Cold Fusion No Longer a Myth? Energy Problems Solved? It Appears So.

Posted by Chris Jensen | May. 27, 2008 07:20AM PST | 1689 views | 0 comments

FILED UNDER: News. Science, Tech.

Back in 1989, a team of physicists, Fleischmann and Pons, claimed to have discovered cold fusion, the holy grail of energy research. In a short amount of time, the research was discredited and cold fusion became a bad word, something akin to UFOs and alien abduction. In the nearly 20 years that have followed, not much has been heard of cold fusion.

All that changed on May 22, when Japan's leading and esteemed physicist, Yoshiakiu Arata, presented a demonstration to 60 invited guests from around the world, including representatives from six major newspapers. According to those in attendance, the demonstration was a success with the common belief that Arata's work will be easy to duplicate and verify.

From PhysOrg:

In their experiment, the physicists forced deuterium gas into a cell containing a mixture of palladium and zirconium oxide, which absorbed the deuterium to produce a dense "pynco" deuterium. In this dense state, the deuterium nuclei from different atoms were so close together that they fused to produce helium nuclei.

Evidence for the occurrence of this fusion came from measuring the temperature inside the cell. When Arata first injected the deuterium gas, the temperature rose to about 70° C (158° F), which Arata explained was due to nuclear and chemical reactions. When he turned the gas off, the temperature inside the cell remained warmer than the cell wall for 50 hours, which Arata said was an effect of nuclear fusion.

While Arata´s demonstration looked promising to his audience, the real test is still to come: duplication. Many scientists and others are now recalling the infamous 1989 demonstration by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, who claimed to produce controlled nuclear fusion in a glass jar at room temperature. However, no one - including Fleischmann and Pons - could duplicate the experiment, leading many people to consider cold fusion a pseudoscience to this day.

(Source: PhysOrg)

Tags arata, japan, cold fusion