It's Not Cold Fusion... But It's Something
Scientific American Blog has an interesting article about the Fleischmann–Pons experiment. For those who don't remember, Fleischmann was world class scientist who claimed to have discovered a way to safe room temperature nuclear physics. The media dubbed it as cold fusion. Speaking from memory, I don't think they ever actually called their experiment as cold fusion, however, they seemed to have believed that was the case. Regardless, they kept the details of their experiment secret and kept their cards close to their chest because they wanted to patent and benefit from it. As a result, most scientist were unable to duplicate the experiment and these two got crucified in the media and in scientific circles. They eventually left US for France and continued their work, but not much came out of it till after Fleischmann's death.
Well, it seems that you can make safe nuclear reaction at room temperatures and generate enough heat to boil microscopic fragments of the metal. But it is not Cold Fusion (few body interaction) but rather "low-energy nuclear reactions" or LENR. That is a many-body particle physics. So ultimately, although Fleischmann did not achieve what had set out to do, his work did lead to other exciting research areas that may revolutionize safe energy. Too bad he did not live long enough to see this.
Here's the article from SciAm: blogs.scientificamerican.com
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