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Cold Fusion, the sequel April 5, 2004
Dr. Eugene F. Mallove, editor of Infinite Energy magazine, quoted in The New York Times. The biggest innovation news of last week came in a short article in The New York Times. Almost exactly fifteen years after the first cold fusion fiasco, the United States Department of Energy has agreed to review recent findings in the area. Cold fusion came to general awareness in March 1989, when two chemists at the University of Utah, Drs. Pons and Fleischmann, said they had generated fusion in a tabletop experiment using a jar of heavy water and two palladium electrodes. Other researchers were unable to reproduce their results, and cold fusion sank beneath the weight of scientific and popular skepticism.
Cold Fusion -- The Musical
In Canada in 1995, Wes Borg and Paul Mather wrote "Cold Fusion: The Musical," mixing the science of cold fusion with ruthless entrepreneurs and scantily-clad women. In 1996, Pons and Fleischmann, now working in France, brought a $6 million libel suit against the Italian magazine La Republicca. The magazine had called their cold fusion research a "scientific fraud." Not only did they lose the libel suit, but the Italian court ordered them to pay the legal costs of the opposing side. Today, scientists working on cold fusion say that they can generate two to three times more energy than they put in. And their results are reproducible. With the Department of Energy’s decision to review recent findings in the area, cold fusion has another chance to prove itself. Many fundamental breakthroughs have the same narrative arc that’s playing out in the current cold fusion work. An extraordinary finding is met with extreme skepticism from the established scientific community. Many years later, the original approach turns out to have some validity. I recently attended a talk by MIT Professor Robert Langer who, with over 500 patents, has pioneered many new drug delivery systems using novel bio-materials. His innovations have created numerous companies and saved many lives. Many of his breakthroughs were initially rejected as impossible by experts in the field. Thomas Kuhn, in his landmark book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, provided a number of institutional reasons for this kind of pattern. Primary among them is the reluctance of senior scientists to let go of the theories and approaches which they have taught and developed for many years. As Kuhn noted in 1962: If cold fusion exists, current physics cannot explain it. Since current physics cannot explain it, the leaders in the field have an institutional obligation to dismiss it. And that is what physicists continue to do. Here’s what Dr. Stewart Prager, a physics professor at the University of Wisconsin, told The New York Times: "I'm surprised. I thought most of the cold fusion effort had phased out. I'm just not aware of any physics results that motivated this." Yet some respected scientists thought cold fusion deserved another look. Dr. James Decker, the deputy director of the science office in the Department of Energy, told The New York Times: The scientists may have excellent credentials, but they are not physicists. Two are professors of electrical engineering and computer science, while the third is an electrochemist. If cold fusion is successful, Kuhn would predict that its pioneers will come from areas outside of the fields most challenged by it. That is, in fact, what appears to be happening. Perhaps Cold Fusion, the Sequel, will be a better story than the original. More Information 1. Cold fusion has a cousin in Sonofusion – using ultrasonic vibrations to generate tabletop fusion reactions. This work is gaining credibility, according to recent stories in The New York Times and Business Week. Here’s a link to the Times story: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40E12FA3E5B0C708CDDAA0894DC404482 2. Here’s an outline of Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions: http://www.emory.edu/EDUCATION/mfp/Kuhn.html 3. The New York Times article on Cold Fusion, from which most of the quotes in this update were taken, is here: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30B11FD3E540C768EDDAA0894DC404482 4. The Salt Lake Tribune recently published a look back to the time in 1989 when Pons and Fleischmann made their announcement at the University of Utah: http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Mar/03232004/utah/150364.asp 5. Pons and Fleishmann sued an Italian newspaper for libel and lost. Here’s a recap of that event: http://www.padrak.com/ine/CFLIBEL.html 6. Last but not least, here’s a link to more information on Cold Fusion: The Musical: http://www.subatomichumor.com/shows/coldfusion.html |
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