Manuel Lozano Leyva, a Spanish physicist, emeritus professor and advisor to Spain’s Council of Nuclear Security, turns 77 this year and says he’s too old to be afraid of speaking his mind. Which is why he’ll bluntly tell you that “[Donald] Trump is deranged”, advocate for the return of mandatory military service and defend nuclear energy. The grandson of a carriage driver from whom Lozano Leyva inherited a love of horses (he has 66 of them on the eight-hectare farm where he lives in Dos Hermanas, in the southern province of Seville), laughingly recalls an anecdote that aptly sums up his strategy in life. During a competition for which he was riding a horse named Opinion, he was surprised when people started laughing and clapping. He soon found out the reason for the crowd’s response. The animal was well-known for balking, and was an expert in reaching the finish line dead last — if it arrived at all. But this time, the horse managed to complete the course, not coming in last for the first time in its life.
Lozano Leyva sits astride life much as he did Opinion: with a disdain for political correctness and for trends he considers wrong, as popular as they may be. He’s focused on making it to the end of what he starts, investigating and staying firm in his belief in science.
An underground activist for democracy during Franco’s regime, he participated in a coup plot shortly before the death of the dictator; Lozano Leyva portrayed this event in his Spanish-language book La rebelión de la ‘Vulcano.’ And that passion for writing — he is the author of some 15 books — along with his unshakable calling as a science communicator, have led him to his latest publication, which came out in January: El sexto elemento (The sixth element). Although the subtitle, Una biografía del carbono (A biography of carbon), might lead one to think it is a treatise on physics and chemistry, nothing could be further from the truth. He says that carbon is “the spinal column of life” and as such, he utilizes it in the search for answers to fundamental questions: our origin, our existence and our destiny.
Question. You claim that the carbon in our bodies was forged in the hearts of dying stars. Are we the dust that came from them?
Answer. Or ashes, depending on how romantic you want to get. All material comes from stars when they form. They are born, they live, they suffer, they die and they are reborn through thermonuclear reactions (fusion). After the Big Bang, some heavier elements began to be generated. But the transition from beryllium to carbon takes place under extraordinarily unique circumstances: an energy level that in the universe, can only occur inside large dying stars, in the final stages of their life. This is the miracle. From there, within the dying stars, heavier elements are formed. Carbon can take various forms, from coal to graphite to diamond. It is the skeleton of the molecules of life and an absolutely natural consequence of a specific physical circumstance. The only appropriate medium for combining into more complex molecules is mud. The Bible’s Book of Genesis recounts that man arose from clay, and that on the first day there was light, like the spontaneous generation of radiation from the Big Bang. I am not defending anything, because I am an atheist or agnostic, whatever you want to call it, but the intuition of the people who wrote these things was formidable, fantastic. The rest is all madness.
Q. In the book, you recall how Napoleon said he didn’t see God anywhere. You say you don’t either.
A. It was [Pierre-Simon] Laplace, [astronomer and one-time Minister of the Interior of France] who showed Napoleon the mathematical description of the movements of the solar system. After looking it over, Napoleon said he didn’t see any mention of God. Laplace’s response was that he had never worked under such a hypothesis.
Q. You warn that science and technology will lead us to unease, to unprecedented well-being, or to self-destruction. Where are we headed?
A. Everything that science discovers can be applied towards creation or destruction. It is we, not science, who decide. We are capable of reaching the moon or flying, but aviation can be used to make us happy by traveling the world or to develop fighter-bombers, which are based on the same laws of aerodynamics. We can fight a virus or trigger an artificial pandemic.
Q. Can it be controlled?
A. I think it’s important to lightly transform democracy and constitutions in order to train the political classes, and to avoid consequences like the ones we are seeing now. From a scientific and technological perspective, we have to return to the vanguard, as we have always done in Europe. Trump is manipulating technology and putting it in the hands of scoundrels. He is doing terrible things and altering all the laws. It’s important to merge the two parts [political and scientific] to give democracy a totally different meaning.
Q. Can Europe do that independently?
A. We have to place ourselves at the helm of the scientific and technical revolution. Europe can be independent of American digitalization. We have more than enough capacity to do that and to have a cheaper defense than the sum of what exists individually. I am among those who think that we have to go back to obligatory European military service. We must rise above national projects, unify supranational teams, and give them clear objectives. The problem is the new politician who is destroying Europe. It’s important to promote projects that truly bring us freedom and independence.
Q. In the book, you address climate change with three options: a new productive paradigm, a gradual and unstoppable increase in the use of new sources of clean energy, or a reasonable combination of the two. Is the last alternative possible?
A. The atmosphere is a highly complex system, as is the human body. Global warming is undebatable, it has been documented, but combating climate change is complicated. When it comes to energy sources, the more renewable, the better. But from my point of view, the backup for variable sources [such as solar or wind, which are intermittent] must necessarily be nuclear. Not the old kind we have now, but the new reactors that are being considered for development. What Trump wants to do with nuclear energy is delusional. He is giving millions to a bunch of kids for something that is technically all wrong. Trump is deranged. On the other hand, the modular nuclear reactors proposed by Europe are based on highly sophisticated technology. There is an alternative to uranium, thorium, which has very similar characteristics but is much better. Norway has enough thorium to maintain a fleet of nuclear reactors for between one and two centuries.
Q. And there won’t be security or waste problems?
A. The waste produced would be much less than that generated by uranium, and in terms of safety, plutonium is not in the chain. China already has a thorium reactor. I don’t know where the research is to solve our problems in Europe, to make decisions and become sovereign and independent in terms of energy.
A. It’s ideal, but it is still a desideratum that needs further research, because it’s the future, but it’s not around the corner. What’s being done in Granada [the International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility – Demo Oriented Neutron Source] is a wonderful thing, and I have completely supported it. But the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor is, today, the best fusion experiment we have— and that’s just what it is, experimental. We are at a stage of fusion that will deliver the expected results in terms of stability, but its connection to the grid will be a demo. We still do not know the amount of high-energy neutrons that come out of fusion or how they interact with structural materials. We are getting into something that, as physicists say, is a new constant: the number of years left to achieve fusion is always 50.
Q. You’re not afraid of wading into any issue
A. I like to get in the middle of horse stampedes. A herd will do anything but knock you over.
Q. You say that the diamond, which is formed by crystalized carbon, represents the eternal battle between the beauty we seek and the price we pay for it.
A. The diamond has two facets: the first is its beauty, its perfection. Its dark side is that it’s associated with luxury, power and blood.
Q. You also say that not only must one not fear death, but enjoy the relation that Epicurus established between atoms and the joy of living.
A. What one must do is not think about the afterlife, or fear death. You do not fear what happened before you were born, nor is the future any of your concern. What concerns you is life. So, devote yourself to it.
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