COLD FUSION: BY FAR NOT DEAD

The big news on cold fusion in the past month¾though there still is no resolution of the basic puzzle¾was a conference in Santa Fe, N.M., sponsored by the Los Alamos National Labs and the DoE on May 28 to June 1. There were some 400 participants [Fleischman and Pons (F&P) were absent]; thanks to reader Phil Becker of Denver, I had access to the complete tapings.

Though readers of the New York Times would never believe it, the hope¾not the certainty!--of cold fusion by the F&P effect is now stronger than it was last month.

First, to the less spectacular "Jones" fusion¾produced at room temperatures without the help of muon particles¾ observed at Brigham Young Univ. The experiment by Italian scientists at Frascata, with up to 800 times background [AtE Jun 89], was different from Jones' (Titanium, liquid deuterium) and unduplicated. Now replication by another Italian team has been achieved, and the Jones effect has been replicated elsewhere. It is now generally accepted and means a permanent advance of cold fusion even if the P&F effect proves to be caused by something else than fusion. This is an important new avenue of research; but in its present state it is nowhere near breakeven and thus quite insig-nificant as an energy source. With this I will leave the Jones type of fusion until some significant advance is made, meanwhile only beat-ing myself in the breast that when S.E. Jones, then at INEL, Idaho, first demonstrated the existence of cold fusion (by means of muons) four years ago, this newsletter was one of the few to realize its significance [AtE Jun 85].

But now on to the far more interesting¾and still puzzling¾ F&P effect. Last month I said the instant experts had no right to assume that the F&P calorimetry was wrong even if that should later turn out to be the case. I can now (gleefully) report that their calorimetry was not wrong: Stanford and Texas A&M gave details of their calorimetry in heat-producing experiments, and unlike the Baltimore APS meeting, the Santa Fe assembly generally accepted these partly new experiments. They were done very carefully¾for example, Stanford cast and recast the palladium up to 15 times in an argon atmosphere until they were sure no hydrogen or other impurities were left in significant amounts. Flawless control experiments were also made. Although they got only up to 40% excess heat above the input energy (P&F got up to 5000%), nobody talks about P&Ps "incompetence and delusions" any more. Koonin, who used these words in Baltimore, was not seen and Lewis, who had also badmouthed P&F's calorimetry, ap-peared strongly subdued.