Wonder Plastic Baffles World
Home-lab invention shields atomic blast.

A former Yorkshire hairdresser has bafled military and scientific
establishment s across the world by producing a magical piece of
plastic that is so tough it can withstand the heat of a nuclear
explosion.  Experiments at the Ministry of Defence's Atomic Weapons
Establishment in Foulness, Essex, and by Nato scientists at the US
missile range at White Sands, New Mexico, have shown that the substance
withstood simulated nuclear flashes which generated temperatures of
more than 1000 degrees C.

The tests' results, published for the first time in International
Defense Review, published by Jane's, are leading chastened scientific
communities on both sides of the Atlantic to a strange and humbling
conclusion: that an English inventor without a degree tinkered around
in his laboratory for a few years to stumble on a secret to which
nuclear physicists spent decades searchin g the answer.  Once dismissed
as a crank with a plastic bee in his bonnet, Maurice Ward now finds
himself the toast of the military-industrial complexes of Britain and
America with the polymer he calls Starlite. He is talking to French
defense consortia and has been whisked to Japan on a first class, all
expenses paid visit.  Where Whitehall's portals were once shut in his
face, doors marked 'most secret' are now readily opened and he has the
run of Cambridge University's famous Cavendish laboratories where
Rutherford heralded the nuclear era by splitting the atom.  Now that
the veil of scepticism is lifting over Mr Ward's invention, everyone
wants a piece of the action and it is not hard to understand why.

If Starlite works as well as the tests suggest so far - and more
experiments are still being scheduled - it could have enormous
implications for the civilian and defence industries.  Nobody, least of
all Mr Ward, really knows how Starlite works (only selected members of
his family know the full ingredients), but the properties which his
mysterious plastic displays are impressively self-evident.  Mr Ward
first brought them to public notice three years ago on BBC's Tomorrow's
World programme when he coated the shell of a raw chicken's egg with
his substance. Despite blasting the egg with an oxyacteyline [that's
how it's spelled in the article] welding torch, it remained uncooked,
undamaged and could be handled with bare fingers immediately
afterwards.

Since then, Starlite has been subjected to ever more stringent tests,
including being zapped by one of the MoD's most powerful laser weapons
at its signals and radar establishment at Malvern in Worcestershire. In
October 1990, a quarter of a millimetre's thickness of Starlite
contained the energy of the equivalent of 75 nuclear flashes for 30
seconds.  But whatever Starlite - a name thought up by Ward's
eight-year-old granddaughte r Kerry - is subjected to, it remains
undamaged. Only minute pockmarks are discernible on the plastic
coating. The energy hurled at the polymer does not bounce off but is
absorbed and diffused at extraordinary speeds through a process which
scientists are still grappling with.

Ward, who turned to producing plastics 20 years ago after pondering
their curious qualities while perming women's hair, was first struck by
the potential of his material while watching the Manchester airport
disaster on TV. 'I thought then that an aircraft coated with my
material could have saved lives.' Apart from aeroplanes, Mr Ward
believes the polymer could also boost safety in trains, cars, ships and
spacecraft. A dab of the substance, he suggests, might do away with the
need for all those bothersome heat deflecting tiles which keep falling
off Nasa space shuttles.  Perhaps most exciting of all is the prospect
of 'clean' nuclear energy. Ward thinks it is not too improbable to
forsee a scenario where his product could be used to contain the energy
released by nuclear fission.  But aside from these civilian
applications which Mr Ward, who describes himself as a 'good
Yorkshireman' and an old fashioned moderate socialist, is happy to
contemplate, there are clearly significant military uses as well.
Warships and bombers could be treated with the material as could
front-line battle and weapon stations.

One of the methods of destruction currently being being tested are the
so-called 'soft-kill' weapons. In this sci-fi world, generals are
testing the efficacy of frying soldiers' blood and brains with lasers.
Military experts say that apart from killing this method also has the
capability of wiping out the software and electronics which run
sophisticated tanks and artillery stations. A conventional weapons
would destroy the tank but a laser would merely render it inoperable,
leaving most of the machinery intact so it could quickly be repaired
and used by the 'home team'. Maurice Ward's Starlite would render tanks
and other weapons systems impervious to such laser attacks.

Mr Ward is now being advised by Professor Sir Ronald Mason, until 1983
the MoD's chief scientific adviser, who sees the transition between
civilian and military applications for Starlite as a 'seamless robe'.
He envisages the first uses for the aircraft and maritime markets and
claims it could easily be employed on space vehicles. 'Maurice is very
enthusiastic and sometimes speaks scientific cobblers, but there is no
doubt that this is really the most remarkable material,' he says. The
MoD has only said that the material could have 'interesting
potential'.  With such a scientific heavyweight as Sir Ronald on board,
Mr Ward's prospects for success now seem good. It did not always appear
that way. 'Yes, they used to laugh at me a bit in the beginning,' says
Mr Ward, 'but they are taking me seriously now all right.  'After one
test at the Cavendish the other day, one of their chaps said to me that
the results were so beyond what he expected that there had to be an
error in the computer. We looked again but there wasn't. Now he
believes me.'

If Mr Ward is able to take comfort from the cold facts of his apparent
success, he could do worse than point future sceptics towards that
classic 1950's Ealing comedy, The Man in the White Suit. In it, Alec
Guinness plays an eccentric inventor who manufactures a fantastic
material which cannot be damaged and always stays white. At first no
one believes him, then the giant corporations try to ridicule him. In
the end they all clamour round trying to get him to sign up.  If life
continues to imitate art in such a bizarre fashion, Mr Ward is
definitely set to have the last laugh.

John McGhie, The Observer, Sunday 11 April 1993.

http://www.acteurspublics.com/arti [...] re-au-plan

(1)ANOMAL, -ALE adj. (pl. Anomaux, -ales). XIIe siècle. Emprunté du bas latin anomalus, terme de grammaire, du grec anômalos, dérivé, avec le préfixe an-, privatif, de omalos, « uni, égal, pareil ».
Qui s'écarte du type habituel ou de la norme.