Posted on 03/24/2006 2:36:30 PM PST by Some hope remaining.
He was ballyhooed and then discredited and then largely forgotten. But cold fusion pioneer Dr. Martin Fleischmann still holds the secret to a cheap energy source for the world, says a California company that plans to produce prototypes of a cold fusion-powered home heater, with Fleischmann as "senior scientific adviser."
The announcement came on the 17th anniversary of the day that Fleischmann, then a chemistry professor at the University of Utah, and his colleague B. Stanley Pons stunned the scientific world with news that they had discovered a room-temperature way to create nuclear fusion. The announcement immediately led to predictions that the world's energy problems were over. The Utah Legislature appropriated $5 million so the U. could perfect the technique and pursue patents.
But when other scientists around the world had trouble replicating Fleischmann's and Pons' work, the method was dismissed as a pipe dream.
Eventually, though, "when truth and justice are done," says David Kubiak, the University of Utah will bask in the glory of its association with cold fusion. Kubiak is communications director of D2Fusion of Foster City, Calif., and Los Alamos, N.M., which will be hosting Fleischmann and is setting up a lab using his "recipe."
These days, Kubiak says, the term "cold fusion" has generally been replaced by "solid state fusion," "low-energy nuclear reactions" or "nuclear reactions in condensed matter." But the principles are still the same — a fusion reaction produced at normal temperatures using hydrogen-loving metals such as palladium or titanium.
To start with, D2Fusion plans to produce a 2,000-3,000 watt heater that would never need refueling. Then the process could be ramped up to produce 30,000 or 300,000 watts, Kubiak says. That would eventually mean whole communities powered by this cheap, efficient, non-polluting, radiation-free energy source that would end America's dependence on oil imports.
"It's an extraordinary vista," he says, sounding much like the cheerleaders of cold fusion in 1989.
The inventor of all this sci-fi technology lives in the English countryside near Stonehenge, where according to Kubiak he doesn't have e-mail. "He's an old-school genius."
Kubiak says scores of labs around the world are pursuing cold-fusion techniques, some of them originally inspired by Fleischmann's work in Utah. Fleischmann and Pons originally built their device for $100,000 in the basement of the Henry Eyring Chemistry Building.
"There are a lot of variables in this process," Kubiak says to explain why many of the original attempts at replication of the pair's work met with bad results. It turns out, he says, that the quality of the metals used makes a big difference. "That wasn't understood at the time. So some pronounced it a fraud."
The researchers now working on the technique "are not tin-pot inventors working out of a garage," he says. "They're top-notch scientists, including a couple of Nobel laureates."
"Instead of arguing any more about the theoretical basis of it," he says, "we're saying 'this works, this is where we should be putting our attention.' "
"True, our theoretical grasp of all the processes in play remains imperfect, but neither can we fully explain the workings of aspirin, acupuncture or high temperature superconductivity," Kubiak says. "Unresolved questions about their mechanisms have not stopped us from enjoying their respective benefits, which are pale indeed compared to what solid state fusion offers."
Can you tell us the names and something about the real Nobel Laureats who are now working on this?
Dear Sir,
I'd like to purchase your perpetual motion machine. However, I have been testing my own for the past two years and since it hasn't stopped I haven't been able to get off of it. Thank God I have my fusion laptop with me -- otherwise I'd never be able to order your machine and see how it compares to mine.
Please send me two machines, one for comparison, and one for reverse engineering.
ping
42?
And we still don't know why.
I certainly can't. My comment when I posted the article was that I'll believe it when it's heating my house.
Dear Ma'am,
How exactly are you trying to get off?
(I'm sorry, I just couldn't help myself)
No, I'm guessing Young Frankenstein ;)
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ah, well... maybe. prob'ly not, but maybe.
love the tagline, btw
All I have to say about cold fusion is - MAKE IT SO BABY! I say we must explore this field and invest some millions (Federal government) in it to put it to the test
I did a little electrochemical work years ago in graduate school. That experience taught me that the experimental apparatus and techniques used were very important in getting the experiment to work.
This is probably the reasons that their work has been very difficult to reproduce.
I too await the nuclear reactor in my basement and in my private vehicle.
Why don't you tell us. I can't stand the suspense, LOL.
Ol' Chuck pi55ed in my gas tank back in 1985, and I haven't had to fill it up since!
30,000 watts is 30 kw or kilowatts power ( energy/sec). 30kwh is 30kw for an hour (energy). 30,000 watts does produce 30kwh an hour. Thats the h in kwh.
Yasser Arafat and Nelson Mandela?
Consider the physics involved, ASSuming that this even works. At 300 kW, there is still a respectable amount of of shielding due to neutron flux and gammas. Remember, we are talking about a reaction with an energy release of anywhere from 8 to 25 MeV!
Even at the low power levels that Fleischman claims for his "test tube" experiment, and he was standing right next to it - he should be fried.
One person (here on FR) claimed that the only product of the reaction was He-4 (an alpha particle). Well, if say even 8 MeV was the energy of the alpha particle, it's still going awful fast. Even with a +2 charge, it's going to take more than tissue paper (which will stop most alpha particles from typical radioactive decay) or even the wall of a borosilicate glass test tube to stop it.
Keep in mind that as the neutrons slow down, there will be some degree of neutron activation products.
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