him what it felt like to die. I would have liked nothing more than
to explore this man’s exotic world. But in my professional role as a
Fermilab representative I could not, as it could have been seen as
patronizing. Maybe it would have been. So I told him we’d consider his
ideas and sadly said goodbye.

(Ten minutes later, he called back. "Let me start out by saying that
I am different from most people. But I am not crazy." Pointing out that
he is immune to most toxic chemicals, he went on to offer blood samples
for study.)

As a science writer, and as someone fascinated by perceptions of
reality, I would love to investigate the stories behind these
passionate rogue theorists.  Indeed, I discovered that at least one
other science writer already has. In "Notes from a Parallel Universe,"
Jennifer Kahn dives into the archive of crank correspondence at UC
Berkeley. (Oh, and for a larger sample of crankiness, with less
analysis, nothing beats Crank Dot Net.)

My coinhabitants on the email list I mentioned earlier treated the
crankish hurricane question with a straight
face. I would love to have seen them pull out their calculators in
response to Mr. Walking Death.