An article by chemist F.J. Donahoe on Polywater (polywater, or water II, or anomalous water) appears in the journal Nature, deeming it “the most dangerous polymer on Earth.” The story begins in the quiet Soviet town of Kostroma, where in 1962 Nikolai Fedyakin discovered, or thought he had discovered, a new physical state of water, denser by 10% or 20%—a kind of gel, in short. His work initially went completely unnoticed in the West. There are 14 known types of ice, and it would be revolutionary, given its countless applications, to discover new types of liquid water. Then the news reached the journal Nature and was published in the West, first by Brian Pethica’s English group. A hexagonal molecular structure was hypothesized. Donahoe’s fear is that if this proved to be a more stable form of water, it could spread to all the world’s oceans, turning them into jelly (polymeric water), bringing about the end of life on Earth. From the very beginning, several researchers raised the issue of the tiny quantities observed so far, at the limits of the instruments, and the possible contamination. By 1971, the favorable voices had dwindled to a minimum, so much so that it began to be called polycrap… Eventually, even the Soviets admitted that the cause was probably contaminants, and polywater suddenly disappeared. Science is phenomenal and objective, but it is a collective process made up of people who are not always phenomenal and objective… Sometimes it is not only research, rationality, and creativity that guide the scientist, but also ambition, envy, delusion, and sometimes (not necessarily in this case) dishonesty.
