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Cold fusion is a name given to a controversial field of research which investigates the possibility of nuclear reactions at conditions near room temperature and atmospheric pressure.

The first report of such an experiment was published by M. Fleischmann and S. Pons from the University of Utah in 1989 . In their publication, Fleischmann and Pons reported the observation of anomalous heating ("excess heat") of an electrolytic cell during electrolysis of heavy water (D₂O). Lacking a simple explanation for the source of such anomalous heat, they proposed the hypothesis, without supporting evidence, that the source of the heat is nuclear fusion of deuterium.

Cold fusion gained a reputation as a pathological science after other scientists failed to replicate the results. A review panel organized by the US Department of Energy (DOE) in 1989 did not find the evidence persuasive, and said that such nuclear fusion at room temperature would be contrary to all understanding gained of nuclear reactions in the last half century; it would require the invention of an entirely new nuclear process.

Since then, other reports of anomalous heat and tritium production have been published in peer-reviewed journals, and discussed at scientific conferences. The scientific community, however, has met these reports with skepticism. In 2004 the US DOE organized another review panel. This panel, like the one in 1989, did not recommended a focused federally-funded program. The 2004 panel identified basic research areas that could be helpful in resolving some of the controversies in the field. They stated that the field would benefit from the peer-review processes associated with proposal submission to agencies and paper submission to archival journals.

History

Early work

Cold fusion revolves around the idea that palladium or titanium might catalyze fusion stemmed from the special ability of these metals to absorb large quantities of hydrogen, including its deuterium isotope, the hope being that the deuterium atoms would be close enough together to induce fusion at ordinary temperatures. The special ability of palladium to absorb hydrogen was recognized as early as the nineteenth century by Thomas Graham. In the late nineteen-twenties, two German scientists, F. Paneth and K. Peters, reported the transformation of hydrogen into helium by spontaneous nuclear catalysis when hydrogen was adsorbed by finely divided palladium at room temperature. These authors later acknowledged that the helium they measured was due to background from the air.

In 1927, Swedish scientist J. Tandberg stated that he had fused hydrogen into helium in an electrolytic cell with palladium electrodes. On the basis of his work he applied for a Swedish patent for "a method to produce helium and useful reaction energy." After deuterium was discovered in 1932, Tandberg continued his experiments with heavy water. Due to Paneth and Peters' retraction, Tandberg's patent application was eventually denied.

The term "cold fusion" was coined by Dr Paul Palmer of Brigham Young University in 1986 in an investigation of "geo-fusion," or the possible existence of fusion in a planetary core.

Pre-announcement and announcement

In the 1960s, Fleischmann and his research team began investigating the possibility that chemical means could influence nuclear processes. Simple quantum mechanical calculations indicate that such effects should be negligibly small , but Fleischmann was convinced that collective effects, that would require quantum electrodynamics to calculate, might be more significant. By 1983, Fleischmann had experimental evidence leading him to believe that condensed phase systems developed coherent structures up to 10m in size. Impressed by the observation of "cold explosion" by Percy Williams Bridgman in the 1930s, the research team went on to study the possibility that nuclear processes would develop in such coherent structures.

In 1988, Fleischmann and Pons applied to the United States Department of Energy for funding towards a larger series of experiments. Up to this point they had been funding their experiments using a small device built with $100,000 out-of-pocket.

The grant proposal was turned over for peer review, including Steven E. Jones of Brigham Young University. Jones had worked on muon-catalyzed fusion for some time, and had written an article on the topic entitled Cold Nuclear Fusion that had been published in Scientific American in July 1987. Similar to Fleischmann and Pons, Jones claimed that he detected fusion but with a more modest claim, but it was discredited because the rates were far too low to be commercially practical.

Both Fleischmann and Pons`, and Jones research teams met on occasion in Utah to discuss sharing research and techniques. During this time, Fleischmann and Pons described their experiments as generating considerable "excess energy", in the sense that it could not be explained by chemical reactions alone. This could bear significant commercial value and would be protected by patent protection. Jones, however, was measuring neutron flux, which was not of commercial interest. In order to avoid problems in the future, the teams apparently agreed to simultaneously publish their results, although their accounts of their March 6 meeting differ.

In mid-March, both research teams were ready to publish their findings, and Fleischmann and Jones had agreed to meet at an airport on March 24 to send their papers to Nature via FedEx. Fleischmann and Pons, however, broke their apparent agreement, submitting their paper to the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry on March 11, and disclosing their work via a press conference on March 23.

Jones, upset, faxed in his paper to Nature after the press announcement was made.

Post-announcement

The press initially reported on the experiments widely, and due to the surmised beneficial commercial applications of the Utah experiments, led scientists around the world to attempt to repeat the experiments within hours of the announcement.

On April 10, 1989, Fleischmann and Pons, who later suggested pressure from patent attorneys, published a rushed "preliminary note" in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry This paper notably contained a gamma peak without its corresponding Compton edge, a discrepancy that triggered accusations of fraud. Their earlier paper was followed up a year later in July 1990, when a much longer paper, going into details of calorimetry but abandoning mention of any nuclear measurements, was published in the same journal.

Also occurring on April 10, a team at Texas A&M University published their results of excess heat, followed up by a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology in regards to neutron production. Both results were widely reported on in the press, although both Texas A&M and Georgia Institute of Technology withdrew their results for lack of evidence. For the next six weeks, additional competing claims, counterclaims and suggested explanations kept the topic of Cold Fusion paramount, and led some journalists refer to the situation as "fusion confusion."

On April 12, Pons received a standing ovation from about 7,000 chemists at the semi-annual meeting of the American Chemical Society. The University of Utah asked Congress to provide $25 million to pursue the research, and Pons was scheduled to meet with representatives of President Bush early May.

One month later, on May 1, the American Physical Society held a session on cold fusion, reported a string of failed experiments. A second session began the next day with other negative reports, and eight of the nine leading speakers stated that they ruled the initial Utah claim as dead. Dr. Steven E. Koonin of Caltech called the Utah report a result of "the incompetence and delusion of Pons and Fleischmann." Dr. Douglas R. O. Morrison, a physicist representing CERN, called the entire episode an example of pathological science.

By the end of May, much of the media attention had faded due to not only to the competing results and counterclaims, but also to the limited attention span of modern media. While the research efforts cooled significantly, similar cold fusion projects continued around the world.

In July, the first successful replication of the excess heat was completed by Richard Oriani, a professor of physical chemistry at the University of Minnesota. The results were published in his paper, "Calorimetric Measurements of Excess Power Output During the Cathodic Charging of Deuterium Into Palladium," in Fusion Technology.

Nature published papers critical of cold fusion in July and November.

In November, a special panel formed by the Energy Research Advisory Board, under a charge of the United States Department of Energy, reported the result of their investigation into cold fusion. The scientists in the panel found the evidence for cold fusion to be unconvincing. Nevertheless, the panel was "sympathetic toward modest support for carefully focused and cooperative experiments within the present funding system." As 1989 wore on, cold fusion was considered by mainstream scientists to be self-deception, experimental error and even fraud, and was held out as a prime example of pseudoscience. The United States Patent and Trademark Office has rejected most patent applications related to cold fusion since then.

In 1991, Dr. Eugene Mallove stated that the negative report issued by MIT's Plasma Fusion Center in 1989, which was highly influential in the controversy, was fraudulent because data was shifted without explanation, and as a consequence, this action obscured a possible positive excess heat result at MIT. In protest of MIT's failure to discuss and acknowledge the significance of this data shift, Mallove resigned from his post of chief science author at the MIT news office on June 7, 1991. He maintained that the data shift was biased to support the conventional belief in the non-existence of the cold fusion effect as well as to protect the financial interests of the plasma fusion center's research in hot fusion.

Nobel Laureate Julian Schwinger also stated in 1991 that he had experienced "the pressure for conformity in editor's rejection of submitted papers, based on venomous criticism of anonymous reviewers," and that "the replacement of impartial reviewing by censorship will be the death of science." He resigned as Member and Fellow of the American Physical Society, in protest of its peer review practice on cold fusion.

In 1992, General Electric challenged the Fleischmann-Pons 1990 report in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, stating that the claims of excess heat had been overstated. The challenge concluded that the Fleischmann and Pons cell generated 40% excess heat, more than ten times larger than the initial error estimate. Despite the apparent confirmation, Fleischmann and Pons replied to General Electric and published a rebuttal in the same journal, which has never been refuted in scientific literature.

Moving beyond the initial controversy

In the 1990s, there was little cold fusion research in the United States, and much of the research during this time occurred in Europe and Asia. Fleischmann and Pons relocated their laboratory to France under a grant from the Toyota Motor Corporation, and later sued La Repubblica, an Italian newspaper and a journalist for their suggestion that cold fusion was a scientific fraud. They lost the libel case in an Italian court. In 1996, they announced in Nature that they would appeal the court's decision, but never did.

By 1991, 92 groups of researchers from 10 different countries had reported excess heat, tritium, neutrons or other nuclear effects. Over 3,000 cold fusion papers have been published including about 1,000 in peer-reviewed journals. In March 1995, Dr. Edmund Storms compiled a list of 21 published papers reporting excess heat. Articles have been published in peer reviewed journals such as Naturwissenschaften, European Physical Journal A, European Physical Journal C, Journal of Solid State Phenomena, Physical Review A, Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, and Journal of Fusion Energy.

The generation of excess heat has been reported by (among others):

• Michael McKubre, director of the Energy Research Center at SRI International,
• G. Preparata (ENEA (Italy))
• Richard A. Oriani (University of Minnesota, in December 1990),
• Robert A. Huggins (at Stanford University in March 1990),
• Y. Arata (Osaka University, Japan),
• T. Mizuno (Hokkaido University, Japan),
• T. Ohmori (Japan),

The most common experimental set-ups are the electrolytic (electrolysis) cell and the gas (glow) discharge cell, but many other set-ups have been used. Electrolysis is popular because it was the original experiment and more commonly known way of conducting the cold fusion experiment; gas discharge is often used because it is believed to be the set-up that provides an experimenter a better chance at replication of the excess heat results. The excess heat experimental results reported by T. Ohmori and T. Mizuno (see Mizuno experiment) have come under particular interest by amateur researchers in recent years.

Researchers share their results at the International Conference on Cold Fusion, recently renamed International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science. The conference is held every 12 to 18 months in various countries around the world, and is hosted by The International Society for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science, a scientific organization that was founded as a professional society to support research efforts and to communicate experimental results. A few periodicals emerged in the 1990s that covered developments in cold fusion and related new energy sciences. Researchers have contributed hundreds of papers to an on-line cold fusion library.

Between 1992 and 1997, Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry sponsored a "New Hydrogen Energy Program" of $20 million to research cold fusion. Announcing the end of the program, Dr. Hideo Ikegami stated in 1997 "We couldn't achieve what was first claimed in terms of cold fusion." He added, "We can't find any reason to propose more money for the coming year or for the future."

In 1994, Dr. David Goodstein described the field as follows:

"Cold Fusion is a pariah field, cast out by the scientific establishment. Between Cold Fusion and respectable science there is virtually no communication at all. Cold fusion papers are almost never published in refereed scientific journals, with the result that those works don't receive the normal critical scrutiny that science requires. On the other hand, because the Cold-Fusioners see themselves as a community under siege, there is little internal criticism. Experiments and theories tend to be accepted at face value, for fear of providing even more fuel for external critics, if anyone outside the group was bothering to listen. In these circumstances, crackpots flourish, making matters worse for those who believe that there is serious science going on here."

Cold fusion researchers said that cold fusion is suppressed, and that skeptics suffer from pathological disbelief. They said that there is virtually no possibility for funding in cold fusion in the United States, and no possibility of getting published. They said that people in universities refuse to work on it because they would be ridiculed by their colleagues.

In February 2002, a laboratory within the United States Navy released a report that came to the conclusion that the cold fusion phenomenon was in fact real and deserved an official funding source for research. Navy researchers have published more than 40 papers on cold fusion.

In 2004, the United States Department of Energy (USDOE) decided to take another look at cold fusion to determine if their policies towards cold fusion should be altered due to new experimental evidence. They set up a panel on cold fusion. The nearly unanimous opinion of the reviewers was that funding agencies should entertain individual, well-designed proposals for experiments that address specific scientific issues relevant to the question of whether or not there is anomalous energy production in D/Pd systems, or whether or not D-D fusion reactions occur at energies on the order of a few eV. These proposals should meet accepted scientific standards, and undergo the rigors of peer review. No reviewer recommended a focused federally funded program for low energy nuclear reactions.

Ongoing controversy

Since the initial excitement over Fleishman and Pons, the reality of the existence of cold fusion has been supported by a few researchers who have tried to reproduce excess energy production in electrolytic cells. Most scientists are dismissive of these efforts, but the researchers have managed to gain some attention in recent years and in 2006 sessions of both the American Chemical Society and the American Physical Society were devoted to low-energy nuclear reactions. Still, skepticism about the existence of cold fusion is the default position of most scientists. Two issues are cited as being problematic: the lack of consistently reproduceable results and the lack of a theoretical mechanism.

Reproducibility of the result

The cold fusion researchers presenting their review document to the 2004 DoE panel on cold fusion said that the observation of excess heat has been reproduced, that it can be reproduced at will under the proper conditions, and that many of the reasons for failure to reproduce it have been discovered. Despite the assertions of these researchers, most reviewers stated that the effects are not repeatable.

In 1989, the DoE panel said: "Even a single short but valid cold fusion period would be revolutionary. As a result, it is difficult convincingly to resolve all cold fusion claims since, for example, any good experiment that fails to find cold fusion can be discounted as merely not working for unknown reasons."

Theoretical mechanisms

Cold fusion's most significant problem in the eyes of many scientists is that current theories describing conventional "hot" nuclear fusion cannot explain how a cold fusion reaction could occur at relatively low temperatures, and that there is currently no accepted theory to explain cold fusion. The 1989 DoE panel said: "Nuclear fusion at room temperature, of the type discussed in this report, would be contrary to all understanding gained of nuclear reactions in the last half century; it would require the invention of an entirely new nuclear process", but it also recognized that the lack of a satisfactory explanation cannot be used to dismiss experimental evidence.

Cold fusion observations are contrary to the conventional physics of nuclear fusion in several ways :

• Nuclear reaction in general: The average density of atoms in the palladium rod seems vastly insufficient to force pairs of nuclei close enough for fusion to occur according to mechanisms known to mainstream theories. The average distance is approximately 0.17 nanometers, a distance at which the attractive strong nuclear force cannot overcome the Coulomb repulsion. Actually, deuterium atoms are closer together in D2 gas molecules, which do not exhibit fusion.

• Deuterium fusion products: if the excess heat were generated by the fusion of 2 deuterium atoms, the most probable outcome would be the generation of either a tritium atom and a proton, or a He and a neutron. The level of neutrons, tritium and He actually observed in Fleischmann-Pons experiment have been well below the level expected in view of the heat generated, implying that these fusion reactions cannot explain it. If the excess heat were generated by the hot fusion of 2 deuterium atoms into He, a reaction which is normally extremely rare, gamma rays and helium would be generated. Again, insufficient levels of helium and gamma rays have been observed to explain the excess heat.

• Conversion to heat: there is no known mechanism that would release fusion energy as heat instead of radiation within the relatively small metal lattice. Robert F. Heeter said that the direct conversion of fusion energy into heat is not possible because of energy and momentum conservation and the laws of special relativity.

Cold fusion advocates have proposed various speculative theories to explain the reported observations. Such ideas run counter to mainstream physical theories and associated observational evidence.

Experimental reports

Measurement of excess heat

The cold fusion researchers presenting their review document to the 2004 DoE panel on cold fusion said that the possibility of calorimetric errors has been carefully considered, studied, tested and ultimately rejected. They said that over 50 experiments conducted by SRI International showed excess power well above the accuracy of measurement. Arata and Zhang said they observed excess heat power averaging 80 watts over 12 days. The researchers also said that the amount of energy reported in some of the experiments appeared to be too great compared to the small mass of the material in the cell for it to be stored by any chemical process. They said that their control experiments using light water never showed excess heat.

When asked about the evidence for power that cannot be attributed to an ordinary chemical or solid state source, the 2004 DoE panel was evenly split. Many of the reviewers noted that poor experiment design, documentation, background control and other similar issues hampered the understanding and interpretation of the results presented to the DoE panel. The reviewers who did not find the production of excess power convincing said that excess power in the short term is not the same as net energy production over the entire time of an experiment, that all possible chemical and solid state causes of excess heat had not been investigated and eliminated as an explanation, that the magnitude of the effect had not increased after over a decade of work, and that production over a period of time is a few percent of the external power applied and hence calibration and systematic effects could account for the purported effect.

Nuclear products

The cold fusion researchers presenting their review document to the 2004 DoE panel on cold fusion said that there are insufficient chemical reaction products to account for the excess heat by several orders of magnitude. They said that three independent studies have shown that the rate of helium production measured in the gas stream varies linearly with excess power. Extensive precautions were taken to ensure that the samples were not contaminated by helium from the earth's atmosphere (5.2 ppm). Bursts of excess energy were time-correlated with bursts of He in the gas stream. However, the amount of helium in the gas stream was about half of what would be expected for a heat source of the type D + D -> He. Searches for neutrons and other energetic emissions commensurate with excess heat have uniformly produced null results. Although there appears to be evidence of transmutations and isotope shifts near the cathode surface in some experiments, they said that it is generally accepted that these anomalies are not the ash associated with the primary excess heat effect.

For a nuclear reaction to be proposed as the source of energy, it is necessary to show that the amount of energy is related to the amount of nuclear products. When asked about evidence of low energy nuclear reactions, twelve of the eighteen members of the 2004 DoE panel did not feel that there was any conclusive evidence, five found the evidence "somewhat convincing" and one was entirely convinced.

In 2007, Pamela Mosier-Bos and her team reported their observation of pits in CR-39 detectors during D/Pd codeposition experiments in the European Physical Journal. They said that those pits have features consistent with those observed for nuclear generated tracks, that the Pd cathode is the source of those pits, that they are not due to contamination or chemical reactions. They attributed some pits to knock-ons due to neutrons, and said that others are consistent with those obtained for α particles.

Other kinds of fusion

Some other kinds of fusion may be termed "cold" in some sense but are separate from the cold fusion controversy. "Cold" may be taken in the sense that no part of the reaction is actually hot (except for the reaction products), or that the energies required are low and the bulk of the material is at a relatively low temperature. Some other kinds of fusion are "hot", involving reactions which create macroscopic regions of very high temperature and pressure.

Locally cold fusion

• Muon-catalyzed fusion is a well-established and reproducible fusion process which occurs at low temperatures. It has been studied in detail by Steven Jones in the early 1980s. Because of the energy required to create muons, it is not able to produce net energy.

Generally cold, locally hot fusion

• In cluster impact fusion, microscopic droplets of heavy water (on the order of 100-1000 molecules) are accelerated to collide with a target, so that their temperature at impact reaches at most 10 kelvin, 10,000 times smaller than the temperature required for hot fusion. In 1989, Friedlander and his coworkers observed 10 more fusion events than expected with standard fusion theory. Recent research () suggests that the calculation of effective temperature may have failed to account for certain molecular effects which raise the effective collision temperature, so that this is a microscopic form of hot fusion.

• In sonoluminescence, acoustic shock waves create temporary bubbles that collapse shortly after creation, producing very high temperatures and pressures. In 2002, Rusi P. Taleyarkhan explored the possibility that bubble fusion occurs in those collapsing bubbles. If this is the case, it is because the temperature and pressure are sufficiently high to produce hot fusion.

• The Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor is a tabletop device in which fusion occurs. This fusion comes from high effective temperatures produced by electrostatic acceleration of ions. The device can be built inexpensively, but it too is unable to produce a net power output.

• Antimatter-catalyzed fusion uses small amounts of antimatter to trigger a tiny fusion explosion. This has been studied primarily in the context of making nuclear pulse propulsion feasible.

Several of these systems are "nonequilibrium systems", in which very high temperatures and pressures are produced in a relatively small region adjacent to material of much lower temperature. In his doctoral thesis for Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Todd Rider did a theoretical study of all non-equilibrium fusion systems. He demonstrated that all such systems will leak energy at a rapid rate due to Bremsstrahlung, radiation produced when electrons in the plasma hit other electrons or ions at a cooler temperature and suddenly decelerate. The problem is not as pronounced in a hot plasma because the range of temperatures, and thus the magnitude of the deceleration, is much lower.

Hot fusion

• "Standard" fusion, in which the fuel reaches tremendous temperature and pressure inside a fusion reactor, nuclear weapon, or star.

References

1. "Electrochemically induced nuclear fusion of deuterium," M. Fleischmann and S. Pons, Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry vol. 261, p. 301 (1989).
2. Browne, M. (May 3, 1989). ""Physicists Debunk Claim Of a New Kind of Fusion"". New York Times. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
3. 1989 DoE report
4. ^ Nearly 200 reports of anomalous heat production and over 60 of anomaous tritium production are listed in several publications, including Storms, Edmund (2007). The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing. pp. pp 52-61 and pp 79-81. ISBN 9789812706201. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help) Cite error: The named reference "Storms" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
5. For example those cited in the 2004 DoE review:
   Y. Arata and Y-C Zhang, "Anomalous difference between reaction energies generated within D₂0-cell and H₂0 Cell", Jpn. J. Appl. Phys 37, L1274 (1998)
   Iwamura, Y., M. Sakano, and T. Itoh, "Elemental Analysis of Pd Complexes: Effects of D₂ Gas Permeation". Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. A, 2002. 41: p. 4642.
   Other:
   Mizuno, T., et al., "Production of Heat During Plasma Electrolysis in Liquid," Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 39 p. 6055, (2000)
   M.H. Miles et al., "Correlation of excess power and helium production during D₂O and H₂0 electrolysis using Palladium cathodes]", J. Electroanal. Chem. 346 (1993) 99
   B.F. Bush et al, "Helium production during the electrolysis of D₂0 in cold fusion", J. Electroanal. Chem. 346 (1993) 99
   Electrochemist Dr. Dieter Britz, who has remained neutral on the question of whether cold fusion exists, has compiled a cold fusion bibliography which includes 479 published scientific journal articles marked "res+" indicating positive research results.
6. Van Noorden, R. (2007). "Cold fusion back on the menu". Chemistry World.
7. "2006 APS March Meeting Monday–Friday, March 13–17, 2006; Baltimore, MD Session W41: Cold Fusion".
8. http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/08/cold_fusion
9. 2004 DOE report
10. ^ Robert (24 September, 1989). "Cold Fusion confusion - Prons and Fletschmann may have fallen victim to the experimental scientist's worst nightmare - self-deception". Los Angeles Daily News. p. V1. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
11. "THOMAS GRAHAM".
12. 1989 DOE panel page 7
13. 1989 DOE panel page 7
14. ^ Bashkin, S. (March 1994). "Bad Science". Physics Today. p. 95.
15. Jones’s manuscript on history of cold fusion at BYU
16. Fleischmann, Martin (2003). "Background to cold fusion: the genesis of a concept" (PDF). 10th International conference on cold fusion.
17. Fleischmann, Martin (2003). "Background to cold fusion: the genesis of a concept" (PDF). 10th International conference on cold fusion.
18. Kowalski, Ludwik (5 March, 2004). "Jones's manuscript on history of cold fusion at BYU". {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
19. Browne, M. (May 3, 1989). ""Physicists Debunk Claim Of a New Kind of Fusion"". New York Times. Since March, scores of laboratories in the United States and abroad have sought to repeat the cold fusion experiment {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
20. ^ Krivit, Steven (2005). "The Seminal Papers of Cold Fusion". New Energy Times.
21. Krivit, Steven. "MIT Attack on Fleischmann and Pons".
22. "Science: Nuclear Fusion". CBS Evening News. 10 April, 1989. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
23. Browne, M (May 3, 1989). "Physicists Debunk Claim Of a New Kind of Fusion". New York Times. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
24. "APS Special Session on Cold Fusion". 1 May and 2 May, 1989. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
25. Browne, M (May 3, 1989). "Physicists Debunk Claim Of a New Kind of Fusion". New York Times. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
26. Oriani, R. A., J C. Nelson, S. Lee, and J. H. Broadhurst, Calorimetric Measurements of Excess Power Output During the Cathodic Charging of Deuterium into Palladium, Fusion Technol. 18 (1990) 652
27. "Upper limits on neutron and ray emission from cold fusion". Nature (journal). 6 July, 1989. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
28. "Upper bounds on 'cold fusion' in electrolytic cells". Nature (journal). 23 November, 1989. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
29. "Cold Fusion Research". A Report of the Energy Research Advisory Board to the United States Department of Energy. November 1989.
30. Krivit, Steven. "Controversial MIT. Cold Fusion Graphs".
31. Mallove, E. (1999). "MIT and cold fusion: a special report" (PDF).
32. Schwinger, J., "Cold fusion: Does it have a future?", Evol. Trends Phys. Sci., Proc. Yoshio Nishina Centen. Symp., Tokyo 1990, 1991. 57: p. 171.
33. Wilson, R.H. (1992). "Analysis of experiments on the calorimetry of LiOD-D2O electrochemical cells" (332). J. Electroanal. Chem.: 1. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
34. Beaudette, Charles G. "Excess Heat & Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed": 188, 357-360 (2nd ed.). {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
35. Krivit, Steven. "The Seminal Papers of Cold Fusion". New Energy Times.
36. Mallove E, "Fire from ice", 1991, NY: John Wiley, pp. 246-248
37. LENR-CANR.org
38. Krivit, Steven, "Selected Papers - Low Energy Nuclear Reactions,"
39. Pollack, A. "Japan, Long a Holdout, Is Ending Its Quest for Cold Fusion", New York Times, August 26, 1997 pg. C.4
40. Goodstein, D. "Whatever happened to cold fusion?", 'The American Scholar' 63(4), Fall 1994, 527-541
41. Josephson, B. D., "Pathological disbelief", 2004
42. "DOE Warms to Cold Fusion", Physics Today, April 2004, pp 27
43. "In from the cold", The Guardian, March 24, 2005
44. LENR-CANR.org, Special collections, U.S. Navy Cold Fusion Research
45. U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, "Report of the Review of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions", 2004
46. Energy Research Advisory Board of the United States Department of Energy, "Report on Cold fusion research", November 1989
47. Close, F., "Too Hot to Handle. The Race for Cold Fusion." 1992, New York: Penguin, paperback.
48. Huizenga, J.R., "Cold Fusion: The Scientific Fiasco of the Century". second ed. 1993, New York: Oxford University Press.
49. "Cold fusion research : A Report of the Energy Research Advisory Board to the United States Department of Energy". 1989. Retrieved 2007-11-21. the failure of a theory to account for cold fusion can be discounted on the grounds that the correct explanation and theory has not been provided
50. Cite error: The named reference Goodstein was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
51. Kee B., "What is the current scientific thinking on cold fusion? Is there any possible validity to this phenomenon?", Scientific American, Ask the Experts, October 21, 1999, p. 5
52. See the review document submitted to the 2004 DoE panel on cold fusion by the researchers
53. See the Report of the Review of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions by the 2004 DOE panel on cold fusion
54. Presented by Mosier-Boss, Szpak and Gordon at the APS meeting in March 2007 ( slide 7) Cited by Krivit, New Energy Times, March 16, 2007
55. See the review document submitted to the 2004 DoE panel on cold fusion by the researchers
56. See the Report of the Review of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions by the 2004 DOE panel on cold fusion
57. Mosier-Boss et al, "Use of CR-39 in Pd/D co-deposition experiments", Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. 40, 293-303 (2007)

See also

• Alchemy
• Transmutation
• Pathological science
• Protoscience

Further information

Books

• Close, Frank E..Too Hot to Handle: The Race for Cold Fusion. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-691-08591-9; ISBN 0-14-015926-6.
• Huizenga, John R. Cold Fusion: The Scientific Fiasco of the Century. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 1992. ISBN 1-878822-07-1; ISBN 0-19-855817-1.
• Kozima, Hideo. The Science of the Cold Fusion phenomenon, Elsevier Science, 2006. ISBN 0-08-045110-1.
• Mallove, Eugene. Fire from Ice: Searching for the Truth Behind the Cold Fusion Furor. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1991. ISBN 0-471-53139-1.
• Park, Robert L. Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-513515-6.
• Storms, Edmund. Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction: A Comprehensive Compilation of Evidence and Explanations. World Scientific Publishing Company, 2007 ISBN 9-8127062-0-8.
• Taubes, Gary. Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion. New York, N.Y. : Random House, 1993. ISBN 0-394-58456-2.

External links

• 1989 Energy Research Advisory Board, "Conclusions and recommendations"
• U.S. DoE 2004 Cold Fusion Review - U.S. Department of Energy review of 15 years of cold fusion experiments
• Recent papers on cold fusion listed on New Energy Times
• Some selected articles on cold fusion
• Britz's cold nuclear fusion bibliography: An extensive overview and review of almost all available publications about cold nuclear fusion.

• Pseudoscience