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Cold Fusion Research Paper

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Cold Fusion Research Paper

As the world becomes more aware of the growing need for a more abundant energy supply, one energy source has been swept under the carpet and virtually ignored. This source is cold fusion. Cold fusion is:

“A reaction that occurs under certain conditions in supersaturated metal hydrides (metals with lots of hydrogen or heavy hydrogen dissolved in them). It produces excess heat, helium, and a very low level of neutrons. In some experiments the host metal has been transmuted into other elements. Cold fusion has been seen with palladium, titanium, nickel and with some superconducting ceramics.” (Infinite)

In 1989 Stanley Pons and Martain Fleischmann announced to the press that they had discovered cold …show more content…

If they had gone to the community before the press, a new scientific discovery might have been developed and researched, however there are only a few believers in cold fusion that are still researching it today.

A general way physicists determine if a reaction is nuclear or chemical is via tritium (an isotope of hydrogen) production. Chemical reactions do not produce tritium, while most nuclear reactions do. It is important to note that some forms of fusion (nuclear reaction) can occur where tritium is not produced. (Matejowsky) Pons and Fleishmann claimed to produce a few tritium atoms, but their claimed results were never replicated because they did not publish their experiment. The exact method they used was not replicated until it was too late and cold fusion already had a bad name and been renounced. Even once the method they used had been reproduced the results were not consistent enough to convince the community. This resulted in the scientific community believing the entire idea and concept of cold fusion to be a hoax. As a result, any young scientists entering the community were turned away from cold fusion as was observed at the Seventh International Conference on Cold Fusion. “The younger ones had bailed years ago, fearing career damage from the cold fusion stigma.” (Platt) Most scientists that thought the possibility of cold fusion was real either left it

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