Draft 2 (4 April) with new information, additions, corrections.. 31 March 1989. PHYSICS NEWS - COLD FUSION? Dear colleagues, There have been many reports in the papers that Prof. Fleischmann of Southampton and Dr. Pons of Utah have evidence for cold fusion of deuterium by electrochemistry. This afternoon Prof. Fleischmann gave a seminar in CERN. Because of the many media reports, the auditorium was crowded and although I arrived 20 minutes early, I had to sit on the steps. As I have given several lectures on Wrong Results in Physics, I went to this and also to the press conference afterwards - especially as the news reports had been very hard to understand scientifically, but if true, this could have a major impact on the world economy. Martin Fleischmann had a reputation as a major expert in his subject. As his talk developed, it became clear that he was a first class scientist and it seems to me that he has made a major breakthrough, though what the fundamentals processes are is not yet fully understood. Let me try and explain what I think I learnt (I talked to him for a while afterwards, so it may not be too bad). Basically the catalyst used, palladium Pd, is a face-centred crystal. It can absorb a certain amount of hydrogen. If an electrical potential is applied, then over a period of time it can absorb a great deal. For F & P, they reached 0.6 atoms of deuterium per atom of Palladium after three months. They made tests with four rods each of 10 cm length and of diameters 0.1, 0.2, 0.4 and 0.8 cm. They only have good measurements for the first three as the fourth one was said to have "died" (this was indicated to be something chemical and to have nothing to do with fusion). They also tried a 1 x 1 x 1 cm3 cube but one morning when they came in they found that it had melted and the fume cupboard was starting to smoulder! They made calorimetric measurements and found that they were getting more heat out than they had put in and this effect increased with the diameter of the rod. It seems to be a volume effect and not a surface effect. The excess heat is about 5 megajoules per cm3 which is about 100 times greater than any known chemical process. A second measurement was by putting a NaI crystal close when they recorded gammas. The energy spectrum of the gammas was sharply peaked between 2000 and 2400 which is characteristic of the (n,gamma) reaction on hydrogen. This could be explained as the neutrons interacting in the water bath round the experiment. Thirdly they observed tritium production and measured and found a "characteristic" spectrum (I did not understand this fully, partly as he had an incomplete scale on the graph, but see later). Fourthly they looked for neutrons using a polythene sphere filled with BF3. The count was three times background. In 50 hours they counted 40 000 neutrons. However there is a point that is a stumbling block for particle physicists - if you take the rate of release of heat, then there should be 10 E 13 or 14 neutrons - a huge discrepancy. He does not have the equipment to measure the neutron spectrum - the neutrons have to pass through the surrounding water bath which tends to thermalise them. A conclusion that can be drawn from Fleischmann's talk is that the heating is not due to the reactions 2D + 2D ---> 3He + n (1) or 2D + 3T ---> 4He + n (2) which are the ones that spring to mind. He gave a table of the excess enthalpy in the Pd rod cathodes expressed as a percentage of breakeven values; 0.1 cm 81% 0.2 189% 0.4 839% He opened his talk with a basic discussion of electrochemistry. D2O + e- <---> D(absorber) + OD- D(absorber) <---> D(lattice) D(absorber) + D2O + e- <---> D2 + OD- With the applied field the D can go over the potential barrier by applying a Potl. Difference at the interface. The result is that inside the Pd there can be many collisions without repulsion. Effectively there is a PD of 0.8 eV which can translate into a compression of 10 E 27 atmos. i.e. it would require this enormous pressure to achieve the same PD. Thus electrochemistry is high energy chemistry! The D is in a sea of high electron density. The structural or coherent strength of the Pd is 4000 atm. Thus it is a very strange kind of Quantum Mechanics (his phrase). I have to go to collect my daughter at the airport, but will try and continue later. 1 April 1989. (despite the date, it is serious!) Re-reading what I wrote yesterday. I realise that I have been trying to explain simply. The actual talk contained some more details and two tables of results that I had only time to copy down partially. There was a fuller discussion of electrochemistry. The question now is what is happening. The observations are of a source of heat, of emision of tritium, gammas and of neutrons, but the number of neutrons are many orders of magnitude less than would be expected if the heat produced came from reactions producing neutrons. Fleischmann talks as if you have to modify quantum mechanics - this I do not believe - we have to apply it differently. An additional piece of information that he gave at his press conference but not at his seminar, was that the particle emission was not uniform but had fluctuations which were much larger than statistical - this I think is a very important piece of information. There are a lot of different theories being discussed. The following comments should be considered private, qualitative and not necessarily correct. The catalyst, palladium works by accepting an incredible number of deuterium nuclei in the spaces of its face-centred cubic lattice. The distance between each deuterium nucleus is therefore reduced. This was first demonstrated by the observation of muon-induced catalysis where in deuterium, the electron is replaced by a muon. As the muon is some 200 times heavier, the proton and neutron are pulled closer together so that the probability of fusion is greatly increased - by many orders of magnitude. Now there are two suggestions; 1. Since the deuterium nuclei are in a very dense electron field, it may be that the electrons have an effective mass much greater than normal and this increases the probabilty of the nuclei tunnelling through the barrier. 2. the applied potential difference drives more and more deuterium nuclei into the spaces between the palladium atoms so that the separation of the nuclei decreases so that the probability of fusion increases dramatically. Personally I have a preference for the second approach, but it is always possible that both are applicable. Instead of saying that there is a discrepancy between the number of neutrons produced and the heat produced, perhaps we should assume that all the results are correct and that the reactions ocurring are different. Maybe the dominant reaction is fusion, D + D ---> 4He, but we need something else to share the energy and momentum produced - this could be the close neighbouring structure of the lattice. Thus the dominant reaction is to produce heat! Of course other reactions will also occur which is why there is an observation of tritium and one would expect some production of 3He and 4He and neutrons and gammas. If this were true, and again this is mainly a suggestion which needs experimental confirmation, then this would have tremendous social effects as we would have a simple source of energy without the particulate matter, sulphur and other gasses from coal and oil fired power stations that are killing so many today. Also the radiation danger would be very much less than with nuclear reactors ( sell your coal and oil shares if you have any!) In answer to a question, Fleischmann said that they had tried to look at 3He and 4He production and ratio, but the experiment is difficult for them and they prefer to leave that for experts who have the equipment - for they have been using their own money for 5 years. Before the Seminar, things were rather disturbed with the media - lots of TV crews and flashes popping off. The Chairman, Carlo, asked them all to leave explaining this was a scientific meeting and he did not want questions on any other subject, but afterwards there would be a press conference. After some time the media left. At the end of Fleischmann's talk, the TV crews re-entered and had to be requested to leave again before the question period. On the way to the press conference, Fleischmann was told that there had been a report on the radio that a group (at Columbia?) had confirmed his result. He said he had not heard this and during the Press Conference he continued to emphasise, in a very proper manner, that before leaping to conclusions, there should be further confirming evidence. Fleischmann had described his other press conference in Utah as awful, but this one went well with Carlo a good Chairman - who was also asked questions. Fleischmann explained that the work was intentional and not an accident. He said that after verification, it might take 10 to 20 years to develop an economically viable system. Carlo was asked his opinion and said that "Dr. Fleischmann has planted a seed - will the seed grow up? I think yes" Fleischmann said that he believed in Karl Popper's philosophy - you cannot prove something right, you can only prove it wrong. "We have spent 5 years trying to prove ourselves wrong, now other people should try". In explaining why they did it, "it was not to do an ego trip (though all scientists are on an ego trip to some extent), but to try and find a plentiful source of energy. We have a social conscience" Question - "There was a sceptical atmosphere in the room, did you feel like a chemistry bull in an arena of physics toreadors?" Answer - "Are people correct to be sceptical?, yes, it is correct to be sceptical. But it was not a bad atmosphere. Our experiment fits partly into accepted ideas but not entirely, therefore either experiment is wrong or we have extended the conceptions of possible fusion mechanisms". Carlo was asked if he found the meeting strange - "No, I am at home in my own lab". Question - "Do you think it is correct?". Answer(MF) - "I think it is correct, but others should show it is correct". (Note, this was typical of some of the questions where the journalist asked "for a good quote"). Carlo was asked if CERN should work on fusion. He replied " There are different science cultures. In an orchestra everyone tries to play his own instrument, and does not have other instruments. But we have quantum mechanics in common. We should do what we do best. But there is also cross-fertilisation between chemistry and nuclear physics" He also joked that this was the firsttime that a chemist had discovered a neutron! Question - "Any military applications?" Answer(MF) - "There will always be some military application of anything, but we do not know of any such thing" Question - " You said you did not have enough money, have you been offered money since your press conference last week"? Answer - "Up to now have used our own money as we thought it unlikely to work, so there were some restrictions. Since then we have been approached with offers but as our capacity to spend money is limited, we have to plan carefully. Question - "If it is fusion what will its effect be on other fusion research?" Answer - " Glad you asked that. It would be a total disaster to cut back on other fusion research. Ours is small scale, theirs is large scale generation of electricity. It would be extremely foolish to cut back". There was more, but I hope this gives the flavour - both Fleischmann and Carlo aquitted themselves very well and responsibly. Friedrich Dydak had told me he had two papers confirming the F & P work and I could copy them. Later when I was returning them, Fleischmann came in for another TV interview and we talked while he was waiting for the lighting to be set up. He had not seen the papers, so I gave him copies. The main author was Stephen Jones who is at the BYU in Utah. We looked quickly at the papers - he was particularly interested in the dates on the papers. I explained I was interested particularly for two reasons. Firstly as I was possibly the first to observe fusion in Europe - in the early sixties I was scanning bubble chamber film of deuterium and normally when there is the decay chain, pion ---> muon ---> electron the muon always has the same short range (if the pion is at rest). But one day I observed an extra long range for the muon. I spent some time measuring the curvature and angles of the tracks, but could not explain it. However someone told me that the Berkeley bubble chamber group had found it and it had been explained as the muon replacing an electron and causing fusion. At this Luis insisted that this should be treated as a secret, but quickly it was calculated that it had no military or economical value. So I left it and went on to new things(incidently the Scientific American article of July 1987 by Rafelski and Jones on Cold Nuclear Fusion says that this muon -induced fusion was first suggested by Frank and Sakharov in the late 1940's). Secondly I said I had given several serious lectures on Wrong Results in Physics and found that they exhibited certain characteristics so that they could be recognised before they had been proved wrong - after the press reports I wondered if this was a case in point, but after I had heard his conference, I was inclined to believe that his results were correct. He did not seem to appreciate this too much, not unnaturally, but we continued talking and he told me some remarkable things. I mentioned that after the press conference, Dr. Wind was looking for him as he used to work in Utrecht on electrochemistry and had been able to insert 1000 hydrogen ions per atom of palladium catalyst. Dr. Fleischmann (who had attained 0.6 ions after 3 months) said he did not believe this number of 1000. It is possible that Dr. Wind was talking about the reduction in volume that can be obtained when hydrogen is absorbed in Palladium - this factor of 1000 in volume would then translate to 0.4 atoms of hydrogen per Pd atom in agreement with Dr.Fleischmann. The two papers are; 1. "Observation of Cold Nuclear Fusion in Condensed Matter" by S.E. Jones and others of Brigham Young Univ. and J. Rafelski of Univ. of Arizona. 2. "Limits on Cold Fusion in Condensed Matter; a Parametric study" by J. Rafelski and others of Arizona and S.E. Jones of BYU. The main point of the first paper is that they claim to have observed neutrons when there was low voltage electrolytic fusion of deuterons into metallic titanium or palladium. They believe this is from the reaction; d + d ---> 3He(0.82 MeV) + n(2.45 MeV) (1) The distribution of counts in different channels give a broad enhancement which the authors say corresponds to neutrons of 2.45 MeV. This looks convincing - just; it would be good to repeat this. They say they have not yet(?!advertising?) obtained results regarding the parallel reaction; d + d ---> p(3.02 MeV) + t(1.01 MeV) (3) The electrolyte contains various mineral salts and they say that their evidence indicates the importance of co-deposition of deuterons and metal ions at the negative electrode. "hydrogen bubbles were observed to form on the Pd foils only after several minutes of electrolysis, suggesting the rapid absorbtion of deuterons into the foil; oxygen bubbles formed at the anode immediately". The palladium pieces were 0.025cm thick and had the surfaces roughened or were mossy. They do not say that it took 3 months to get started by charging the deuterons into the palladium (private comment - this suggests to me that Fleischmann and Pons would have improved things if they had increased the surface to volume ratio of the catalyst and roughened its surface, but it is hard to be sure. However it does suggest that it is possible to charge the catalyst in much less than three months). The experimental part of their paper gives an impression of haste, but there are a lot of other interesting things in their paper; In a deuterium molecule the separation between the deuterons is 0.74 A and the d-d fusion rate is very slow about 10 E -74 per D2 molecule per sec ( calculated in an interesting paper by Van Siclen, C.D. and Jones, S.E., Journal of Physics G Nucl. Phys. 12 (1986) 213 - here they state that the fusion rates for reactions (1) and (3) are nearly equal over the range 10 to 30 KeV. They also discuss whether piezonuclear fusion - i.e. by pressure - within the liquid metallic hydrogen core of Jupiter could account for the fact that the planet radiates 1.5 times as much heat as it receives from the sun. However they concluded that this process was many orders of magnitude too small to be a significant energy source - this is where the idea of Fleischmann and Pons of using electrolytic catalysis is so important). However in muon-induced catalysis the internuclear separation is reduced by about the ratio of the muon to the electron masses (200) resulting in the fusion rate increasing by an enormous factor, 80 orders of magnitude! In the second paper this variation of fusion rate as a function of the distance is quantified. This made me think of the observation by Fleischmann that they had observed large fluctuations in the signals - for the number of deuterons in a space in the lattice of Palladium is discrete and given by Poisson statistics hence the distance between the deuterons will vary appreciably - this and other factors(roughness of surface) could cause there to be local spots hot in space and time, since the fusion rate varies so violently with distance. In addition to the reactions (1) and (3), there can occur the reaction on tritium that will exist to some varable extent, 2D + 3T ---> 4He + n (2) Although there is less tritium than deuterium, this reaction has a much higher cross section - so that this reaction (2) could also help fluctuations (but these comments on fluctations are my own, so treat them with appropriate caution). Paper (1) also has an interesting chapter on Geophysical considerations (or the Hawaii effect). Sea water contains about one part in 7000 of deuterium. By subduction water is carried down to the earth's mantle where it might undergo fusion via the reaction; p + d ---> 3He + gamma(5.4 MeV) (4) under the extreme pressure and temperature there. Calculations are done which indicate that a substantial contribution to the heat flux through the crust could come from cold fusion. This heat could also help to explain the localised heat of volcanism at subduction zones. They quote that the 3He to 4He ratio is high in rocks, liquids and gases from volcanoes. Further they then predict that tritium will be produced from d + d fusion and since tritium is relatively short-lived(12 years half-life), observation of tritium would suggest a geologically recent process. On the Mauna Loa mountain on Hawaii, tritium was monitored from 1971 to 1977 and a correlation is shown in the paper between the tritium level and volcanic activity. This is very striking for the 1972 Mauna Ulu eruption but later eruption signals were partly confused by atomic bomb tests. They estimate that in the Mauna Ulu eruption 100 curies of tritium was released per day for 30 days! In paper (1), it is also reported that after diamonds are sliced with a laser, the concentration of 4He and 3He has been measured - it is reported that the 4He is distributed uniformly while the 3He is concentrated in spots suggesting cold fusion reactions. Similar anomalies have been reported in metal foils. The authors also calculate that the excess heat from Jupiter could be accounted for from cold fusion in the core consisting of metallic hydrogen plus iron silicate. The second paper calculates the cold fusion rate of d-d as a function of 1 - relative energy, 2 - separation of two hydrogen nuclei in a sphere, 3 - the effective electron mass, 4 - the effective electron charge. They do not consider the effects of the lattice of a catalyst as do Fleischmann and Pons. It is probable that some readers will be thinking that this letter has wandered off strict physics news. They are right. It is intentional as I feel this subject will become so important to society that we must consider the broader implications as well as the scientific ones. Looking into a cloudy crystal ball, it is not impossible to foresee the situation that the experiments are so easy that schools will be doing them, that many new companies will start up, most(not all) will fail and the present big power companies will be running down their oil and coal power stations while they are building deuterium separation plants and new power plants based on cold fusion. No new nuclear power stations will be built except for military needs. There will be very little if any research on high temperature(plasma) fusion. Petrol will probably still be used for cars and planes. Overall pollution will start to be less. Ecologists will be talking about the contamination from radioactive tritium and asking about the effect of this tritium on the ozone layer. On the other hand there could be major practical problems, e.g. the fusion could perhaps destroy the lattice structure of the catalyst before an efficient amount of heat has been extracted (one needs to understand and quantify why the 1 cm3 cube melted and why the 0.8 cm diameter rod went "dead"). Clearly many experiments, often simple, are waiting to be done CONCLUSIONS It is known(from muon cataysis) that if two nuclei of deuterium or tritium are held close together then they can fuse releasing energy. Fleischmann and Pons thought of achieving this by using electrolysis to insert deuterium nuclei inside a palladium catalyst. They observed production of more heat than they put in. They also observed tritium production, gammas of an energy consistent with neutrons interacting with the surrounding water bath, and neutrons directly. They thus conclude they have observed fusion of heavy hydrogen producing energy, i.e. cold fusion. A paper by Jones et al. reports on the operation of similar electrolytic cells with observation of neutrons with an energy spectrum consistent with that expected from deuterium fusion. They also describe interesting though rather anecdotal evidence for fusion in volcanoes, Jupiter, diamonds and metal foils. The theory, while not fully developed, suggests that the deuterium nuclei inside the lattice of the catalyst, are held so closely together that the probability of fusion(the tunneling effect) is dramatically increased by many orders of magnitude. If there do not turn out to be major practical problems, it may be expected that this will cause major changes in the energy industry and major social, economic and hence political changes. Douglas R. O. Morrison. ADDITION 4 April 1989. The problem is to find an explanation for all the data, or alternatively most of the data. The biggest problem is the discrepancy between the heat produced and the rate of neutron production in the reaction d + d ---> 3He + n (1) Occurring with about equal cross section is the reaction d + d ---> t + p (3) The other energetically possible reaction is d + d ---> 4He but this needs something else to carry off the energy - it could be a gamma but the cross section for this reaction is much less than for (1) or (3). The suggestion has been made that it could be the lattice of the palladium d + d ---> 4He + L (5) where L is the Lattice. This sounds attractive as the ratio of the cross section for reaction (5) to reactions (1) and (3) is not known. In discussing with John Ellis this morning he suggested a three-body reaction d + d + L ---> 4He + L* (6) where L* would be an excited state of the Lattice. However the energy released is about 19 MeV and this seems too much for the lattice which normals measures its excited states in eV. However if an entire region of the lattice were to move essentially coherently, say a few 1000 atoms, then MeV energies might be obtained. However there is the problem of timing - the nuclear reaction takes place in a much shorter time than the period of oscillation of a lattice. So while reactions (1) and (3) probably do occur infrequently, we still need a reaction mechanism which is dominant and gives out most of the heat. This afternoon I heard from two sources that Fleischmann and Pons used Lithium salts in their electrolytic solution! If the electrolysis were then to drive the lithium into the Palladium together with the deuterium then it would be would be possible to have the reaction d + 6Li ---> 4He + 4He (7) This is beautiful as it would explain how one gets energy(heat) but with fewer neutrons. Looking again at the paper of Jones et al., they say they also used lithium salts! Their actual wording is of interest; "we developed the following (unoptimised) prescription for the electrolytic cells. The electrolyte is a mixture of about 160 g of deuterium oxide(D2O) plus various metal salts in about 0.2 g amounts each: FeSO4.7H2O, NiCl2.6H20, PdCl2, CaCo3, Li2So4.H2O NaSO4.10H2O, CaH4(PO4)2.H2O, TiOSO4.H2SO4.8H2O, and a very small amount of AuCN. (Our evidence indicates the importance of co-deposition of deuterons and metal ions at the negative electrode)". Thus the experimental results can possibly be explained if the deuteron - lithium reaction (7) is dominant and the d - d reactions (1) and(3) occur but at a much lower rate. Thus the ratio of heat to neutrons could be varied by varying the electrolyte composition. In the paper of Jones et al. that records anomalies in volcano gases, Jupiter energy balance and 3He to 4He ratios in diamonds and metal foils, these effects could possibly be explained as resulting from different conditions and elements in the "electrolytic cell". It should be noted that if (7) is the dominant reaction, then most of the energy will be emitted as Helium-4 nuclei and these should be searched for. Also these Helium-4 nuclei will cause severe damage to the Palladium rods which could also be studied. Again this damage could be important in constructing a power plant which is economic. Douglas ========================================================================= 4 April 1989. COLD FUSION NEWS No 3. Dear Collaborators, Finally managed to get Martin Fleischmann on the phone at the new number and got answers to my many questions. Firstly, yes, they did have Lithium in their electrolyte. He seemed a little surprised that a possible way of explaining the discrepancy between the large heat output and the low yield of neutrons, would be to assume that the lithium-deuterium fusion reaction 2D + 6Li ---> 4He + 4He (1) could be the dominant one while the deuterium fusion reactions 2D + 2D ---> 3He + n (2) 2D + 2D ---> t + p (3) were present but much reduced. He explained that they take samples of the electrolyte throughout the run and measure the tritium content. They find that the tritium level initially drops slightly and he interpreted this as the tritium undergoing fusion preferentially first via the reaction 2D + t ---> 4He + n (4) as the cross section is larger for reaction (4) than for reactions (2) and (3). The tritium level then starts to rise and goes well above the initial level. The Lithium was not used for reasons of possible fusion but because it was light and because it was well known to help to keep the palladium together after lengthy catalysis. The fact that the 0.8 cm diameter rod "died", was not something that worried him as apparently it is only moderately rare for palladium to be transferred back from the anode to the cathode. This rod gave out no measurable amount of heat, less than 0.1 mwatt. The spectrum of gamma rays looked a little unusual with only a nice peak about 2.2 MeV, but he explained that there was some correction for Compton scattering. The spectrum of electrons from tritium that I found difficult to understand, was not a Kurie plot but was a simple liquid scintillator. He said that the heat output of 5 megajoules per cm3 was for a period of 100 hours, which was equal to about 10 watts per cm3. In the last few days there have been reports in the media that physicists at the university Lajos Kossuth at Debrecen in Hungary had repeated the Fleishmann - Pons experiment - he said he knew them and felt they were good workers in this field. They(F & P) have a number of experiments under way but these will take time. 5 April 1989. Yesterday there was the hope of explaining the discrepancy of the observation of large amounts of heat but very few neutrons, by invoking the possible fusion of deuterium with 6Li to give two alpha particles, i.e. heat without neutrons. However last night I realised that if 6Li can fuse, why not 7Li? and calculations show the reaction is also exothermic d + 6Li ---> 4He + 4He + 22.4 MeV (1) d + 7Li ---> 4He + 4 He + n + 12.9 MeV (2) If one reaction takes place why not the other (note, cannot get 5He)? Further natural lithium is 7.5% of 6Li and 92.5% of Li (and commercially available lithium is often seriously depleted in 6Li for military reasons) So that this also argues against reaction (1) being a solution of the discrepancy. Hence the main mystery remains; 1. Fleischmann and Pons measure a heat output of about 10 watts per cm3 2. They measure a neutron production rate which assuming the reaction d + d ---> 3He + n + 4.08 MeV (3) would alone give a rate of heat production many orders of magnitude lower than observed. 3. They observe tritium production 4. They observe gammas of an energy which corresponds to neutrons interacting in the water bath 5. Jones et al. measure neutrons of about 2.4 MeV as expected from reaction (1) but at a rate that would give a heat output many orders of magnitude lower than F & P observe. 6. A group from Birmingham working with Rutherford lab people at RAL, are reported to have observed neutrons 7. The Hungarian group has claimed to observe fusion but so far have no information on what means of detection they used. It may be judged that the idea that electrolytic catalysis can cause fusion to occur is almost confirmed experimentally. There is only one result which suggests that the energy output is big enough to be of economic interest. In discussing this with Martin Fleischmann this afternoon, he said that the experiment to measure the heat produced is not basically difficult, but it is very necessary to be careful. Thus he hopes that some other independent group repeats their experiment(they are doing it themselves, but independence is better, he rightly emphasises). In his lecture he had said that an experiment takes months to perform, however recent experiments have been performed in days. He explained that to charge with deuterium a one millimeter diameter rod of Palladium takes about 2 days, a 2 mm rod 8 days, a 4 mm rod a month and an 8 mm rod about 4 months. Hence after a fast qualitative result, the variation of measurements with rod diameter and other variables to obtain quantitative analysis can be long. Thus it would appear that neutrons can be observed fairly quickly, but to do the more extensive experiment with calorimetry, will take longer. These are the crucial experiments that one now awaits to see if electrolytic fusion is economically viable or whether, like muon catalysis fusion, it occurs but is not useful in a practicable way. Douglas. ============================================================================= Dear Collaborators, 13 April 1989. COLD FUSION NEWS No 6 In the history of cold fusion, we seem to have passed phase one where (1) preprints of the original two Utah experiments have become available for study and are often considered to be hastily written accounts of work that has been done with few controls and is described with so few details that it is difficult to judge the truth or falsehood of the results (2) press reports of experiments claiming to confirm these results but descriptions are not available to the scientific community. Now we are in phase two where we do not need more press releases but experiments with good measuring devices and serious controls that would convince other scientists. In working on cold fusion, one is quickly aware of the great knowledge gap between electrochemists and particle physicists and also the different cultures and jargon. An ideal team would include both electrochemists and particle physicists. A major criticism of the neutron measurements, particularly by Tom Walsh, is that the counting rates are close to the cosmic ray rate. If this background could be reduced by a few orders of magnitude, then any neutron signal would be unequivocally established. Such a neutron detector with a very low background has been developed by the groups of the Institut des Sciences Grenoble, College de France Paris, CPPM Marseille, Saclay, and LAPP Annecy at the Bugey Reactor centre near Lyon in the course of studies of neutrino oscillations where a low background has been found to be esential. It is always dangerous to say something is the best in the world, but this is one of the best. Dr. Cary Miller has make an electrolytic cell at the EPF Lausanne with a palladium rod of 0.18 cm diameter and 5 cm length and has been running it for 8 days for calorimetric measurements. This morning we took it to Bugey (this is the first time I have had a running experiment small enough to fit in my car) and installed it inside the shielding of the Bugey neutron counter. After a few hours running, already a neutron rate could be established substanially below the Jones at al. rate and several orders of magnitude below the Fleischmann and Pons rate and this is a very conservative estimate which will soon be improved. The shielding is such that the total background rate was about 1 E2 per hour and this was before discrimination between neutrons and other particles. When the veto against muons was removed (it is only on a few percent of the time), the background increased and signs of neutrons could be observed (stopping negative muons are known to produce neutrons via the decay electrons which interact with protons to give neutrons). There is considerable space inside the shielding of this detector and the constructors (IN2P3 and CEA) invite any groups that have electrolytic cells wishing to study cold fusion to come to Bugey and make use of the detector. Please contact Dr. Yves Declais at LAPP Annecy, Email address; LAPPVX::YD Earlier versions of the detector and of the pulse shape discriminator are described in R. Aleksan et al. NIM A273 (1988) 303 and NIM A274 (1989) 203. The shielding has an outer layer of 10 cm of lead to reduce gammas, 25 cm of water to slow/stop neutrons, then 5 mm of a plastic containing boron to absorb the slow neutrons and on the inside 10 cm of liquid scintillator which counts muons mainly and is normally used as a veto (in our case we wish also to see if muons can cause more neutrons by muon fusion catalysis - Dr. Petitjean of SIN who is an expert on muon catalysis, has confirmed what was written in note No 4, that muons are expected to be unable to cause many fusion catalysis reactions as they will be captured by the heavy palladium ions and held strongly). Inside this large shielding box, there is the detector of 600 litres consisting of 98 cells which contain 6Li in the new liquid scintillator NE320. The slowing of the neutrons gives recoil protons and the signal amplitude is correlated to the neutron energy. When the neutron stops it reacts with 6Li to give tritium and 3He and the height of this gnal is also measured. The distribution of the times between these two signals is used to determine the fraction of neutrons as the relation between the heights of the two pulses so that a discrimination is possible between protons and electrons. This Collaboration also offers space in the Frejus tunnel to any group who would like to make use of the low background level and large amount of space available there. Again please contact Dr. Declais. Have received messages telling me that as well as Texas A and M confirming the calorimetric measurements of Fleischmann and Pons, Georgia Tech report a neutron flux 13 times higher than background - it would be good to wait and see more details. In discussing this morning with Prof. Michael Gratzel and Dr. Cary Miller of the Ecole Polytechnique Federal of Lausanne, I learnt the importance of the footnote c to table 2 of Fleischmann and Pons's paper - these high values of the excess heat as % of the break-even, are not directly measured but assume a possible future scheme in which the deuterium gas released is not lost but recombines with the hydroxyl radical OD to give heavy water D2O. Douglas R. O. Morrison ============================================================================== Dear Collaborators, 15 April 1989. COLD FUSION NEWS No 7 There is an Informal Network of scientists who exchange information about their work and their ideas "in confidence". Including this the overall situation about cold fusion appears to be; IN FAVOUR 1. The two original experiments, performed with Palladium (F & P) and with Titanium (Jones), gave two unusual results; 1.A Production of excess heat(Fleischmann and Pons only) 1.B Nuclear-type effects, production of tritium, gammas and neutrons These results have been critised in detail and are not consistent (the heat is about 10 orders of magnitude greater than would be expected if the origin were nuclear according to the results 1.B, also the neutron rates observed in the two Utah experiments disagree by several orders of magnitude (but see below). 2. There are several confirming experiments. One or two have been withdrawn since (Georgia Tech and possibly Brookhaven). However the main conclusions are known only from press conferences, except in one case where informal information casts serious doubts on the confirmation. AGAINST 1. There are no published papers (or press conferences) saying that the experiments were repeated and the results claimed were not found, i.e. there are no null results. 2. Many groups are performing the experiments - today's Int. Herald Tribune says hundreds. 3. From the Informal Network I know that there are a number of groups that find no effect. For some of these groups I know enough details to believe that the work was done carefully and with good equipment. DISCUSSION 1. For the majority of people, the case against is almost unknown, while the evidence in favour seems to be getting stronger and stronger (as shown by the smart money men who are pushing the price of palladium to ever higher values). 2. But the members of the Informal Network think the opposite, they are more and more convinced that there is no new source of heat and that if there are any nuclear effects, there are at a very much lower rate than published. 3. There have been great hopes that this cold fusion in an electrolytic cell could give almost limitless supplies of energy and that with little radiation or other pollution. Everyone would love it and greatly wishes it were true. But to their regret, those with access to the information of the Informal Network, believe it is not true. WHY DO GROUPS NOT PUBLISH NEGATIVE RESULTS? Would it not be so simple just for each experiment to publish so that everyone could judge? Each group that separately does not find any effect, has two problems (a) they ask themselves how can they be sure they themselves have not made a mistake somewhere that blocked them from finding the effect? - answer is that they can never be completely sure (b) They ask if there is some secret part of the technique that Fleischmann and Pons and Jones et al. use that they have not talked about for some reason - if only they knew this they would find the effect. Hence up to now no group has wanted to publish a null result. There is possibly also a third reason for delaying announcing a negative result - since there has been so much excitement about the press announcements of a positive result and such very high hopes have been raised, that the first group to announce they did not see it would be subject to a tough media questioning "How can YOU be so sure that you have not missed it when several others have found it?" The second worry (b) can perhaps be answered by noticing that other groups claim to have found the effects without asking the Utah groups for their secret. So how could "no effect" results be presented? It needs either a strong group that has done many experiments and careful checks to publish alone or for several groups to present their results at the same time, e.g. at a conference. Who will be the first to say the Emperor has no clothes. Douglas R. O. Morrison. ============================================================================= Dear Collaborators, 17 April 1989. COLD FUSION NEWS NO. 8 Today Prof. Steven Jones of Brigham Young University visited CERN and gave a lecture then a few of us involved in experiments, talked with him in more detail afterwards. His talk was very cheerful and pleasant. The first part of his talk was about muon-induced fusion, a subject in which he is a world expert and it is his group that has managed to have muons make 150 deuterium-tritium catalyses on the average before decaying or being stuck on a produced helium nucleus. He said that Van Siclen and he had calculated the fusion rate for a free deuterium molcule as Lambda(f) = 1 E-74 per deuterium moleclue per sec. which corresponds to one fusion per year in the galaxy! [ a very recent paper by Koonin and Nauenberg gives 1 E-64 - my afterthoughts are in square brackets] In 1986 they proposed "piezoelectric fusion" where pressure could cause molecules of heavy hydrogen to fuse. He showed a very interesting map of the world with contours of heat flow in units of mW per m2. The greatest heat flow occurred far off the Pacific coast of the American continent, particularly off the coast of Peru. Other hot spots were roughly, Hawaii, the Red Sea, Iceland, North-east Italy [where the North African plate impinges on the European plates causing the rise of the Alps], etc. He then superimposed a contour map of regions of the earth where the ratio of 3He to 4He was much greater than normal - for example Hawaii was 21 times, 10 to 12 times in the Pacific hot spots, 12 x in the Red Sea region, 18 x near Iceland, 10 x in the N-E Italian region, The correlation was striking. Prof Jones explained this extra heating as possibly being caused by "piezoelectric fusion" of proton-deuteron molecules, produced in the subduction of the Pacific tectonic plate as it forces its way under the American land mass. For this he calculated the fusion rate to be Lambda(f) = 1 E-24 fusions per deuteron per sec. [in their paper they gave 1 E-18 ]. He quoted other examples of anomalous 3He to 4He ratios in metal foils. Prof. Jones said their work in electrolytic cells started in May 1986 and as evidence of this showed pages of a log book (later Prof. Jones gave me a write-up of the history of their work which mentions that some pages of notes dated 7 April 1986 were notarised that day by a BYU attorney "showing the importance attached to these ideas by the physicists present". [some later parts of this long write-up are rather painful to read]). He then described his experiments basically as in his preprint. He said that titanium was better than palladium - both had been used. He showed the calibration curve of the neutron counter for 5.2 MeV neutrons (not in preprint, it showed a broad peak near channel 270). Taking his Run 6, he said the shape of the observed peak near channel 100 is what would be expected from neutrons of 2.5 MeV. He gave numbers showing the rate of neutrons near 2.5 MeV was (6.2 +/- 1.3) E-4 while there was no effect on subtracting foreground from background for energies > 2.7 MeV (later there were serious questions on the errors from this reference region). Run 6 which was the one of the 14 runs reported which had the most significant effect, used a titanium "sponge" of 3 grams - for it he derived a fusion production rate of 0.4 fusions per sec. giving a rate of cold fusion production rate of Lambda(f) = 1 E-23 fusions/deuteron pair/sec He showed the signals for the 14 runs (fig 4) and said they were uneasy at the way the signal varies so that they could not predict the neutron rate. He explained that the unusual collection of salts used for the electrolyte was learnt by trial and was supposed to represent the mixture of salts available in geology [ how could they make trials if the only positive results obtained were the 14 runs?]. The surface of the electrode was rough(later he gave us samples - it looked like a mixture of crystals and had sharp points) and was like denderites. They felt that the sharp points would have a stronger electric field and would "shield the Coulomb barrier". Work remains to be done to disentangle the features. When they ran with zero current, no effect was observed. When water was used instead of D2O, no effect was observed. In his conclusions he said they had observed neutrons as a 5 standard deviation effect at a rate of 0.4 neutrons per sec. This corresponded to a heat production of 1 E-13 watts. He felt that this was new physics and could be a mono-energetic source of neutrons. Carlo asked whether he thought that his experiment and Fleischmann and Pons's could agree? Prof. Jones said that they had never done calorimetry nor had they observed a rod melting. The two neutron results looked different and the peak shown by Fleischmann and Pons looked too narrow. There were several questions about the significance of the 5 sigma claimed, in particular by Yves Declais and Charles Peyrou concerning the choice of control region, the scaling of the background and the apparent non-inclusion of the errors of the background. This would appear to reduce the statistical significance to much less than 5 sigma. I asked then and later in private discussion, about the calibration with 2.9 MeV neutrons which was mentioned in the paper while only the more remote 5.2 MeV neutron calibration curve was shown - the 2.9 MeV has a curious shape with a sharp fall-off at channel 190 (corresponding to 2.9 MeV). But as the response is non-linear it is not really possible to check if the width of 28 channels claimed in the paper is correct or whether it is wider which would reduce the statistical significance. Overall the feeling was that if a rigourous analysis were made by physicists familiar with neutron counters, it could well turn out that the significance was considerably less than 5 sigma. Bernard Hyams asked some interesting questions - as you have been running for three years, you must have done thousands of experiments (since they last about 8 hours each), so the probability of finding one series with a 5 sigma effect, is quite big. Prof Jones said this was based on a false premise as until December 1988, they only had a neutron flux monitor, after they had the good neutron counter. Bernard then asked if these were all the runs, and was told yes, except for one run of four days with two cells, but the cells soon turned off and the counts were not statistically above background [this troubled me as part of the syndrome of Wrong Results in Physics is that runs are discarded because they do not show the effect and therefore there must be something wrong with them. This reminded me of the 0.8 cm rod of Fleischmann and Pons which was declared "dead", but when I asked Prof. Fleischmann what his definition of "dead" was, he replied that it gave no heat, less than a milliwatt and so it must be "dead"]. Jean-Francois Cavaignac said that they had a carefully shielded neutron counter with very low background at Bugey and in the Frejus tunnel they had a smaller one but with an even lower background - he was invited to work there if he wished. Prof Jones replied that he was already discussing with Italian groups to work in the Gran Sasso tunnel (and also Los Alamos). For the final question, I said there were hundreds of repeat experiments being performed, a few had positive results confirming the two Utah results and they called press conferences (some later retracting) but many had negative results and none of them had published - there were two reasons for this (1) it is very difficult to be sure you have not made any mistake and the first negative experiment will be closely questioned by colleagues and the media, (2) how can they be sure that there is not some secret trick that the two Utah groups used. Prof Jones assured us that there were no secrets, except perhaps that he used these special fused purified titanium crystals with sharp points. Thus if one repeats the experiment exactly, one should get the same result. Dietrich Schinzel of CERN asked Prof. Jones a number of questions at the private meeting afterwards particularly on gain control and stability of detectors. Detailed answers were not available, but it was repeated that the results were erratic, sometimes falling off after eight hours and another time the signal and background all declined by 50%. The electrodes had not been specially heat-treated before the experiments. Also it was replied that LiOD had not been tried by itself; that the cocktail of salts used had been developed over months [again, what criteria were used if this was before the good neutron detector was available last December?], but were considered not to be optimised. The current density (probably the maximum) was 100 mA per cm2. The purity of the Ti was 99.8% An interesting new piece of information was that in Run 6 that was described as having a 3 gram pellet of Titanium (page 4) or as having several fused pellets with a total mass of 3 grams (page 5), there apparently was also a palladium cell - and Prof. Jones discussed whether palladium could have been deposited on the titanium rod [ looking at the drawing of the set-up, it would be interesting to know how it was determined that the neutrons came from the titanium and not from the palladium]. Unfortunately time was very limited and questions were many. Among the things that were missing from the paper were; The paper says that "typically 4 - 8 cells were used simultaneously" and I wondered that their only really successful run, No 6, had only the single titanium pellet - now we learn that there was a second cell at least in place at the same time. It would be good to see a complete list of what electrodes of what size and composition, were in use for each of the 10 runs plus also a full description of the 4 day run not in the paper. The current density should be given for each run and electrode. OTHER COMMENTS 1. Although the price of palladium is rising fast, and annual palladium production is only about 100 tons per year, it should be noted that other materials also absorb hydrogen, e.g. titanium, some alloys... 2. Peter Igo-Kemenes who speaks Hungarian, phoned Prof Csikai of the Kossuth University in Debrecen, who had reported confirmation of the Utah results. He said they had only looked at neutrons and had obtained a (signal + background) of 0.12 neutrons/s while the background alone was 0.04 neutrons/sec. They will publish in one week. NEW IDEA AND RESULT FROM FRASCATI Tuesday 18 April 1989. This morning's Italian newspapers are full of a major discovery by a group led by Prof. F. Scaramuzzi of Frascati. The papers were rather short in details but Ugo Amaldi gave me what looks like a press release in Italian but which also contains two figures, and more usefully he described the experiment to me. Basically they are trying a "dynamic" operation instead of the "static" work done up to now. That is they are trying to move the deuterons through the titanium in the hope that they will come closer together more often and so fuse. They take a cylinder, 3cm in diameter and 18 cm long and fill it with fine shavings of titanium. This is in deuterium gas. All is cooled to liquid nitrogen temperature as the amount of deuterium absorbed should increase at lower temperatures. A pressure of 8 atmospheres is applied. After a time neutrons are counted and this rate rises and then falls. In figure 2 of the paper, this rise starts after 200 minutes, reaches a peak of 300 counts/(per unit of 10 minutes - I think, but it could be per sec) and then falls to a background count of close to zero at time 1100 min. Later the cycle is reversed and the pressure is released and the titanium is warmed up to room temperature when again the neutron count rises and then falls. It is not clear whether fig. 2 applies to the first or to the second part of the cycle. However in fig.1 there is a counting rate in hours and here again John Ellis and I have been trying to figure out what it means. It extends over 64 hours and shows a background counting signal of about 1 per 10 min. with bursts of signals of about 15 to 45 counts per 10 min. It is possibly impressive, but needs explanation (I will be at a WA84 Collaboration Meeting all tomorrow, so please ask others for faxes). It is said that a peak counting rate of a thousand per second is reached and that the cycle has been repeated "many times". Patent rights have been applied for. It should be noted however that the energy production is about a billionth of a watt, much less than the energy required to cool and heat and pressurise the titanium, i.e. it is very unlikely to be a source of energy production. Eric Heijne, the CERN expert on Silicon, has given me some interesting graphs. On the graph of absorption of hydrogen at one atmosphere as a function of temperature, titanium looks fairly flat at about 50 000 cm3 (NTP) per 100 gram, i.e. one would gain little by cooling. On the other hand the curve for palladium rises very steeply from 300 at 400 C to 800 at 200 C and 8 000 at 120 C, but then the curve suddenly changes and becomes both dotted and flat giving 9 000 at 0 C. Looking at a graph of the diffusionn coefficients of H and D in the metals Palladium, Niobium and Vanadium (G. Alefeld, Comments on Solid State Physics, 6 (1975) 53), the diffusion rate always decreases with lowering the temperature. For D in Palladium, it is 3 E-8 cm2 per sec at -50 C and 8 E-7 at +50 C. Hence it would be interesting to know whether the cooling has a positive or a negative effect on the production of neutrons. Overall this seems an exciting physics result, though of probably no economic importance, and one looks forward to many more results on this "dynamic" approach. Douglas R. O. Morrison. ============================================================================= Dear Colleagues, 19 April 1989. COLD FUSION NEWS No 9. There are a number of exciting new results that when taken together may help to clear some, but not all of the con-fusion. We would like to emphasis again that one should treat the work as being of TWO experiments. Firstly fusion with the possible observation of its products such as neutrons, gammas, tritium and helium. Secondly calorimetry with the possible observation of excess heat. Later one will discuss the extent of any relationship between the two. 1. FUSION Recent and less recent results will be given and an attempt made to understand many(but not all) of them with a hypothesis. This hypothesis will then be compared with the results presented by Fleischmann and Pons and by Jones et al. 1.1 Firstly praise to the Frascati group of Prof. Francesco Scaramuzzi and his collaborators of the National Agency for Alternative Energy in Frascati for not copying the two Utah experiments but varying conditions. Their idea was that it was a "dynamic" effect and not a stable condition where you charged up the Palladium until the deuterium reacts. Hence instead of taking rods of several mm diameter, they used very small pieces of metal so that the surface to volume ratio was greatly increased. Further instead of using palladium as did Fleischmann and Pons, they used titanium as Jones et al. - and looking at the curves for the absorption of hydrogen, it can be seen that titanium absorbs much more hydrogen than palladium (certainly above 400 Kelvin, but as in Note No 8, it is not clear at low temperatures). They were rewarded by seeing 200 minutes after the entry of the deuterons was started, a very strong emission of neutrons but which fell to normal after about 1000 minutes. When the deuterons were released from the titanium, another burst of neutrons were observed. This is the first completely convincing neutron signal that has been seen here. In Astrophysics, the first to see a new Supernova, star, galaxy, etc, and who sends off his telegram first to the International Astronomical Union is called the discoverer. Someone who found this earlier but did not report it is called the Pre-discoverer. 1.2 Secondly praise to the Hungarian group of Prof. Gyula Csikai of Kossuth University for their powers of observation. We spoke for some time today and he explained that they had found that they observed neutrons only in the first 20 minutes after switching on their electrolysis. Thus their essential experiment was to switch on for half an hour, stay off for an hour and then repeat the cycle. This was done about 20 times. they found that the signal + background = 0.12 neutrons per second background = 0.038 neutrons per second He estimated the signal as being about three standard deviations. We look forward with interest to the results when this experiment is run for a longer time to obtain higher statistics. 1.3 Thirdly praise to the original discoverers of fusion of hydrogen in palladium, Dr. Fritz Panath and Dr. Kurt Peters of the Chemical Institut of Berlin University. They performed their experiment at the timme when it was suggested that the energy of the sun came from the burning of hydrogen to helium by means of Einstein's equation, E = Mc2. Thus they did their experiment in 1926! Their original paper is in Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft. They say that they passed hydrogen into palladium and by spectroscopic means observed helium production at the rate of about 1 E-8 to 1 E-9 cm3 per day. They used palladium because it is a good catalyst of chemical reactions. they used Pd in asbestos, Pd sponge and Pd metal where they treated the metal to get a bigger surface. They concluded that the amount of helium produced depends on how the surface was treated. They tried to look for gamma radiation but did not detect any (it should be recalled that gamma detectors were not too sensitive in 1926). A result that palladium could transmute hydrogen into helium, must have sounded too much like the Alchemist's Stone, for they wrote a second paper in 1927 (same journal) where they describe the many attacks and the additional experiments that they did to answer these criticisms - finally concluding that helium had been obtained from hydrogen. They seem not to have continued this work (because of the attacks?) which is not surprising because deuterium and the neutron were not discovered until 1932. In addition to Palladium, they tried Titanium and other metals, but found Palladium best. (I am indebted to Jaques Trembley, Eric Heinje, and Horst Wenninger for helping to translate the papers). Per-Olaf Hulth tells me that in Sweden, a famous scientist, Dr. Tanberg is well-known to have observed production of helium from hydrogen in 1927 and in fact his apparatus is still on display. Have recently heard that Prof. Pons of Utah reported that they had found production of Helium from their electrolytic cell - do not know at what rate or if it was 3He or 4He. 1.4 METHOD OF PUTTING HELIUM INTO METAL Recently Fleischmann and Pons and also Jones et al. have introduced a new way of putting hydrogen into metals by electrolysis and this method seems to have been successful in causing fusion. The Frascati group have returned to what may be called "The old-fashioned way" of using gas pressure and that has been in use for many decades and it is clear from their very significant results that this gives fusion. Which is the best? Using pressure, ratios of 0.6 to 0.8 atoms of hydrogen per atom of palladium have been found. Prof Fleischmann said he has obtained 0.6 but when I asked him how he knew, it seems it was theoretical. Have tried recommending groups to try and measure this ratio. It is perhaps important to note that Frascati had to wait 200 minutes then they got neutrons for 800 minutes using the pressure method while the Hungarian group only got neutrons for 20 minutes and this would seem to favour the pressure method but the efficiency of the two neutron detector devices is not known yet. The Hungarian group also tried the pressure method but only with a low pressure of 40 to 50 mm of mercury and did not observe a significant signal. Since the effect depends on surface area, there is also the fact that Frascati chose a very large surface while Csikai et al. used a rod of 5 mm diameter and a tube of 5 mm diameter and 1 mm thickness (they thought the tube was better but this must be at the limit of their statistics). Also one used palladium at room temperature while the other used titanium at varible temperatures. Hence we really do not know yet. 1.5 HYPOTHESIS TO EXPLAIN FUSION RESULTS The Univ. of Utah group emphasised that it was a volume effect and that the surface of the material did not matter. However they seem to have been referring to the possible heat excess and this was reasonable in their theory, however it may have diverted people doing the other experiment of looking for signs of fusion. Hence the credit of the Frascati group and of the Hungarian group in thinking that it could be a surface effect. It would seem that the effect does not occur appreciably in the steady state but more when there is a change in the direction of the force causing the deuterium nuclei to diffuse through the metal. Now there was a theoretical argument that worried me about fusion in palladium. The crystal is a face-centred cube and the distance between the nuclei of palladium is about 2.5 to 2.8 Angstroms and this is very large compared to the distance of 0.74 A between the nuclei in a free deuterium molecule. And with a separation of 0.74 A the fusion rate is calculated to be a very low value of 1 E-64 fusions per deuterium pair per second. Now it is not too clear just what is the distance between hydrogen nuclei in a palladium crystal, but they seem to take sites which are more than one angstrom apart (would appreciate more information on this) and hence their fusion rate would be extremely low. However when there is a movement through the crystal lattice, the deuterium nucleus must jump from one site to another and there is a chance that in the course of this jump, the separation distance between two deuterium nuclei becomes so small that fusion becomes probable. This would tend to happen when the pressure is applied or removed. The rate of fusion would depend on the number of sites occupied in that region and on the rapidity of the change. The driving force could be physical pressure or electrolytic-induced pressure. Which is best requires more experiments. Thus a hypothesis is proposed in which fusion occurs when deuterium nuclei jump from one site to another and pass close to another deuterium nucleus already in a nearby site. Since there is always some diffuse movement this probably occurs all the time but will be at such a low level that it is not easily detected except when the driving force is changing rapidly when copious production of neutrons could be observed and indeed was by the Frascati group. 1.6 COMPARISON OF THE HYPOTHESIS WITH THE DATA OF THE TWO ORIGINAL EXPERIMENTS. Prof. Fleischmann and Prof. Pons and Prof. Jones and his colleagues are to be praised for re-opening the possibility of causing fusion in a catalyst. They have created great interest in this subject and have activated many experiments thus opening up a new field. In the experiment of Jones et al., it was stated that they were puzzled by the fact that their neutron yields were very erratic and often stopped after about 8 hours. There was a tendancy to ascribe this to their poor statistics and analysis method, but it could be that they were observing the transient nature of the phenomen observed by the Frascati group who had a larger surface area of their titanium. When Prof. Jones was here on Monday he gave us samples of his favoured form of titanium - it had many sharp points and hence a larger surface to volume ratio than the smooth rods that many groups used, though not as large a ratio as Frascati. The neutron counting rate of Fleischmann and Pons is much higher than that observed elsewhere and this is hard to understand as fusion. There overall efficiency of 2.4 E-6 was exceptionally small so that their actual rate of counting was small and close to natural backgrounmd rates. Natural background rates can vary from place to place, e.g. people sometime put in shielding thinking to decrease the background, but this can increase it if muons are slowed down more and these then interact in e.g. water to give neutrons via the reaction of the decay negative electrons with protons to give neutrons and a gamma. It was very worrying that the background rate was established by taking a reading at a distance instead of the normal and safer way of taking it in exactly the same situation but with the assumed neutron producer switched off. Measurement of neutron fluxes is a very difficult job and is best left to experienced people or at least experts should be fully consulted. The gamma ray distribution shown in their paper is most impressive and convinced many. But again people wondered why the background level was determined by taking measurements in a different position (5 and 10 meters were mentioned while 50 metres were stated for neutrons), instead at the same position and switching off the possible source. The gamma spectrum shown has a sharp peak centred at 2.2 MeV. A possible explanation may be provided by a story Dietrich Schinzel told me today. This morning they moved their electrolytic cell with heavy water and palladium electrode down to a basement where they had a gamma detector. The gamma detector immediately gave a very fine peak ressembling that of the Utah group but at the slightly higher energy of 2.6 MeV. The Health Physics group said that was a well-known effect seen when a gamma detector is placed near concrete as concrete contains thorium which gives off a 2.6 MeV line. 2. CALORIMETRY. It is generally agreed that calorimetry is a difficult subject. The problems are to be sure that one has included all the factors in the problem and that the energy balance is counted from the start. For example one could try and establish stable electrolytic conditions and then make the heat balance. But there is the danger that one has neglected the fact that by pushing deuterium into palladium, the structure of the lattice is deformed and considerable energy has been stored up, so that really one should start from time zero, but this means that the effect is small compared to the large amounts of energy that has entered the system. Also as the lattice fills up with deuterium, the sites that are being filled change with time and changes of sites can lead to different energy states. Thus to really understand the matter it would be better to consult experts on Palladium hydrides. 3 COMPARISON OF RESULTS FROM FUSION STUDIES AND FROM CALORIMETRY. The University of Utah group claimed to have observed 10 watts per cm3 being produced. This is an impressive amount and it was stated that the authors knew of no known chemical process that could account for this rate. Hence they concluded that it must be nuclear. But if it is nuclear then one would expect to observe the particles resulting from such processes such as neutrons, gammas, tritium. However their measurements gave rates which were many orders of magnittude less (more than a billion times less) and other experiments all give enormous discrepancies. If you do not observe the products then it is unreasonable to expect that a fusion process has taken place. However the authors concluded that "the bulk of the energy release is due to a hitherto unknown nuclear process or processes". This was a major sticking point to physicists that a nuclear process could give a billion times more energy than normal fusion. However helium had not been measured and it was speculated that the reaction could be D + D = 4He + recoil energy. However there are two arguments to close this unlikely loophole. Firstly the recoil energy must be taken up by something and the only thing available is the lattice of the palladium crystal. In the News note of 4 April, the crucial point was made that the timing is impossible - the nuclear reaction takes place in a such a short time that the lattice does not have time to move in a coherent way. Secondly Paneth and Peters already faced this problem in 1926 when they observed that the amount of Helium observed was many orders of magnitude smaller than the various terms in the heat balance equation i.e. there was not enough helium produced. Hence all possible nuclear reaction products have been covered. The most reasonable conclusion is that there is some problem in the very difficult calorimetry. 4. FUTURE EXPERIMENTS There are many more interesting experiments needed, but they must be of high quality and in general should involve experts from different fields or at least experts should be continually consulted. Since it is clear that there is unlikely to be any economic interest, it is to be hoped that secrecy and first publication via press conferences can from now on be avoided. 4.1 There are many obvious experiments involving the two methods of obtaining the force to drive the deuterium into the metals using pressure and electrolysis and comparing them. I have already heard of some ingenious ways of doing it and people are sure to have other new ways of doing it, the subject is so fresh. Some special suggestions are; 4.2 Approximately equal mixtures of tritium and deuterium should be tried as the barrier penetration probability (i.e. the cross section) is so much greater than for the deuterium - deuterium system. 4.3 Factors affecting the fusion rate would be expected to include 4.3.1 the position of the hydrogen sites in the metal and the manner in which the hydrogen nucleus jumps or flows from one site to another - this needs consultation with experts in metallic hydrides. 4.3.2 the amount of hydrogen that can be absorbed by the metals, here Titanium, Zirconium, Cerium, Vanadium, Palladium (but only at temperatures below about 200 C), Tantalum, and Niobium are possibilities. 4.3.3 the rate of diffusion of hydrogen and deuterium nuclei through metals (they are different being much faster for hydrogen in Vanadium and niobium but in Palladium deuterium is, surprisingly, slightly faster). There are two points; the diffusion rate is very temperature dependent, e.g for deuterium in Palladium it is 2 E-8 at -60 C and 8 E-6 cm2/s at +200 C so the higher the temperature the higher the diffusion rate but palladium is particularly bad for the absorption of hydrogen falling steeply with rising temperature. Vanadium has a very high diffusion coefficient,D, 1 E-5 at -100 C and 1 E-4 at +200 C (the relationship is linear on a plot of D against 1/T where T is in K). Hence for their higher values of D, Vanadium and Niobium would perhaps be worth trying. 5 CONCLUSIONS It is clear that there are two very different experimental results and initially there was great confusion by mixing them. The "result" that there was an unknown source of heat giving 10 watts per cm3 of palladium should be considered mistaken. There is a second class of experiments which indicates that in certain circumstances fusion can take place inside a metal catalyst but the rate of heat production is so extremely small, about 1 E-10 watts, that even with extensive developments, it is inconceivable that it could produce anywhere near as much heat as is required to make the fusion take place. Thus with great regret, it is clear that cold fusion can never be a practical source of power as you have to put in much much more power than one gets out. So our best hope for long term power production with the smallest amount of pollution' is still "hot fusion" with temperatures of 100 million degrees, but this serious development work is expected to take several decades. 6. OTHER POINTS 6.1 SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY Everyone dreams of an inexaustible source of energy which creates very little pollution. Anyone presenting experimental results showing this might be feasible, gets all encouragement and lots of attention. "Cold Fusion" started this way. One was aware of the social responsibilty of scientists but it was brought home to me very strongly by the cartoon in the International Herald Tribune of 4 April which shows the oil spill in Valdez in Alaska and a buoy floating on which are two seals and a bird covered in oil and the bird asks "Any more word on how those fusion experiments are going?" I heard that in a nearby country there were two groups starting an experiment to repeat the original ones and not finding anything. Then on the television news they suddenly heard that in a small town a group had repeated the experiment and found neutrons! They quickly enquired and asked for details and learnt that a Geiger-Muller counter had been used (it is famous but does not count neutrons). They quickly told the media and others and the false news did not escape from the country. Now in how many other countries does there exist the possibility for responsible scientists to respond and act quickly? 6.2 There are strong rumours from several directions that the Utah group have done the control experiment so often requested, to use ordinary water instead of heavy (deuterated) water and use their method of calculating It is said that they found a heat excess! It would be good if this news were confirmed as if it is true it would clearly establish that the original work on calorimetry was mistaken and there is absolutely no connection between any heat measurement and fusion. 6.3 Several people have asked me how I got the Paneth and Peters paper of 1926 The story is typical. A friend at the Max Planck Institute in Munich, Mike Aderholz, is a member of the E632 experiment at Fermilab near Chicago, and he gave one of these news notes to a friend in the Plasma Physics section. This friend took it to a conference in Oak Ridge where they were discussing it. A Russian who was there said "Why do you not read your own literature?" and gave the 1926 reference. This came back to Munich and Mike sent me a Telefax of the two articles yesterday afternoon. It now seems to be circulating very quickly and some people have asked me if I have seen it. 6.4 The rise in the price of Palladium seems to have stopped. It is always possible it will rise again as its unusual propreties have been brought to wide attention and maybe some one will find other uses for it. 6.5 I still keep thinking about the two maps of the world that Prof. Jones showed on Monday of the heat flux coming up through the earth's surface and the relatively high rates of the 3He to 4He gases emitted. These showed the highest heat flows in the Pacific Ocean well off the coast of Peru - it would be interesting to know how this fluctuates with time and if there is a relation to the temperature of the nearby ocean water as this temperature seems to drive much of the world weather. Douglas R. O. Morrison. ============================================================================= Dear Collaborators, 30 April 1989. COLD FUSION NEWS No 11. 1. Summary of the Situation 2. APS Session on Cold Fusion 3. Results and Ideas on Calorimetry 4. Results and Ideas on Neutrons 5. Results and Ideas on Tritium 6. Theories 7. Regionalisation of Results; Correlation between Results and Information Available 8. Historical Perspective 1. SUMMARY OF SITUATION Out of the hundreds of experiments being done, more are beginning to report so that now the situation can be evaluated in two ways, (1) by simply counting the numbers confirming or finding no effect (2) by judging by the quality of the experiment - is it known that adequate checks and controls have been made? are the counters reasonably efficient? have acceptable statistical errors been given? The first is easier to do. For example Le Figaro of 28 April had a front page story "Treize reussites, treize echecs" which was followed on the inside by a table listing 26 labs that had reported in a manner accessible to the newspaper. The table had four columns listing lab's name, confirmation?, energy(calorimetry) and neutrons. Although the headline suggested the score was 13 to 13, Georgia Tech was quoted as "oui puis non" and scored as "yes" whereas one expects they would prefer to be taken as "no" i.e. 12 to 14. Also Texas A and M are scored as "yes", but they have since retracted their confirmation, i.e. 11 to 15. There is another experiment that I recognise where the authors withdrew after learning that Geiger counters have a rather low efficiency for neutrons, i.e. 10 to 16. On the other hand Tom Wilkie of the Independent ( the new serious paper of London) lists confirmations of minimal amounts of neutrons from South Korea, Brazil, and East Germany, and a couple of research students in Seattle i.e. 14 to 16. But a Berlin group can explain an apparent emission of heat i.e. 14 to 17. Thus we are passing through Phase 2. The Economist quotes Prof. Pons as saying that "60 laboratories have privately confirmed different parts of his and Dr. Fleischmann's work", but as there are no names of labs given, nor details of the checks done, it is difficult to evaluate this statement but probably this will be possible at the APS meeting tomorrow. Quality is always more controversial, but the few experiments that I know to have made reasonable checks are all "no". In addition as details emerge of the four original experiments of Utah University and the one of Brigham Young University, they are all being strongly criticised (see No. 10 and below). A striking pattern is emerging in which in some regions of the world, the experiments all give "yes" and in others they all give "no". There may be some correlation between the information available in a region and the results obtained there. There are worrying signs of disunity in the scientific community and it is important in the future that people behave responsibly and even more importantly with kindness. 2. APS SESSION AT BALTIMORE On Thursday afternoon I received an electronic mail message that seems to have originated on Wednesday afternoon and was sent by electronic mail only. It said that "As a result of the excitement produced by the the recent cold fusion experiments, the American Physical Society has agreed to organise a special session on the topic at the Baltimore meeting of the APS". It will take place on Monday May 1 from 19.30 to 23.00, the room to be announced. It is scheduled that there will be four half-hour talks by S.E Jones, M. Fleischmann or B.S. Pons, J. Rafelski, and S. Koonin, and the remaining 90 minutes are for contributed papers. Abstracts for contributed papers should reach the APS in NY by noon on 28 April or at Baltimore up to noon on May first (have been informed that electronic mail and telefaxes are not acceptable). Foreign scientists are specially invited. I tried to pass the news on to European scientists who have done or are doing some of the most interesting experiments, but at that moment all said it was not possible to attend, but indicated what I could say at Baltimore. 3. RESULTS AND IDEAS ON CALORIMETRY At TIFR, India, a first test has been done using 20 ml of D2O and with NaCl as electrolyte. The temperature rose quickly and then stabilised. Their preliminary indications are of a heat excess but no error is mentioned to say whether this is significant or not. Also no clear analysis of Newton's law of cooling has been done. A nichrome wire heater was used as controlFull checks or control experiments have not been done yet. Some workers have reported trouble with such type of electrolyte due to effects produced by the Chlorine gas boiling off. (This has not been announced and thus should be taken as very preliminary, and hence is not counted above.) For the Stanford experiment of Dr. Huggins, I am now told that they observed 50% more heat with D2O than with H2O and from which they deduce that there must be something non-chemical happening. I have no details about a report that Tokyo University and the Ghandi Centre for Atomic Research at Kalpakham in India have both reported as observing excess heat (Le Figaro, 28/4/89). George Yost told me of a meeting at Berkeley where an electrolytic chemist commented unfavourably on the Fleischmann and Pons calorimetry, in particular their use of an "open" arrangement where the gases can escape. He said that Pons had said that they ran for 120 hours at 5 Volts and this gives a measure of the energy put into the system which is not incompatable with the 4 megajoules talked about. The Stanford Experiment also suffers from being an "open container" one. He offers a possible model to explain the Stanford results - it is known that it is much easier to dissociate H2O than D2O (used to separate isotopes). Thus for the same amount of energy in, more of the light hydrogen bubbles off (and this is not easily recognised in an open experiment) so that the energy going into the heavy water, goes less into dissociation and more into heat production (I think that one has to ask Stanford people about the accuracy of their measurement of the water levels and how this was fed into their calculations). David Williams of Harwell described to me their calorimetry system. It is well known that the most reliable measuring instrument is one that measures nothing! -for example the Wheatstone Bridge. So they have three cylinders at three temperatures. Heat is added to enable the temperatures to be stable - i.e. it is a null method and Newton's Law of cooling is not required. If there were to be excess heat, then the external heat added would have to be decreased to maintain constant temperature. They are studying both open and closed systems. They are also using various controls. They intend to do a very thorough job and find that as new techniques (e.g. Frascati) are reported, they have to extend their work. He hopes to be ready to publish all at the end of May. He told me another interesting thing - that Li, which is often used as an electrolyte, oftens contains some potassium 40 which is radioactive and gives gammas (I remember it is also a nuisance in glass). The Frascati group of Prof. Scaramuzzi say in their paper that they did not make specific calorimetry measurements, but if an excess heat had been emmited of the amount claimed by Fleischmann and Pons, then the liquid nitrogen in the bath around the cell, would have been evaporated anomalously, and this they did not observe. Have been told by several people, but have not seen the report in German myself, that in Berlin they tried calorimetry. They noticed that as the level of the D2O fell, more of the palladium electrode got exposed to the air and the deuterium gas began to be emitted from this part of the palladium. This released the strains in the palladium rod caused by the inserting of the deuterium nuclei and caused a heating. They suggest this may be the explanation of why heat may apparently be given off. This should be easy to check. I was reminded that heat produced from changes in crystalline structure of Graphite in a graphite-cooled reactor was reponsible for the Windscale fire that caused so much trouble - this is called the Wigner energy. A similar effect could be responsible for the emmision of heat when changes occur in the distribution of deuterium nuclei in palladium. It has also been suggested that changes between octahedral and terahedral sites of deuterium, could propagate along fault lines in the crystal causing regions of the crystal to release energy suddenly. Note that these are explanations which may not be considered chemical by some chemists, and also are not from nuclear reactions. 4. RESULTS AND IDEAS ON NEUTRONS A group of electrochemists from Grenoble have made a cell which has been placed in the high quality neutron counter of Bugey. No effect was seen. The paper is being prepared (roughly it should indicate an upper limit about two orders of magnitude less than that of Jones et al. This experiment is now being repeated in the Frejus tunnel where the background is very low (one count per year, it is said). At Jussieu in Paris, no evidence of neutrons was found. At the Erice meeting, M. M. Broer of AT&T Bell labs, reported that with a 0.1 cm diameter and 10 cm long rod which was electrlysed for 10 days, the upper limit on neutrons was three orders of magnitude less than those reported by Jones et al. Also J. E. Zeigler of IBM said that they had upper limits of 1 E-3 /s/cm3 for the detection of t or p from the d + d reactions. An experiment from CNR at Frascati reported that neutrons were observed for the first few minutes - as reported in News No 10, however having seen these results, they do not look significant.(reports from Nature, 20 April 1989). I have now had a sympathetic talk with Prof. Scaramuzzi who is the leader of the team at Frascati that reported non-equilibrium emmission of neutrons. He confirmed that they were not able to do control studies before their press conference but they were now doing them. He has sent me a preprint of their work which gave details. In the 7 to 10 April run, the titanium was degassed and a pressure of 50 atm achieved in several steps and then the cell was lowered into a bath of liquid nitrogen which slowly evaporated to quite a low level. The arrows on the graph correspond to times when nitrogen was added. The upward arrow after 42 hours was when the pressure was released. the authors had also noticed the "quantised" structure of the counts in units of 20 (but do not comment on the drift to higher values) and they suggest an interpretation in terms of counter saturation if the neutrons only come in very short bursts - however this seems to me to raise more questions than it answers. They will check this. For the second run, 15/16 April, "the deuterium had been in contact with the titanium bed at different temperatures and pressures for roughly one day and counts only just above background had been detected". to study desorption, "the deuterium was evacuated from the system by vacuum pumping and the liquid nitrogen dewar was also removed, allowing the cell and its contents to rise to room temperature. This moment corresponds to time zero in fig 3." The spectacular and very significant gaussian shape rise and fall of the neutron counts was then observed betwen 3 and 18 hours. The suggestion of David Williams that this effect could be due to cold and moist air affecting the neutron counter will be checked. This is the first time that I had appreciated that there was a day of running beforehand during which time no significant neutron counting rates were observed - it would be good to understand this. The overall counting efficiency is given as 5 E-5, which is rather low compared with tens of % in some other experiments. They conclude that these experiments "open an interesting field of scientific investigation". David Rogers of the Canadian Ionising Radiation Measurements Standards Laboratory says that their group is trying to reproduce these Frascati results and have used 8 atmospheres pressure so far. They have a null result. 5. RESULTS AND IDEAS ON TRITIUM At the Ecole Polytechnique of Lausanne, Claude Friedli and Victor Lopez, have measured the emmision of tritium from heavy water and found an effect when electrolysis was done over 100 hours with a current of 0.5 Amp. per cm2. When the palladium electrode (0.1 cm diameter and 10 cm long) was replaced by a platinium electrode, emmision of tritium continued at the same rate. I hope to get more details from Christos Comninellis tomorrow on the way to the plane which will allow an opinion on the significance of this result. The authors feel that the tritium is produced by a simple effect - the different electrolysis rates of deuterium and tritium. It is interesting to note that Georgia Tech. originally said at their press conference that they confirmed the Fleischmann and Pons result by observing both neutrons and tritium. However the retraction only seemed to apply to neutrons - should we assume that the tritium result has also been withdrawn? 6. THEORIES There are a number of theories which assume that the results are false and these have been given above (e.g that the "heat excess" observed was a short term phenomenon caused by the energy stored in the crystal lattice of palladium when it has been charged with deuterium). There are also a number of theories which assume that the results are true. 6.1 Two Utah chemists propose that helium is formed in an excited nuclear state which is then de-excited not through the normal modes but rather by "internal conversion", i.e. processes involving overlap of electronic wave functions with the nuclear wave function. they propose that the same proces that causes the fusion (electron mass enhancement due to solid state effects) causes also the increase in the internal conversion rate. However it is estimated that the internal conversion rate should be many orders of magnitude less. 6.2 Dr. Peter Hagelstein of MIT has written four papers and MIT has subsequently released a summary of his papers and filed a patent application (Nature). He is said to consider the lattice of palladium and the deuterium atoms as a whole and considers the energy flowing from the fusion of d + d to 4He to flow freely to the lattice. If a cosmic ray muon causes one fusion by muon catalysis, then the spread of the energy would help other fusions causing a chain reaction (hope I have got that right, but I am not sure). However such ideas seem to ignore the time factor - as written earlier, the nuclear reaction happens many orders of magnitude faster than the vibration time of the lattice which therefore cannot react coherently. 6.3 Dr S. Koonin pointed out at Erice that the reaction p + d ---> 3He has a much higher probability than d + d fusion and there is some H2O in the heavy water used by Fleischmann and Pons - however this is only 1/2 %. 7. REGIONALISATION OF RESULTS; CORRELATION BETWEEN RESULTS AND INFORMATION AVAILABLE. There are striking variations of the ratio of confirmation to null results from one region to another. In North-western Europe ( Britain, Switzerland France, Germany) there are only null results whereas in Italy there are two press conference releases announcing confirmation and I have heard of three other groups with confirming results (two neutrons and one protons). In Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America only confirming results have been announced. In the USA, the North-East plus major labs at Livermore and Los Alamos have reported null results while elsewhere the results are confirmations. It is interesting to compare this with the information available in each region to see if there is a correlation with the results. Initially most of the world welcomed the information that the dream of energy with little pollution, had some experimental evidence, though doubts were expressed in a few papers, particularly the New York Times and some Western European papers. Responsible journalists in these regions continued to express doubts. As an example of the effect of the media on opinion, Don Perkins offered his first year class odds of 100 to one that there was nothing in the reports of heat generation by Fleischmann and Pons - and no one would take the chance of losing one pound in the hope of gaining one hundred from their professor. In Italy on the other hand, the first reports from Frascati that a new technique had been developed, were extensively reported on the front pages. In the rest of the world outside of the USA, I do not have enough information. In the USA, the New York Times has an important influence in the North-East and has expressed sceptical doubts and reported negative results. The State of Utah is exceptional. Only confirmations seem to be reported. The economy is not in good shape and there are great hopes that cold fusion could change all this - as California has its Silicon Valley, Utah will have its Fusion Valley. The State has voted $5 million for fusion. The Office of Naval Research, ONR has voted an additional grant of $400 000 for the University of Utah team over the next 32 months nearly doubling ONR support for Pons's laboratory (Nature 20 April). And now Fleischmann and Pons (or the University of Utah) has requested $25 million from Congress to set up a realistic device to generate energy (Le Monde, 28 April). Some people are very firm believers in cold fusion like the person who taught Prof. Fleischmann at Imperial College and who now is a professor in the States. His group held a press conference announcing confirmation. He believes that only women "will make the world see sense and force governments to produce hard cash for an environmentally ideal fusion process". Hence he has written "to Jane Fonda to ask her to lead a campaign, America wide, to persuade Congress of the need for strong financial backing for nuclear fusion" (Mail on Sunday, April 16). His University has since retracted confirmation. This possible correlation between the climate of information available in a region and the results obtained in that region, must be considered tentative as it is based on only partial information and a fuller time study is needed. There is another regional divergence that is even more worrying. There seems to be a slight tendancy for chemists in the USA to be in favour of Fleischmann and Pons. Thus Nature of 20 April reported that at the American Chemical Society meeting in Dallas "chemists welcomed the prospect that cold fusion might represent a victory for chemistry over physics. Opening the special session, ACS president Clayton Callis said the goal of fusion as an energy source has remained elusive and that physicists' efforts at hot fusion using tokomacs and lasers were 'apparently too expensive and too ambitious to lead to practcal power'. To applause from the crowd, he added, 'Now it appears that chemists have come to the rescue'. In his speach, Pons joked about the high cost of physicists attempts at fusion by calling his own apparatus the 'U-1 Utah tokamak'. A picture showed a glass electrochemical cell inside a cooling bath made from an ordinary rubber kitchen bucket." This is sad. Not all results can be correct and clearly some must be wrong. In this difficult time to come, it is important that all scientists, no matter what their field of specialisation, should be supportive of those who produced wrong results and believed too firmly in them. 10. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE In my studies of the history of Wrong Results in Science, or Pathalogical Science, a considerable number of the 12 conditions forming the syndrome, seem to be fulfilled. In particular we have passed Phase One where there are the original results and a few confirming results obtained quickly. In Phase Two, there seems to be confusion as there are about an equal number of confirming and negative results. On a world-wide basis, we seem to be in that phase now, but in some parts of the world we are already entering Phase Three where all the results are negative and no one believes in the effect, except the original discoverer. In the past, the originators of the effect have not retracted. In the classic case of N-Rays, Prof. Blondlot was exposed rather cruelly by R. M. Wood, an American scientist visiting Europe who was asked by the Royal Society to call in on Blondlot and investigate. A year afterwards Blondlot published a book describing positively N-rays. An exception was the great German scientist Prof. Paneth who believed he had found helium from the fusion of hydrogen in palladium - he investigated further and published in 1928 very detailed evidence descibing where he had gone wrong - but he was a great scientist. Historically speaking cold fusion seems to heading towards its end though there will still be strong advocates for some time longer. Some harm will have been done to Science through raising people's hopes too high, but there are also some positive sides - many have appreciated the importance of careful checking and control experiments, of not wishing a result too much. Also many have learnt something about other branches of Science that they do not normally consider. There is perhaps a better understanding of scientific method. Doubtless this will enter into the History of Science. It is important that all act responsibly; there is no point in witch-hunting. Everyone makes mistakes and it is very important to be kind and understanding. Douglas R. O. Morrison. PS For the period 1 to 9 May, my Email address will be DROM@FNAL