Word: fleischmanns
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...awesome potential of the alleged discovery explains why so many people are badgering Pons and Fleischmann for information, and why they are giving it out so cautiously. A practical technique for creating useful fusion energy at low temperatures could change the world forever by providing a source of virtually limitless power. Moreover, the process would generate no pollutants -- not even carbon dioxide, which many scientists fear is warming the globe in a greenhouse effect. A fusion plant would give off much less radiation than do conventional nuclear-power generators. And it would essentially run on seawater. Any scientist who managed...
...miles away. Although the U is the state-supported university, Utah's majority Mormon population identifies far more strongly with church-run Brigham Young. It was at least partly because a Brigham Young physicist named Steven Jones was nearing an announcement on cold fusion too that Pons and Fleischmann called their surprise press conference. They had been urged to go public by University of Utah administrators, who were apparently fearful that archrivals at Brigham Young would steal the fusion spotlight. The U has had chronic money troubles recently, and an influx of fusion-research grants, not to mention international glory...
...first experiments did not do much. But one night in 1985, an electrochemical cell being used by the two scientists melted down. "That," says Pons, "told us we had much more energy than could be attributed to a chemical reaction." After the accident, Pons called Fleischmann, who had returned to England. Fleischmann responded to the momentous news with an admonition: "We'd better not talk on the phone." Pons says they ultimately spent about $100,000 of their own money to pursue what they were convinced was fusion...
Neither Pons nor Fleischmann would have ranked high on anyone's list of scientists likely to revolutionize physics, although both are respected researchers in the field of electrochemistry, the study of how chemical reactions behave in the presence of an electric field. In retrospect, though, their backgrounds were quirky enough to suggest that almost anything was possible. Pons, in particular, had an unorthodox professional history. A native North Carolinian, Pons, 46, dropped out of graduate school at the University of Michigan in 1967, just a few months shy of getting a Ph.D. in chemistry. "Jobs for Ph.D. chemists were paying...
...Fleischmann too is known for resourcefulness. Now 62, he arrived in England in 1939 with his family, Czech refugees from Hitler's Europe, and soon distinguished himself in school and college. Ian Fells, who worked with him at the University of Newcastle, calls him a man of "great ideas," and Roger Parsons, head of the chemistry department at Southampton, describes Fleischmann as "excitable in the sense that he gets very enthusiastic about ideas. He is a man full of ideas across a wide field and not necessarily connected to his main research...