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Re: Cold Fusion, etc.



On Wed, 01 Jul 1998 19:10:38 William Beaty <billb@eskimo.com> wrote:

... If "Cold Fusion" is eventually shown to be valid, then everyone will
leap on the bandwagon, but there will be no detailed investigations of the
ones who spent years ridiculing the topic. "Who, me? I was always a
supporter!" ...

Not everyone is like this. I would not be ashamed to admit that as long
as cold fusion was not experimentally confirmed by many experts (as long
as its hidden nature was not recognized and as long as a poorly chosen
name was used to describe it) I did not take it seriously. But now I know
that this very important process has nothing to do with nuclear fusion.
How lucky we are, a very practical replacement for fossil fuels was finally
found, just in time. Glory to those who did not give up and whose efforts
provided us with the new technology.

Will the energy which is too cheap to meter help the world or will it
precipitate its destruction? A good question. I did not know how to
answer it. Yes, "consumption of energy" is always associated with
pollution. Yes, many forms of pollution can be eliminated when cheap
energy is available. Pollutinig stars which are billions of light
years away from us would probably be inconsequential.

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Physical reality does not have to agree with our ideas. But in physics
our ideas should agree with that reality.

Ludwik Kowalski
kowalskiL@alpha.montclair.edu, (Math. Sci., MSU in New Jersey)
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