Newsgroups: sci.space
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Room Temperature fusion, expert skepticism
Message-ID: <1989Mar30.042334.14945@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <290@vlsi.ll.mit.edu> <1644@etive.ed.ac.uk> <13470@steinmetz.ge.com> <7486@thorin.cs.unc.edu>
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 89 04:23:34 GMT

In article <7486@thorin.cs.unc.edu> symon@lhotse.cs.unc.edu (James Symon) writes:
>I'm inclined not to. My father is a theoretical physicist who worked
>for years in plasma research. I called and asked him "Say Dad, do you
>suppose if I squeezed some deuterium into a metal lattice it might
>fuse?" He just said, "No."

Whatever is going on inside that palladium -- assuming that there is
anything going on in there -- it is *not* a plasma phenomenon, so asking
a plasma physicist won't necessarily give a meaningful answer.  Better
would be to ask a chemist specializing in the subject just how close
hydrogen atoms get inside palladium, and then ask a physicist just how
close they have to get for interesting things to happen.

Unfortunately, this may -- repeat, may -- be like asking a 19th-century
physicist what he thinks of the possibility of a single bomb capable of
destroying an entire city.  There may, pure and simple, be some new and
hitherto-unsuspected effect involved, in which case *any* expert opinion
is valueless.

If you had asked a superconductivity expert, several years ago, whether
complex copper oxides would superconduct at liquid-nitrogen temperatures,
the odds are pretty good that he would have said "no".  There is still
no theoretical understanding of how liquid-nitrogen superconductors work;
the old BCS theory, which quite successfully explained superconducting
metals, cannot possibly be stretched to cover the new superconductors,
and there is no replacement theory in sight yet.  Remember that example
when assessing theoretical opinions about this issue.
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