Is the “Cold Fusion” back? Now the research goes to the US Navy
After more than three decades of heated debates in specialized physics groups and fringe research circles, the cold fusion controversy (sometimes called low-energy nuclear reactions or LENR) has refused to go away. On the one hand, there is a lack of coherent and scientifically reproducible bases for the supporters of the phenomenon. On the other hand, vehement detractors cannot completely ignore the anomalous results that have continued to emerge, such as the evidence of the so-called "lattice-confinement fusion" cited last year by a group at NASA's Glenn Research Center.
Scientists from the Naval Surface Warfare Center , Indian Head Division, have brought together a group of laboratories from the Navy, the Army, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to try to resolve the debate. The presence of NIST is necessary to provide an accurate measurement of any minimal energy production. Together, the labs will conduct experiments in an attempt to establish if there really is something to the idea of cold fusion, if it is just strange chemical interactions, or if some other phenomenon is taking place in these controversial experiments.
In 1989, electrochemist Stanley Pons and chemist Martin Fleischmann published the results of experiments in which they claimed to observe anomalous heat, as well as byproducts of fusion such as neutrons, in a simple table-top setup at room temperature involving palladium and water. heavy . The claim was, to put it mildly, huge. Melting is typically a high temperature, high pressure phenomenon. It requires a star or, if you are determined to make it happen on Earth, huge magnets and a lot of power. Yet the promise of cheap, secure, and abundant energy was soon shattered when the vast majority of scientists failed to replicate their findings.
In the following years the research continued and there were some unexplainable phenomena, normally called LERN, Low Energy Nuclear reaction, which, however, could not be inserted within a coherent scientific theory, whether chemical or physical. Thirty years later the phenomenon has not yet been clarified, but we hope that finally the US military laboratories will unravel the mystery, also to provide a possible non-dangerous and low-cost energy source.
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The article Returns the "Cold Fusion"? Now the research goes to the US Navy comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/ritorna-la-fusione-fredda-ora-la-ricerca-passa-alla-marina-usa/ on Fri, 30 Jul 2021 06:00:27 +0000.