http://www.bobpark.org/
Friday, March 23, 2007
1. MARCH MADNESS: COLD FUSION PEAKS AROUND THE VERNAL EQUINOX.
On this day 18 years ago, the University of Utah announced the discovery of
cold fusion without giving any technical details
<http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN89/wn032489.html>(WN 24 Mar 89) . The
peak came three weeks later when Stanley Pons received a standing ovation
at the annual ACS Meeting in Dallas, but by June it was over. The Utah
research was exposed as a pitiful embarrassment. For years the faithful
sulked at their own annual meetings held at swank resorts around the world.
There they could congratulate each other on their progress. Each year
another experiment would be hailed as proof, but never survived
replication. A few years ago, however, the bolder of the faithful began to
reemerge from the dark, giving papers at professional society meetings.
They now prefer to call their field Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR),and
they held a session at the APS March Meeting in Denver. Next week they will
hold a session at the ACS Meeting in Chicago. Once again, there is a new
experiment that is being hailed as proof-at-last. Who knows, maybe this
will be the one.
