what is cold fusion?

Answer 1

Well, Fusion is the process of creating heavier elements from Hydrogen, which releases a huge amount of energy. This is how the Hydrogen Bomb works. Cold Fusion is the attempt to do this in a controlled way that can be used for power, which would pretty much solve most of our problem concerns- it would be safe, ridiculously efficent, and not dangerous to the environment.

Answer 2

Two scientists by the name of Pons and Fleishmann (sp) around 1990 claimed they were getting electricity from electrodes of iridium and platinum (I think), submersed in "heavy water." The hydrogen in heavy water is a heavy isotope. Scientists everywhere only got wierd, sporadic results from trying to duplicate the process.

Answer 3

A very dodgy theory that should be impossible, and cannot be replicated

Answer 4

Cold fusion is a theoretical fusion reaction that occurs near room temperature and pressure using relatively simple devices. In nuclear fusion, multiple nuclei are forced to join together to form a heavier nucleus, and during that process, energy is released. The only known method of fusion that releases significant energy is the thermonuclear reaction, where temperatures and pressures are tremendous and must be contained within an as-yet technologically impractical fusion reactor - or be released, as by a fusion bomb.

Cold fusion was brought into popular consciousness by the controversy surrounding the Fleischmann-Pons experiment in March 1989. A number of other scientists reported replication of their experimental observation of anomalous heat generation in electrolytic cells. In 1989, a panel organized by the U.S. Department of Energy concluded there was no convincing evidence that useful sources of energy would result from the phenomena attributed to cold fusion, and another DoE panel reached similar conclusions in 2004. Since 1989, significant progress had been made in the sophistication of calorimeters, the later panel observed, and evidence of excess heat was more compelling than in 1989. Still, its report said, many experiments were poorly documented, the magnitude of the effect had not increased, it was not easily repeatable, and a nuclear cause was generally rejected. Reviewers identified several areas of scientific inquiry that might resolve some of the controversies.

The electrolysis cell
A cold fusion calorimeter of the open type, used at the New Hydrogen Energy Institute in Japan. Source: SPAWAR/US Navy TR1862In their original set-up, Fleischmann and Pons used a Dewar flask (a double-walled vacuum flask) for the electrolysis, so that heat conduction would be minimal on the side and the bottom of the cell (only 5% of the heat loss in this experiment). The cell flask was then submerged in a bath maintained at constant temperature to eliminate the effect of external heat sources. They used an open cell, thus allowing the gaseous deuterium and oxygen resulting from the electrolysis reaction to leave the cell (with some heat too). It was necessary to replenish the cell with heavy water at regular intervals. The cell was tall and narrow, so that the bubbling action of the gas kept the electrolyte well mixed and of a uniform temperature. Special attention was paid to the purity of the palladium cathode and electrolyte to prevent the build-up of material on its surface, especially after long periods of operation.

The cell was also instrumented with a thermistor to measure the temperature of the electrolyte, and an electrical heater to generate pulses of heat and calibrate the heat loss due to the gas outlet. After calibration, it was possible to compute the heat generated by the reaction.

A constant current was applied to the cell continuously for many weeks, and heavy water was added as necessary. For most of the time, the power input to the cell was equal to the power that went out of the cell within measuring accuracy, and the cell temperature was stable at around 30 °C. But then, at some point (and in some of the experiments), the temperature rose suddenly to about 50 °C without changes in the input power, for durations of 2 days or more. The generated power was calculated to be about 20 times the input power during the power bursts. Eventually the power bursts in any one cell would no longer occur and the cell was turned off.


[edit] History

[edit] Early work
The idea that palladium or titanium might catalyze fusion stems from the special ability of these metals to absorb large quantities of hydrogen (including its deuterium isotope). The hydrogen or deuterium disassociate with the respective positive ions but remain in an anomalously mobile state inside the metal lattice, exhibiting rapid diffusion and high electrical conductivity. The special ability of palladium to absorb hydrogen was recognized in the nineteenth century.

In 1926, two German scientists, F. Paneth and K. Peters, reported the transformation of hydrogen into helium by spontaneous nuclear catalysis when hydrogen is absorbed by finely divided palladium at room temperature.[1] These authors later retracted their report, acknowledging that the helium they measured was due to background from the air.

A year later, Swedish scientist J. Tandberg said that he had fused hydrogen into helium in an electrolytic cell with palladium electrodes. On the basis of his work he applied for a Swedish patent for "a method to produce helium and useful reaction energy". After deuterium was discovered in 1932, Tandberg continued his experiments with heavy water. Due to Paneth and Peters' retraction, Tandberg's patent application was eventually denied.


[edit] Events leading to the announcement
In the 60's, Fleischmann and his team started investigating the possibility that chemical means could influence nuclear processes. Quantum mechanics says that this is not possible, and he started research projects to illustrate inconsistencies of quantum mechanics, and the needs to use quantum electrodynamics instead. By 1983, he had experimental evidences leading him to think that condensed phase systems developed coherent structures up to 1000 Ångström in size, which are best explained by quantum electrodynamics. Impressed by the observation of "cold explosion" by Percy Williams Bridgman in the 30's, his team went on to study the possibility that nuclear processes would develop in such coherent structures. [2]

In 1988 Fleischmann and Pons applied to the US Department of Energy for funding for a larger series of experiments: up to this point they had been running their experiments "out of pocket".

The grant proposal was turned over to several people for peer review, including Steven E. Jones of Brigham Young University. Jones had worked on muon-catalyzed fusion for some time, and had written an article on the topic entitled Cold Nuclear Fusion that had been published in Scientific American in July 1987. He had since turned his attention to the problem of fusion in high-pressure environments, believing it could explain the fact that the interior temperature of the Earth was hotter than could be explained without nuclear reactions, and by unusually high concentrations of helium-3 around volcanoes that implied some sort of nuclear reaction within. At first he worked with diamond anvils on what he referred to as piezonuclear fusion, but then moved to electrolytic cells similar to those being worked on by Fleischmann and Pons. In order to characterize the reactions, Jones had spent considerable time designing and building a neutron counter, one able to accurately measure the tiny numbers of neutrons being produced in his experiments. His team got 'tantalizingly positive' results early January 1989, and they decided in early February to publish their results.

Both teams were in Utah, and met on several occasions to discuss sharing work and techniques. During this time Fleischmann and Pons described their experiments as generating considerable "excess energy", excess in that it could not be explained by chemical reactions alone. If this were true, their device would have considerable commercial value, and should be protected by patents. Jones was measuring neutron flux instead, and seems to have considered it primarily of scientific interest, not commercial. In order to avoid problems in the future, the teams apparently agreed to simultaneously publish their results, although their accounts of their March 6 meeting differ.

In mid-March both teams were ready to publish, and Fleischmann and Jones had agreed to meet at the airport on the 24th to send their papers at the exact same time to Nature by FedEx. However Fleischmann and Pons broke that apparent agreement - they had submitted a paper to the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry on the 11th, and they disclosed their work in the press conference the day before. Jones, apparently furious at being "scooped", faxed in his paper to Nature as soon as he saw the press announcements.[3]


[edit] Sequel of the announcement
The press reported on the experiments widely, and it was one of the front-page items on most newspapers around the world. The immense beneficial implications of the Utah experiments, if they were correct, and the ready availability of the required equipment, led scientists around the world to attempt to repeat the experiments within hours of the announcement.

On April 10, Fleischmann and Pons published their 8-page "preliminary note" in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry. The paper was rushed, very incomplete and contained a clear error with regard to the gamma spectra.

On April 10 a team at Texas A&M University published results of excess heat, and later that day a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology announced neutron production. Both results were widely reported on in the press. However, both teams soon withdrew their results for lack of evidence. For the next six weeks additional competing claims, counterclaims, and suggested explanations kept the topic on the front pages, and led to what some journalists have referred to as "fusion confusion."[4]

On April 12 Pons received a standing ovation from about 7000 chemists at the semi-annual meeting of the American Chemical Society. The University of Utah asked Congress to provide $25 million to pursue the research, and Dr. Pons was scheduled to meet with representatives of President Bush early May.[5]

On May 1 the American Physical Society held a session on cold fusion that ran past midnight; a string of failed experiments were reported. A second session started the next day with other negative reports, and 8 of the 9 leading speakers said that they ruled the Utah claim as dead. Dr. Steven E. Koonin of Caltech called the Utah report a result of "the incompetence and delusion of Pons and Fleischmann". The audience of scientists sat in stunned silence for a moment before bursting into applause. Dr. Douglas R. O. Morrison, a physicist representing CERN, called the entire episode an example of pathological science.[6][7]

By the end of May much of the media attention had faded. This was due not only to the competing results and counterclaims, but also to the limited attention span of modern media. However, while the research effort also cooled to some degree, projects continued around the world.

In July and November 1989, Nature published papers critical of cold fusion which cast the idea of cold fusion out of mainstream science.[8][9]

In November, a special panel formed by the Energy Research Advisory Board (under a charge of the US Department of Energy) reported the result of their investigation into cold fusion. The scientists in the panel found the evidence for cold fusion to be unconvincing. Nevertheless, the panel was "sympathetic toward modest support for carefully focused and cooperative experiments within the present funding system".[10] As 1989 wore on, cold fusion was considered by mainstream scientists to be self-deception, experimental error and even fraud, and was held out as a prime example of pseudoscience. The United States Patent and Trademark Office has rejected most patent applications related to cold fusion since then.

A year later, in July 1990, Fleischmann and Pons corrected the errors from their earlier "preliminary note," and published their detailed 58-page seminal paper "Calorimetry of the Palladium-Deuterium-Heavy Water System," in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry.

Also in 1990, Richard Oriani, professor of physical chemistry emeritus of the University of Minnesota published the first replication of the excess heat effect in his paper, "Calorimetric Measurements of Excess Power Output During the Cathodic Charging of Deuterium Into Palladium," in Fusion Technology. This paper has never been challenged in the scientific literature.

In 1992, the Wilson group from General Electric challenged the Fleischmann-Pons 1990 paper in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry.[11] The Wilson group asserted that the claims of excess heat had been overstated, but they were unable to "prove that no excess heat" was generated. Wilson concluded that the Fleischmann and Pons cell generated approximately 40% excess heat and amounted to 736 mW, more than ten times larger than the error levels associated with the data.

Despite the apparent confirmation by Wilson, Fleischmann and Pons still responded to the Wilson critique and published a rebuttal, also in the same issue of Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry. To this day, Fleischmann and Pons' seminal paper has never been refuted in the scientific literature.


[edit] Moving beyond the initial controversy
The 1990s saw little cold fusion research in the United States, and much of the research during this time period occurred in Europe and Asia. Fleischmann and Pons moved their research laboratory to France, under a grant from the founder of Toyota Motor Corporation. They sued La Republica, an Italian Newspaper, and its journalist for their suggestion that cold fusion was a scientific fraud, but lost the libel case in an Italian court.[12] In 1996 they announced in Nature that they would appeal[13], but they didn't, perhaps because of the reply in Nature.[14]

By 1991, 92 groups of researchers from 10 different countries had reported excess heat, tritium, neutrons or other nuclear effects.[15] Over 3,000 cold fusion papers have been published including about 1,000 in peer-reviewed journals.[16] In March 1995, Dr. Edmund Storms compiled a list of 21 published papers reporting excess heat. [24] Articles have been published in specialized peer reviewed journals such as Physical Review A, Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, and Journal of Fusion Energy.


Charles Bennett examines three "cold fusion" test cells at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USAThe generation of excess heat has been reported by

Michael McKubre, director of the Energy Research Center at SRI International,
Richard A. Oriani (University of Minnesota, in December 1990),
Robert A. Huggins (at Stanford University in March 1990),
Y. Arata (Osaka University, Japan),
T. Mizuno (Hokkaido University, Japan),
T. Ohmori (Japan),
The most common experimental set-ups are the electrolytic (electrolysis) cell and the gas (glow) discharge cell, but many other set-ups have been used. Electrolysis is popular because it was the original experiment and more commonly known way of conducting the cold fusion experiment; gas discharge is often used because it is believed to be the set-up that provides an experimenter a better chance at replication of the excess heat results. The excess heat experimental results reported by T. Ohmori and T. Mizuno (see Mizuno experiment) have come under particular interest by amateur researchers in recent years.

Researchers share their results at the International Conference on Cold Fusion, recently renamed International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science. The conference is held every 12 to 18 months in various countries around the world, and is hosted by The International Society for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science, a scientific organization that was founded as a professional society to support research efforts and to communicate experimental results. A few periodicals emerged in the 1990s that covered developments in cold fusion and related new energy sciences. Researchers have contributed hundreds of papers to an on-line cold fusion library.

Between 1993 and 1998, Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry sponsored a "New Hydrogen Energy Program" of $20 million to research the promise of tapping new hydrogen-based energy sources such as cold fusion. They obtained no significant results. Critics say that the program was poorly run.[17]

In 1994, Dr. David Goodstein described the field as follows:[18]

"Cold Fusion is a pariah field, cast out by the scientific establishment. Between Cold Fusion and respectable science there is virtually no communication at all. Cold fusion papers are almost never published in refereed scientific journals, with the result that those works don't receive the normal critical scrutiny that science requires. On the other hand, because the Cold-Fusioners see themselves as a community under siege, there is little internal criticism. Experiments and theories tend to be accepted at face value, for fear of providing even more fuel for external critics, if anyone outside the group was bothering to listen. In these circumstances, crackpots flourish, making matters worse for those who believe that there is serious science going on here."
In February 2002, a laboratory within the United States Navy released a report that came to the conclusion that the cold fusion phenomenon was in fact real and deserved an official funding source for research. Navy researchers have published more than 40 papers on cold fusion.[19]

In 2004, the United States Department of Energy (USDOE) decided to take another look at cold fusion to determine if their policies towards cold fusion should be altered due to new experimental evidence. They set up a panel on cold fusion. They concluded that, since 1989, significant progress has been made in the sophistication of calorimeters. When asked whether the evidence for power that cannot be attribued to ordinary chemical or solid-state source is compelling or inexistent, the panel was evenly split. When asked about low energy nuclear reactions, two thirds of the panel did not feel that the evidence was conclusive, one found the evidence convincing, and the remainder indicated they were somewhat convinced. Many reviewers noted that poor experiment design, documentation, background control and other similar issues hampered the understanding and interpretation of the results presented. The nearly unanimous opinion of the reviewers was that funding agencies should entertain individual, well-designed proposals for experiments on these 2 questions.[20]


[edit] Mechanism
Main article: Condensed matter nuclear science
Cold fusion's most significant problem in the eyes of many scientists is that current theories describing hot nuclear fusion can not explain how a cold fusion reaction could occur at relatively low temperatures, and that there is currently no accepted theory to explain cold fusion.[21][22] The DOE panel says: "Nuclear fusion at room temperature, of the type discussed in this report, would be contrary to all understanding gained of nuclear reactions in the last half century; it would require the invention of an entirely new nuclear process". Current understanding of hot nuclear fusion shows that the following explanations are not adequate:

Nuclear reaction in general: The average density of deuterium in the palladium rod seems vastly insufficient to force pairs of nuclei close enough for fusion to occur according to mechanisms known to mainstream theories. The average distance is approximately 0.17 nanometers, a distance at which the attractive strong nuclear force cannot overcome the Coulomb repulsion. Actually, deuterium atoms are closer together in D2 gas molecules, which do not exhibit fusion.
Absence of standard nuclear fusion products: if the excess heat were generated by the fusion of 2 deuterium atoms, the most probable outcome would be the generation of either a tritium atom and a proton, or a 3He and a neutron. The level of neutrons, tritium and 3He actually observed in Fleischmann-Pons experiment have been well below the level expected in view of the heat generated, implying that these fusion reactions cannot explain it.
Fusion of deuterium into helium 4: if the excess heat were generated by the hot fusion of 2 deuterium atoms into 4He, a reaction which is normally extremely rare, gamma rays and helium would be generated. Again, insufficient levels of helium and gamma rays have been observed to explain the excess heat, and there is no known mechanism to explain how gamma rays could be converted into heat.
In order for fusion to occur, the electrostatic force (Coulomb repulsion) that repels the positively charged nuclei must be overcome. Once the distance between the nuclei becomes comparable to one femtometre, the attractive strong interaction takes over and the fusion may occur. However, bringing the nuclei so close together requires an energy on the order of 10 MeV per nucleus, whereas the energies of chemical reactions are on the order of several electron-volts; it is hard to explain where the required energy would come from in room-temperature matter. Nuclei are so far apart in a metal lattice that it is hard to believe that the distant atoms could somehow facilitate the fusion reaction: the deuterium nuclei are further apart in a palladium cathode than in a molecule of heavy water. Moreover, when fusion occurs, a large amount of energy is normally released as gamma rays or energetic protons or neutrons: there is no known mechanism that would release this energy as heat within the relatively small metal lattice.[23] Robert F. Heeter said that the direct conversion of fusion energy into heat is not possible because of energy and momentum conservation and the laws of special relativity.[24] Other critics say that until the observations are satisfactorily explained, there is no reason to believe that the effects have a nuclear rather than a non-nuclear origin.[25]

The following mechanisms have been proposed to explain the discrepancies:

Bose-Einstein condensate-like: Theoretical work suggests that deuterons in shallow potential wells such as may be found in a palladium metal lattice may exhibit a cooperative behaviour similar to a Bose–Einstein condensate [citation needed]. This would allow nuclei to react despite the coulomb barrier, due to tunneling and superposition. However, traditional Bose condensates only occur at much lower temperatures (close to absolute zero).
Mossbauer effect-like: Theoretical work suggests that the energy of fusion can be transmitted to the entire metal lattice rather than a single atom, preventing the emission of gamma rays [citation needed]. It is interesting to compare this to the Mossbauer effect, in which the recoil energy of a nuclear transition is absorbed by a crystal lattice as a whole, rather than by a single atom. However, the energy involved must be less than that of a phonon, on the order of ?? keV, compared with 23 MeV in nuclear fusion.
Multi-body interactions: The following reaction, if proven to exists, would not generate gamma rays: d+d+d+d -> 8Be -> 2 4He (Storms 2001).
Enhanced cross section; neutron formation; particle-wave transformation; resonance, tunneling and screening; exotic particles; formation of proton or deuteron clusters; formation of electron clusters. (Storms 2001)
Deuterons embedded in palladium could settle at points and in channels within the metal's electron orbitals which substantially increase the likelihood of deuteron collisions. (Jones, S.E., et al. (1989) "Observation of Cold Nuclear Fusion in Condensed Matter," Nature, 338, 737-740.) V.A. Filimonov and his colleagues in Russia have described this as a combination of deuteron cluster formation, shock wave fronts involving phase boundaries, and the directional propagation of solitons. (See also Zhang, W.-S. et al., 1999, 2000, and 2004.)

[edit] Controversy
A majority of scientists consider current cold fusion research to be of questionable validity, while proponents argue that they are conducting valid experiments that challenge mainstream science. Here are the main arguments in the controversy.


[edit] Reproducibility of the result
Cold fusion researchers have reported the production of excess heat in their experiments. However, this result is not consistent, and its exact cause is unknown. The reproducibility of the result will remain the main issue in the Cold Fusion controversy until a scientist designs an experiment that is fully reproducible by following a recipe, or that generates power continuously rather than sporadically.

On the other hand, the 1989 DOE panel said: "Even a single short but valid cold fusion period would be revolutionary. As a result, it is difficult convincingly to resolve all cold fusion claims since, for example, any good experiment that fails to find cold fusion can be discounted as merely not working for unknown reasons.".[26] It is not uncommon for a not-yet-understood phenomenon to be difficult to control, and to bring erratic results. On the contrary, occasional observations of new events, by qualified experimentalists, can in some cases be the preliminary steps leading to recognized discoveries.


[edit] Energy source vs power store
While the output power is higher than the input power during the power burst, the power balance over the whole experiment does not show significant imbalances. Since the mechanism under the power burst is not known, one cannot say whether energy is really produced, or simply stored during the early stages of the experiment (loading of deuterium in the Palladium cathode) for later release during the power burst.

A "power store" discovery would have much less value than an "energy source" one, especially if the stored power can only be released in the form of heat.


[edit] Other kinds of fusion
A variety of other methods are known to effect nuclear fusion. Some are "cold" in the strict sense as no part of the material is hot (except for the reaction products), some are "cold" in the limited sense that the bulk of the material is at a relatively low temperature and pressure but the reactants are not, and some are "hot" fusion methods that create macroscopic regions of very high temperature and pressure.

Fusion with low-energy reactants:
Muon-catalyzed fusion occurs at ordinary temperatures. It was studied in detail by Steven Jones in the early 1980s. It has not been reported to produce net energy. Because of the energy required to create muons, their 2.2 µs half-life, and the chance that muons will bind to new helium nuclei and thus stop catalyzing fusion, net energy production from this reaction is not believed to be possible.
Fusion with high-energy reactants in relatively cold condensed matter: (Energy losses from the small hot spots to the surrounding cold matter will generally preclude any possibility of net energy production.)
Pyroelectric fusion was reported in April 2005 by a team at UCLA. The scientists used a pyroelectric crystal heated from −34 to 7 °C, combined with a tungsten needle to produce an electric field of about 25 gigavolts per meter to ionize and accelerate deuterium nuclei into an erbium deuteride target. Though the energy of the deuterium ions generated by the crystal has not been directly measured, the authors used 100 keV (a temperature of about 109 K) as an estimate in their modeling.[25] At these energy levels, two deuterium nuclei can fuse together to produce a helium-3 nucleus, a 2.45 MeV neutron and bremsstrahlung. This experiment has been repeated successfully, and other scientists have confirmed the results. Although it makes a useful neutron generator, the apparatus is not intended for power generation since it requires far more energy than it produces. [26] [27] [28] [29]
Antimatter-initialized fusion uses small amounts of antimatter to trigger a tiny fusion explosion. This has been studied primarily in the context of making nuclear pulse propulsion feasible. This is not near becoming a practical power source, due to the cost of manufacturing antimatter alone.
In sonoluminescence, acoustic shock waves create temporary bubbles that collapse shortly after creation, producing very high temperatures and pressures. In 2002, Rusi P. Taleyarkhan reported the possibility that bubble fusion occurs in those collapsing bubbles. As of 2005, experiments to determine whether fusion is occurring give conflicting results. If fusion is occurring, it is because the local temperature and pressure are sufficiently high to produce hot fusion.
Fusion with macroscopic regions of high energy plasma:
"Standard" "hot" fusion, in which the fuel reaches tremendous temperature and pressure inside a fusion reactor, nuclear weapon, or star.
The Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor is a tabletop device in which fusion occurs. This fusion comes from high effective temperatures produced by electrostatic acceleration of ions. The device can be built inexpensively, but it too is unable to produce a net power output. These devices have a valid use however, and are commercially sold as a source of neutrons. The ion energy distribution is generally supposed to be nearly mono-energetic, but Todd Rider showed in his doctoral thesis for Massachusetts Institute of Technology that such non-Maxwellian distributions require too much recirculating power to be practically sustainable