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may have been sent deliberately into our Universe by an intelligent agent. After some experimentation, Earth sets up a power system to make use of the new energy. Apparently, the aliens in the para-Universe do the same thing with the tungsten. The process on Earth comes to be called an Electron Pump, since in effect it pumps electrons from our Universe into the para-Universe; more formally it is called the Inter-Universe Electron Pump. It becomes a major project, associated with a university, and eventually the source of plentiful, non-polluting energy at almost no cost.
This much of the story could be the beginning of a utopian novel that describes how humanity uses the new energy to improve its condition, or a dystopia that shows how humanity misuses the energy to turn a blessing into a curse. Neither would make a particularly different nor particularly promising novel. Asimov turned it into something unique, something with the special substance of hard-core science fiction, by dealing with the scientific consequences of the Electron Pump and the human difficulties of the people in charge to perceive these consequences and to act upon them.
Asimov tells the "Against Stupidity" part from the third-person viewpoint of an antagonist, Peter Lamont, who sets out to write a history of the development of the Pump. Lamont's first approach to Hallam, however, infuriates Hallam and embitters Lamont. Hallam is delighted to cooperate until Lamont innocently suggests that the para-men are more intelligent than humans, since they initiated the exchange and even sent directions on iron foil for building the Pump. Hallam calls such notions "mysticism" and shouts Lamont from the room.
Lamont, determined to pick holes in the project, recruits a new University scholar, Myron Bronowski, a translator of ancient Etruscan writing, to aid him in communicating with the para-men. And Lamont tries to find some unforeseen problem with Pumping. "Everything in history had had a catch," he thinks. "What was the catch to the Electron Pump?"
One possible problem with the Pump lies in what happens during the process of Pumping. The effect of the transmission of electrons had been considered and discarded: the electron supply would last for a trillion trillion trillion years, and the entire Universe wouldn't last a tiny fraction of that. But Lamont perceives that the physical laws of the two Universes are being exchanged as well, and that could mean trouble. Because the significant difference between the two Universes is the strength of the nuclear interaction, nuclear fission is more likely in our Universe, nuclear fusion in the para-Universe. As the nuclear interaction

 
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