There has been a lot of debate pertaining to what might turn out to be
a more accurate descriptive term for "Cold Fusion". Should the
phenomenon be called CANR - Chemically Assisted Nuclear Reactions? Or
should it be called LENR - Low Energy Nuclear Reactions.
LENR is just the (hopefully) less-career-killing word for "Cold Fusion".
I'm for reclaiming "Cold Fusion".
Cold <------------------------> Hot (Plasma temperatures)
Low Energy High Energy
So where do you draw the line between "Cold" and "Hot", "Low Energy" and "High Energy"
Bigger words, with no more meaning.
Then we have "Fission/Fusion" vs "Nuclear Reaction". Again, Bigger words with less precision.
Fission : Fusion
Nuclei Nuclei
become become
smaller larger.
"Nuclear Reaction" could make nuclei smaller OR bigger, so it's not really descriptive.
I don't see any convincing evidence of "Chemically Assisted". "Lattice Assisted", maybe.
The first use of "Cold Fusion" that I could find (in google books) was .... Ben Franklin !! (But referring to metallurgy, not nuclei).
Per wiki : The term "cold fusion" was used as early as 1956 in a New York Times article about Luis W. Alvarez' work on muon-catalyzed fusion
Again, distinguishing between Hot (Plasma) and Cold.
Theodore Sturgeon picked that up, and used Muon-catalyzed "Cold Fusion" reactors in "The Pod in the Barrier" (1957) -- with a twist : Extreme disbelief disabled them!
http://books.google.com/books?id=3vstCdOrqbUC&lpg=PA46&dq=cold%20fusion&pg=PA13#v=onepage&q=cold%20fusion&f=false
Pons and Fleischmann were perfectly justified in using the term. Since it's a GENERAL term, it doesn't need to be associated with D/Pd alone.
I say CLAIM IT BACK !!
or, as Ben Franklin put it : FART PROUDLY !
ps That or Alchemistic Trasmutation
