Just when cold fusion was declared all but dead, Utah fusion researchers this week received a new lease on life from a National Science Foundation panel.
In the same week, Utah taxpayers, who for the most part have supported the University of Utah scientists, also received some good news.The U. isn't going to ask them for any more money to fund the National Cold Fusion Institute, which this year received $5 million from state coffers.
James Brophy, U. vice president for research, told legislators he's confident that by the end of the fiscal year, 10 to 20 corporate or private participants will invest in the institute.
"We have delayed making formal proposals to these companies until we have got something to show," he said. "We (also) haven't made a formal proposal because we don't know how to price the experiments."
Brophy and U. President Chase N. Peterson went to Capitol Hill to deliver the first of several expected updates on the state's investment in fusion - a 25,000-square-foot institute in the U.'s Research Park.
The center has been touted as an international gathering place where scientists can capitalize on the research of B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, who seven months ago stunned the scientific world when they reported achieving nuclear fusion - the forcing together of atomic nuclei - at room temperature.
Stung by criticism from disbelievers since their March 23 announcement, the scientists were given a renewed vote of confidence this week when a panel of prominent scientists concluded that effects from fusion experiments "cannot be explained as a result of artifacts, equipment of human errors."
The panel said the research should be taken seriously and urged the government to allocate money for fusion research - a recommendation that would have galled a Department of Energy advisory committee three months ago.
In July, committee members said no persuasive evidence of cold fusion then existed and no more research should be funded.
Why the turn-around?
Brophy told lawmakers that 20 to 30 labs around the world have now confirmed one or more aspects of the Pons/Fleischmann experiments.
"That is, they have seen low levels of sustained excess heat for weeks and months. They have seen occasional large heat excursions for hours or days and nuclear byproducts such as tritium and neutrons."
Many of these fusion researchers, Brophy said, will work in the U. fusion lab for periods of time - for a week to a year - as the program proceeds.
Meanwhile, a 20-person, goal-orientated, multidisciplinary research team is executing a research program designed to understand fusion experiments and explore their range of applications.
The institute, Brophy said, is also engaged in a nationwide recruitment program, which will likely result in researchers from Utah State University and Brigham Young University working with U. scientists.
But legislators' concern focused on the whereabouts of the fusion co-discoverers. Where, they asked, do Pons and Fleischmann fit into the institute's research program?
Brophy reassured lawmakers that the fusion pioneers are members of the scientific advisory team that formulated the institute's research program.
"But they also want to have what Dr. Fleischmann calls their own little `other ridiculous experiments' going on in the basement of the chemistry building," Brophy said. "That is quite appropriate. You not only need team research; you need the individual creativity characteristic of a university.
"Pons and Fleischmann are not team-research players."
But Brophy said the electrochemists continue to be advisers to institute researchers, with whom they share their scientific data - but only that which they choose to share.
When asked what their current results are, Brophy said he doesn't know.