symon@lhotse.cs.unc.edu (James Symon) (03/29/89)
In article <13470@steinmetz.ge.com>, blackje@sunspot.steinmetz (Emmett Black) writes: > . . . > I'm inclined to believe them, too. > I'm inclined not to. My father is a theoretical physicist who worked for years in plasma research. I called and asked him "Say Dad, do you suppose if I squeezed some deuterium into a metal lattice it might fuse?" He just said, "No." Then again, there is a wild, cheering, science enthusiast in the back of my head yelling, "Experts have been wrong before, wrong before, wrong before!" I bet my father has the same demon in action but probably under many more muffling layers of knowledgable skepticism. jim symon@cs.unc.edu {decvax uunet}!mcnc!unc!symon
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (03/30/89)
In article <7486@thorin.cs.unc.edu> symon@lhotse.cs.unc.edu (James Symon) writes: >I'm inclined not to. My father is a theoretical physicist who worked >for years in plasma research. I called and asked him "Say Dad, do you >suppose if I squeezed some deuterium into a metal lattice it might >fuse?" He just said, "No." Whatever is going on inside that palladium -- assuming that there is anything going on in there -- it is *not* a plasma phenomenon, so asking a plasma physicist won't necessarily give a meaningful answer. Better would be to ask a chemist specializing in the subject just how close hydrogen atoms get inside palladium, and then ask a physicist just how close they have to get for interesting things to happen. Unfortunately, this may -- repeat, may -- be like asking a 19th-century physicist what he thinks of the possibility of a single bomb capable of destroying an entire city. There may, pure and simple, be some new and hitherto-unsuspected effect involved, in which case *any* expert opinion is valueless. If you had asked a superconductivity expert, several years ago, whether complex copper oxides would superconduct at liquid-nitrogen temperatures, the odds are pretty good that he would have said "no". There is still no theoretical understanding of how liquid-nitrogen superconductors work; the old BCS theory, which quite successfully explained superconducting metals, cannot possibly be stretched to cover the new superconductors, and there is no replacement theory in sight yet. Remember that example when assessing theoretical opinions about this issue. -- Welcome to Mars! Your | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology passport and visa, comrade? | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu