Re: solution to the world's energy needs

[John Mallinckrodt <ajmallinckro@CSUPOMONA.EDU>]

On Mon, 13 Sep 1999, William Beaty wrote (among other things):

> On Sun, 12 Sep 1999, John Mallinckrodt wrote:
>
> > Can you really believe that, in an era
> > of fantastic advances in the horsepower to mass ratio of gasoline engines,
> > flight was not an inevitability?
>
> Yes.

(and supplied copious historical anecdotes to support his position.)

Bill,

I won't try to counter your anecdotes; my knowledge of the relevant
history is pretty clearly weaker than yours.  Suffice it to say that I
found your stories very interesting, even surprising, but I remain utterly
unconvinced that they can be marshalled to support the thesis that we
would have remained grounded absent the contributions of the Wrights. (Out
of curiosity, since you think that even buzzing the White House might not
have been noticed, just what *was* it that they finally did to overcome
the ability of people not to see them flying?)

Later you wrote:

> (And, what if Cold Fusion in the end proves to be entirely
> real?  How could anyone explain it's present status?  Mass-insanity on the
> part of the physics community?  Yep.  Just like the mass-insanity which
> very nearly suppressed the Wright Brothers.)

I suppose that I should be embarrassed to admit that two of my colleagues
in the physics department here at Cal Poly Pomona are still working on
cold fusion (or, as it is generally referred to these days, "anomalous
effects in hydrated metals.")  O.K., I guess I *am* a little embarrassed.
As much as we all like them and support their right to choose the
direction of their own research, it is, nevertheless, pretty clear that
they have been a little too quick to believe what they want to believe.
That, character trait doesn't help their credibility.

Having said that, I will stipulate that my personal opinion about the
merits of this research counts for precious little.  I haven't tried to do
the experiments myself and I'm not likely ever to do so.  Accordingly I
must rely on the weight of the evidence from others.  At this point that
weight is pretty overwhelming.  Large numbers of accomplished
experimenters have failed to reproduce the effect and there are no
commercial reactors on the market despite the early predictions that this
would happen very quickly.

My attitude toward cold fusion is precisely the same as my attitude toward
powered flight: I simply do not find it very likely that an advance of
such enormous consequences could be hidden from public view for any
appreciable amount of time if it were on view, working everyday in
laboratories around the world.  You say the Wrights' work was "very nearly
suppressed."  I guess I simply don't know what that means.  In any event,
history clearly shows that it wasn't.

I am willing to believe that the cold fusion story has not yet been fully
written; that there just might be some new physics; *even* that the
effect, if real, might be exploitable.  I do *not*, however, believe that
the effect is as readily and prodigiously observable as was claimed by the
early researchers.  If it were, I have NO doubt (read "< 0.0001 doubt")
that we would all know by now.

John Mallinckrodt      mailto:ajm@csupomona.edu
Cal Poly Pomona          http://www.csupomona.edu/~ajm