Too Good To Be True

1. Too Good To Be True The Strange, But True, Story of Cold Fusion

2. The Announcement • March 23, 1989 – Salt Lake City • “Two scientists have successfully created a sustained nuclear fusion reaction at room temperature in a chemistry laboratory at the University of Utah.” • “The greatest invention since the discovery of fire.”

3. Pons and Fleischmann Dr. Stanley Pons Dr. Martin Fleischman

4. p n A Nuclear Fusion Primer • In nuclear fusion two light nuclei are combined into a heavier nucleus, releasing energy. • Deuterium, 2H, can be used in D-D fusion to release approximately 4.00 MeV per fusion. Deuterium

5. p p p p n n n n p n n n p p 3H 3He p n Two Pathways D + D  p + 3H D + D  n + 3He

6. Energy Of Fusion • In the D + D  p + 3H reaction most of the energy (3 MeV) is carried away by the proton. • In the D + D  n + 3He reaction the neutron carries most of the energy (2.45 MeV).

7. Hot Fusion • Because of the electrostatic repulsion between the deuterium nuclei high temperatures are used to bring them together to fuse. • Magnetically confined plasmas are used to generate the high temperatures.

8. Hot Fusion: Tokomak

9. The Cold Fusion Machine • The Cold fusion “machine” was a beaker of “heavy water” (D2O) with a couple of electrodes and a small power supply.

10. The Cold Fusion Experiment How did they do that?

11. The Cold Fusion Cell • The anode is a coil of platinum and the cathode a palladium rod. • The cell is filled with heavy water and immersed in a water bath. • LiOD is added to the heavy water as the electrolyte.

12. The Cold Fusion Process • The electric current splits the D2O molecules into D2 gas and OD– ions at the cathode. • The ions migrate to the anode and form D2O and O2. • Palladium has a great affinity for hydrogen and deuterium ions are absorbed into the cathode – up to a density of thousands of times that of deuterium gas. • The closely packed deuterium nuclei fuse and release heat, neutrons, protons, etc.

13. The Signs of Fusion • Excess Heat* • Neutrons* • Tritium* (?) • 3He • Protons

14. The P & F Evidence Heat and Light

15. Excess Heat

16. Neutrons via Gammas • Some neutrons would be absorbed by the H nuclei in the water releasing a 2.2 MeV gamma- ray. • P & F looked for these gammas.

17. Gamma-Rays • The gamma-ray peak as presented in the first P & F paper submitted to the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry (JEC).

18. The Reaction Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one. -Charles Mackay Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,1841

19. A Media Explosion • Cold Fusion became a instant media event. • P & F were interviewed on all the major news networks. • Congress scheduled hearings on CF.

20. The Scramble to Confirm or Refute • Numerous physics and chemistry labs began experiments using the limited information available. • Large scale efforts at MIT, Los Alamos, Harwell, Yale, and Caltech were launched.

21. Confirmations • Jones, et. al. (BYU Neutrons) • Georgia Tech – Neutrons • Texas A & M – Excess Heat • Seattle – Tritium • Small colleges and independent researchers • Bob’s Discount House of Knowledge

22. Doubts • Why are they still breathing? • Heat vs. neutron output. • Are the nuclei really any closer? • Where are the control runs? • What’s wrong with that peak? • The MIT gang goes to the video replay.

23. Gamma-Rays • The gamma-ray peak as presented in the first P & F paper submitted to the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry (JEC). 2200

24. The Video Peak

25. Comparing Peaks

26. The APS Meeting • Caltech: Steve Koonin and Nathan Lewis • Questions about the Calorimetry • Closed cell vs. Open cell • Raw data? • A lot of negative results.

27. Excess Heat

28. Retractions • Georgia Tech – Temperature (not Neutrons) • Texas A & M – Ungrounded thermistor (not Excess Heat ) • Seattle – “Remind me how a mass spec works again.” (not Tritium )

29. Harwell • Working with advice from Fleischmann the Harwell Nuclear Lab conducted the most extensive set of cold fusion tests in the world. • Cells were tested in numerous configurations for heat, neutrons, gammas, tritium, and Helium-3. • No evidence for nuclear processes in any of the experiments. • “Sometimes brilliant people have mad ideas” – J. Williams, Dir. Harwell Lab

30. The Utah Physicists • Mike Salamon lead a team of physicists from the University of Utah to make extensive radiation measurements in Pons’ laboratory. • Na(I) detectors searched for Gamma-rays from neutrons, and protons. • No signal was seen above background after 831 hours of measurement. • “upper bound of 10 picowatts of energy generated by any known nuclear process”

31. What Happened? And what can we learn?

32. Pons & Fleischmann • Was it a fraud? • The rush to announce. • “The explosion.” • Isolation from peers. • “Sometimes brilliant people have mad ideas.”

33. The Science Community • Meeting expectations. • The good, the bad and the normal distribution. • “Seek simplicity, and distrust it” A. N. Whitehead