Cold Fusion Is Hot Topic at UC Campus

Richard Fox had no trouble obtaining concert tickets for the popular British rock group New Order. But when he attempted to pick up tickets Wednesday for a lecture by physicist Steven Jones, Fox was told the event was so popular all the tickets had been snapped up days ago.

New Order specializes in a type of music some call “manic-depressive disco.” Jones, a professor at Brigham Young University, specializes in a field called “cold fusion.”

And during the last month, cold fusion experts have been accorded greater celebrity status than some rock groups.

When it was announced that Jones would be lecturing at UC Santa Barbara, phones “rang off the hook” at the campus Institute for Theoretical Physics, said Zuleine DeLima, a department secretary.

“We’ve been getting calls first thing in the morning to the end of the afternoon . . . all day long,” DeLima said.

For the uninitiated, it may be difficult to appreciate the allure of a lecture dealing with “normalized molecular formation rates,” “inertial confinement” and “muonic atom formations.” But while the recent fusion research has met with considerable skepticism, many scientists believe it holds the possibility of dramatic scientific advancement.

The frenzy surrounding Jones’ visit was remarkable in part because he has played only a supporting role in the fusion breakthrough.

B. Stanley Pons of the University of Utah and Martin Fleischmann of the University of Southampton, England, were the two electrochemists who announced last month that they had achieved nuclear fusion in a flask.

Jones was thrust into the news because his research provided the earliest corroboration of the experiment announced by the chemists.

Several months ago, before the crush of publicity about fusion, Jones had agreed to give a lecture at the Institute for Theoretical Physics. The institute’s lectures usually are held in a small seminar room and draw about 30 people.

But, after the fusion announcement, interest in Jones was so great the lecture was moved to a hall on campus that seats about 350. The physics department distributed tickets to professors and graduate students for all but 90 seats, which were available at the door.

So before the lecture, fusion devotees began lining up outside the hall, hoping to obtain a seat.

“We had two Nobel laureates speak here earlier this year and the hall was only half full,” said Fox, a nuclear engineering major. “But this has generated amazing interest among the people in my department.”

Fortunately, Fox and the others without tickets were able to squeeze into the lecture hall. It was filled to capacity, with a number of people lining the back wall.

The reason cold fusion has created such a stir is because it holds such important possible applications. Current nuclear plants are powered by nuclear fission. But unlike fission, which releases energy when atoms are split, fusion releases energy when atoms are welded together.

A power plant using nuclear fusion could produce enormous amounts of energy with very little fuel.

But during a press conference before his lecture, Jones said it was premature to speculate about the long-term benefits of cold fusion. The results of Pons’ and Fleischmann’s research still have not gone through “the peer review process,” he said.

“You hope it will bear fruit . . . but there are still many steps to take,” he said. “I can’t imagine it happening for years.”