A correspondent of mine remarked that cold fusion appears to be
"resurrected" given the "reaction and the reappearance (so I
understand) within mainstream physics, even if at the margins right
now." My response:
You are quite right. . . . Actually, the situation most resembles a
Road Runner cartoon where the cold fusion researchers play Wile E.
Coyote. They come up with one oh-so-clever experiment after another
-- finding first tritium, then gamma rays, massive excess heat, more
tritium -- but whatever they do, it backfires and they end up getting
hammered by the APS or Scientific American. They report a little
tritium at Los Alamos and the APS says "that's a mistake!" SRI finds
tritium at a million times background and not only do they end up
having to pay $20,000 to fix the detector and getters, but the
critics say "that has to be fake!" It is no-win situation, where the
goal posts are moved after ever play, and they have now been moved
out of the stadium, out of the parking lot, and off a cliff. At the
bottom of that cliff you will find the cold fusion Coyote has
plummeted into a hole shaped like himself.
I do love Road Runner cartoons.
. . . I was going to mention that many experiments look like they
come from Acme Corporation, but I did not want to give a bad
impression of the field.
- Jed
