Too hot to handle : the race for cold fusion / Frank Close.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Close, F. E., author.

Series:

Princeton Legacy Library

Princeton legacy library

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cold fusion.

Cold fusion--Research--Utah.

Fleischman, Martin.

Pons, Stanley.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (387 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [1991]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Frank Close, a leading physicist and talented popular science writer, reveals the true story of the cold fusion controversy--a story ignored until now in spite of the glare of publicity surrounding Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons. On March 23, 1989, these two Utah scientists held an astonishing press conference, maintaining that they had succeeded, working in secret, in harnessing atomic fusion. What was the basis for their claims to have achieved cold fusion in a test tube in a basement laboratory, while other scientists--using magnets as big as houses and temperatures hotter than those in the center of the sun--were failing to produce as much power as they were using? Why did Fleischmann and Pons proclaim their "discovery" at a news conference, when first announcements of scientific results are almost always made within the scientific community? Why did the full-blown media event inspired by their initial report cause governments to reorient their research programs in hopes of cornering the "new technology"? And why did some scientists recklessly abandon their traditional painstaking methods in haste to be first to prove or discredit the experiment? Acquainted at first hand with investigations of cold fusion on two continents, Close is uniquely qualified to probe the motivations behind Fleischmann's and Pons's startling assertions and to explore the intellectual and political turmoil that surrounded the cold fusion debate.Originally published in 1991.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

PREFACE

1. The Greatest Discovery Since Fire

PART ONE: Genesis

2. Nothing New Under the Sun

3. The Sun on Earth

4. Cold Fusion

5. The Chemists

6. The Dispute

7. Harwell

PART TWO: Deuteronomy

8. The First Reactions

9. The Parting of the Waters

10. Money

11. The Caltech Story

12. From Spring to Fall

13. International Reactions

14. Test-Tube Fusion: Science or Non-Science?

PART THREE: Revelations

15. The Spy in the Lab

16. Credibility

17. 'It's Not Fusion'

18. The First Anniversary

19. Assessment

Appendices

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

Description based on print version record.

"First published in Great Britain by W.H. Allen Publishing"--title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 357-368) and index.

ISBN:

9780691635019

0691635013

9781400861606

1400861608

9780691606200

069160620X

OCLC:

884013067