VIEWPOINTS : But How Will It Do Against Cosby?
It’s time to end the fusion confusion.
No question lately is more perplexing, outside of when the retirement tributes to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar will finally end, than whether scientists B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann really produced an energy-creating fusion reaction at room temperature using simple lab equipment.
The Pons-Fleischmann work, announced last month at the University of Utah, has scientists rushing to their labs to verify or disprove the work. That leaves the rest of us to wonder whether we are within range of developing an unlimited energy supply or on the verge of fusion delusion.
Most intriguing is the fusion-in-a-flask simplicity with which the Pons-Fleischmann team claims to have produced the miracle. It seems almost to be the stuff of How-and-Why books and kids’ chemistry sets. Fusion has become much more than a scientific debate. Topics discussed over morning coffee at the office now include whether palladium-platinum electrodes immersed in heavy water with an electrical current thrown in really do give off more heat than they use up.
But ignored in the debate over whether Pons-Fleischmann fused or didn’t fuse is an untapped area of huge potential: Telefusion. Why keep fusion in the lab? With public interest growing, put it on the tube. Here’s how:
1) A live, prime-time fusion special.
Give Pons and Fleischmann two hours to produce fusion in prime time. Hire Geraldo Rivera to host the program. Call it “Fusion: Heat or Hype?”
Dress Rivera in a white lab coat. Post him outside the lab and have him periodically check in live with the progress being made by the two scientists.
Fill in the rest of the time with tape of Rivera reviewing cleanup operations at the Exxon oil spill near Valdez, Alaska, where he can discuss the need for new forms of energy. Better yet, show him wandering with a flashlight through Reactor No. 2 at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.
2) Pay-Per-Fusion.
Pay-per-view television is a growing service offered by cable-television operators in which people pay from $3.95 to $20 a program to watch movies, concerts, prize fights and fake wrestling matches that they once watched for free.
Pay-per-fusion offers the opportunity for the world’s first tag-team scientific research battle. Groups of rival fusion scientists would gather in the center of the ring with their equipment. When Pons tires, he can lean over to tag the hand of Fleischmann, who would then take over.
The ideal location would be Trump Plaza in Atlantic City, N.J. As a preliminary event, owner Donald J. Trump and business rival Merv Griffin can see how much energy the sparks between them generate.
Such an event holds at least as much promise of pay-per-view excitement as watching Evel Knievel’s son, Robbie, ride his motorcycle over the Caesars Palace fountain in Las Vegas. It also would help quiet the increasing number of people who are saying cable isn’t worth the $20 to $40 a month they pay for it.
3) Revive the GE College Bowl:
Back in the 1960s, General Electric sponsored a weekly clash between academic teams from universities.
Bring the show back by pitting fusion researchers from the University of Utah, Brigham Young, Caltech and MIT against each other. If “Jeopardy” can be resuscitated into a hit program, so can College Bowl.
For General Electric, the benefits are twofold. It has an obvious stake in an energy technology with the potential of fusion.
More important, GE owns NBC-TV at a time when a growing number of people are spurning network television. Not only could fusion lead to unlimited energy, it could also lead to unlimited ratings. Maybe even a series about a husband-wife fusion research team striving for a Nobel prize by day and raising three children by night.
