The prospect of cold fusion
The prospect of cold fusionThe Prospect of Cold fusion
In March of 1989, Drs. Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons first announced that they had discovered a way of producing heat from metals supersaturated with heavy water. Thus at the University of Utah, cold fusion was discovered. In the weeks following this announcement many other scientists tried to replicate the same experiment, with little result. After many scientists and Universities came up empty handed, the possibility of cold fusion was called a fluke or a con mostly because none of the nuclear or chemical theoretical models could explain the observed cold fusion effects.
So it would not be surprising if you thought that cold fusion was "dead," because the scientific establishment, the hot fusion community, and many in the news media have ignored the continuing cold fusion research. But cold fusion is far from dead. It is alive not only in dozens of laboratories in the United States, but in numerous foreign research centers, particularly in Japan.
Cold fusion is a real but still incompletely explained energy-producing phenomenon that occurs when ordinary hydrogen and the special form of hydrogen called deuterium are brought together with metals, such as palladium, titanium, and nickel. Usually, some triggering mechanism, such as electricity or even acoustic energy, is required to provoke the "cold fusion" effects. Both ordinary hydrogen and deuterium are abundant in ordinary water so the process would likely end many of the world's energy concerns, if it can be developed commercially.
One of the biggest reasons that cold fusion is so difficult to replicate is that it is not easy to supersaturate a metal with hydrogen or deuterium. The electrolyte, hydrogen or deuterium gas must be kept free of impurities. The metal must be carefully manufactured, cleaned, prepared and pre-treated. As the metal lattice fills up, tremendous pressure is created, which causes most metal samples to fracture. This prevents high loading, which is a necessary condition for cold fusion
The most important evidence for cold fusion is the excess heat energy that comes from special electrochemical cells --- much more heat excess power output beyond input power anywhere from 10% beyond input coming out than electrical energy being fed in. Researchers have now confirmed that under the proper conditions it is possible to obtain to many thousands of times the input power. In fact, in experiments reported at the Fourth International Conference on Cold fusion, one researcher, D. T. Mzuno of Hokkaido University, reported an output/input ratio of 70,000! Sometimes this power comes out in bursts, but it has also appeared continuously in some experiments for hundreds of hours, and in some cases even for many months.
And there is more. Neutrons, tritium, energetic charged particles, and other ionizing radiation have been detected in a variety of cold fusion experiments. In the past few years, there has also emerged startling experimental evidence that elements have been transformed in cold fusion experiments....
To view the complete essay, you be registered.