Give Invention a Chance
* Re: “The Cold Fusion Files” [Feb. 28]:
“Nothing is certain,” declared 20th century physicist Werner Heisenberg, ushering in the uncertainty principle. Likewise, legendary physicist John Archibald Wheeler--who coined the term “black hole”--said of the laws of physics, “There is no law except the law that there is no law.”
Yet the U.S. district judge who blocked Joseph Newman’s effort to patent his potentially revolutionary energy-creating device did so by citing the “laws” of thermodynamics, concurring with scientists who say the physics of this energy machine just aren’t possible. Are they “certain”?
Newman’s critics should at least test the machine before casually dismissing it merely on the basis of scientific equations and “laws” that every few generations prove to have loopholes (thank God).
For fear of the unstoppable oil powers that be, I hesitate to suggest that someone check the judge’s ties to the energy industry (though I guess I just did).
At the end of the article, another expert says, “We have to look for evolutionary changes . . . not revolutionary.” But aren’t the greatest breakthroughs often revolutionary? And more inspired than derived?
As today’s power plants struggle and the finite supply of fossil fuels on this planet dwindles, a revolutionary new source of energy will have to be created this century, along with all the amazing breakthroughs in medicine that are already underway.
And if the billions of tax dollars we Californians just wasted bailing out power companies had instead been put toward developing efficient fusion energy generators--”little suns,” as my physicist uncle Charles likens them--even just a methodical, evolutionary breakthrough could have come a lot sooner down the line. That much is certain.
ROBERT CORBETT
Hermosa Beach
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