14 Years Later, Cold Fusion Still Gets The Cold Shoulder

segment writes "It has been 14 years since two little-known electrochemists announced what sounded like the biggest physics breakthrough since Enrico Fermi produced a nuclear chain reaction on a squash court in Chicago. Using a tabletop setup, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, of the University of Utah, said they had induced deuterium nuclei to fuse inside metal electrodes, producing measurable quantities of heat. That was the opening bell for one of the craziest periods in science. Cold fusion, if real, promised to solve the world's energy problems forever. Scientists around the world dropped what they were doing to try to replicate the astounding claim." The linked AP story (carried on SFGate.com) is about the Tenth International Conference on Cold Fusion, which took place in the last week of August.

Comments

Re:What really happened

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems that Utah is the center of all possible problems...

Re:Embarassed

[DNS-and-BIND]

"Given the type of people you are, and the environment you're in, you have to admit the strong probability that this may be the only chance you will ever have in your entire lives to have sex."

Codl fusion != Cold Fusion

[angel'o'sphere]

First:
The Pons and Fleischmann "cold fusion" experiments where reproduced by several labs(including my university). However, it has nothing to do with cold fusion, that is the resume. As fusion, cold or not, creates measureable amounts of neutrons. Those did not get detected.
What remains is a heat producing aparatus with unknown reaction.

Second:
There are a lot of other ways to get a cold fusin reaction. And that is old science from the late 70th. One is "myon catalised fusion". In that case you bombard H atoms with myons. Myons are particls with similar behaviour likel electrons. Those can replace the electorns of an H atom. As a myon has about 300,000 times the mass of an electron it orbits the H atom very close. When two H atoms with their electrons replaced by myons form a mulecule, the two H cores are brought so close together that a fusion can happen.

There are likely other ways for "cold fusion".

Interesting, that a "geek net magazine" where posters/readers are supposed to have a clue about computers and related sciences behave like inquisitors when it goes about cold fusion and behave like experts when it goes about asteroid deflection or near earth misses ....

Probably it would be at least nice, if not wise, to open up your mind.

angel'o'sphere