Stanley Pons Notes

In March 1989 electrochemist Stanley Pons of the University of Utah and his colleague Martin Fleischmann of the University of Southampton in England announced in a University of Utah press conference that they had discovered a way to achieve nuclear fusion in a flask at room temperature. They claimed that the device generated more energy in the form of heat than was fed into it as electricity. The obvious practical application of this idea sprang forward: usable technology for generating heat and power. The Cold Fusion controversy was re-ignited with the canonical scientific community dismissing the claim as a "blondlotisma" (see Blondlot).

The problem with cold fusion is that it defies current accepted physical theory. For cold fusion to occur, two deuterium nuclei have to fuse. Deuterium nuclei naturally repel one another because of the electric force between them. The laws of quantum mechanics allow deuterium nuclei to fuse by accident every so often even if they are not initially close together, but the probability of that happening is very small. If cold fusion could be controlled, a seemingly endless stream of energy would be available.

Subsequent to their announcement Pons and Fleischmann have moved their research to France where it is funded by a Japanese consortium. A paper by Pons and Fleischmann published in 1993 stated that the pair has achieved heat production reaching boiling levels in numerous cold fusion cells accompanied by nuclear by products like tritium.

Stanley Pons	Official Cosmic Record
YEAR	TEAM	POS	BA	AB	H	HR	RBI
1997	Ionians	if	.273	220	60	6	25
Total 1 Season	Batting
KEY POS-Position; BA-Batting Average;AB-At Bats; H-Hits; HR-Homeruns; RBI- Runs Batted In