Chronology | Current Month | Current Thread | Current Date |
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] | [Date Index] [Thread Index] | [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] | [Date Prev] [Date Next] |
Jones's work on negative muon catalyzed fusion was sufficiently
well known that a Scientific American article completely revealing
it had already appeared several years before the Pons & Fleischmann
flap in 1989. (I can't find the article just now.) The process had
been seen earlier by Luis Alvarez. The earliest reference I can
find in my library is to a New York Times article dated 29 December
1956. It begins:
Atomic Energy Produced by New, Simpler Method
____________________________________________________
Coast Scientists Achieve Reaction Without Uranium or
Intense Heat - Practical Use Hinges on Further Tests
____________________________________________________
MONTEREY, Calif., Dec. 28 - A third and revolutionary
way to produce a nuclear reaction was described here
today. It does not involve uranium, as in the fission
reaction, or million-degree heat, as in the fusion
reaction.
The new process is called "catalyzed nuclear
reaction." It was discovered accidentally a few weeks
ago during routine work with the huge atom-smashing
bevatron at the University of California radiation
laboratory...*
There is also evidence that Sakharov had predicted the phenomenon
as early as 1948, but he did not publish.
Leigh
*Full article appears in "Discovering Alvarez", ed. by W. Peter
Trower, University of Chicago Press, p. 155. I was a student in
Alvarez's nuclear physics class at Cal when this article appeared.