Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

are met, you have a fusion reaction, whether it is a hydrogen bomb, a star, or a fusion in a reactor.)
    So that is the key: heating and compressing hydrogen gas until the nuclei fuse, releasing cosmic amounts of energy.
    But previous attempts to harness this cosmic power have failed. It is a fiendishly difficult task to heat hydrogen gas to tens of millions of degrees, until the protons fuse to form helium gas and release vast amounts of energy.
    Moreover, the public is cynical about these claims, since every twenty years scientists claim that fusion power is twenty years away. But after decades of overoptimistic claims, physicists are increasingly convinced that fusion power is finally arriving, perhaps as early as 2030. Sometime by mid-century, we may see fusion plants dotting the countryside.
    The public has a right to be skeptical about fusion, since there havebeen so many hoaxes, frauds, and failures in the past. Back in 1951, when the United States and the Soviet Union were gripped in Cold War frenzy and were feverishly developing the first hydrogen bomb, President Juan Perón of Argentina announced, with huge fanfare and a media blitz, that his country’s scientists had made a breakthrough in controlling the power of the sun. The story sparked a firestorm of publicity. It seemed unbelievable, yet it made the front page of the
New York Times.
Argentina, boasted Perón, had scored a major scientific breakthrough where the superpowers had failed. An unknown German-speaking scientist, Ronald Richter, had convinced Perón to fund his “thermotron,” which promised unlimited energy and eternal glory for Argentina.
    The American scientific community, which was still grappling with fusion in the fierce race with Russia to produce the H-bomb, declared that the claim was nonsense. Atomic scientist Ralph Lapp said, “ I know what the other material is that the Argentines are using. It’s baloney.”
    The press quickly dubbed it the Baloney Bomb. Atomic scientist David Lilienthal was asked if there was the “slightest chance” the Argentines could be correct. He shot back, “Less than that.”
    Under intense pressure, Perón simply dug in his heels, hinting that the superpowers were jealous that Argentina had scooped them. The moment of truth finally came the next year, when Perón’s representatives visited Richter’s lab. Under fire, Richter was acting increasingly erratic and bizarre. When inspectors arrived, he blew the laboratory door off using tanks of oxygen and then scribbled on a piece of paper the words “atomic energy.” He ordered gunpowder to be injected into the reactor. The verdict was that he was probably insane. When inspectors placed a piece of radium next to Richter’s “radiation counters,” nothing happened, so clearly his equipment was fraudulent. Richter was later arrested.
    But the most celebrated case was that of Stanley Pons and Martin Fleisch mann, two well-respected chemists from the University of Utah who in 1989 claimed to have mastered “cold fusion,” that is, fusion at room temperature. They claimed to have placed palladium metal in water, which then somehow magically compressed hydrogen atoms until they fused into helium, releasing the power of the sun on a tabletop.
    The shock was immediate. Almost every newspaper in the world put this discovery on its front page. Overnight, journalists talked of ending the energy crisis and ushering in a new age of unlimited energy. A feeding frenzyhit the world media. The state of Utah immediately passed a $5 million bill to create a National Institute for Cold Fusion. Even Japanese car manufacturers began to donate millions of dollars to promote research in this hot new field. A cultlike following began to emerge based around cold fusion.
    Unlike Richter, Pons and Fleischmann were well respected in the scientific community and were glad to share their results with others. They carefully laid out their equipment and their data for the world to see.
    But then things got complicated. Since the apparatus was so simple, groups around the world tried to duplicate these astonishing results. Unfortunately, most groups failed to find any net release of energy, declaring cold fusion a dead end. However, the story was kept alive because there were sporadic claims that certain groups had successfully duplicated the experiment.
    Finally, the physics community weighed in. They analyzed Pons and Fleischmann’s equations, and found them deficient.