They may not be ready to call it cold fusion, but the consensus of more than 200 scientists attending a conference in Salt Lake City is that there are phenomena and it's time to move ahead.
"Thank you for advancing us so much farther down the road," Martin Fleischmann of Britain's Southampton University said Saturday at the conclusion of the three-day conference. "We are at a stage where we want to optimize the situation and broaden our base where we make judgments."Fleischmann said cold fusion will be achieved when scientists see bursts in tritium,
neutrons, X-rays and gamma rays and have added necessary ingredients of "dubions" - for the doubters - to the puzzle.
Richard Petrasso of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an outspoken cold-fusion skeptic, said Fleischmann left off the particle "skepticon" for Petrasso's role.
"I'm still skeptical, but I think there are some exciting things that need to be explained," he said.
Steven Jones, a Brigham Young University physicist who has researched cold fusion since 1986, said, `I've been here three days and the picture is still not clear, but from the conference rose questions that we can all think about."
B. Stanley Pons, Fleischmann's partner in the University of Utah's discovery of cold nuclear fusion at room temperature, described the conference - sponsored by the state-funded National Cold Fusion Institute - as "a fair and open conference."
"It can do nothing but help science. I think it is now clear that there is something. If the atmosphere at this meeting continues, it should move us along faster."
He did, however, say articles published in Nature magazine discrediting cold-fusion research could hinder its pace. A Nature editorial published March 29 bid "Farewell (not fond) to cold fusion," calling cold fusion a diminishing focus for professional belief.
But believers say the conference has taken the chill off cold fusion.
"I hope next time we meet we will have moved beyond this point and gone further down the list and gotten a handle on the reaction productions, hear of further new experiments based on the sketchy theory that we have, or theories fully fledged as they develop," Fleischmann said.
John Bockris of Texas A&M University said scientists should look for heat, tritium, gamma rays and perhaps neutrons in the same experiments. "To correlate them seems to be one of the most important things we can do."
He said he is willing to stick his head out and agree that the excess heat from cold-fusion experiments cannot be explained in any known chemistry.
But skeptics weren't as quick to say that excess heat means cold nuclear fusion.
"I don't buy that," Jones said. "I'm sure that neutrons are not there along with the heat."
Stephen Kellogg, with the California Institute of Technology, said he would like to be Alice in Wonderland and "accept so many impossible things before breakfast. I may be willing to accept one miracle, but what I see from this conference is that the various groups that are reporting positive results are at variance with each other. You can't all be right. Who among you is wrong?"
Giuliano Preparata of the University of Milano, Italy, said he also would like to be Alice in Wonderland and look through the looking glass.
"The problem here is that there are complicated procedures, and we don't really understand the reproducibility," he said. "I think we should have the courage to say if we feel so that it is cold fusion. It has been proven to the extent that this phenomena are real although they are not controllable, but there is ample evidence that cold fusion is a physical reality and the world is well-advised to take it seriously. There are too many serious experiments that prove it beyond a reasonable doubt."
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(Chart)
Positive fusion results
TRITIUM
Pons and Fleischman (U. of U.) yes
Jones (BYU) don't know
Other scientists who have duplicated some
spect of the Pons-Fleischman experiment yes: 14
don't know: 8
no: 1
NEUTRONS
Pons andFleischman (U.) don't know
Jones (BYU) yes
Others yes: 12
don't know: 10
probable: 1
HEAT
Pons and Fleischman (U.) yes
Jones (BYU) don't know
Others yes: 11
don't know: 11
no response: 1