Cold Fusion - History

History

Nuclear fusion occurs at temperatures in the tens of millions of degrees. Speculations that nuclear fusion might happen at temperatures much lower than that seen in normal "hot" fusion nuclear reactions in the context of electrochemical loading of hydrogen in palladium and other similar metals have been suggested from time to time for nearly 100 years. In 1989, a claim by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann (then one of the world's leading electrochemists) that such cold fusion had been observed caused a brief media sensation before other scientists began heavily criticizing their claim as being incorrect after many failed to replicate the excess heat. Since the initial announcement, cold fusion research has continued by a small community of committed researchers convinced that such reactions do happen and hoping to gain wider recognition for their experimental evidence.

Read more about this topic:  Cold Fusion

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.
    Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)

    This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation, because as a result of what happened in this week, the world is bigger, infinitely.
    Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)

    The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.
    Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)