Cold fusion raises its head above the parapet again

Monday, March 23, 2009 - 10:51 in Physics & Chemistry

20 years after bringing ignominy and academic exile to its founding scientists, the idea of free energy at room temperature is making a comebackAmerican scientists claim to have discovered fresh evidence for "cold fusion", the controversial and discredited process that was once touted as the answer to the world's energy problems.Pamela Mosier-Boss, a researcher at the US Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Centre in San Diego, said her group had detected telltale signs that nuclear fusion reactions normally found in the centre of the sun were afoot in a simple bench-top device.The results were announced today at a meeting of the American Chemical Society to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the first enthusiastic – and ultimately doomed – claims for cold fusion at the University of Utah.When university researchers Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann first claimed to have created a "star in a jar" in 1989, scientists were...

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