Originally published 23 November 1992
A guy walks up to me at a party. A business type. I think his name was McGuire.
“Chet.”
“Yes.”
“I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.”
“Yes?”
“Fusion.”
A long pause.
I asked, “Exactly how do you mean it?”
“There’s a great future in cold fusion. Think about it. Will you think about it?”
I hesitated. “Yes, I will.”
He slapped me on the back: “ ‘Nuff said. That’s a deal.” He left to rejoin the party. I stood there, slack-jawed.
The last time someone gave me a one-word tip for financial success was back in 1958, when I was a young graduate. The word then was “plastics.” I dropped the ball. I didn’t invest.
This time I was determined not to fumble. I considered what I knew about cold fusion.
Three years ago, chemists B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann created a furor with their claim to have produced energy by fusing hydrogen into helium in a simple table-top experiment at room temperature — so-called cold fusion.
Fusion is the source of energy that powers the stars. The fuel for the fusion reaction is cheap, inexhaustible hydrogen. The “ash” of the reaction is harmless helium. If cold fusion worked, it could answer the world’s energy needs forever.
The trouble is, current theories of physics predict that hydrogen fusion happens only at temperatures of tens of millions of degrees. Such temperatures occur naturally in the cores of stars, but they can be produced on Earth only with nuclear explosions or colossally expensive fusion reactors.
Pons and Fleischmann claimed to have harnessed fusion energy with an apparatus consisting of a jar of heavy water (water made with deuterium, a heavy form of hydrogen) into which was dunked an electric current-carrying rod of palladium. Cheap. Portable. Simple as pie.
Physicists examined the claim of fusion in a jar and decided it lacked merit. The experiments of Pons and Fleischmann could not be reliably replicated. The furor passed.
Now this guy McGuire was giving me a red-hot investment tip. Did he know something I didn’t know? I called my brother-in-law, the stockbroker.
“Joe,” I said. “What do you know about cold fusion?”
“Hot topic.”
“How so?”
“Lots of stories in the business press lately — the Wall Street Journal, Business Week. Almost every day there’s stuff on my electronic bulletin board about successful cold fusion experiments. The financial community sniffs money.”
“That’s funny. There’s been almost nothing about cold fusion in the scientific literature, at least not since the Pons and Fleischmann hoopla died down.”
“You know those physicists, Chet. They’re conservative as hell. Scared to admit they don’t understand what’s going on. They resent the fact that it is mostly chemists and engineers who are doing the cold-fusion research. And they’ve got vested interests in expensive hot fusion projects. They’ll go right on debunking cold fusion until the Japanese have a corner on the market. Take my word for it, this market will make Persian Gulf oil look like small potatoes.”
“What do you mean?”
“There was a cold-fusion conference in Japan lately. Scientists from around the world reported successful production of energy in experiments involving hydrogen, palladium rods, magnesium-oxide-coated palladium wafers, and God knows what else. Some people claim to get 10 times more power of their experiments that what goes in — with a device the size of an automobile battery. It’s the closest thing to perpetual motion I’ve seen yet.”
“Cold fusion does smack of the old perpetual motion scam.”
“Come on, Chet, get with it. It’s no accident the conference was held in Japan. Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corporation, the Japanese telecommunications giant, is doing cold fusion experiments and claims success. The Toyota Motor Corporation has a subsidiary working on cold fusion. It is said that Japanese money is behind the new laboratory that Pons and Fleischmann have set up in France. By the time Americans wake up and smell the coffee, the Japanese will be light-years ahead.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Give me a thousand bucks, 10,000, whatever you can afford. I’ll put it into Nippon stock, or palladium futures, or cold-fusion venture capital. When the new technology takes off, you’ll make a killing.”
“Sorry, Joe, but it sounds too risky to me. Everything I know about physics suggests that hydrogen fusion at room-temperature is extraordinarily unlikely, probably impossible. The cold-fusion boomlet looks to me suspiciously like a combination of wishful thinking, contaminated data, and sloppy experimental technique. Something may be happening in those labs, but I doubt if it’s fusion. I think I’ll keep my money in a savings account.”
“OK, but don’t say later that I didn’t give you a chance to get in on the ground floor.”
“I won’t. Remember, I missed out on plastics, too.”
