Sun in a Bottle (26 page)

Read Sun in a Bottle Online

Authors: Charles Seife

I called Happer and began to piece together what was going on. (Garwin was in China at the time but I soon got his side of the story, too.) Someone—I never found out for sure who it was—had sent Garwin and Happer each a copy of the Taleyarkhan manuscript and a copy of the Shapira-Saltmarsh paper. Both then e-mailed Kennedy. Garwin was harsh and succinct:
 
I understand there has been some discussion as to whether
Science
, having accepted the paper, should nevertheless not print it. I certainly don’t want to enter into such a discussion with you.
But I do want to tell you that I have read both papers carefully, and that I think the odds are extremely high that this “discovery” is simply error and incompetence.
So I caution you to mute the natural enthusiasm of people on your team who want to publish the latest significant discovery.
 
Happer’s note was longer and more involved, but he, too, urged Kennedy not to hype the results, likening it to cold fusion and polywater:
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I am told that the paper in question, the most recent version of which has the title “Evidence for Nuclear Emissions During Acoustic Cavitation,” will have a place on the cover of “Science” when it is published, and will be accompanied by additional laudatory editorials and sidebars. I may well be misinformed about this, but if I am not, I hope I can persuade you to exercise your authority as Editor in Chief to stop these plans....
Giving the Taleyarkhan paper lots of publicity in “Science” would damage the credibility of the magazine and would do quite a bit of harm to our scientific community. I have seen several examples of similar episodes in my career, for example, polywater and cold fusion. Both episodes caused lasting damage to science.
 
Happer strongly argued that the Taleyarkhan paper was in error, and said that several other prominent fusion researchers (including the laser fusion scientist John Nuckolls) had concluded that Taleyarkhan was flat-out wrong. But at the same time, Happer insisted that he wasn’t trying to block publication. “I like
Science
; I’m a member of AAAS,
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and I don’t want them to shoot themselves in the foot—or some other body part,” Happer told me. “All I told him was, for God’s sake don’t put it on the cover of
Science
.” Garwin was a little more oblique about what
Science
should do with the bubble fusion manuscript. “It would be unfortunate if
Science
magazine were to take any position on its correctness,” he said.
There’s no question in my mind that Happer and Garwin would have been happy if
Science
had pulled the Taleyarkhan paper. They were convinced (as I was becoming) that bubble fusion was a fiction. However, I think that by the time they contacted Kennedy, they knew that
Science
was likely to publish the paper. They just wanted to minimize the damage to Oak Ridge and to the journal and, above all, to science. Don’t hype the results. Don’t put it on the cover. Don’t go out on a limb for bubble fusion.
Kennedy, not unreasonably, interpreted the notes slightly differently. He saw it as a last-ditch attempt by Oak Ridge to quash publication. His response to Happer was measured, if indignant.
Science
editors had taken exceptional care with the manuscript, he insisted, and the review process had led to a firm recommendation to publish:
 
Concern on the part of research managers from ORNL appeared late in the game, followed by some secondary measurements taken with a different detector which are claimed to show differences with respect to some of the results. That work has not been peer-reviewed. . . .
I am now hearing from you and a few other distinguished physicists arguing that I should now block publication of a paper that has met and passed all our tests. Because I believe that the right way to resolve serious scientific differences is through repetition, peer review, and publication I plan to proceed. I have told the ORNL management that we will be happy to consider a manuscript by those who have a different interpretation.
 
It was getting more complicated by the minute, but now that the Taleyarkhan paper was circulating around the physics community, I was freed from the high level of secrecy that had hampered my investigations. I made dozens of phone calls to scientists around the country, asking not only about bubble fusion but also about what had happened with the review process at Oak Ridge. I knew about Shapira and Saltmarsh, so I contacted them. I also spoke to one of Oak Ridge’s deputy directors, Lee Riedinger.
I was pretty sure Riedinger thought bubble fusion was garbage—but he never said so directly. “I’m confused,” he told me, when I asked him whether he believed the Taleyarkhan experiment or the Shapira-Saltmarsh one. “There’s an active dialogue back and forth about what could be wrong with either set of measurements.” Riedinger seemed to be walking a very fine line. He was trying to temper enthusiasm for Taleyarkhan’s results without publicly faulting his own employee’s research. (And he went out of his way to compliment Taleyarkhan’s abilities, adding that his work is “very novel and interesting.”)
I found a fusion expert at Livermore, Mike Moran, who had also done sonoluminescence—with deuterated water, no less—and I asked him what he thought of the paper. “The paper’s kind of a patchwork, technically, and each of the patches has a hole in it,” he told me, and pointed out a number of damning flaws that I hadn’t considered. Taleyarkhan’s experiment seemed to be producing some tritium, and the tritium production disappeared when the sound-wave generator wasn’t operating. Moran pointed out that this disappearance was a problem. A deuterated solution that had been irradiated by neutrons should show an increase in tritium levels whether or not the sound-wave generator—which collapsed the bubbles to ignite fusion—was working. Even without the fusion reactions, some of those neutrons would strike deuteriums and stick, creating tritium. In Taleyarkhan’s experiment, this was not the case; the control experiment with deuterated acetone and no sound-wave generator showed no increase in tritium. “If he’s really right, it should have shown up,” Moran said. “It’s an inconsistency in the data.”
I was convinced. Taleyarkhan was wrong: bubble fusion was a fiction. And because of the spurious result, a scientific drama was playing out before my eyes. The officials at Oak Ridge felt that the Shapira-Saltmarsh paper was damning, and they were hoping to avoid embarrassment. Garwin and Happer were trying to prevent another cold-fusion controversy, and Kennedy was trying to preserve the integrity of the peer-review process. Rumors were flying, and they were getting nastier and more paranoid by the minute. Everybody was getting increasingly annoyed with everyone else.
I got a note from Happer on Friday, March 1. He relayed part of a message from an unnamed colleague (not from Princeton or Oak Ridge) who was telling people of rumors that I had been “calling around asking about activities surrounding the publication of the article, not the ‘science’ in the article.” That message continued:
 
I don’t want to get anyone upset about this, but it does tend to verify the rumors we have heard about Don Kennedy, the current Science editor and former Stanford President, wanting to go after Princeton people for opposing the publication of the research paper in its original form.
 
The story had just gotten harder. The allegations were absurd—Kennedy had not influenced me at all, so I could hardly be his attack dog. However, it would be impossible to get honest opinions from physicists who believed that I was preparing a hatchet job at the behest of Don Kennedy. Later in the day, Happer sent a final note:
 
Be careful what you write and remember:
 
“The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on.
Nor all thy piety, nor all thy wit,
Can call it back to cancel half a line
Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.”
 
I had been Omar Khayyamed.
Happer need not have reminded me. Of course I was acutely aware of the sensitivity of the situation. People were quite likely to get their first impression about bubble fusion from my article at the front of the magazine. I was skeptical, and I wanted that skepticism to come through, but at the same time I wanted to make sure that everybody’s view was represented fairly: the researchers, the editors, and the skeptics. In my mind, the whole bubble fusion controversy was fueled by these three parties’ tragic mutual incomprehension.
The bubble fusion story was about more than a scientific paper. It had become a story about the way science is done—and how the scientific peer-review process sometimes fails. The original ending to my piece grimly emphasized the point:
 
Taleyarkhan and his team, in good faith, submitted their paper to peer review and passed.
Science
magazine subjected the paper to scrutiny in accordance with their procedures, and once the paper was accepted, refused to allow outsiders to influence their publication process. And outside scientists, worried about the quality of the paper, tried to prevent the embarrassment of a second cold fusion fiasco. All three parties had the best of intentions—and now the road ahead is paved.
 
This ending was scrapped in favor of a less-editorializing one. Yet even as I penned those words, the misunderstanding built. Bob Park, the tireless critic of pseudoscience (particularly cold fusion and its proponents, such as Thomas Valone, the patent examiner), featured bubble fusion in his weekly
What’s New
newsletter, which is distributed on Friday afternoons:
 
BUBBLE FUSION: A COLLECTIVE GROAN CAN BE HEARD
 
A report out of Oak Ridge of d-d fusion events in collapsing bubbles formed by cavitation in deuterated acetone, is scheduled for publication in the March 8 issue of Science magazine. . . . Although distinguished physicists, fearing a repeat of the cold fusion fiasco 13 years ago, advised against publication, the editor has apparently chosen not only to publish the work, but to do so with unusual fanfare, involving even the cover of Science. Perhaps Science magazine covets the vast readership of Infinite Energy magazine.
 
Infinite Energy
, of course, was the cold-fusion activist Eugene Mallove’s publication. Park was uncharacteristically wrong about the cover; bubble fusion was never going to be a cover story. However, his comment meant that the hitherto private controversy was about to become very public.
Over the weekend, the rumors flew, as did the press releases.
Science
distributed one as part of the weekly embargoed notification to journalists:
 
FUSION IN A FLASH? SCIENCE RESEARCHERS REPORT NUCLEAR EMISSIONS FROM TINY, SUPER-HOT COLLAPSING BUBBLES
 
The dramatic flashing implosion of tiny bubbles—in acetone containing deuterium atoms—produces tritium and nuclear emissions similar to emissions characteristic of nuclear fusion involving deuterium-deuterium reactions. This finding was reported in the 8 March issue of the peer-reviewed journal Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Shock wave simulations also indicate that temperatures inside the collapsing bubbles may reach up to 10 million degrees Kelvin, as hot as the center of the sun. Although the high temperatures and pressures within the bubbles would be sufficient to generate fusion, the overall results of the study only suggest, but do not confirm, nuclear fusion in the bubbles’ collapse. . . .
The experiment’s entire apparatus is well within the bounds of “table-top physics,” about “the size of three coffee cups stacked one on top of the other,” says Taleyarkhan. . . .
Currently, the level of neutron emissions with the characteristic fusion energy appears to be lower than would be expected from the tritium signals observed in the experiment. Further tests are needed to account for this discrepancy, and to verify the observed relations between the neutron emissions, tritium production, and bubble collapse.
If fusion is confirmed in further tests, these bubbles would still have a long way to go before they could be considered as a possible energy source with any commercial value, says Science co-author Richard T. Lahey Jr. of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. First of all, the bubble reaction would have to demonstrate net energy gain—that is, it should produce more energy than the energy needed to drive the reaction itself. Second, scientists would have to find a way to make the reaction perpetuate itself in a chain reaction, without constant input from a neutron source. . . .
 
It was optimistic, but not outrageous. The biggest problem, in my mind, is that it did not mention the Shapira and Saltmarsh manuscript. That was a major oversight, though I am not sure whether the press office was even aware of the paper at the time.
Reporters who received
Science
’s press package could get the Taleyarkhan paper, but the information was embargoed until 2 PM on Thursday, March 7. Only then would science reporters be allowed to print their stories.
There was also an Oak Ridge press release, but I didn’t see it until a few days later. Its tone was a little more pessimistic:
 
PRELIMINARY EVIDENCE SUGGESTS POSSIBLE NUCLEAR EMISSIONS DURING EXPERIMENTS
 
Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Russian Academy of Sciences have reported results that suggest the possibility of nuclear reactions during the explosive collapse of bubbles in liquid, a process known as cavitation. . . .
Experiments suggest the presence of small but statistically significant amounts of tritium above background resulting from cavitation experiments using chilled deuterated acetone. This tritium could result from the nuclear fusion of two deuterium nuclei. Tritium was not observed during cavitation of normal acetone, which does not contain deuterium.
Attempts to confirm these results by looking for the telltale neutron signature of the deuterium fusion reaction have yielded mixed results. While there are indications of neutron emission in the newly published results, subsequent experiments with a different detector system show no neutron production.
Theoretical estimates of the conditions in the collapsing bubbles are consistent with the possibility of nuclear fusion, under certain assumptions concerning the relevant hydrodynamics.
These results suggest the need for additional experiments, said ORNL’s Lee Riedinger, deputy director for Science and Technology. In particular, the difference in the two sets of neutron measurements must be clarified. Additional tritium experiments would also allow a better understanding of the tritium observations.
Until confirmatory experiments are completed, a cautionary view is appropriate, according to Riedinger, who said, “The manuscript has been through external peer review, but the scientific record shows that tritium and neutron measurements at these levels are difficult, and one must do further tests before firm conclusions can be drawn.”

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