Monday, May 07, 2007

Son of Cold Fusion

That Buck Rogers Stuff

It looks like Cold Fusion is returning from the outer darkness of fringe science, where it had been condemned by legions of right thinking scientists from 1989 on.  Some pointy-heads at the Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) in San Diego have achieved a reproducible sort of room temperature fusion:

Cold fusion has gotten the cold shoulder from serious nuclear physicists since 1989, when Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann were unable to substantiate their sensational claims that deuterium nuclei could be forced to fuse and release excess energy at room temperature. Spawar researchers apparently kept the faith, however, and continued to refine the procedure by experimenting with new fusionable materials.

Szpak and Boss now claim to have succeeded at last by coating a thin wire with palladium and deuterium, then subjected it to magnetic and electric fields. The researchers have offered plastic films called CR-39 detectors as evidence that charged particles have emerging from their reaction experiments.

The Spawar method shows promise, particularly in terms of being easily reproduced and verified by other institutions. Such verification is essential to widespread acceptance of the apparent breakthrough, an important precursor to scientists receiving the necessary funding to fuel additional research in the field.

Maybe we will have our Mr. Fusion after all.


Posted by Buckethead on 05/07/07 at 08:56 PM
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