WHAT’S NEW Robert L. Park Friday, 24 Apr 09 Washington, DC 1. COLD FUSION: PLEASE, MAY I HAVE A CUP OF TEA? Last Sunday's edition of the CBS News program 60 Minutes was titled "Race to Fusion." It was 1989, Fleischmann and Pons are shown with the "cold fusion" test tube that would have killed them had they been right. Because they lived, the race was called off. Michael McKubre of SRI apparently didn’t get the memo; he just kept doing it over and over for 20 years. Lucky for him there’s still no fusion, but he says he does get heat – except when he doesn't. How does it work? He hasn’t a clue, but he showed a video cartoon of deuterium defusing through palladium and said it might be fusion. In fact McKubre called it "the most powerful source of energy known to man." Whew! But wait, Dick Garwin did a fusion experiment 60 years ago; it worked all too well. Garwin thinks McKubre is mistaken. Just about every physicist agrees, so the American Physical Society was asked to name an independent scientist to examine the claims of Energetics Technology, according to 60 Min correspondent Scott Pelley. An APS statement issued Wed. says this is totally false, and the APS does not endorse the cold fusion claims on 60 Min. (Aside: This morning I thought I should watch the video on the 60 Min web site one more time. Drat! CBS took it off. No matter, there’s a full transcript. Uh oh! The part where CBS says the APS picked Rob Duncan to look into the ET SuperWave is gone. CBS can change history? My God, time travel! Now that is powerful.)
2. SUPERWAVE: IMPALED ON THE SHARP STAKE OF REPLICATION. Rob Duncan, vice chancellor of research at the University of Missouri, went to Israel with 60 Minutes to visit Energetics Technologies, which claims SuperWave Fusion will solve the energy problem. It shouldn’t be necessary to remind scientists that neither visiting a laboratory, nor peer reviewing a manuscript, is enough. There must be independent replication of the ET claims. Without replication, the claims are nothing. The genius behind ET is the CVO, Chief Visionary Officer, Irving Dardik, MD. Dardik got into cold fusion after losing his license to practice medicine in New York. It puts us in mind of Randy Mills of BlackLight Power, another MD who says he can solve the energy problem. Is SuperWave Fusion another scam? 3. PLAN B: AT WHAT AGE IS CONTRACEPTION AN EMERGENCY? A cruel FDA ruling in the Bush years was to deny to women under 18 over-the- counter access to Plan B. Assistant FDA Commissioner Susan Wood resigned in protest, http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN05/wn090205.html . The policy was expected to change in the Obama Administration, but surprisingly the change was ordered by a federal court first. A federal judge ruled that the policy was based solely on politics. In fact, it had been opposed by virtually the entire staff at FDA. The new ruling extends access to 17- year- olds. But why stop there? Motherhood‘s an even greater problem at 16 and greater still at 15, nor would it get any easier to confide in a parent. 4. ALTERNATIVE ENERGY: WE CAN’T STORE WIND AND SUNLIGHT. An op-ed in today’s Washington Post coauthored by James Schlesinger, the first Secretary of Energy, makes the obvious point that although wind and solar power can produce as much energy as we now use, they can’t be expected to supply it when we need it. For the foreseeable future we will require a backup source. That adds to the cost. Maybe we should be thinking more about superconducting energy storage. THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND. Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the University of Maryland, but they should be.
