‘However, when radiation was first discovered it was also considered to be in violation of the laws of thermodynamics because those witnessing simply didn’t understand what it was at the time. It was only with Einstein’s discoveries and the publications of his famous papers that govern the laws of energy and matter that scientists finally understood what was taking place — the decay of radioactive materials from one element to another. Once understood, there were no violations of the rules of thermodynamics and the process was thus accepted by the scientific community.’
‘So you’re saying, in effect, that what Stanley Meyer discovered may actually be real?’ Lopez pressed.
It was Amber, not Dr Grant, who replied.
‘I think that my father uncovered the solution to something known as cold fusion.’
Dr Grant winced at the mere mention of the words, shaking his head.
‘What’s cold fusion?’ Ethan asked.
‘A debacle,’ Dr Grant replied without hesitation.
‘So everybody says,’ Amber shot back, ‘but if there was nothing in it then how come my parents are on the run and three hundred people have vanished from Clearwater?’
Doctor Grant scowled but said nothing.
‘We need to know,’ Lopez said to him. ‘If there’s something about this cold fusion that’s behind why Stanley has fled then it could also lead us to him and help us protect him from whoever is behind all of this.’
Dr Grant sighed and spoke quietly.
‘In 1989 one of the world’s leading electro chemist’s, Martin Fleischmann and his partner Stanley Pons, created a device that produced what was known at the time as anomalous or excess heat in sufficient quantities that they could only be explained in terms of nuclear processes. Their work was based on the idea that if you load enough hydrogen or deuterium atoms inside a metal lattice made from nickel or palladium, they become so tightly packed together that they begin to fuse: nuclear fusion. They also reported the detection of neutrons and tritium, by — products of nuclear reactions. What was remarkable about this experiment and the device was that it occurred on a table top and involved the electrolysis of heavy water on the surface of a palladium electrode. They called the process cold fusion, because it mimicked the processes going on within stars but without the millions of degrees of temperatures and intense pressures required to fuse atoms together.’
‘What happened to this cold fusion, and why is it not powering my home and car right now?’ Lopez asked.
‘What makes science so successful is the process by which fresh claims in any discipline are tested, the process being known as peer review. If a scientist makes a great discovery, he then publishes the method of his experiments widely in journals and allows others to test it to see if they can find a flaw. Many scientists attempted to replicate cold fusion but were unable to do so. As the number of negative replications increased, suddenly the positive replications that had occurred were withdrawn and before long the entire cold fusion research community became embroiled in scandal. Cold fusion eventually gained a reputation as pathological science, and reviews by the United States Department of energy in 1989 and 2004 reached a conclusion that cold fusion was dead, although they did offer what they called a sympathetic view towards modest support for further experiments.’
‘So cold fusion was a scam then, or a mistake?’ Ethan said.
‘Yes.’
Grant winced as Amber nudged him again. Dr Grant tilted his head this way and that as he spoke.
‘Over the years certain things have happened that have caused some degree of doubt among scientists over the initial assessment of cold fusion by the Department of Energy and by the scientists employed by them to study the phenomena,’ Grant admitted. ‘You have to remember that both Fleischmann and Pons were expert scientists, leaders in their fields and not prone to coming up with spurious results or publishing papers when they were not certain of their conclusions. And yet both men were completely ostracised by the scientific community, their funding removed, their reputations tarnished and even smeared. Neither of the men ever recovered their prior scientific prowess.’
‘You think that a smear campaign was orchestrated deliberately?’ Lopez asked. ‘In order to reduce the impact of what they discovered?’
‘What nobody in the scientific community actually disputes is that they discovered something,’ Dr Grant said. ‘Yes, it’s possible that their anomalous excess heat data was the result of some other phenomena rather than nuclear reactions, but nonetheless they discovered something. That something, the anomalous heat, was surprising and encouraging enough for them to go public with the discovery. You don’t do that lightly in the scientific community, especially when what you found goes against the grain of all known physical processes. Although I’m not a supporter of cold fusion, I am a supporter of the fact that those two men must have been pretty damn sure of what they were seeing before they went wide with it. And there were also questions over the method used by the scientists who failed to replicate Fleischmann’s and Pon’s results.’
‘Such as?’ Ethan asked.
‘There are two studies that are cited by Patent Offices worldwide for refusing all applications concerning cold fusion devices, and those studies were the ones commissioned by the Department of Energy’s Energy Research Advisory Board. They were conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Caltech, and were designed to determine federal responses to cold fusion claims and even to shape energy policy at the highest level of government. The problem is that a man named Dr Eugene Mallove wrote an article for the MIT press in which he claims that MIT actually did observe excess heat in their cells and then covered it up. Another scientist, Dr Maleeva, was so incensed at the complete disregard for proper scientific process that he resigned his position at MIT in protest. Yet another noted scientist, Dr Peter Hagelstein, noted that the MIT experiments could not have possibly seen enough excess heat because their loading was not high enough, the scientists concerned having not packed enough deuterium molecules inside their cathodes to reach the reaction range.’
‘So they fudged the results on purpose,’ Amber said, anger clear in her voice although she was staring at the table top. ‘My father said that it was not the first time that such research had been quashed by the government’s involvement in silencing creators of novel energy devices.’
‘However, times are changing,’ Dr Grant said. ‘A symposium was held at MIT in 2014 regarding cold fusion, and the scientists involved explained that according to their experiments excess heat is never seen in cold fusion devices unless a ninety per cent deuterium — to — palladium loading ratio is created. The Caltech and MIT experiments never got above eighty per cent, which is why their experiments failed to produce excess heat. More recent tests involving more modern devices have, allegedly, produced the excess heat that’s been missing from prior experiments, but of course the mainstream scientific community still denounces them and no papers are being published by respected journals because they are always refused on the basis that cold fusion is dead science.’
‘Catch Twenty Two,’ Amber said. ‘You can’t get funding to develop a device, and if you build one yourself nobody will test or review it in public journals. The science is buried.’
Ethan sat back as he thought about what Dr Grant had said.
‘So at least some people in the scientific community still accept the possibility that cold fusion is real, and as a result scientists are going out on their own.’
‘Precisely,’ Dr Grant said. ‘This is why Stanley resigned his position at the National Ignition Facility. He was determined to do something about all of this, his experience and knowledge in the field meant that he could do it on his own on a table top, just like Fleischmann and Pons claimed to have done. Although I can barely believe I’m saying it, it would appear that he achieved what he set out to do, and that the government were there waiting and ready to ensure that it never saw the light of day.’ Dr Grant sighed. ‘I don’t think I need to elaborate on what our world would look like now had cold fusion found the traction that it needed to become a fully — fledged scientific theory. Oil crises, climate change, the rising price of gas and other fossil fuels, all would be a thing of the past because the cold fusion device that Fleischmann and Pons created works on nothing more than a low electrical supply and heavy water or deuterium, which is easy to produce and cheap too. Your entire house could be powered by a cold fusion device no larger than a shoebox, and there are plenty of people out there who don’t want to ever see that happen.’