Fusion Scientists Delay Publication of Research
Two scientists who stunned the world four weeks ago when they claimed to have achieved cold fusion with a simple table-top device withdrew their long-awaited research paper from the journal Nature on Thursday, but they picked up important experimental support from around the world.
The withdrawal of the paper was another peculiar twist in the unfolding drama, but the authors and the prestigious scientific journal emphasized that the reversal should not imply that the purported breakthrough is any “less believable” than a paper the journal will publish next week on a related subject by Steven Jones of Brigham Young University.
B. Stanley Pons of the University of Utah and Martin Fleischmann of the University of Southampton, England, withdrew the paper because they did not have time to both continue their research and expand the report as requested by other experts who had reviewed it, according to a Utah spokesperson.
The two scientists, who claimed earlier that their research could lead to inexpensive energy from seawater, are involved in 19 new experiments.
The normal procedure for professional journals such as Nature is to have several other researchers from the same field review an article before it is published. The reviewers frequently raise questions that should be dealt with in the report, and sometimes that requires additional research. The process, known as “peer review,” can take months.
“The reviewers had asked for a substantial increase in the length of the paper and they asked for more comprehensive data than they (Pons and Fleischmann) had included,” said spokeswoman Pamela Fogle of the University of Utah. Much of the data the reviewers want is not available because the research has not even been completed, she added, indicating that the scientists’ original press conference may have been hurried.
From the beginning, Pons and Fleischmann have been criticized by other scientists for making an announcement that seems to have been quite premature. The university has maintained that the scientists decided to go ahead and reveal their findings sooner than they had planned because news of the startling claim was beginning to leak out.
In addition, Fogle said, the experiment could be hazardous in some ways and Pons wanted to share his concerns before other researchers attempted to replicate it.
Scientists have anxiously awaited the Nature report in hopes that it would provide further details that would help others reach the same results. In an editorial in Thursday’s issue of Nature, urging scientists not to read too much significance into the withdrawal, the journal suggested that the paper would have been of little help anyway. It was even briefer than a report by Pons and Fleischmann that was recently published in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, the editorial indicated.
Meanwhile, evidence continued to mount in support of the controversial experiment.
Scientists at the University of Florida announced Thursday that they had succeeded in duplicating part of the experiment and that they came away convinced that a nuclear reaction was taking place. Using a device based on the Pons-Fleischmann experiment, the Florida scientists said they produced trillions of radioactive particles that can only be produced through a nuclear process.
“Our conclusion from this experiment is that it has independently confirmed that a . . . nuclear reaction is taking place, with tritium as a major product,” said Glen J. Schoessow of the university’s nuclear engineering sciences department. Schoessow and John A. Wethington Jr. said they have no doubt that their experiment produced tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen that is sometimes produced when other hydrogen isotopes fuse.
Measuring the tritium, Schoessow said, “is easy for us to do” following standard procedures and using a “liquid scintillation counter.”
Tritium gives off energy in the form of beta radiation, Wethington said in a telephone interview. When the “heavy water” used in the experiment is combined with the liquid in the scintillation counter the “betas make a little flash of light.”
“So you’ve got a lot of lightning bugs in there,” he said. The flashes can be counted by other sensitive instruments, thus revealing the amount of tritium.
The Florida researchers said that after running their experiment for 48 hours they detected “approximately 1 trillion (tritium) atoms.”
The number was almost 20 times greater after running the experiment for 100 hours, they added.
A number of “control” experiments were also run in which the heavy water was tested for tritium both before and after the experiment, and it revealed that the tritium was in fact coming from the reaction.
The Florida experiment differed in some ways from experiments elsewhere, possibly explaining why the researchers succeeded there while others have failed. Asked what the differences were, Schoessow said the answer will have to wait until the University of Florida finishes applying for a patent.
The Pons-Fleischmann announcement has electrified much of the world of science over the last four weeks, and laboratories all over the world continue to report progress in attempts to replicate the experiment.
On Thursday, scientists at Technical University in Dresden, East Germany, said they had confirmed part of the experiment. Scientists there said they had measured neutrons, which, like tritium, are produced when atoms of deuterium fuse. Their report was published in the Communist Party daily Neues Deutschland.
The East German announcement came on the heels of a similar report from Sao Paulo University in Brazil. Scientists there said they also measured neutrons.
“I would tear up my Ph.D. if it is not a nuclear reaction,” said researcher Spero Penha Morato of the university’s Institute of Energy and Nuclear Research.
Although the number of reports confirming parts of the Pons-Fleischmann experiment has risen in recent days, the sporadic claims of success fall short of convincing everyone.
Richard L. Garwin, an IBM Fellow who is best known these days as a brilliant critic of the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars), clearly remains doubtful.
In an article in Thursday’s issue of Nature, Garwin held out the possibility that the Pons-Fleischmann experiment “will teach us much besides humility” if it leads to “a multidimensional (energy) revolution.”
But he added:
“I bet against its confirmation.”
