We are at War! Washington is involved. It is a fight between David and Goliath, Goliath being armed with the power vested in the United States Patent Office. I am one of those who ranks as a mere 'David', my weapon being my experience as a European Patent Attorney having scientific and technical qualifications. I seek to report here, in a somewhat anecdotal style, the story of the war as seen from my perspective. How the war will end, I do not know, but the outcome is important. The global problems on the energy front affect us all. Here is a war that can end by bringing happiness, prosperity and security on the energy front or end by leaving us to the mercy of the forces of pollution. At this time the United States administration is waging battle on the wrong side of this contest. It is important that this situation should be brought to the attention of the world at large.
I note here that, in writing these Web pages, I have no personal 'axe to grind'. I am 70 years of age and fully retired. All I seek is the satisfaction of knowing that I have tried to help the world by casting light on a few of the mysteries that pervade the sector of science with which I am familiar. I will be rewarded if I see that others come to understand the rudiments, if not the detail, of what I am saying, because, in the long term, the battle must be won even though it will take an army of like-minded souls. Once it is won the world will see at the edge of the battleground the path leading to an understanding of Creation, meaning how the building blocks of all matter in the universe emerge from the energy field in which we are immersed.
It was in 1950 that my post-graduate training in a U.K. major engineering company took me, at my request, for a period into that company's Patent Department. I had an aptitude for research and wanted to learn something about the protection of inventions. To become professionally qualified in the patent field and also venture on a three-year research project to earn a Cambridge Ph.D. degree would take six years. I decided to work for both and later decide which career path, patents or research, I would follow. In the event I earned my income as a patent professional, pursued my research as a theoretical physicist as a hobby, and eventually took early retirement to concentrate wholly on my academic research, my interest being in anomalous energy phenomena.
I became IBM's Director of European Patent Operations. I represented the International Chamber of Commerce at international meetings concerned with intellectual property matters and was, for two years, President of the Trademarks, Patents and Designs Federation in U.K. In short, I seek by this introduction to explain why I feel competent enough to express an opinion on the 'war' picture I now see when looking in the direction of the Examining Group of Art Unit No. 2204 in the United States Patent Office.
I well recall that when, many years ago, the British Patent Office decided to adopt a new posture concerning what was or was not patentable in the computer field, they circulated a notification, stating their intentions and inviting comment. I am not aware that the U.S. Patent Office has done that in respect of their decision to obstruct the grant of any patents that purport to depend upon 'cold fusion'.
It is generally understood in patent practice that novel ideas relating, for example, to methods of accountancy are not patentable and, as computer software developed, especially in connection with banking and commerce, we were content to accept that computer programs, as such, were not patentable. It was British Petroleum in U.K. who rocked the boat one day by urging the British Patent Office to grant them a patent on linear programming. In the analysis of data gained from surveying for oil and gas reserves they had to compute optimum solutions to a plurality of mathematical equations. Could a computer program for solving mathematical equations be patented or not? The issue was important. IBM had not filed for patents on computer programs.
This, as I saw it, was not so much a matter of corporate policy, but one of practicality. Yes, we could write patent specifications on computer programs but there is a reverse side to that coin. A patent ends with a set of claims which define a monopoly. It would be the task of the patent attorneys who reported to me to scan all such patents that might be granted and determine whether or not any of our computer programs came within the scope of any of those claims. Now, with an engineered product or a chemical process or a duly formulated chemical composition, there is a clear 'something' one can grasp mentally to classify and search. How could one be expected to check each line of code in a computer program, especially one subjected to repeated updates, and compare its content with the purported cover of the numerous claims that would emerge in patents if computer programs were patentable? In the end the task would itself need to be computerized and that would only be feasible if what one was seeking was proof of copying. In a court action concerning patents, the evidence is not concerned exclusively with copying, but with whether what the alleged infringer has done comes within the strict terms of the patent claims and whether those claims are in fact valid. Computers cannot make such judgements. If they could then one could eliminate the need for judge and jury when engaging in litigation, even in cases concerned with more general subject matter, and we are still some way off seeing that in prospect.
It was for that reason that we urged revision of copyright law to extend to computer programs and argued against the formal recognition that patents could be granted for computer programs, as such. IBM made an offer to the British Patent Office to supply them with a copy of every IBM program for use in their patent searching, well knowing that the offer was unlikely to be accepted. Our posture was: 'If you grant patents on something, you must first search the prior art.' In the event, the offer was declined and the ongoing revisions of Patent law as well as the eventual European Patent Law and international arrangements took care of the problem.
To the lay person the issue can be expressed in a simple way. If you write a novel with an ingenious plot, you get copyright protection for your work. Whether you get protection for the plot alone is also a question of interpreting the extent to which it is copied, meaning it is a matter of copyright law. You would not dream of filing a patent to cover the plot of your book, nor would the patent system grant you such protection. However, where there is technology involved and an industrial process or manufactured product, then patents are there to serve the inventor and those who sponsor the inventor.
An invention that presents us with a new way of generating power by deploying energy in some special way is, beyond any doubt, proper subject matter for an invention. So, if the United States Patent Office has decided on a policy of refusing the grant of such patents, where they conflict with the commercial interests of those trying to get 'hot fusion' inventions to work, then the administration concerned should review their international treaty obligations besides inviting public comment. Indeed, if I were still to hold the voluntary position I once held as Rapporteur in the Intellectual Property section of the International Chamber of Commerce, I would be recommending overtures to the United Nations arm, the World Intellectual Property Organization, to get the United States to explain its action. The United States Patent Office should not be examining and processing patent applications through the Geneva service of the Patent Cooperation Treaty and then declaring to the applicant who seeks a U.S. patent on that same application that the invention is in a category not deemed patentable! The tactics used lack integrity in that they fall short of making such a 'declaration' and are those of a 'war of attrition' aimed at driving the applicant to despair - but I will come to tell the story about that later in these Web pages.
Above I mentioned that in 1950 I spent a period in London in a corporate patent department. Indeed, I kept my contacts with that department through my Ph.D. research years at Cambridge and earned a little money working for them during some of my vacations. In this way I 'clocked-up' several months of tutored training which made it possible to take my eventual patent examinations earlier than I could otherwise. It saved me a precious year.
Reminiscing a little about the previous 10 years, much of which I had spent at school, I found that my 'tutor' had been called up for service in World War II and, upon being asked about his aptitudes and inclinations, he had not stressed his expert knowledge at assessing and dealing with inventions. Instead, he had merely revealed his interest in his 'hobby', the mechanics of the motor vehicle. He was accordingly assigned to the army as a driver of a truck. When later on leave at Christmas time, by tradition, he took his wife to a dinner dance attended by many of his colleagues in the patent profession to find, to his wife's dismay, that those of his colleagues who had joined the armed services had officer rank. His wife was adamant and took it upon herself to complain to officialdom that her husband's skills were being wasted as a truck driver. The result was that he was transferred to a Whitehall government office and given the task of evaluating some of the wartime invention proposals that were coming through the system. So it was, as he told me about his experiences, that one submission he received proffered advise on how to win the war against the U-boat menace. The idea was quite simple. Drop something in the sea close to a U-boat, something that can boil the water surrounding it and so kill the crew inside. The question of what to drop in the ocean was left for the scientific experts to work out. In retrospect one can see that nothing short of an atom bomb would suffice in such a venture, but the point is made. There are crazy inventions, but not all, seemingly crazy, inventions that involve heat and water can be dismissed so easily. You see, we really have to face up to a similar situation where the invention is genuine but where we confront the 'war in peace time' issue of 'cold fusion'.
After the World War II my 'tutor' in patent practice, whose initials were W.A.R., returned to English Electric Company and, four or so years later, I joined him in their Patent Department. I eventually became fully qualified in the patent professional field and had my Ph.D. and then one day I had a briefing from a senior engineer who told me about the company's interest in a project aimed at generating energy from fusion. There was reference to the ZETA project and how it had proved difficult to stabilize the pulsed electric current discharge that was supposed to pinch electrodynamically - enough to set up temperatures that could promote nuclear fusion.
My Ph.D. concerned magnetism, particularly electromagnetic induction, so I was particularly interested in what I heard. The message was that the whole project had been kept under secrecy but that all efforts to trigger fusion had failed and those researching the subject had run out of ideas. They were releasing information about ZETA hoping that the scientific community at large might have something to add by way of inspiration. Here, then, was a verdict, as long ago as 1958, on the fate of 'hot fusion'. It was not a viable pursuit and those closely involved in the project were on the verge of surrender.
A little common sense is enough to assure us that, if it takes a temperature of 100,000,000 degrees or so to trigger the fusion reaction, then the chances of containing something transiently developing such temperatures in a commercial environment are beyond contemplation. A fleeting explosion and a momentary reaction are a long way away from a 'hot fusion' reactor technology. Evenso, I devised my own scheme for an apparatus which should have contained that discharge, had the laws of physics been obeyed by the ions involved in the discharge. English Electric Company did secure a patent on my invention, but the specific form of apparatus I proposed was never, so far as I know, put to the test.
Undoubtedly, however, the standard laws of physics fail where heavy ions, such as protons or deuterons, constitute the discharge and those who examine patent applications tend only to allow the grant of patents for inventions which are not in breach of the well-established laws of physics. Given that so many scientists would say that the laws of electrodynamics are 'well-established', whereas I can point to clear experimental evidence that does not comply with those laws, I have not hesitated to debate the issue where appropriate and with success. However, I had not realised that one day I would be destined to encounter a U.S. patent examiner who could dictate his own laws as to whether or not something in science is or is not possible. By his dictates, 'hot fusion' is possible, 'cold fusion' is not possible. The sun is a 'hot fusion' source of energy. The hydrogen bomb is a fusion device. The endeavour to build a fusion reactor has his blessing, although that technology is getting to be prehistoric so far as having any patent relevance. Those who fund 'hot fusion', government organizations, do not need patents anyway.
My story will develop and come to that U.S. patent examiner topic in due course. In the meantime let us think back in time and suppose that nuclear fission power had not proved itself to be a contender on the energy scene and suppose that the prospect of 'cold fusion' as a source of heat had become an option. Surely it would have been researched with vigour, backed by government funding, and surely the question of its operability as a viable source of power would have been settled. The funds involved would have been miniscule compared with what was to be wasted on 'hot fusion' research.
Of course, you will say that 'cold fusion' was not on the table as a proposal, so it was not an option one could think about. Well, be that as it may, I remember, all those years ago, the efforts of a man named Bruce, who was with ERA (Electrical Research Association) in U.K. He was concerned with electrical discharge phenomena and he argued, from his knowledge of radiation from arc discharges in comparison with the available evidence from solar radiation, that the sun's temperature was attributable to the same phenomena that accompanies electrical discharges. The scientific question became one of understanding how the electric potentials are set up at the solar surface and not one of just assuming 'hot fusion'. We are talking about something that occurs at, say, 6,000 K and not 100,000,000 degrees of temperature. We are talking about 'cold fusion', if we use the word 'cold' as a relative term, 'hot' meaning millions of degrees.
If I remember correctly, Bruce pointed to the fact that sun spots, which are blemishes inside the outer surface of the sun, are cooler than that outer region, the latter being a region of continuous electric discharge - perpetual lightning!
If Bruce was right, then the source of the sun's heat could be something other than attributable to the fusion of hydrogen nuclei or their derivatives. So, I ask, can we be 100% sure that the centre of the sun is at 100,000,000 or so degrees? After all, we can only see its surface and 6,000 degrees is what we see!
I have referred to Bruce in my book 'Modern Aether Science'. On page
13 of that work I quote a commentary on that subject by Sir Basil Schonland
taken from his 1964 book 'The Flight of the Thunderbolts'. A short
extract from that quotation is the statement:
Many hot stars, including our sun, emit radio waves of high frequency which penetrate our ionosphere; their sources are hot plasma in stellar magnetic fields and hardly qualifying for description as thunderstorms. But whether any of the dying stars have relatively cold atmospheres in which thunderstorms could be created is an interesting speculation. Bruce has developed ingenious theories. It is too early to form judgment on his many remarkable proposals.
Here is one of those examples of an 'expert' making assumptions, albeit popular assumptions, and telling another 'expert' that his unorthodox opinion is wrong. Of course there is no mechanism in the solar atmosphere that can replicate that involved in creating thunderclouds and thunderstorms, but lightning is really nothing other than an electrical discharge set up by an electric field. The radiation from Sun to Earth is absorbed by electrons in the Earth's surface and atmosphere and that initiates those electric fields here on Earth. The radiation reaction can do the same at the solar surface and, in addition to that, that hot solar plasma acted on by gravity can assert a preferential pull on the proton ions in relation to the electron ions. There will inevitably be a concentration of positive charge within the body of the sun, enough to set up those electric fields which sustain those 'lightning' discharges that Bruce mentions.
That core charge will prevent gravity from compressing the plasma inside the sun beyond the point where more than a very small proportion of the hydrogen atoms present becomes non-ionized. That will keep the solar core at temperatures commensurate with those observed at the solar surface. Therefore, 'hot fusion' as the source of solar heat is not a viable proposition. It defies the standard and well accepted principles that I have come to accept from my physics education. I believe Bruce, the expert on lightning phenomena, was guiding us in the right direction. Certainly, if it was 'too early to form a judgment' thirty and more years ago, as Schonland then declared, then when can we expect that day of judgment? Why not now? How can the solar plasma ever allow the mutual gravitation of free proton ions to overwhelm the positive charge thereby induced? Keep in mind that two protons attract gravitationally with 1836 times the force per unit of mass acted upon when compared with the gravitational action between two electrons. To get balance in a true hydrogen plasma, meaning a 'soup' comprising only free protons and free electrons, there has to be a preponderance of protons, enough to set up a positive electric potential exactly balancing the negative gravitational potential. The sun must have a positive core charge! It can sustain continuous activity in the form of electrical discharges of the kind we associate with lightning. If it involves a nuclear fusion process, then 'cold fusion', albeit in the 6,000 K temperature region, is the fusion process we should be contemplating - not hot fusion!
You think that is the final conclusion to what you need to say in proffering your advice. You instill bias into the picture, backing the venture as a loser, but cover your risk by saying that the claim should be investigated.
However, the President asks a question, the kind of question that any reasonable person having a moderate knowledge of physics might put. The question is: "If you take a bottle full of pure H2O, meaning that its natural deuterium oxide content as been substantially depleted, and leave it on the shelf for a period of time, will it, ever so gradually, convert in part to deuterium oxide so as to recover the natural relative abundance state?"
You see, one can buy, from chemical suppliers, deuterium-depleted water, typically having only 1% of the normal content of heavy water. I see from my 1967 edition of 'Handbook of Physics' edited by Condon and Odishaw (publishers McGraw-Hill) that the natural abundance ratio as between atoms of H2 and H1 is 1492 to 10 million, so I assume that there is a way of measuring that ratio. If one buys that depleted water it will arrive in your hands with about 1492 molecules of heavy water amongst every billion such molecules of water, light or heavy.
So the President wants to know whether that bottle of water will witness a gradual adjustment of that abundance ratio as it creeps up in increments to increase one hundred-fold to become normal water. A simple question deserving a simple answer. A special commodity is involved, but it is only water! It is on the market. Does it have a 'shelf life?' and if so 'what is the measure of its half-life?'
Now I have cast you, the reader, as an expert and assume that you would not have read this far if you could not understand the significance of my question. The President is looking at you. What is your answer? You are an expert on nuclear physics and here is the most basic of all practical questions that could be put to you!
You play safe. Maybe you do not have the answer. You cannot admit you do not know? That is tantamount to saying that the question of 'cold fusion' is a wide open question on which you, as an expert, are supposed to have an opinion. If you took that stance the President would move in for the kill throw you out. So you have only one course of action. You declare that the water in the bottle will never undergo change to become normal water. You know you are an expert but can you back that statement up by saying that experiments by Dr. X on water monitored for a period of Y years showed not the slightest trace of any increase in deuterium content, at least with specific limits of measurement error?
You have given an 'opinion' that there is nothing in the 'cold fusion' claim, but the President has his doubts. He has the sense to realise that it would not cost much to fund a test involving monitoring a tank of deuterium-depleted water to see if it shows any sign of adjusting to the normal state of normal water. He wonders how water created from protons ever became contaminated with heavy water involving deuterons. However, he has other more pressing concerns and he sends you on your way, duly thanking you for your advice.
Now you begin to think. After all, you are an 'expert' on nuclear fusion'. You reason that if two protons are somehow fusing to create a deuteron then there will be heat generated. Therefore the rate of heat generation will be a measure of the rate of transmutation involved. We do not need to monitor the composition, because there should be a temperature differential. That water in the bottle must be hotter than its environment, if nuclear fusion is occurring and it must occur if H20 changes to HDO or D20, D being the sybol for deuterium otherwise represented as H2. Add a satellite electron and you still get what, chemically, is a hydrogen atom, but the atom has a deuteron as nucleus instead of a proton. The proton and the deuteron each have the same unitary charge, both being positive and either being able to neutralize the negative charge of the electron. That is basic physics, of the kind also involved in physical chemistry. However, our 'expert' needs to estimate that temperature to see if we can expect it to be measurable.
So he now sets about convincing himself that there simply can be no fusion process to worry about. If there is conversion from light water to heavy water by natural processes that conversion must be very slow, otherwise the oceans would be mainly composed of heavy water, and the oceans have been around for quite a long time. A little mental calculation than suggests that the rate of heat generated by fusion of protons to form deuterons would be so minute as to have no commercial significance. The advice to the President was therefore quite sound. Our expert can sleep in contentment.
However, the President, meanwhile, has found a new way of enhancing his
slumbers. Instead of counting sheep he has found that all he has to do is to
picture hydrogen atoms trying to combine to form deuterons. Eventually, his mind
wanders onto the thought of how two positively charged protons can fuse to
create a deuteron having a single positive charge. Eureka! There has to be an
inflow of negative electrical charge to permit such a fusion reaction. No input
of electricity means no cold fusion. He has answered his own question. Do you
remember the question?:
"If you take a bottle full of pure H2O, meaning that its natural deuterium oxide content as been substantially depleted, and leave it on the shelf for a period of time, will it, ever so gradually, convert in part to deuterium oxide so as to recover the natural relative abundance state?"
The conversion can only occur if electricity can get into the bottle and that needs some wires and an electrode system unless the bottle is electrically conductive and the atmosphere is well stocked with ions. 'Cold fusion', if that means expedited fusion of the hydrogen isotopes in water, therefore goes hand in hand with wires and electrodes. That seems to make some sense of what the 'crank' researchers are claiming! However, the 'expert' opinion said there could be no fusion involved in the laboratory-temperature experiments involving water. 'Expert' opinion must be respected and, after all, if 'cold fusion' were to be a viable technology it would have been discovered in the 19th century and the oceans are not seas of heavy water! Indeed, how would that electricity, essential to feed the proton fusion process, get into the sea? Ever heard of lightning, Mr. President?
Now cast yourself as 'Expert No. 2'. You see things a little differently. Water comprises molecules. Molecules involve atoms. Atoms have nuclei surrounded by electrons. The hydrogen atom, whether nucleated by a proton or a deuteron, has a satellite electron. It is a bodyguard running around the nucleus keeping all intruders at bay. As long as it is there no two atomic nuclei can ever come together and, even if they could they have positive charges which repel one another, so there is no chance that water can be involved in a nuclear fusion process. To get fusion one has to remove those electrons and bring the temperature up to the point where the protons and deuterons are dashing around at such enormous speeds that they can collide with one another in spite of the braking action of those repulsive forces.
It may be true that the electrons can be stripped off at room temperature if the hydrogen atoms are absorbed into the body of a metal electrode, something that is a feature of the alleged 'cold fusion' experiments, but surely those protons and deuterons inside that host metal electrode cannot move at anything like the speed needed to collide and fuse. Obviously 'cold fusion' is a ridiculous proposition!
And so it is that 'experts' will agree that the claims concerning 'cold fusion' are false. The President has been well advised.
You cannot say I am talking nonsense, because, when it comes to protons, you, however expert you are, have no idea where protons came from. You can pretend you know by saying they are formed from quarks, but where do quarks come from? Pretend again and think of gremlins. Say that the gremlin is a 'virtual proton' or a 'virtual anti-proton', just as you can imagine 'virtual electrons' and 'virtual positrons'. They are all members of the gremlin family. They appear and vanish everywhere where energy abounds, even in what we think of as empty space, because they are the life's blood of quantum electrodynamics, or, concerning protons, quantum chromodynamics. Scientists do have a way of inventing words to describe and classify what they cannot understand. Let us just use that word 'gremlin'.
Now those 'experts' who advise on matters scientific do not have nightmares, because nightmares involve imagination and fantasies that can involve ghostly phenomena. Experts deal in facts. They have no time to waste and no tolerance when they hear reports on strange phenomena which trespass into their territory but are not an accepted feature of their the stock of factual knowledge that they share with their peers. However, the President of the United States surely is entitled to have the odd nightmare, given the weight of his responsibilities and his problem in balancing fact and uncertainty in making his administrative decisions. So, given that gremlins are everywhere, they must have a presence in White House.
So, our fictitious image of the President, allows us to imagine that his slumbers are interrupted by a dream in which those gremlin protons appear in that bottle of deuteron-depleted water. His nightmare dream assures him that all protons are clones of one another. So if God ordains that a proton should appear at point A and promptly vanish from the scene, but is satisfied if an existing clone very close to A vanishes instead, then we can have our gremlins being rather peevish and moving the property inside the White House around. This does not take the form of a rearrangement of the furniture, but a slight repositioning of the protons in the cells or molecules that constitute the substance or fabric of that furniture or the body tissue of the human form. In short, if there are gremlins at work, then there is scope for a proton at A to find itself in the arms of a gremlin proton that has appeared as if from nowhere and, with God demanding retribution, an isolated proton very close at B is sacrificed and swept away to that background underworld sea of energy that pervades space. Is this really a dream? It could be a 'cool reality' and we would only see a trace of what has happened if the protons in the water molecule change into deuterons. In short, if light water converts into heavy water by some natural process, we can blame it on those gremlins.
'Nonsense', you say, 'It is all a dream'. So let us now look for those gremlins in the sea. If they can, so to speak, rearrange the furniture in the sea and create heavy water from light water, then why cannot they move the furniture around some more and convert heavy water into light water? Have we done any experiment, watching heavy water, to see if, slowly but surely, it converts into light water? Would you think it absurd if I suggested that the the process can work both ways? All it means is that, a bottle of deuterium-depleted water will slowly become a bottle of normal water and a bottle of heavy water will slowly become a bottle of normal water, whereas in normal water or in sea water, there is equilibrium between the two transmutation processes.
Clearly those wires and electrodes, if present and energized electrically, will speed up the tranformations by supplying or extracting the needed electrical charge, but no such provision is needed for the equilibrium condition.
Now, about now you will be telling yourself that anyone can ramble on like this, without saying anything that is meaningful or helpful. Therefore, I face the task of convincing you. Well, where would you like me to begin? Suppose I can show how protons are actually created and prove it by deducing the precise proton-electron mass ratio, meaning its value to the measured accuracy of a part or so in ten million. Suppose, further, that I can show you how to work out the equilibrium ratio in normal water, as between H2O and D2O and show that it is the same as that measured. I can do both and, indeed, in these Web pages I will do both, but will you then believe in those gremlins?
Don't you want to understand how the universe was created? All I have said is that our environment contains a sea of energy which is trying to materialize and does so very transiently by creating gremlins. There is, it seems, an equilibrium limit on how many of those gremlins can stay with us as the matter form - as protons and electrons. I admit that I have not seen a way of determining what governs that state of equilibrium but do appreciate that, in science, we can only proceed step by step. The next step that I hope to see is the acceptance of 'cold fusion' as a new technological source of energy. That will mean that we have got those gremlins working for us just as Clerk Maxwell said his 'demon' might serve us in generating heat by astute manipulation of a kind of valve separating two gas-filled compartments. It is all about interfering with the state of equibibrium as between two states of a physical system.
The choices are:
Protons,
Deuterons and Neutrons
Cold
Fusion: My Story: Part I
The
Maxwell Demon: A 21st Century Prospect
Cold
Fusion Index
Post Script: I do emphasize that there is no way whatsoever for energy science to advance within the framework of our immediate environment unless we come to terms with that mysterious something that sits with us here and now and shares our environment. That something is the 'hammering we are taking' as the field energy in space tries to materialize in and around us. We are not alone, but we are in a state of equilibrium, though one could say that human decay and old age owes something to the transmutations produced by that 'hammering'. We march towards our ultimate destiny living in that sea of energy. All I am saying is: "Recognize that it exists and seek to take advantage of it, whether directly, as in a 'cold fusion' reactor or, indirectly, by more subtle techniques exploiting its quantum characteristics." The latter are revealed in certain types of electric plasma discharges and ferromagnetic processes. If you prefer to march on, simply accepting the laws of physics, which do not recognize that energy underworld and are devoid of hope, then you are depriving future generations the benefit they can derive from today's research. If you do not believe that there is scope for such a source of alternative energy, then stand back from the field of battle and do not obstruct the fight you will witness from the volunteer forces who carry the flag. For one side, it is a fight to the death, because to win is to die, early death by energy pollution, a death to be shared by all who just stand and watch. Just hope that the contender side where my flag can be seen will prove to be the winner!Harold Aspden
March 15, 1998