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These days, Kubiak says, the term "cold fusion" has generally been replaced by "solid state fusion," "low-energy nuclear reactions" or "nuclear reactions in condensed matter."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."
and the Chuck Norris idolatry parade rolls ever on...
Chuck Norris is the only man to ever make Dick Cheney cry!
>>Yes, I have that knowledge. I hold the secret... to life... itself
>Let me guess, either liquid soap, or cheese whiz?
I'm going with duct tape. It's kind of like "the Force" in Star Wars... it has a light side and a dark side, , and it binds the universe together.
The only "aneutronic" reaction is helium3 + deuterium. Product is a Helium4, an energetic proton, and a gamma.
Helium3 is also a decay product of tritium.
Would you believe he can do for cold fusion what he's done to make the world a more peaceful and saner place?
Thanks for posting it, as I had not seen it before:>)
What is it with the Chuck Norris things??
Your preaching to the chior, as I said, I ain't holding my breath.
And smoking is good for your health.
.... iwant that secret pill that turns water into gasoline....
Not a problem..... Send me $110 and a self addressed label and I'll send two right out by priority mail.
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