Chemist Martin Fleischmann, center of cold fusion controversy, dies at 85

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Chemist Martin Fleischmann, center of cold fusion controversy, dies at 85

By Associated Press, Published: August 7

NEW YORK — British chemist Martin Fleischmann, who stunned the world by announcing that he had achieved nuclear fusion in a glass bottle, has died after a long illness. He was 85.

His son Nicholas said he died Friday at his home in Tisbury, England. He had suffered from Parkinson’s disease for many years.

Fleischmann was one of the world’s leading electrochemists when he and partner Stanley Pons proclaimed in 1989 that they had sparked fusion, the nuclear process that heats the sun, in an experiment at the University of Utah.

The reaction they reported occurred at room temperature and appeared to give off little radiation, an enormous contrast to the still-ongoing quest to harness fusion by conventional means, in billion-dollar reactors at temperatures of millions of degrees.

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Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/chemist-martin-fleischmann-center-of-cold-fusion-controversy-dies-at-85/2012/08/07/8149c9c2-e0b2-11e1-8d48-2b1243f34c85_story.html

[yellowcanine]

1. George Will would like us to forget that he wrote a fawning column at the time....

basically celebrating the "fact" that a couple of guys with a picnic cooler could upstage all of the fancy pants scientists with their big government grants, etc. To this day I do not believe Will has retracted that column nor any other and of course he is on board with the climate change deniers.

[freethought]

2. First of all, it's not fusion.

60 Minutes did a profile on Fleischmann and Pons some 20 years after their discovery. It's not fusion, calling it that was a mistake. It's a kind of catalytic reaction and it's still not completely understood.
What was shown was that the U.S. Navy investigated the phenominon and actually submitted a written report. In short the report stated there was something to definitely be looked at more closely by researchers. The report did not come out and say they understood what the reaction was, only that some kind of reaction was happening and it merited further study. I believe Pons is still working on it and he tends to think it has something to do with the palladium metal, another rare earth element, used. It's not a reliable reaction. Have set the experiment up. Sometimes the reaction starts quickly, other times it may not start for days. It would be great thing if they could figure it out to work consistently.