Capture the Sun

In 1988 a clerk at the United States Department of Energy received a funding request from two scientists working out of the University of Utah-Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann. The application requested money to finance their research into chemically induced room temperature fusion. Normal custom required such grant requests to undergo peer review, and the application was sent to another scientist who was quietly working on similar experiments-Steven E. Jones. Ironically, Jones worked at another Utah university-Brigham Young, a mere forty-five minute drive south from Pons and Fleischmann. This fluke of proximity would bring to pass ruinous, unforeseen consequences for all three men. In time, they would be both praised and reviled, accepted and forsaken, famous and infamous. Eventually the hallowed halls of Science would excommunicate all three for committing the unpardonable sin: unbridled hubris. Their "invention" would come to be called "cold fusion." It held the promise of cheap, inexhaustible energy. The whole world paid attention.