Part 6 (1/2)

The story, two thousand words long, starts shortly after a hypothetical crash of steel shares around 1904. The narrator, sick of scrabbling for money, decides to sell his immortal soul to Mephistopheles. To hammer out a deal, he and Satan meet in a dark, unnamed lair at midnight, drink some hot toddies, and discuss the depressingly modest going price for souls. Pretty soon, though, they're sidetracked by an unusual feature of Satan's anatomy-he's made entirely of radium.

Six years before Twain's story, Marie Curie had astounded the scientific world with her tales of radioactive elements. It was genuine news, but Twain must have been pretty plugged into the scientific scene to incorporate all the cheeky details he did into ”Sold to Satan.” Radium's radioactivity charges the air around it electrically, so Satan glows a luminescent green, to the narrator's delight. Also, like a warm-blooded rock, radium is always hotter than its surroundings, because its radioactivity heats it up. This heat grows exponentially as more radium is concentrated together. As a result, Twain's six-foot-one, ”nine-hundred-odd”-pound Satan is hot enough to light a cigar with his fingertip. (He quickly puts it out, though, to ”save it for Voltaire.” Hearing this, the narrator makes Satan take fifty more cigars for, among others, Goethe.) Later, the story goes into some detail about refining radioactive metals. It's far from Twain's sharpest material. But like the best science fiction, it's prescient. To avoid incinerating people he comes across, radium-bodied Satan wears a protective coat of polonium, another new element discovered by Curie. Scientifically, this is rubbish: a ”transparent” sh.e.l.l of polonium, ”thin as a gelatine film,” could never withhold the heat of a critical ma.s.s of radium. But we'll forgive Twain, since the polonium serves a larger dramatic purpose. It gives Satan a reason to threaten, ”If I should strip off my skin the world would vanish away in a flash of flame and a puff of smoke, and the remnants of the extinguished moon would sift down through s.p.a.ce a mere snow-shower of gray ashes!”

Twain being Twain, he could not let the Devil end the story in a position of power. The trapped radium heat is so intense that Satan soon admits, with unintended irony, ”I burn. I suffer within.” But jokes aside, Twain was already trembling about the awesome power of nuclear energy in 1904. Had he lived forty years more, he surely would have shaken his head-dispirited, yet hardly surprised-to see people l.u.s.ting after nuclear missiles instead of plentiful atomic energy. Unlike Goethe's forays into hard science, Twain's stories about science can still be read today with instruction.

Twain surveyed the lower realm of the periodic table with despair. But of all the tales of artists and elements, none seems sadder or harsher, or more Faustian, than poet Robert Lowell's adventures with one of the primordial elements, lithium, at the very top of the table.

When they were all youngsters at a prep school in the early 1930s, friends nicknamed Lowell ”Cal” after Caliban, the howling man-beast in The Tempest The Tempest. Others swear Caligula inspired the epithet. Either way, the name fit the confessional poet, who exemplified the mad artist-someone like van Gogh or Poe, whose genius stems from parts of the psyche most of us cannot access, much less harness for artistic purposes. Unfortunately, Lowell couldn't rein in his madness outside the margins of his poems, and his lunacy bled all over his real life. He once turned up sputtering on a friend's doorstep, convinced that he (Lowell) was the Virgin Mary. Another time, in Bloomington, Indiana, he convinced himself he could stop cars on the highway by spreading his arms wide like Jesus. In cla.s.ses he taught, he wasted hours babbling and rewriting the poems of nonplussed students in the obsolete style of Tennyson or Milton. When nineteen, he abandoned a fiancee and drove from Boston to the country house of a Tennessee poet who Lowell hoped would mentor him. He just a.s.sumed that the man would put him up. The poet graciously explained there was no room at the inn, so to speak, and joked that Lowell would have to camp on the lawn if he wanted to stay. Lowell nodded and left-for Sears. He bought a pup tent and returned to rough it on the gra.s.s.

The literary public delighted in these stories, and during the 1950s and 1960s, Lowell was the preeminent poet in the United States, winning prizes and selling thousands of books. Everyone a.s.sumed Lowell's aberrations were the touch of some madly divine muse. Pharmaceutical psychology, a field coming into its own in that era, had a different explanation: Cal had a chemical imbalance, which rendered him manic-depressive. The public saw only the wild man, not his incapacitating black moods-moods that left him broken spiritually and increasingly broke financially. Luckily, the first real mood stabilizer, lithium, came to the United States in 1967. A desperate Lowell-who'd just been incarcerated in a psychiatric ward, where doctors had confiscated his belt and shoelaces-agreed to be medicated.

Curiously, for all its potency as a drug, lithium has no normal biological role. It's not an essential mineral like iron or magnesium, or even a trace nutrient like chromium. In fact, pure lithium is a scarily reactive metal. People's linty pockets have reportedly caught fire when keys or coins short-circuited portable lithium batteries as they jangled down the street. Nor does lithium (which in its drug form is a salt, lithium carbonate) work the way we expect drugs to. We take antibiotics at the height of an infection to knock the microbes out. But taking lithium at the height of mania or in the canyon of depression won't fix the episode. Lithium only prevents the next episode from starting. And although scientists knew about lithium's efficacy back in 1886, until recently they had no clue why it worked.

Lithium tweaks many mood-altering chemicals in the brain, and its effects are complicated. Most interesting, lithium seems to reset the body's circadian rhythm, its inner clock. In normal people, ambient conditions, especially the sun, dictate their humors and determine when they are tuckered out for the day. They're on a twenty-four-hour cycle. Bipolar people run on cycles independent of the sun. And run and run. When they're feeling good, their brains flood them with suns.h.i.+ny neurostimulants, and a lack of suns.h.i.+ne does not turn the spigot off. Some call it ”pathological enthusiasm”: such people barely need sleep, and their self-confidence swells to the point that a Bostonian male in the twentieth century can believe that the Holy Spirit has chosen him as the vessel of Jesus Christ. Eventually, those surges deplete the brain, and people crash. Severe manic-depressives, when the ”black dogs” have them, sometimes take to bed for weeks.

Lithium regulates the proteins that control the body's inner clock. This clock runs, oddly, on DNA, inside special neurons deep in the brain. Special proteins attach to people's DNA each morning, and after a fixed time they degrade and fall off. Sunlight resets the proteins over and over, so they hold on much longer. In fact, the proteins fall off only after darkness falls-at which point the brain should ”notice” the bare DNA and stop producing stimulants. This process goes awry in manic-depressives because the proteins, despite the lack of sunlight, remain bound fast to their DNA. Their brains don't realize they should stop revving. Lithium helps cleave the proteins from DNA so people can wind down. Notice that sunlight still trumps lithium during the day and resets the proteins; it's only when the sunlight goes away at night that lithium helps DNA shake free. Far from being suns.h.i.+ne in a pill, then, lithium acts as ”anti-sunlight.” Neurologically, it undoes sunlight and thereby compresses the circadian clock back to twenty-four hours-preventing both the mania bubble from forming and the Black Tuesday crash into depression.

Lowell responded immediately to lithium. His personal life grew steadier (though by no means steady), and at one point he p.r.o.nounced himself cured. From his new, stable perspective, he could see how his old life-full of fights, drinking binges, and divorces-had laid waste to so many people. For all his frank and moving lines within his poems, nothing Lowell ever wrote was as poignant-and nothing about the fragile chemistry of human beings was as moving-as a simple plaint to his publisher, Robert Giroux, after doctors started him on lithium.

”It's terrible, Bob,” he said, ”to think that all I've suffered, and all the suffering I've caused, might have arisen from the lack of a little salt in my brain.”

Lowell felt that his life improved on lithium, yet the effect of lithium on his art was debatable. As Lowell did, most artists feel that trading a manic-depressive cycle for a muted, prosaic circadian rhythm allows them to work productively without being distracted by mania or sedated by depression. There's always been debate, though, about whether their work suffers after their ”cure,” after they've lost access to that part of the psyche most of us never glimpse.

Many artists report feeling flatlined or tranquilized on lithium. One of Lowell's friends reported that he looked like something transported around in a zoo. And his poetry undoubtedly changed after 1967, growing rougher and purposely less polished. He also, instead of inventing lines from his wild mind, began poaching lines from private letters, which outraged the people he quoted. Such work won Lowell a Pulitzer Prize in 1974, but it hasn't weathered well. Especially compared with his vivacious younger work, it's barely read today. For all that the periodic table inspired Goethe, Twain, and others, Lowell's lithium may be a case where it provided health but subdued art, and made a mad genius merely human.

An Element of Madness

Robert Lowell typified the mad artist, but there's another psychological deviant in our collective cultural psyche: the mad scientist. The mad scientists of the periodic table tended to have fewer public outbursts than mad artists, and they generally didn't lead notorious private lives either. Their psychological lapses were subtler, and their mistakes were typical of a peculiar kind of madness known as pathological science.* And what's fascinating is how that pathology, that madness, could exist side by side in the same mind with brilliance. And what's fascinating is how that pathology, that madness, could exist side by side in the same mind with brilliance.

Unlike virtually every other scientist in this book, William Crookes, born to a tailor in London in 1832, never worked at a university. The first of sixteen children, he later fathered ten of his own, and he supported his enormous family by writing a popular book on diamonds and editing a b.u.mptious, gossipy journal of science goings-on, Chemical News Chemical News. Nevertheless, Crookes-a bespectacled man with a beard and pointy mustache-did enough world-cla.s.s science on elements such as selenium and thallium to get elected to England's premier scientific club, the Royal Society, at just thirty-one years of age. A decade later, he was almost kicked out.

His fall began in 1867, when his brother Philip died at sea.* Despite, or perhaps because of, their abundance of family, William and the other Crookeses nearly went mad with grief. At the time, spiritualism, a movement imported from America, had overrun the houses of aristocrats and shopkeeps alike all over England. Even someone like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who invented the hyperrationalist detective Sherlock Holmes, could find room in his capacious mind to accept spiritualism as genuine. Products of their time, the Crookes clan-mostly tradesmen with neither scientific training nor instinct-began attending seances en ma.s.se to comfort themselves and to chat with poor departed Philip. Despite, or perhaps because of, their abundance of family, William and the other Crookeses nearly went mad with grief. At the time, spiritualism, a movement imported from America, had overrun the houses of aristocrats and shopkeeps alike all over England. Even someone like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who invented the hyperrationalist detective Sherlock Holmes, could find room in his capacious mind to accept spiritualism as genuine. Products of their time, the Crookes clan-mostly tradesmen with neither scientific training nor instinct-began attending seances en ma.s.se to comfort themselves and to chat with poor departed Philip.

It's not clear why William tagged along one night. Perhaps solidarity. Perhaps because another brother was stage manager for the medium. Perhaps to dissuade everyone from going back-privately, in his diary, he had dismissed such spiritual ”contact” as fraudulent pageantry. Yet watching the medium play the accordion with no hands and write ”automatic messages,” Ouija boardstyle, with a stylus and plank impressed the skeptic despite himself. His defenses were lowered, and when the medium began relaying babbled messages from Philip in the great beyond, William began bawling. He went to more sessions, and even invented a scientific device to monitor the susurrus of wandering spirits in the candlelit rooms. It's not clear if his new radiometer-an evacuated gla.s.s bulb with a very sensitive weather vane inside-actually detected Philip. (We can hazard a guess.) But William couldn't dismiss what he felt holding hands with family members at the meetings. His attendance became regular.

Such sympathies put Crookes in the minority among his fellow rationalists in the Royal Society-probably a minority of one. Mindful of this, Crookes concealed his biases in 1870 when he announced that he had drawn up a scientific study of spiritualism, and most fellows of the Royal Society were delighted, a.s.suming he would demolish the whole scene in his rowdy journal. Things did not turn out so neatly. After three years of chanting and summoning, Crookes published ”Notes of an Enquiry into the Phenomena Called Spiritual” in 1874 in a journal he owned called the Quarterly Journal of Science Quarterly Journal of Science. He compared himself to a traveler in exotic lands, a Marco Polo of the paranormal. But instead of attacking all the spiritualist mischief-”levitation,” ”phantoms,” ”percussive sounds,” ”luminous appearances,” ”the rising of tables and chairs off the ground”-he concluded that neither charlatanism nor ma.s.s hypnosis could explain (or at least not wholly wholly explain) all he'd seen. It wasn't an uncritical endors.e.m.e.nt, but Crookes did claim to find a ”residual” of legitimate supernatural forces. explain) all he'd seen. It wasn't an uncritical endors.e.m.e.nt, but Crookes did claim to find a ”residual” of legitimate supernatural forces.*

Coming from Crookes, even such tepid support shocked everyone in England, including spiritualists. Recovering quickly, they began shouting hosannas about Crookes from the mountaintops. Even today, a few ghost hunters haul out his creaky paper as ”proof” that smart people will come around to spiritualism if they approach it with an open mind. Crookes's fellows in the Royal Society were equally surprised but rather more aghast. They argued that Crookes had been blinded by parlor tricks, swept up in crowd dynamics, and charmed by charismatic gurus. They also tore into the dubious scientific veneer he'd given his report. Crookes had recorded irrelevant ”data” about the temperature and barometric pressure inside the medium's lair, for instance, as if immaterial beings wouldn't poke their heads out in inclement weather. More uncomfortably, former friends attacked Crookes's character, calling him a rube, a s.h.i.+ll. If spiritualists sometimes cite Crookes today, a few scientists still cannot forgive him for enabling 135 years of New Age-y BS. They even cite his work on the elements as proof he went crazy.

When young, you see, Crookes had pioneered the study of selenium. Though an essential trace nutrient in all animals (in humans, the depletion of selenium in the bloodstream of AIDS patients is a fatally accurate harbinger of death), selenium is toxic in large doses. Ranchers know this well. If not watched carefully, their cattle will root out a prairie plant of the pea family known as locoweed, some varieties of which sponge up selenium from the soil. Cattle that munch on locoweed begin to stagger and stumble and develop fevers, sores, and anorexia-a suite of symptoms known as the blind staggers. Yet they enjoy the high. In the surest sign that selenium actually makes them go mad, cattle grow addicted to locoweed despite its awful side effects and eat it to the exclusion of anything else. It's animal meth. Some imaginative historians even pin Custer's loss at the Battle of the Little Bighorn on his horses' taking hits of loco before the battle. Overall, it's fitting that ”selenium” comes from selene, selene, Greek for ”moon,” which has links-through Greek for ”moon,” which has links-through luna, luna, Latin for ”moon”-to ”lunatic” and ”lunacy.” Latin for ”moon”-to ”lunatic” and ”lunacy.”

Given that toxicity, it might make sense to retroactively blame Crookes's delusions on selenium. Some inconvenient facts undermine that diagnosis, though. Selenium often attacks within a week; Crookes got goofy in early middle age, long after he'd stopped working with selenium. Plus, after decades of ranchers' cursing out element thirty-four every time a cow stumbled, many biochemists now think that other chemicals in locoweed contribute just as much to the craziness and intoxication. Finally, in a clinching clue, Crookes's beard never fell out, a cla.s.sic symptom of selenosis.

A full beard also argues against his being driven mad, as some have suggested, by another depilatory on the periodic table-the poisoner's poison, thallium. Crookes discovered thallium at age twenty-six (a finding that almost ensured his election to the Royal Society) and continued to play with it in his lab for a decade. But he apparently never inhaled enough even to lose his whiskers. Besides, would someone ravished by thallium (or selenium) retain such a sharp mind into old age? Crookes actually withdrew from spiritualist circles after 1874, rededicating himself to science, and major discoveries lay ahead. He was the first to suggest the existence of isotopes. He built vital new scientific equipment and confirmed the presence of helium in rocks, its first detection on earth. In 1897, the newly knighted Sir William dove into radioactivity, even discovering (though without realizing it) the element protactinium in 1900.

No, the best explanation for Crookes's lapse into spiritualism is psychological: ruined by grief for his brother, he succ.u.mbed, avant la lettre, to pathological science.

In explaining what pathological science is, it's best to clear up any misconceptions about that loaded word, ”pathological,” and explain up front what pathological science is not not. It's not fraud, since the adherents of a pathological science believe they're right-if only everyone else could see it. It's not pseudoscience, like Freudianism and Marxism, fields that poach on the imprimatur of science yet shun the rigors of the scientific method. It's also not politicized science, like Lysenkoism, where people swear allegiance to a false science because of threats or a skewed ideology. Finally, it's not general clinical madness or merely deranged belief. It's a particular madness, a meticulous and scientifically informed delusion. Pathological scientists pick out a marginal and unlikely phenomenon that appeals to them for whatever reason and bring all their scientific ac.u.men to proving its existence. But the game is rigged from the start: their science serves only the deeper emotional need to believe in something. Spiritualism per se isn't a pathological science, but it became so in Crookes's hands because of his careful ”experiments” and the scientific tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs he gave the experiments.

And actually, pathological science doesn't always spring from fringe fields. It also thrives in legitimate but speculative fields, where data and evidence are scarce and hard to interpret. For example, the branch of paleontology concerned with reconstructing dinosaurs and other extinct creatures provides another great case study in pathological science.

At some level, of course, we don't know squat about extinct creatures: a whole skeleton is a rare find, and soft tissue impressions are vanis.h.i.+ngly rare. A joke among people who reconstruct paleofauna is that if elephants had gone extinct way back when, anyone who dug up a mammoth skeleton today would conjure up a giant hamster with tusks, not a woolly pachyderm with a trunk. We'd know just as little about the glories of other animals as well-stripes, waddles, lips, potbellies, belly b.u.t.tons, snouts, gizzards, four-chambered stomachs, and humps, not to mention their eyebrows, b.u.t.tocks, toenails, cheeks, tongues, and nipples. Nevertheless, by comparing the grooves and depressions on fossilized bones with modern creatures' bones, a trained eye can figure out the musculature, enervation, size, gait, dent.i.tion, and even mating habits of extinct species. Paleontologists just have to be careful about extrapolating too far.

A pathological science takes advantage of that caution. Basically, its believers use the ambiguity about evidence as as evidence-claiming that scientists don't know everything and therefore there's room for my pet theory, too. That's exactly what happened with manganese and the megalodon. evidence-claiming that scientists don't know everything and therefore there's room for my pet theory, too. That's exactly what happened with manganese and the megalodon.*

This story starts in 1873, when the research vessel HMS Challenger Challenger set out from England to explore the Pacific Ocean. In a wonderfully low-tech setup, the crew dropped overboard huge buckets tied to ropes three miles long and dredged the ocean floor. In addition to fantastical fish and other critters, they hauled up dozens upon dozens of spherical rocks shaped like fossilized potatoes and also fat, solid, mineralized ice cream cones. These hunks, mostly manganese, appeared all over the seabed in every part of the ocean, meaning there had to be untold billions of them scattered around the world. set out from England to explore the Pacific Ocean. In a wonderfully low-tech setup, the crew dropped overboard huge buckets tied to ropes three miles long and dredged the ocean floor. In addition to fantastical fish and other critters, they hauled up dozens upon dozens of spherical rocks shaped like fossilized potatoes and also fat, solid, mineralized ice cream cones. These hunks, mostly manganese, appeared all over the seabed in every part of the ocean, meaning there had to be untold billions of them scattered around the world.

That was the first surprise. The second took place when the crew cracked open the cones: the manganese had formed itself around giant shark teeth. The biggest, most pituitarily freakish shark teeth today run about two and a half inches max. The manganese-covered teeth stretched five or more inches-mouth talons capable of shattering bone like an ax. Using the same basic techniques as with dinosaur fossils, paleontologists determined (just from the teeth!) that this Jaws3, dubbed the megalodon, grew to approximately fifty feet, weighed approximately fifty tons, and could swim approximately fifty miles per hour. It could probably close its mouth of 250 teeth with a megaton force, and it fed mostly on primitive whales in shallow, tropical waters. It probably died out as its prey migrated permanently to colder, deeper waters, an environment that didn't suit its high metabolism and ravenous appet.i.te.

All fine science so far. The pathology started with the manganese.* Shark teeth litter the ocean floor because they're about the hardest biological substance known, the only part of shark carca.s.ses that survive the crush of the deep ocean (most sharks have cartilaginous skeletons). It's not clear why manganese, of all the dissolved metals in the ocean, galvanizes shark teeth, but scientists know roughly how quickly it acc.u.mulates: between one-half and one and a half millimeters per millennium. From that rate they have determined that the vast majority of recovered teeth date from at least 1.5 million years ago, meaning the megalodons probably died out around then. Shark teeth litter the ocean floor because they're about the hardest biological substance known, the only part of shark carca.s.ses that survive the crush of the deep ocean (most sharks have cartilaginous skeletons). It's not clear why manganese, of all the dissolved metals in the ocean, galvanizes shark teeth, but scientists know roughly how quickly it acc.u.mulates: between one-half and one and a half millimeters per millennium. From that rate they have determined that the vast majority of recovered teeth date from at least 1.5 million years ago, meaning the megalodons probably died out around then.

But-and here was the gap into which some people rushed-some megalodon teeth had mysteriously thin manganese plaque, about eleven thousand years' worth. Evolutionarily, that's an awfully short time. And really, what's to say scientists won't soon find one from ten thousand years ago? Or eight thousand years ago? Or later?

You can see where this thinking leads. In the 1960s, a few enthusiasts with Jura.s.sic Park Jura.s.sic Park imaginations grew convinced that rogue megalodons still lurk in the oceans. ”Megalodon lives!” they cried. And like rumors about Area 51 or the Kennedy a.s.sa.s.sination, the legend has never quite died. The most common tale is that megalodons have evolved to become deep-sea divers and now spend their days fighting krakens in the black depths. Reminiscent of Crookes's phantoms, megalodons are imaginations grew convinced that rogue megalodons still lurk in the oceans. ”Megalodon lives!” they cried. And like rumors about Area 51 or the Kennedy a.s.sa.s.sination, the legend has never quite died. The most common tale is that megalodons have evolved to become deep-sea divers and now spend their days fighting krakens in the black depths. Reminiscent of Crookes's phantoms, megalodons are supposed supposed to be elusive, which gives people a convenient escape when pressed on why the giant sharks are so scarce nowadays. to be elusive, which gives people a convenient escape when pressed on why the giant sharks are so scarce nowadays.

There's probably not a person alive who, deep down, doesn't hope that megalodons still haunt the seas. Unfortunately, the idea crumbles under scrutiny. Among other things, the teeth with thin layers of manganese were almost certainly torn up from old bedrock beneath the ocean floor (where they acc.u.mulated no manganese) and exposed to water only recently. They're probably much older than eleven thousand years. And although there have been eyewitness accounts of the beasts, they're all from sailors, notorious storytellers, and the megalodons in their stories vary manically in size and shape. One all-white Moby d.i.c.k shark stretched up to three hundred feet long! (Funny, though, no one thought to snap a picture.) Overall, such stories, as with Crookes's testimony about supernatural beings, depend on subjective interpretations, and without objective evidence, it's not plausible to conclude that megalodons, even a few of them, slipped through evolution's snares.

But what really makes the ongoing hunt for megalodons pathological is that doubt from the establishment only deepens people's convictions. Instead of refuting the manganese findings, they counterattack with heroic tales of rebels, rogues who proved squaresville scientists wrong in the past. They invariably bring up the coelacanth, a primitive deep-sea fish once thought to have gone extinct eighty million years ago, until it turned up in a fish market in South Africa in 1938. According to this logic, because scientists were wrong about the coelacanth, they might be wrong about the megalodon, too. And ”might” is all the megalodon lovers need. For their theories about its survival aren't based on a preponderance of evidence, but on an emotional attachment: the hope, the need, for something fantastic to be true.

There's probably no better example of such emotion than in the next case study-that all-time-great pathological science, that Alamo for true believers, that seductress of futurists, that scientific hydra: cold fusion.

Pons and Fleischmann. Fleischmann and Pons. It was supposed to be the greatest scientific duo since Watson and Crick, perhaps stretching back to Marie and Pierre Curie. Instead, their fame rotted into infamy. Now the names B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann evoke only, however unfairly, thoughts of impostors, swindlers, and cheats.

The experiment that made and unmade Pons and Fleischmann was, so to speak, deceptively simple. The two chemists, headquartered at the University of Utah in 1989, placed a palladium electrode in a chamber of heavy water and turned on a current. Running a current through regular water will shock the H2O and produce hydrogen and oxygen gas. Something similar happened in the heavy water, except the hydrogen in heavy water has an extra neutron. So instead of normal hydrogen gas (H2) with two protons total, Pons and Fleischmann created molecules of hydrogen gas with two protons and two neutrons.

What made the experiment special was the combination of heavy hydrogen with palladium, a whitish metal with one flabbergasting property: it can swallow nine hundred times its own volume of hydrogen gas. That's roughly equivalent to a 250-pound man swallowing a dozen African bull elephants* and not gaining an inch on his waistline. And as the palladium electrode in the heavy water started to pack in hydrogen, Pons and Fleischmann's thermometers and other instruments spiked. The water got far warmer than it should have, than it and not gaining an inch on his waistline. And as the palladium electrode in the heavy water started to pack in hydrogen, Pons and Fleischmann's thermometers and other instruments spiked. The water got far warmer than it should have, than it could could have, given the meager energy of the incoming current. Pons reported that during one really good spike, his superheated H have, given the meager energy of the incoming current. Pons reported that during one really good spike, his superheated H2O burned a hole in a beaker, the lab bench beneath it, and the concrete floor beneath that.

Or at least they got spikes sometimes. Overall, the experiment was erratic, and the same setup and trial runs didn't always produce the same results. But rather than nail down what was happening with the palladium, the two men let their fancies convince them they had discovered cold fusion-fusion that didn't require the incredible temperatures and pressures of stars, but took place at room temperature. Because palladium could cram so much heavy hydrogen inside it, they guessed it somehow fused its protons and neutrons into helium, releasing gobs of energy in the process.

Rather imprudently, Pons and Fleischmann called a press conference to announce their results, basically implying that the world's energy problems were over, cheaply and without pollution. And somewhat like palladium itself, the media swallowed the grandiose claim. (It soon came out that another Utahan, physicist Steven Jones, had pursued similar fusion experiments. Jones fell into the background, however, since he made more modest claims.) Pons and Fleischmann became instant celebrities, and the momentum of public opinion appeared to sway even scientists. At an American Chemical Society meeting shortly after the announcement, the duo received a standing ovation.

But there's some important context here. In applauding Fleischmann and Pons, many scientists were probably really thinking about superconductors. Until 1986, superconductors were thought to be flat-out impossible above 400F. Suddenly, two German researchers-who would win the n.o.bel Prize in record time, a year later-discovered superconductors that worked above that temperature. Other teams jumped in and within a few months had discovered ”high-temperature” yttrium superconductors that worked at 280F. (The record today stands at 218F.) The point is that many scientists who'd predicted the impossibility of such superconductors felt like a.s.ses. It was the physics equivalent of finding the coelacanth. And like megalodon romantics, cold-fusion lovers in 1989 could point to the recent superconductor craziness and force normally dismissive scientists to suspend judgment. Indeed, cold-fusion fanatics seemed giddy at the chance to overthrow old dogma, a delirium typical of pathological science.

Still, a few skeptics, especially at Cal Tech, seethed. Cold fusion upset these men's scientific sensibilities, and Pons and Fleischmann's arrogance upset their modesty. The two had bypa.s.sed the normal peer-review process in announcing results, and some considered them charlatans intent on enriching themselves, especially after they appealed directly to President George H. W. Bush for $25 million in immediate research funds. Pons and Fleischmann didn't help matters by refusing to answer-as if such inquiries were insulting-questions about their palladium apparatus and experimental protocol. They claimed they didn't want their ideas to be stolen, but it sure looked as if they were hiding something.