Utah Fusion Experiments

The supreme arrogance of H.W. Lewis’ remarks (“Clearing Fusion Off the Table Top,” Op-Ed Page, April 6) set me thinking about religion.

While he was castigating the media for doing what they do best--seizing upon a sexy story--and seemed to have contempt for the notion that unknown physical processes could somehow be taking place to account for the results attained by the Utah physicists, I was struck with a thought about Copernicus.

Copernicus came along with new insights which upset the dogmas of the ruling high priests of truth in his day, the Catholic Church. Now it appears Lewis fears for his own dogmas, and he certainly comes from the modern equivalent of the high priests of truth, the world of physics.

Dogmatics tend to engage in turf battles, seeking the most converts to their view--usually because they have some vested interest in their own dogma. Could it be that his assertion that politicians fund only “real (and expensive) fusion” research leaves him showing his dogma?

Any rational mind knows that truth is the most subjective and malleable of substances. This is why science deals in theories and does not call its findings absolute truths, as many religions do, for invariably new information or creative thinking comes to light to broaden our understanding of existing theories or supplant them altogether.

Lewis remarks, “Sufficiently enhanced cold fusion to make useful amounts of energy in ordinary matter, without the discovery of a new subatomic particle like the muon, would mean that all we know about the science of electrons, deuterons and solids is completely wrong, not just slightly wrong.”

Lewis overreacts. It could be simply that we are viewing the mountain from afar as obscured by trees. Perhaps the Utah researchers’ “one in a billion” experiments have moved us slightly closer, beyond some trees, and now we see the mountain slightly differently, and must now make sense of what we see.

JEFF SOFTLEY

Los Angeles