Suppression of cold fusion research?

Dylan Greene wrote to us with a story talking about the possible suppresion of cold fusion research from those whom you would expect to. It might be inflamatory, but it's also interesting.

Hate to spoil the fun, but where are the neutrons?

As a practicing high-energy physicist, I feel compelled to point out that this article is patently ridiculous.

All nuclear reaction chains release some combination of so-called exotic particles: gamma-rays, neutrons, neutrinos, high-energy protons, positrons, and the like. Any reaction that does not emit such particles is NOT a nuclear reaction.

In particular, the fusion chain that produces helium--the very reaction Pons & Fleischmann claimed to observe--releases neutrons. Neutrons are very easy to see with the right kind of detector, and any observation of neutrons would dramatically confirm the existence of fusion at the nuclear level.

No cold fusion experiment has ever seen any neutrons. None. Ever.

No cold fusion experiment has ever seen any gamma rays, which would also be released by the fusion reaction chain. Pons & Fleischmann at one time claimed to observe gamma rays, but it turned out that these rays were in fact produced by the radioactive source they were using to calibrate their gamma ray detector.

In fact, the severe radiation--produced by any real fusion process producing as much heat as has been claimed to observe--would kill anyone working in the unshielded lab within a few days, or less.

But there has never been any evidence of radiation by any of the labs studying cold fusion: not Utah, not Texas A&M, not MIT, not Caltech, not Portland State, not anyone.

What has been observed is so-called "unaccounted heat". The problem with "unaccounted heat" is that it is extremely difficult to account for all the heat in the cold fusion experimental setup. One dips a palladium electrode in a solution of heavy water, and pumps a high voltage through the electrode. This vaporizes some of the water, producing bubbles (water vapor, hydrogen gas, and
oxygen) and light and heat, and one can measure how much heat is produced. The problem is that it is difficult to measure accurately just how much electricity was pumped into the electrode to begin with!! So you don't know how much energy you started with, and because you don't know how much energy you started it is impossible to determine accurately whether there is any energy missing.

Thus the surefire, absolute, undeniable way to prove that fusion is actually there is to observe neutrons and/or gamma rays. But no one has ever observed neutrons or gamma rays from a cold fusion apparatus.

This is why cold fusion is not taken seriously by the scientific community.

On a side note, I must object to the use of Einstein as a symbol for this discussion. Einstein would never have allowed himself to be associated with the poor quality of research exhibited by Pons, Fleischmann, and others.

Cheers,
Anton Eppich
Wilson Synchrotron Lab, Cornell University
[e-mail]

--
The opinions expressed are mine and mine alone.

I have an idea!

Maybe we should just have "Cold fusion reactor" added to the list for the next University of Chicago scavanger hunt...

Not just in USA

Cold Fusion research is being carried out in lots of countries, and they all have similar problems - getting funding and people to pay attention. Here in the UK, a friend of mine is doing research into fusion-like stuff - they're not trying for commercial applications, just researching into how the physics work. They're having trouble getting funding too, and it's not like they don't have a lot of respect from the rest of the scientific community.

However, in the university where they work, nobody would be able to do Cold Fusion research there, even if they paid for it themselves. There is such a bad stigma attached, that it would be just impossible.

Sad huh...

Re:can anybody tell me

My step-dad is a chemistry professor. I remember when some cold fusion experiments hit the news and asked him about it. He said they got together in the lab in an attempt to recreate it. He would only say they had some "unexplained" energy and a meltdown of the platinum plates. Never heard anything more on that.

Interesting that a meltdown created by blowing bubbles on platinum plates would not create more attention than Beavis and Butthead would have toward "fire! fire! fire!"

Doesn't matter if they're right or wrong.

Supression of anything like this is bad. Just because they're completely out of their minds doesn't mean we have the right to make their work go away. So we don't agree with it? So it's wrong? Ok, it's wrong. Let the scientific method pick apart their arguments in a rational way, rather than Inquisitioning them out of existence.

The late Dr. Carl Sagan, in his Cosmos series, talked about this same kind of thing happening when Immanuel Velikovsky published the first compilation of his astronomical views in Worlds in Collision in 1950. He came up with some wonderful ideas about Venus being a rogue planet that was captured by the Sun's gravitation, the Moon being ejected from Jupiter, an explanation for the sun standing still in Biblical times, and much more.

Sure, the man was completely wrong about many things. He was also right in his theories that in the past, mankind has witnessed global catastrophes of cosmic origin. But rather than prove him wrong, Worlds in Collision was instead banned from numerous academic institutions, and his works suppressed. He is still to this day looked on as a kook more than a scientist who was wrong.

"Do not destroy that which you do not understand."