After 20 Years Of Controversy, Cold Fusion Showing Promise

摘要

The 20th anniversary of the 1989 announcement of "cold fusion" experimental resultsrnby Fleischmann and Pons at the University of Utah is approaching. That announcement by the two chemists of a new source of energy based on electrochemical loading of deuterium nuclei into palladium electrodes attracted global attention.rnTheir results implied that small systems can be used to produce power with densities in excess of those available from chemical reactions, such asrnburning coal or oil products. It appeared possible to generaternenergy from nuclearrnreactions triggered at low energies, without building multi-billion dollar high-energy plasma machines.rnThe reported results, and difficulties in reproducing them, lead to an intense scientific controversy. Many people quickly concluded that the initial experiments were wrong. This view is still widely held because relatively few people have kept up with the significant experimental progress in the field.