Cold Fusion (the Pons-Fleischmann variety) is very slowly clawing its way back into the realm of accepted science. I did a lot of reading lately on various subjects for a lecture on dodgy stuff in science, and the P-F cold fusion was most interesting to explore.

A lot of research has happened since the first tumultuous announcements in 1989; much of the early experiment replicaton problems have been explored thoroughly and logical answers are now available to many of those early questions. Many remain unanswered though, due to lack of research funding.

The main obstacle seems to be in scientific culture rather than science method. Some of the foremost scientists of that day in 1989 have declared the P-F experiment crap and the two men were denounced as frauds. Big reputations have been staked on this. We may not see the controversy resolved before those reputations and Pons and Fleischmann are dead.

A few interesting links for the curious:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.11/coldfusion.html?pg=1&topic=&topic_set=
http://www.infinite-energy.com/images/pdfs/mitcfreport.pdf
http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/rei/CFdir/CFhome.html
http://www.amasci.com/weird/wcf.html
or just:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cold%20fusion

That the beautiful Elisabeth Shue has gotten it to work. I've seen it.

Another recently cool energy invention came out of the University of Toronto around this January.

Developers were trying to increase the efficiency of optical switches by using "quantum dot" nanoparticles, and found that plastic impregnated with the dots actually generated a small elecric sharge.

This technology may well be the foundation for our next generation of solar cells. The nanoparticles allow the plastic solar cells to absorb infrared light, which not only increases the efficiency of the conversio into electricity, but thanks to the penetrating power if infrared, works even on cloudy days, or under a protective coating.

Better still, the resulting solar cell is a transparent plastic material that can be rolled as sheets, woven as a fabric, or een liquified and sprayed onto surfaces. Imagine an "ipod jacket" that provides enough electricity to power an iPod plugged into the pocket. Or a hybrid car where the entire surface, windows and all, are put to use converting solar power.

While still in it's infancy (current levels of efficiency are _way_ below theoretical maximums, or even current technology),, scientists estimate the material will be ready for market within 5 years.

It sould also be noted that current wind turbine technology is capable of producing roughly triple the nation's energy needs within the borders of the US.

Problem is not with the technology, it certainly looks promising, but of the major corporate influences that will try hinder and kill this technology if anyone gets remotely close to it.

There are literally billions and trillions of dollars to be lost by the energy industry who have friends in high and low places to do the dirty work for them.

I'm with you, but a couple of years back a friend of mine gently put it to me that maybe putting the power of the sun in a convenient package into the hands of everyone wasn't such a great idea after all.

Now, I don't want to be overly pessimistic regarding human nature, but the fact remains that the amount of money spent on weapons far outstrips all social projects combined, in fact the amount of money spent on weapons in ONE YEAR could optimistically take care of all the problems we face today, some of them 50 year projects. I'm talking about disease control, clean water, population and pollution problems, poverty, ... you name it, it's included. They (the UN) may be a bit overly optimistic, but hey, let's then talk about TWO YEARS of reappointing the weapons budget...

So every time someone yells "cold fusion" I cross my fingers...

Oh please... not to poo poo on your sad parade, but dude, think about what folks fifty years ago thought would be crazy to "have in our hands".

ever hack a microwave and get it to work like it's not supposed to? [for reference, i have]

seriously, there will *always* be people to figure out how to disrupt the appropriate use of items, but that doesn't mean we should shirk from the good that this would do. i mean, really, how long do you wanna bow down to the Oil Gods? :-\

And on that topic, yeah, I cross my fingers too, because like someone above you posted, there are sooooo many crack head white guys that do *not* want to see their money go away. i wish we could show them just how much they'll take with them in the afterlife to get it across to them how selfish they are. But I digress.

It will take a pro-active culture to get this kind of energy on the table for everyone. It will take a great deal amount of effort, energy (no pun intended) and intelligence to thwart the plans of those who are already in place. But I think it will happen, and I'm excited about it.

Its UCLA actually ( there is no U of LA )
And the website is here

http://www.chem.ucla.edu/dept/Faculty/gimzewski/

There is no University of Los Angeles. If the writer of the article can't get that simple fact right what can you trust in the article? Or is this a new Creation Science faith based instituion?

Its a Typo

If you read the article you will find UCLA mentioned near the end....

Yeah, I thought it was odd, but I figured The Christian Science Monitor knew what they were talking about.

I should have checked it. My bad.

Vern Seward

I dont think so morons. We got too much on our feeble minds with Britney and Bushie.

When I read the headline I thought you meant Macromedia Cold Fusion. The obnoxious program that people around here use to make nice simple html pages into bloated buggy monstrosities that don't work in all browsers.

Cold Fusion-We hates it Precious. We hates it forever!!

The other cold fusion, the Ponds and Fleishman concept that might make cars and laptops run forever without refueling is really cool. If they can get it to work that is.

Jobs isn't going to build Macs anymore on PPC, he's going to build Intel Macs, because Motorola/PPC isn't going to support an adequate path forward. Jobs would switch today if manufacturing and product change were instantaneous. Two years is as fast as Apple can do it. If Apple is dropping PPC, why would I hurry up to buy one so it can become not just dated but obsolete? They only reason I can think of would be a BIG price drop, and you can bet the the closer the Appletel boxes get, the cheaper the PPC will become. If they don't, they won't sell, and nobody stays in business selling nothing.

… that got to do with this article ?

You know, I bet the same objects were raised, insofar as they could be raised given the day's language skills, when the first flint-knappers made the first durable tools. Of course, back then, you were free to hit the whiner with the new flint tool, thus improving life for all and sundry and giving the scavangers an easy meal in the harsh Serengeti ecosystem. Today the professional worrywarts and handwringers and other human jackals are protected by our laws that cover human rights, so we need to silence them in other ways.

The same objections were raised about cell phones, electricity (remember Thurber's grandmother worrying about it spilling out of sockets?), radiation (which it's about 4 billion years too late to do anything about), the internal combustion engine (the coal companies and railroads will enver allow it!), the airplane, and on and on and on. Ignore the Luddites. Leave them to the indignity of their own lives and useless college degrees.

The problem with Pons and Fleischman was that they were electrochemists, not nuclear scientists, not even physicists. The result of that is that they misinterpreted the results. What they observed was unusual warming, they attributed it to fusion, but forgot to borrow a neutron detector to confirm that was the cause.

To give you a simple analogy: what they did is the equivalent of having software engineers announcing a fundamental breakthrough in hardware.
Possible, just very unlikely.
So when the experts in the field tried to replicate the Pons and Fleischman experiment they realized that they got it wrong. No neutrons, no fusion.

That's the beauty of how science works: you publish, others can replicate and confirm your experiments, and build upon them if the original report worked as advertised.

There was no problem in the science method nor in science culture.
Science culture comes in only in that Pons and Fleischman set themselves up for a fall. They held a press conference to announce their results before they were even published, in doing that they exposed themselves to much tighter scrutiny. And they paid for it.


Something to note is that the MIT page is a personal webpage, and the links it has are to magazines with a bent to publish on fringe science including perpetual motion machines ("overunity" devices).

Here's a link to a Scientific American page commenting in a Department of Energy review of the issue of Cold Fusion, which concludes that even if there is promising evidence is not concluding and there's yet no proof that Cold Fusion is possible.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00059015-99C5-1213-987F83414B7F011C&sc=I100322
That report was previous to the article in Nature.

The link that another guest gave to the page of one of the authors of the article has a link to the abstract:

____
"Observation of nuclear fusion driven by a pyroelectric crystal"
Nature, Vol. 434, Num. 7037, pp1115-1118 (2005).
Brian Naranjo, James K. Gimzewski and Seth Putterman

ABSTRACT
While progress in fusion research continues with magnetic and inertial confinement, alternative approaches—such as Coulomb explosions of deuterium clusters and ultrafast laser−plasma interactions—also provide insight into basic processes and technological applications. However, attempts to produce fusion in a room temperature solid-state setting, including 'cold' fusion and 'bubble' fusion, have met with deep skepticism. Here we report that gently heating a pyroelectric crystal in a deuterated atmosphere can generate fusion under desktop conditions. The electrostatic field of the crystal is used to generate and accelerate a deuteron beam (> 100 keV and >4 nA), which, upon striking a deuterated target, produces a neutron flux over 400 times the background level. The presence of neutrons from the reaction D + D -->He (820 keV) + n (2.45 MeV) within the target is confirmed by pulse shape analysis and proton recoil spectroscopy. As further evidence for this fusion reaction, we use a novel time-of-flight technique to demonstrate the delayed coincidence between the outgoing alpha-particle and the neutron. Although the reported fusion is not useful in the power-producing sense, we anticipate that the system will find application as a simple palm-sized neutron generator.
_____

I think there is evidence of fusion (among other reasons, otherwise Nature would have rejected the paper), but the authors are quite careful to note that their device is more suitable to other applications such as a source of accelerated neutrons.

If you have access to a University library they are likely to have a subscription to Nature (both print and online), the journal issue where the crystal fusion report appeared has some commentary articles too.

It would be a good thing to review the original source before coming to conclusions....