Friday, April 2, 2004
1. COLD FUSION: TRUE BELIEVERS SEE DOE REVIEW AS "VINDICATION."
There hasn’t been much to celebrate in the 15 years since the University of Utah held a press conference in Salt Lake City to announce the discovery of "cold fusion." Although a brave little band of true believers continued to trumpet cold fusion, the band leader was publishing "Infinite Energy Magazine." That made it pretty hard to take this stuff seriously. Although there was no press release or announcement, DOE has apparently agreed to take a second look. That’s not really too surprising; not since the Reagan administration has unbridled technological optimism so dominated Washington decision making: missile defense, hydrogen cars, hafnium bombs, manned missions to Mars. How are these other ventures doing? Let’s take a look at one.
2. THE HAFNIUM BOMB: THE DARPA MOTTO IS "HIGH RISK, HIGH PAYOFF."
With DARPA support, a group led by Carl Collins at the U. of Texas at Dallas claimed to be able to trigger energy release from a hafnium-178 isomer using a dental X-ray machine. As What’s New reported last October, a group using the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne found no sign of the hafnium-178 isomer-triggering effect (WN 24 Oct 03). We thought that would be the end of it, but Sunday there was a long cover story on the hafnium-178 bomb in the Washington Post Magazine. The people at DARPA seem to have the "high risk" thing down pretty well, but "high payoff" still seems to be a problem.
3. ANTI-TERRORISM: PSYCHIC TIP PROMPTS BOMB SEARCH OF AIRLINER.
Last Friday, American Airlines Flight 1304 from Fort Myers, FL to Dallas was scrubbed. The plane was searched with bomb-sniffing dogs. A self-described psychic had called to say a bomb might be on the plane. Should the psychic be charged with making a false police report? The psychic no doubt acted out of a sense of concern for the lives of innocent passengers. Being crazy is only crazy. The Transportation Security Administration official who acted on the fantasy of a psychic was terminally stupid.
4. MANAGING THE NEWS: HOW LIBYA’S NUCLEAR EFFORT WAS EXAGGERATED.
By any measure, Libya’s unilateral decision to drop its nuclear weapons program was very good news, but spin doctors are never satisfied. Two weeks ago 45 journalists were flown by chartered jet to DOE’s Y-12 complex in Oak Ridge to listen to DOE Secretary Abraham, who stood beside a pile of centrifuge components from Libya. Guards with weapons at the ready stood by. The implication was that Libya was close to making a bomb. A week later, the New York Times disclosed that the casings lacked the finely tooled rotors to make them useful. A DOE spokesperson shrugged, "Libya has tons of steel to make rotors." Of course, and sculpting is just a matter of removing the unnecessary part of the stone.
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