杏吧原创

THIS year, physics had more than its fair share of false alarms and embarrassments.

In March, a team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee claimed it had triggered nuclear fusion by popping bubbles in souped-up nail varnish remover. A process called sonoluminescence heated imploding bubbles to about 10 million 掳C, they said 鈥� hot enough to trigger fusion.

So was 鈥渂ubble fusion鈥� set to solve our energy crisis? Or would it be a one-hit wonder like cold fusion? Bubble fusion could at least claim a bit more respect: the results appeared in the esteemed journal Science. But a second team failed to see any fusion. Later, other scientists pointed out that the maximum temperature the bubbles could reach was more like 20,000 掳C than 10 million 掳C. Bubble fusion bit the dust.

More troubling was the demise of Hendrik Sch枚n of Bell Labs in New Jersey. A nanotechnology star, he was bagging every trophy in the field. Between 1998 and mid-2001, he produced one paper every eight days on average, with 20 co-authors.

But other physicists were smelling a rat. Some of the data looked too perfect. And some graphs that were supposed to describe the behaviour of different materials were identical.

A Bell Labs committee concluded that Sch枚n was guilty of at least 16 out of 24 charges of misconduct. He had fabricated results, kept no lab notebooks, erased vital raw data from his PC, destroyed important samples鈥�

But while Sch枚n was sacked, his 20 co-authors were cleared of any blame. Outsiders were left wondering why none of them had witnessed any of his most gob-smacking experiments. Bell Labs promised to improve its internal peer review process.