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

What really happened

[sonicattack]

This is from the good ole' fortune file. It really has an answer to everything!

- "Yo, Mike!"
- "Yeah, Gabe?"
- "We got a problem down on Earth. In Utah."
- "I thought you fixed that last century!"
- "No, no, not that. Someone's found a security problem in the physics program. They're getting energy out of nowhere."
- "Blessit! Lemme look... Hey, it's there all right! OK, just a sec... There, that ought to patch it. Dist it out, wouldja?"

-- Cold Fusion, 1989

Re:If real?

[Jason1729]

Imagination

Cold Fusion?

[mlush]

Just a Fleisch in the Pons

and when we do achieve cold fusion...

[forgotmypassword]

we will use it to boil water

(you have to know how a nukular power plant works to get this joke)

Duke

[zurmikopa]

Why do I get the feeling that this fusion project has the codename "Duke Nukem Forever"