Alain Sepeda <[email protected]> wrote:
> For long the scientists have a real job, like tax officer (Lavoisir), > patent officer (Einstein), Engineer and painter (Da vinci), industrialists > (Wright brothers, Lumière brothers),.. > The scientists did not have to please their peers to eat, but to please a > client with things that works, or just to please themselves. > The other problem is that science has become very expensive to do. It used to be much cheaper. Instruments and experiments were simpler. This is because we knew less. There was low-hanging fruit that could be harvested by simple means. Oersted discovered electromagnetism with a device that anyone can make for a few dollars. Henry made tremendously improved electromagnets with simple materials. Even though the devices were simple, the effect was not on a small scale, and every technically smart person could see it was important. By 1833, Henry's magnets could pick up 3300 lbs. Henry's work soon led to the magnetic telegraph, one of the most important discoveries in history. Even in the 20th century, the first cyclotron made by Lawrence was a hand-held instrument that cost a few hundred dollars. Granted, a few years later they were making gigantic ones. Nowadays, to make progress in cold fusion I expect people will need millions of dollars worth of the latest gadgets that combine SEMs with spectroscopy to reveal microscopic details with the elements in various colors. Or STM microscopes. I think people need gadgets like this to confirm Ed Storms' hypothesis, for example. Those are marvelous gadgets and I do not begrudge them to the researchers. The money spent on such instruments is trivial compared to what cold fusion will earn back. If it becomes generally used, it will pay back all of the research money every few minutes for centuries to come. However, unfortunately, we are talking about millions of dollars needed upfront before progress can be made. - Jed
