Word: limitless
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...University of Utah, and Fleischmann, of Britain's University of Southampton, claimed to have achieved nuclear fusion, the process that powers the sun, at room temperature. Because the experiment produced much more energy than it consumed, said the chemists, it could lead to the development of an almost limitless power source. Physicists were skeptical, but they scurried to their labs to see if the seemingly impossible could be true...
...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...
...short, no matter which scheme proves best, the virtually limitless power that could eventually result from fusion is a dream that will not come true anytime soon. The solution to the world's energy crisis is not likely to be declared in a press conference. It must be slowly and carefully worked out, step by painstaking step...
Technology alone, however, bears only part of the responsibility for the time famine. All the promises of limitless leisure relied on America's retaining its blinding lead in the world's markets and unfolding prosperity at home. No one quite bargained for the Middle-Class Squeeze, what Paula Rayman, a sociologist at Wellesley College's Stone Center, calls "falling behind while getting ahead." The prices of houses have soared, inflation erodes paychecks, wages are stagnant, and medical and tuition costs continue to skyrocket. So now it can take two paychecks to fund what many imagined was a middle-class life...
...proclaimed by one researcher to be "perhaps as significant as the invention of the wheel." Another said it "may be the most important discovery since fire." Most scientists are still dubious, especially about claims that the experiment produced four times the energy it consumed, but the prospect of virtually limitless energy has generated an unprecedented level of excitement. Dozens of labs are working feverishly to re-create the potentially historic experiment -- with confusingly mixed results...