home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- <text id=90TT2917>
- <link 89TT1192>
- <link 89TT1048>
- <title>
- Nov. 05, 1990: Calling Dr. Pons
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Nov. 05, 1990 Reagan Memoirs
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- SCIENCE, Page 79
- Calling Dr. Pons
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p>Where is the cold-fusion guru?
- </p>
- <p> Before anyone jumps to conclusions, there is probably an
- innocent explanation for the fact that Stanley Pons has dropped
- out of sight, hiding his whereabouts from the press and his
- employers. Granted, the University of Utah chemist has been
- under pressure since March 1989, when he and British colleague
- Martin Fleischmann said they had created fusion in a jar.
- Skeptical scientists doubted that the pair had tamed the sun's
- power source--at room temperature. The complaint was not just
- that they had announced their discovery at a press conference
- rather than in a scientific journal but also that no one else
- had been able to replicate the experiment.
- </p>
- <p> Pons' disappearance comes just as the state of Utah is
- trying to decide whether it should continue to support a
- cold-fusion laboratory on which the state has already spent $5
- million. And it hardly helps that there are reports that Pons'
- phone has been disconnected and his Salt Lake City home put up
- for sale. But Pons is not totally out of touch: last week he
- requested a one-year sabbatical by having his lawyer send a fax
- to the university. If he ever surfaces, he will no doubt be
- able to explain what he has been doing and set suspicious minds
- to rest.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-