Rep. Wayne Owens, D-Utah, is trying to warm up interest in cold fusion funding in Congress.
He gave a floor speech Tuesday and is sending letters and newspaper clippings to members of the House about last week's statement from a panel of distinguished scientists that new experiments show "something strange" is indeed happening, and further research is needed."Cold fusion is warming up," Owens said on the House floor Tuesday. "After months of ridicule and satire, the scientific community has now taken notice of this phenomenon."
Many in Congress had written off cold fusion after a Department of Energy draft report last July said no significant proof of cold fusion had been found and that it saw no further need of additional research.
But as Owens' letter to House members said, "Early failures by some scientists have been replaced by later successes. At least one experiment has conclusively shown that excess heat and large amounts of tritium, a telltale nuclear product, were produced at the same time - a breakthrough in cold-fusion research."
Owens added, "Although the phenomenon may not be fusion as it is commonly understood, something is clearly happening and scientific curiosity has been revitalized. And although the issue is still not settled, there is increasing evidence that (researchers B. Stanley) Pons and (Martin) Fleischmann and other proponents of this little-understood process may yet be vindicated."
"As Mark Twain might have written, `The reports of the death of cold fusion have been greatly exaggerated.' "
Owens began his cold-fusion publicity campaign in Congress after a meeting with Pons and Fleischmann in Salt Lake City on Monday.
"We meet periodically to keep in touch. We have usually met in bad times, but this time we decided to meet when good things were happening," he said.