When one attempts to construct classical wormholes in Minkowski signature Lorentzian spacetimes violations of both the weak energy hypothesis and averaged weak energy hypothesis are encountered. Since the weak energy hypothesis is experimentally known to be violated quantum mechanically, this suggests that a quantum mechanical analysis of Minkowski signature wormholes is in order. In this note I perform a minisuperspace analysis of a simple class of Minkowski signature wormholes. By solving the Wheeler-de Witt equation for pure Einstein gravity on this minisuperspace the quantum mechanical wave function of the wormhole is obtained in closed form. The wormhole is shown to be quantum mechanically stabilized with an average radius of order the Planck length. 8 refs.

Following the First International Conference on Radioactive Nuclear Beams'' in Berkeley, a workshop was held on October 19, 1989 at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory to discuss plans for a National High Intensity Radioactive Nuclear Beam (RNB) Facility. The purpose of the workshop was -- after having discussed during the conference the physics question that can be addressed with RNBs -- to evaluate more concretely the possibilities for actually constructing such a facility in this country. It is becoming increasingly apparent that facility producing beams of radioactive nuclei with extreme neutron-to-proton ratios is of high scientific interest and technically feasible. It would allow the study of nuclear structure and astrophysical reactions very far from the line of stable nuclei, and could provide new possibilities of reaching the long-sought island of stability of superheavy nuclei. Such facilities are under advanced consideration in Japan and at CERN in Europe. This paper contains a slightly edited transcript of the tape recording that was made of the workshop.