Cold fusion history

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This article describes the history of cold fusion in details. Please go to the main article for a summary.

Contents 1 Early work 2 Events leading to the announcement 3 Sequel of the announcement 4 Moving beyond the initial controversy 5 References

[edit] Early work

The idea that palladium or titanium might catalyze fusion stems from the special ability of these metals to absorb large quantities of hydrogen (including its deuterium isotope). The hydrogen or deuterium disassociate with the respective positive ions but remain in an anomalously mobile state inside the metal lattice, exhibiting rapid diffusion and high electrical conductivity. The special ability of palladium to absorb hydrogen was recognized in the nineteenth century.

In 1926, two German scientists, F. Paneth and K. Peters, reported the transformation of hydrogen into helium by spontaneous nuclear catalysis when hydrogen is absorbed by finely divided palladium at room temperature.^[1] These authors later retracted their report, acknowledging that the helium they measured was due to background from the air.

A year later, Swedish scientist J. Tandberg said that he had fused hydrogen into helium in an electrolytic cell with palladium electrodes. On the basis of his work he applied for a Swedish patent for "a method to produce helium and useful reaction energy". After deuterium was discovered in 1932, Tandberg continued his experiments with heavy water. Due to Paneth and Peters' retraction, Tandberg's patent application was eventually denied.

[edit] Events leading to the announcement

In the 60's, Fleischmann and his team started investigating the possibility that chemical means could influence nuclear processes. Quantum mechanics says that this is not possible, and he started research projects to illustrate inconsistencies of quantum mechanics, and the needs to use quantum electrodynamics instead. By 1983, he had experimental evidences leading him to think that condensed phase systems developed coherent structures up to 1000 Ångström in size, which are best explained by quantum electrodynamics. Impressed by the observation of "cold explosion" by Percy Williams Bridgman in the 30's, his team went on to study the possibility that nuclear processes would develop in such coherent structures. ^[2]

In 1988 Fleischmann and Pons applied to the US Department of Energy for funding for a larger series of experiments: up to this point they had been running their experiments "out-of-pocket".

The grant proposal was turned over to several people for peer review, including Steven E. Jones of Brigham Young University. Jones had worked on muon-catalyzed fusion for some time, and had written an article on the topic entitled Cold Nuclear Fusion that had been published in Scientific American in July 1987. He had since turned his attention to the problem of fusion in high-pressure environments, believing it could explain the fact that the interior temperature of the Earth was hotter than could be explained without nuclear reactions, and by unusually high concentrations of helium-3 around volcanoes that implied some sort of nuclear reaction within. At first he worked with diamond anvils on what he referred to as piezonuclear fusion, but then moved to electrolytic cells similar to those being worked on by Fleischmann and Pons. In order to characterize the reactions, Jones had spent considerable time designing and building a neutron counter, one able to accurately measure the tiny numbers of neutrons being produced in his experiments. His team got 'tantalizingly positive' results early January 1989, and they decided in early February to publish their results.

Both teams were in Utah, and met on several occasions to discuss sharing work and techniques. During this time Fleischmann and Pons described their experiments as generating considerable "excess energy", excess in that it could not be explained by chemical reactions alone. If this were true, their device would have considerable commercial value, and should be protected by patents. Jones was measuring neutron flux instead, and seems to have considered it primarily of scientific interest, not commercial. In order to avoid problems in the future, the teams apparently agreed to simultaneously publish their results, although their accounts of their March 6 meeting differ.

In mid-March both teams were ready to publish, and Fleischmann and Jones had agreed to meet at the airport on the 24th to send their papers at the exact same time to Nature by FedEx. However Fleischmann and Pons broke that apparent agreement - they had submitted a paper to the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry on the 11th, and they disclosed their work in the press conference the day before. Jones, apparently furious at being "scooped", faxed in his paper to Nature as soon as he saw the press announcements.^[3]

[edit] Sequel of the announcement

The press reported on the experiments widely, and it was one of the front-page items on most newspapers around the world. The immense beneficial implications of the Utah experiments, if they were correct, and the ready availability of the required equipment, led scientists around the world to attempt to repeat the experiments within hours of the announcement.

On April 10, Fleischmann and Pons published their 8-page "preliminary note" in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry. The paper was rushed, very incomplete and contained a clear error with regard to the gamma spectra.

On April 10 a team at Texas A&M University published results of excess heat, and later that day a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology announced neutron production. Both results were widely reported on in the press. However, both teams soon withdrew their results for lack of evidence. For the next six weeks additional competing claims, counterclaims, and suggested explanations kept the topic on the front pages, and led to what some journalists have referred to as "fusion confusion."^[4]

On April 12 Pons received a standing ovation from about 7000 chemists at the semi-annual meeting of the American Chemical Society. The University of Utah asked Congress to provide $25 million to pursue the research, and Dr. Pons was scheduled to meet with representatives of President Bush early May.^[5]

On May 1 the American Physical Society held a session on cold fusion that ran past midnight; a string of failed experiments were reported. A second session started the next day with other negative reports, and 8 of the 9 leading speakers said that they ruled the Utah claim as dead. Dr. Steven E. Koonin of Caltech called the Utah report a result of "the incompetence and delusion of Pons and Fleischmann". The audience of scientists sat in stunned silence for a moment before bursting into applause. Dr. Douglas R. O. Morrison, a physicist representing CERN, called the entire episode an example of pathological science.^[6][7]

By the end of May much of the media attention had faded. This was due not only to the competing results and counterclaims, but also to the limited attention span of modern media. However, while the research effort also cooled to some degree, projects continued around the world.

In July and November 1989, Nature published papers critical of cold fusion which cast the idea of cold fusion out of mainstream science.^[8][9]

In November, a special panel formed by the Energy Research Advisory Board (under a charge of the US Department of Energy) reported the result of their investigation into cold fusion. The scientists in the panel found the evidence for cold fusion to be unconvincing. Nevertheless, the panel was "sympathetic toward modest support for carefully focused and cooperative experiments within the present funding system".^[10] As 1989 wore on, cold fusion was considered by mainstream scientists to be self-deception, experimental error and even fraud, and was held out as a prime example of pseudoscience. The United States Patent and Trademark Office has rejected most patent applications related to cold fusion since then.

A year later, in July 1990, Fleischmann and Pons corrected the errors from their earlier "preliminary note," and published their detailed 58-page seminal paper "Calorimetry of the Palladium-Deuterium-Heavy Water System," in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry.

Also in 1990, Richard Oriani, professor of physical chemistry emeritus of the University of Minnesota published the first replication of the excess heat effect in his paper, "Calorimetric Measurements of Excess Power Output During the Cathodic Charging of Deuterium Into Palladium," in Fusion Technology. This paper has never been challenged in the scientific literature.

In 1992, the Wilson group from General Electric challenged the Fleischmann-Pons 1990 paper in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry.^[11] The Wilson group asserted that the claims of excess heat had been overstated, but they were unable to "prove that no excess heat" was generated. Wilson concluded that the Fleischmann and Pons cell generated approximately 40% excess heat and amounted to 736 mW, more than ten times larger than the error levels associated with the data.

Despite the apparent confirmation by Wilson, Fleischmann and Pons still responded to the Wilson critique and published a rebuttal, also in the same issue of Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry. To this day, Fleischmann and Pons' seminal paper has never been refuted in the scientific literature.

[edit] Moving beyond the initial controversy

The 1990s saw little cold fusion research in the United States, and much of the research during this time period occurred in Europe and Asia. Fleischmann and Pons moved their research laboratory to France, under a grant from the founder of Toyota Motor Corporation. They sued La Republica, an Italian Newspaper, and its journalist for their suggestion that cold fusion was a scientific fraud, but lost the libel case in an Italian court.^[12] In 1996 they announced in Nature that they would appeal^[13], but they didn't, perhaps because of the reply in Nature.^[14]

By 1991, 92 groups of researchers from 10 different countries had reported excess heat, tritium, neutrons or other nuclear effects.^[15] Over 3,000 cold fusion papers have been published including about 1,000 in peer-reviewed journals.^[16] In March 1995, Dr. Edmund Storms compiled a list of 21 published papers reporting excess heat. [19] Articles have been published in specialized peer reviewed journals such as Physical Review A, Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, and Journal of Fusion Energy.

The generation of excess heat has been reported by

• Michael McKubre, director of the Energy Research Center at SRI International,
• Richard A. Oriani (University of Minnesota, in December 1990),
• Robert A. Huggins (at Stanford University in March 1990),
• Y. Arata (Osaka University, Japan),
• T. Mizuno (Hokkaido University, Japan),
• T. Ohmori (Japan),

The most common experimental set-ups are the electrolytic (electrolysis) cell and the gas (glow) discharge cell, but many other set-ups have been used. Electrolysis is popular because it was the original experiment and more commonly known way of conducting the cold fusion experiment; gas discharge is often used because it is believed to be the set-up that provides an experimenter a better chance at replication of the excess heat results. The excess heat experimental results reported by T. Ohmori and T. Mizuno (see Mizuno experiment) have come under particular interest by amateur researchers in recent years.

Researchers share their results at the International Conference on Cold Fusion, recently renamed International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science. The conference is held every 12 to 18 months in various countries around the world, and is hosted by The International Society for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science, a scientific organization that was founded as a professional society to support research efforts and to communicate experimental results. A few periodicals emerged in the 1990s that covered developments in cold fusion and related new energy sciences. Researchers have contributed hundreds of papers to an on-line cold fusion library.

Between 1993 and 1998, Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry sponsored a "New Hydrogen Energy Program" of $20 million to research the promise of tapping new hydrogen-based energy sources such as cold fusion. They obtained no significant results. Critics say that the program was poorly run.^[17]

In 1994, Dr. David Goodstein described the field as follows:^[18]

"Cold Fusion is a pariah field, cast out by the scientific establishment. Between Cold Fusion and respectable science there is virtually no communication at all. Cold fusion papers are almost never published in refereed scientific journals, with the result that those works don't receive the normal critical scrutiny that science requires. On the other hand, because the Cold-Fusioners see themselves as a community under siege, there is little internal criticism. Experiments and theories tend to be accepted at face value, for fear of providing even more fuel for external critics, if anyone outside the group was bothering to listen. In these circumstances, crackpots flourish, making matters worse for those who believe that there is serious science going on here."

In February 2002, a laboratory within the United States Navy released a report that came to the conclusion that the cold fusion phenomenon was in fact real and deserved an official funding source for research. Navy researchers have published more than 40 papers on cold fusion.^[19]

[edit] References