New evidence from labs worldwide suggests that "cold fusion" is indeed real and should be studied seriously, but most news media and scientists are ignoring it.
That's what two scientists - Dr. Giuliano Preparata of the University of Milan, Italy, and Dr. Eugene F. Mallove, an MIT instructor who wrote a new book about cold fusion controversies - said at the National Press Club on Friday.They also called for congressional hearings on the new evidence; for rejection of past Energy Department studies that doubted cold fusion based on early studies; and for the United States to begin seriously funding cold fusion research.
The calls came almost exactly three years after the March 23, 1989, announcement that University of Utah chemist Stanley Pons and his British colleague, Martin Fleischmann, claimed to achieve "cold fusion" at room temperature in a table-top experiment in Utah.
Fusion - which powers the stars through the joining of hydrogen atoms to form helium - is usually thought to take place only under extreme heat, pressure or magnetic fields.
But Pons and Fleischmann said that when electrical currents make a form of hydrogen, called deuterium, and interact with metals such as palladium, fusion sometimes occurs and excess energy is given off. They said that could someday be harnessed to provide clean, cheap, safe power.
Preparata and Mallove, who spoke on behalf of Cold Fusion Research Advocates of Chamblee, Ga., said some of the best new evidence supporting cold fusion is again coming from Pons and Fleischmann, who are conducting Japanese-funded research in Nice, France.
Mallove said they report experiments using a silver-palladium alloy were able to bring electrochemical solutions to boiling. He said far too much energy is being reported to have come through normal chemical reactions, so it must be fusion. Preparata said Pons has said he may publicly display the device used by the end of the year.
Preparata said "it's a shame" that Pons and Fleischmann were "essentially driven from the country" because of criticism over findings that challenged established scientific theories.
Mallove likened Pons and Fleischmann to the Wright brothers, who also moved their early flying experiments from the United States to France because of controversy. "They flew in 1903," he said. "But it wasn't until 1908 that the U.S. government acknowledged they had a flying machine."
Mallove and Preparata said scientists are ignoring new findings either because they are too intransigent to entertain new theories, too proud to back off years of strong criticism of cold fusion or too worried it may take money from "hot fusion" research.Mallove said an example of U.S. ignoring of new cold fusion results is that the Japanese version of Scientific American recently reported on them at length, but the article was not included in English versions of the magazine.
Preparata said some other new work suggesting cold fusion is real includes that done by Dr. Michael McKubre at the Stanford Research Institute, during which a Jan. 2 explosion killed a fellow researcher.
Preparata said that after talking to other researchers, he believes "that explosion occurred due to a runaway of the nuclear type that Pons and Fleischmann warned against."
He said experiments at the U.S. Naval Weapons Center at China Lake, Calif., and in Japan and Italy are also achieving startling reports of excess energy that could only be caused by nuclear reactions.
Mallove said more than 100 recent experiments in such diverse areas as India, Taiwan, China, Russia, Mexico, Bulgaria and Spain also support cold fusion.
Preparata said such experiments were discussed last July in Como, Italy, at the 2nd Annual Conference on Cold Fusion.
Unlike the first conference - which was held in Salt Lake City, and which Preparata called a media circus - few reporters attended, and serious discussion led to the conclusion "that strange results were indeed real things and . . . research effort should be escalated."
Mallove also released a petition from 240 scientists calling for congressional hearings on new cold fusion evidence.
Among those signing were noted author Arthur C. Clarke; Nobel laureate Julian Schwinger; Melvin Miles of the Naval Weapons Center at China Lake; India Atomic Energy Commission Chairman P.K. Iyengar; and Hideo Ikegami of the Japanese National Institute for Fusion Science.