THE REVIEW HAS been one of a handful of American publications that that has
defended continued investigation into cold fusion - in contrast to other
media which has ridiculed or ignored the issue. Now the New Scientist lists
cold fusion as one of a dozen "observations that simply defy explanation. .
. exceptions that could rewrite all the rules"
NEW SCIENTIST - After 16 years, it's back. In fact, cold fusion never
really
went away. Over a 10-year period from 1989, US navy labs ran more than 200
experiments to investigate whether nuclear reactions generating more energy
than they consume - supposedly only possible inside stars - can occur at
room temperature. Numerous researchers have since pronounced themselves
believers.
With controllable cold fusion, many of the world's energy problems would
melt away: no wonder the US Department of Energy is interested. In
December,
after a lengthy review of the evidence, it said it was open to receiving
proposals for new cold fusion experiments.
That's quite a turnaround. The DOE's first report on the subject, published
15 years ago, concluded that the original cold fusion results, produced by
Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons of the University of Utah and unveiled
at a press conference in 1989, were impossible to reproduce, and thus
probably false. ........