Despite what appears to be long shot odds, watchdogs of the state's $5 million investment in fusion were assured Friday that taxpayers' gamble will pay off.
Fusion guru B. Stanley Pons told members of the State Fusion/-Energy Advisory Council that a demonstration device that will give out "unequivocal large amounts of heat for extended periods of time" will soon be under construction.Perhaps equally as remarkable, a University of Utah physicist admitted that he and co-workers are now seeing what appears to be copious numbers of low energy X-rays, a nuclear reaction byproduct.
"I hate to say this is an open meeting, because there are so many loose ends . . . I may have to come to you three weeks from now and say it was all a false alarm - that because we were operating our detectors in a region for which they were not designed, we were fooled. And there wasn't anything there," said Haven E. Bergeson, professor of physics.
"However, it does have the appearance - I have to say appearance - right now that there is something very interesting happening . . . I wish I could tell you just what it is. We are working very hard to find out. But I hope you will forgive me if I come to you three months from now and say we were victims of a cruel hoax."
Unexplained anomalies
Bergeson, who is conducting experiments at the U.'s National Cold Fusion Institute, added that his team is in an "awkward position" of trying to find what has troubled physicists - emissions of neutrons and gamma rays and other byproducts of a nuclear reaction.
Theories to explain what they are
seeing, he said, "still need to be fleshed out."
Friday's announcement was ample promise for committee members who hadn't heard an encouraging note from physicists since March 23, 1989 - the day Pons and co-researcher Martin Fleischmann jolted the nation with the announcement they had created nuclear fusion in a simple electrolytic cell.
Today, the electrochemists still face a largely hostile community of scientists, skeptical of the claims that defy traditional understanding of the fusion phenomenon.
"It is difficult, or impossible right now to explain some of the excess heat phenomenon and the fact that nuclear byproducts are present in much smaller amounts than they ought to be if there were traditional fusion going on," Fritz Will told council members gathered at the institute.
"The fact that this is not so is, of course, what is so very troubling to the community of physicists because they maintain that `what I cannot understand must be wrong.' "
Theory comes later
But Will, institute director, believes that in good science a good experimental result comes first. Then it is up to the theoreticians to explain the experimental results.
"Let us not be surprised that it will take the theoreticians a long time before they will be able to come up with a self-consistent theory that explains the many multifaceted experimental results that have been explained."
Several theories will likely be presented March 29-31 when the institute, in conjunction with the first anniversary of the Pons-Fleischmann announcement, will hold its First Annual Cold Fusion Conference.
The conference is expected to attract more than 38 presenters and 200 participants to the institute, which Friday donned a new awning, new displays - a new look - for the international visitors.
Not all of them will be believers.
Europeans drop fusion studies
Among the harsh critics of the phenomenon is Douglas Morrison, a physicist at the CERN nuclear physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, who attended Friday's meeting.
"In Europe, as far as I know, there is no one now doing any experiments on cold fusion," said Morrison, editor of the "Cold Fusion News" he transmits by electronic mail over computer networks to scientists worldwide. "Many experiments have been done (in Europe) and most were negative. Those that were initially positive have stopped giving positive results, and the experimenters consider that there is no point in continuing."
Positive results from researchers in India and Japan will also be presented at the conference, which U. officials are confident will be a day of reckoning for fusion researchers.
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Mounting legal bills
Deputy Attorney General Joe Tesch told the State Fusion/Energy Advisory Council Friday $363.745 of the $500,000 that the state allocated for legal matters has been spent on attorney fee and fusion patent applications.
The two firms now handling fusion matters, he said, anticipate billing the University of Utah $30,000 a month - which means the rest of the $500,000 will be gone by June.
When asked if the U's National Cold Fusion Institute could then pay attorney fees, institute director Fritz Will said "no."
Unless Will raises money from private or federal agencies, the institute could close within a year when the state money runs out.