Today in Technology History
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March 23
On March 23, 1989, two researchers announced a shocking discovery: "cold fusion."
Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons (pictured) were chemists at the University of Utah who, starting in 1980, spent $100,000 of their own money to pay for peculiar electrochemical research. Their experiments were simple: they bathed a metal electrode in a test tube filled with "heavy water," which contains deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen. After letting the metal electrode absorb a great deal of deuterium, the researchers passed an electric current through it. Fleischmann and Pons said their experiment generated heat, which they interpreted as a sign that the deuterium nuclei had fused together.
Click above to see Pons & Fleischman in their lab. This was startling news. Scientists believed nuclear fusion requires extremely hot conditions -- like stars, or hydrogen bombs. But if Fleischmann and Pons could create fusion at room temperature (hence the name "cold fusion") it would change everything: Fusion could cheaply generate an endless supply of power.
It was too good to be true. After a furious burst of media interest, reports began to trickle in from scientists around the world who failed to reproduce the experiment. Nearly no one could duplicate the results, and a government report found no "convincing evidence" for cold fusion. Within a few years, the new cold fusion labs were shut down, and Fleischmann and Pons moved to Europe.
True believers still argue that cold fusion works but a conspiracy -- supposedly organized by the oil industry -- crushed the truth. Meanwhile, scientists are still researching "hot" fusion and other potential sources of energy.
Related links:
Click here to read the Energy Department report that found no "convincing evidence that useful sources of energy will result from the phenomena attributed to cold fusion."
Click here for a 1998 Wired magazine article which includes interviews with several cold fusion researchers.
Many of the hard-core believers of cold fusion today read Infinite Energy magazine.
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