Dr. John Bockris and the Transmutation Crisis at Texas A&M

The Triumph of Alchemy: Professor John Bockris and the Transmutation Crisis at Texas A&M by Eugene F. Mallove istinguished Professor of Chemistry at Texas A&M covery as the domestication of fire. University, John O’M. Bockris, is one of the top two As a presumptive nuclear process, with originally poorly or three electrochemists of the twentieth century. He understood nuclear reaction pathways, cold fusion came into must be counted as a lineal intellectual descendant of direct competition with the well-funded ”hot fusion” establish- Done of the greatest scientists of all time, Michael Faraday, who ment. Plasma physicists and engineers had been trying for was of humble birth but became a towering figure of decades to mimic the cores of stars, using controlled ther- nineteenth century science. Like Bockris, Faraday monuclear reactors at universities and government was raised in England and came to love many research establishments. They had had only mar- facets of science. In addition to his fundamen- ginal success. They had never achieved even a tal discoveries in electromagnetism, Faraday single watt of excess power out of their mam- . n moth machines beyond the electrical power had much to do with the birth of electro- o s f l chemistry. Among other things, he named u that was put in. In truth, they had little W n hope of achieving any practical working the process called electrolysis, designated a e J device before another half-century, if the anode and cathode, and coined the y b o term electrolyte. t then, after billions of dollars more were o h In a multifaceted scientific career from P spent. That they would not be the heroes . y t i who would rescue civilization from an the 1940s through the present on three s r e v continents, Bockris and his student pro- i energy crisis looming in the next centu- n tégés pioneered many of the current U ry was too much for the hot fusioneers to M directions in electrochemistry, and they & accept. By contrast, though initially low A s power, some cold fusion experiments confirmed several aspects of the Fleis- a x e T indicated high percentage excess power chmann-Pons cold fusion experiment. , 0 0 Bockris was born January 5, 1923 in 0 even in some very primitive initial forms, 2 t h without the lethal neutron radiation of hot Johannesburg, South Africa—an extensive ig r y p review of his lifetime of scientific work leaves o fusion. C no doubt about his prominence.1 The story that Cold fusion was also an affront to almost a follows is but a segment of that life, the amazing century of prevailing scientific wisdom that saga of John Bockris’ experiences at Texas A&M Uni- nuclear reactions could not possibly occur to any versity during a major paradigm shift in the history of significant extent near ambient terrestrial temperatures. science—one that may eventually match the impact of the The highly positively charged nuclei of atoms were, it was Copernican revolution. Though that assertion may anger or amuse said, unreachable by other positively charged nuclei, such as those critics, history will be the final arbiter. of hydrogen and its isotopes. Above all, cold fusion was an assault on the current smug, self-assured high energy physicists—the ver- The Beginning: Cold Fusion itable high priests of science who claimed to know almost every- Although often overlooked in the glare and glitz of other thing about the fundamental laws of physics except a few remain- branches of chemistry, such as biochemistry or fullerene (Buck- ing puzzles. They aimed for and wrote about a “Theory of Every- yball) chemistry, electrochemistry is important to our industrial thing” that physics would finalize in their lifetimes. Just give them civilization. It turned out to be far more significant than anyone a few tens of billions of dollars more to build the giant Supercon- could have imagined prior to March 23, 1989. On that day, a sci- ducting Supercollider (SSC)—ironically, under the plains of Texas, entific shock was felt around the world. It may lead to the end in the state where Bockris worked—and they would create this of civilization as we know it—the end of the age of fossil fuels eternal edifice. That they could be utterly wrong about what some and much else we could do without. bench-top chemists, such as Bockris, Fleischmann, and Pons could One of the students whom Bockris influenced at Imperial have achieved, was unthinkable. The “Church of Science” had College in London when he was a Professor there (1945-1953) spoken. Cold fusion was branded “pathological science,” “bad sci- was Martin Fleischmann. Decades later, Fleischmann and Stan- ence,” and “fraud.” ley Pons (who had been a student of Fleischmann’s) announced In 1989, John Bockris and his students at Texas A&M Univer- at the University of Utah one of the most astonishing and bit- sity immediately fell into the whirlwind of activity surrounding terly contested discoveries in the history of science. Their find- the Fleischmann and Pons announcement. Hundreds, perhaps ing, later verified by numerous laboratories around the world, thousands, of scientists all over the globe struggled in the spring became known as “cold fusion”—nuclear-scale excess energy in of 1989 to master the process—or prove it wrong. Bockris was to electrochemical cells that incorporated heavy water with palla- be rewarded with some of the earliest and most fundamental ini- dium and platinum electrodes. Furthermore, because of the tial discoveries in cold fusion—in particular, that the radioactive large energy release and absence of chemical ”ash” to explain form of hydrogen—tritium—could be produced in unexpected the reaction, the cold fusion discovery was immediately seen as bursts within cold fusion cells. He and his colleagues later deter- a means to extract unlimited amounts of energy from abundant mined that helium-4 was produced in nuclear reactions in layers water. The scientific, technological, economic, geopolitical, and below the surface of palladium cathodes; others found helium-4 social implications were immense. It was as fundamental a dis- at the cathode surface. For his tritium discovery, in 1990 Bockris ISSUE 32, 2000 • Infinite Energy 1 Bockris was to be rewarded with some of academe were claiming that they were “objective.” They said it was the purveyors of “pathological science,” such as Bockris, the earliest and most fundamental initial Fleischmann, and Pons, who were polluting and betraying discoveries in cold fusion—in particular, objectivity within science. By fiat of majority vote, they could say who was deemed a good scientist, who bad, what was pos- that the radioactive form of hydrogen— sible to expect from nature’s microcosm, and what was not. In tritium—could be produced in unex- short, this was tyranny within the house of science. pected bursts within cold fusion cells. TAMU Texas A&M (affectionately, “TAMU”), a large university of about 45,000 students, is located in the small town of College and his students were rewarded with a brutal press assault. Station, which adjoins the old town of Bryan. It is well-known Science journalist Gary Taubes dragged Bockris through the for its football team, “the Aggies,” and its ROTC (Reserve Offi- mud, accusing him of being naive about fraud in the alleged spik- cer Training Corps) program. ing of cold fusion cells with tritium by one of his students. Taubes’ The University has a great endowment, one of the largest in attack was without foundation, but it was given wide currency by the country, from land donated to it in the nineteenth century, the main organs of the scientific media. It was repeated by other before it was known to contain oil. And, there are great plans for opponents of cold fusion, who were not bold enough to make the Texas A&M to become one of the ten leading universities in the charge of fraud directly. Some of Bockris’ colleagues at Texas country. Some departments indeed have world leaders in their A&M University participated in the witch hunt. fields. Though the official major emphasis is on agriculture and A few years later, the whole sordid affair against Bockris took engineering, there is a Chemistry Department which ranks a remarkable turn. The openness to new ideas about low-ener- among the leading ten in the country, as measured by the activ- gy nuclear reactions (LENR) that the cold fusion discoveries ity of the graduate schools. had given to its investigators led Bockris onto even more hereti- One of the features of Texas A&M, certainly exemplified by cal ground. Through a series of events with a cast of characters the Chemistry Department, is to appoint famous professors who and circumstances that a Hollywood scriptwriter would be are well on in their careers and who will lend instant distinction hard-pressed to conceive, Bockris began to test the claims of to their department. In 1997 there were seven Distinguished ancient alchemy—the transmutation of heavy metals, such as Professors in Chemistry out of a university-wide total of about mercury, into gold and other elements. twenty-eight active (i.e. non-retired) Distinguished Professors. Two amazing things happened, one predictable, one not. It Bockris joined the Department of Chemistry at Texas A&M in was 100% predictable that when the larger world found out 1978, a time when he had already authored 406 published tech- about the transmutation work at Texas A&M, along with the nical papers and several noted books. He had begun his acad- antics of the strange people who introduced Bockris to it, there emic career at Imperial College of Science and Technology in would be an even more violent witch hunt against Bockris and London (1945-1953), then he was on the faculty of the Universi- his work.

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