WHAT'S NEW Friday, August 06, 2004

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 6 Aug 04   Washington, DC

1. COLD FUSION: JUST WHEN YOU THINK LIFE CAN'T GET ANY SILLIER.
The cover of Popular Mechanics for August warns that "Cold Fusion
Technology Enables Anyone To Build A Nuke From Commonly Available
Materials."  A nuke?  The cold fusion guys can't brew a cup of
tea.  The article: "Dangerous Science" is by Jim Wilson, whose
cover story in April proclaimed the dawn of the age of atomic
aircraft powered by hafnium-178 isomer reactors, which don't
exist and never will http://www.aps.org/WN/WN04/wn041604.cfm. 
OK, so grownups aren't supposed to read Popular Mechanics, but if
the cold fusion faithful think they're going to get a cover story
in Time, get over it.  DOE recently announced that cold fusion
research will be reviewed, and believers imagined they'd been
vindicated  http://www.aps.org/WN/WN04/wn040204.cfm. Wilson says
Eugene Mallove of Infinite Energy Magazine assured him that the
experimental evidence for cold fusion is too compelling for DOE
to ignore.  Mallove couldn't be reached for comment.

2. COINCIDENCE: IS YOUR RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR SPEAKING ARABIC? 
If it is, you may want to take cover, or seek professional help. 
In the August issue of Psychology Today, parapsychologist Dean
Radin is quoted as claiming random number generators (RNGs) were
uncharacteristically coherent in the hours just before the 9/11
terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and again before
Madrid.  Coincidences like that don't just happen; "events with
worldwide impact focus consciousness and that influences the
functioning of machines."  Radin heads the Global Consciousness
Project, with 75 totally deluded researchers around the world
monitoring RNGs to see if they predict terrorist attacks.   Are
RNGs the only machines that act up?  What about elevators and
missile launchers?  This is scary.  No, not the machines, the
fact that there are that many researchers that haven't got a clue
about how things are, and people with money willing to fund them. 

3. SPACE EXPLORATION: MESSENGER MISSION TO MERCURY IS LAUNCHED.
No astronauts need apply.  The voyage of NASA's Messenger probe
will take seven years on a convoluted trajectory that will loop
around the inner planets several times to slow down enough to
enter a highly eccentric Mercury orbit.  The apogee is far enough
away to let the probe cool down.  Planetologists hope to learn
whether Mercury's iron core is still liquid.  To explore where no
human can ever set foot is the great adventure of our time.

4. LOS ALAMOS: COULD THINGS GET ANY WORSE?  THEY ALREADY HAVE.
Add another 4 to the 19 scientists already placed on leave, and 
research is still at a standstill.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.  
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
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