Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Star in a Jar: The Search for Cold Fusion
    A Star in a Jar: The Search for Cold Fusion
    A Star in a Jar: The Search for Cold Fusion
    Ebook159 pages1 hour

    A Star in a Jar: The Search for Cold Fusion

    By R. Paul Stevens

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Twenty years ago, two scientists, Martin Fleischmann & Stanley Pons, Professors of electrochemistry, announced to a stunned world they had discovered the secret to Cold Fusion by literally creating a star in a jar in a modest basement using just $100 000 of their own money. Here is this truly fascinating story with more twists and turns, ravels and unravels, than an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Yes, the verdict is in on Cold Fusion and it's deader than an Egyptian Pharaoh. Or is it?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherR. Paul Stevens
    Release dateAug 3, 2014
    ISBN9781311006561
    A Star in a Jar: The Search for Cold Fusion
    Author

    R. Paul Stevens

    R. Paul Stevens is professor emeritus of marketplace theology and leadership at Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia, and a marketplace ministry mentor. He has worked as a carpenter and businessman, and served as the pastor of an inner-city church in Montreal. He has written many books and Bible studies, including Doing God's Business, Work Matters, Marriage Spirituality, The Other Six Days and Spiritual Gifts. He is coauthor (with Pete Hammond and Todd Svanoe) of The Marketplace Annotated Bibliography.

    Read more from R. Paul Stevens

    Related to A Star in a Jar

    Titles in the series (4)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      11 Of The Biggest Climate Conspiracy Theories

      Mar 4, 2020

      1. Myth: If we lose Earth, we’ve always got Mars. Fact: Yes, scientists believe inducing global warming on Mars might make it habitable – but would you really want to live there? Um, no. 2. Myth: In 2014, global warming caused more than 100 000 bats

      2 min read

    • Article

      A Tale Of Two Pandemics: What A Difference A Century Makes

      Jan 5, 2021

      Today’s instant communications keep citizens worldwide aware of COVID-19 and heighten awareness of the need for global cooperation to contain it.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile

      Sep 29, 2022

      Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile
      1 min read

    • Article

      Bare Feat

      Jul 5, 2022

      Bare Feat
      1 min read

    • Article

      The Idea of Entropy Has Led Us Astray

      Jul 1, 2020

      Last summer, in the early days of a heat wave that would culminate in the highest temperatures ever recorded in Paris, I biked across the city to meet my friend Romain Graziani. At a sidewalk café, we sipped burnt espresso and watched the air shimmer

      9 min read

    • Article

      Five Veteran Scientists Tell Us What Most Surprised Them: Fifty years ago, who knew we’d learn to clone genes and find water on Mars?

      Sep 24, 2015

      Turn back the clock to 1965. Science appeared to be marching forward at an unrelenting pace. Biochemists had cracked the genetic code (how DNA translates into proteins), inspiring Life magazine to envision “superbabies with improved minds and bodies.

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Dawn of Life in a $5 Toaster Oven

      Jan 10, 2019

      God might just as well have begun with a toaster oven. A few years ago at a yard sale, Nicholas Hud spotted a good candidate: A vintage General Electric model, chrome-plated with wood-grain panels, nestled in an old yellowed box, practically unused.

      8 min read

    • Article

      The Dawn of Life in a $5 Toaster Oven: How a homemade piece of lab equipment is recreating chemical evolution on early Earth.

      Aug 27, 2015

      God might just as well have begun with a toaster oven. A few years ago at a yard sale, Nicholas Hud spotted a good candidate: A vintage General Electric model, chrome-plated with wood-grain panels, nestled in an old yellowed box, practically unused.

      8 min read

    • Article

      The End Of Life On Earth?

      Jan 23, 2018

      The End Of Life On Earth?
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Fly in the Primordial Soup: Hydrothermal vent models transform the origins of life from unlikely to near-inevitable.

      Jun 23, 2016

      I arrived on the second day of creation. Laurie Barge had invited me to spend the day in her lab, modeling the origin of life. She is a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and, with her colleague, the pioneering geologi

      8 min read

    • Article

      One Night In Gourock

      Oct 24, 2021

      In 1968, the Bay Hotel in Gourock, Scotland, was a popular watering hole for a diverse group. US submariners from Holy Loch, across the Firth of Clyde; Australian sailors building submarines further up the river in Greenock; and local lassies, attrac

      9 min read

    • Article

      Change For The Better

      Apr 23, 2023

      Change For The Better
      7 min read

    • Article

      A Matter Of Choice

      May 20, 2022

      A Matter Of Choice
      8 min read

    • Article

      Extract The Dying Alchemists

      Nov 17, 2021

      Five billion years ago the planet was a newly congealed lump of fiery rock and nothing lived on it. The atmosphere, when it eventually formed, was largely methane, the surface temperature in the thousands of degrees. Everything was molten, or close t

      2 min read

    • Article

      Good Vibrations

      Mar 4, 2024

      Good Vibrations
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Corals And The Capitalist

      Dec 1, 2022

      The Corals And The Capitalist
      15 min read

    • Article

      The Road Less Traveled to Fusion Energy

      Jun 3, 2020

      The modern quest for Promethean fire is underway in an anonymous office park in Foothill Ranch, California, an hour southeast of Los Angeles. In the park, along a meandering drive, you will find a huge, modern warehouse building with “TAE Technologie

      16 min read

    • Article

      Going Nuclear

      Oct 26, 2021

      Going Nuclear
      2 min read

    • Article

      Going Nuclear

      Jan 5, 2022

      Going Nuclear
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Star in a Jar

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      A Star in a Jar - R. Paul Stevens

      A Star in a Jar: The Search for Cold Fusion

      All Rights reserved © 2014 Paul Stevens, Msc

      An Article in the Steve’s Life & Times Series

      Smashwords Edition

      Introduction - Martin Fleischmann & Stanley Pons - Time-out: A Few Technicals, but Nothing Heavy, Other than Hydrogen - The Palladium Connection - The Experiments - The Run Up - March 23, 1989 - The Aftermath - Cold Fusion or Con Fusion: The Book Wars - Escape To The French Rivera - Cold Fusion Goes Underground - eCAT or eCON - Close, But No Cigar - Videos

      Also by this Author

      A Star in a Jar: The Search for Cold Fusion

      Introduction

      I woke up the other day and as usual reached for my morning newspaper and a cup of coffee in bed before getting to the duties of the day. Suddenly, for no rhyme a reason, a thought sprung to mind. Or rather a question sprung to mind. It was: what on earth happened to Cold Fusion? I remembered about a big splash of news years ago and the odd reference to it here and there in the press subsequently, but if I were pressed to answer the question, I would have to admit I really didn’t know what happened to cold fusion. Wasn’t this supposed to be the answer to all the world’s energy problems? Where had it gone? In fact, like most people maybe, my understanding of what cold fusion actually entailed was a bit sketchy and wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny.

      As I explored the subject, it was apparent that here lay a story that one would only expect to find in a movie or a fiction novel. It is an intensely human story which is still unresolved and has its roots in Nazi persecution only to go a full cycle and end with scientific persecution. It started with a truly brilliant idea by two scientists and ended prematurely assigned to the dustbin by mainstream science. And between these two outcomes a runaway conveyor belt ripped the two unsuspecting scientists through a vortex of pressure, greed, duplicity, media frenzy and professional antagonism and scorn that left their careers in tatters and eventually drove them out of the country.

      You see, this pair offered the world a potentially cheap simple solution to the world’s energy problems, all in a simple glass of water. Literally A Star in A Jar. Such a discovery would probably be amongst the biggest single discovery of all time. It would ultimately solve the world’s energy problems for ever and at the same time solve the problem of global warming. The stakes were huge beyond belief. In medical terms that’s the equivalent of producing a pill that will cure any form of cancer. It’s massive, monumental, blockbuster stuff. It’s the sort of stuff that gives you goose pimples. It’s like finding the Holy Grail.

      To give a perspective, an international project is presently underway in the south of France to emulate the process the sun uses to produce its energy by nuclear fusion. Known as ITER, short for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, the device will take 20 years before it becomes fully operational, at an estimated cost of 10 billion euros. The actual cost will probably be double this by the time it is finished, as the human race is not very good at estimating costs of long and complex projects. The goal of the project is to produce 10 times as much energy, by nuclear fusion, as input, for a period of up to just 480 seconds.

      So here you have two scientists, basically unknown to the nuclear fusion community, claiming to have reproduced nuclear fusion in basically a jar of water, for a cost of $100 000 of their own money.

      Such a claim could be expected to produce an international furor of unprecedented intensity, but the pair really didn’t see it coming. Wrapped up in the innocence of their self financed experiments, in many ways they had the aura of mad but brilliant scientists lost in their own private world.

      Yes, it’s a fascinating story and here it is.

      Time-out: A Few Technicals, but Nothing Heavy, Other than Hydrogen

      Let’s get something out of the way first. There’s nuclear fission, and there’s nuclear fusion. We’re all familiar with nuclear plants and the fact they produce energy and can have devastating results if they run amok. Nuclear fission produces energy by splitting atoms which releases energy which is used to heat water to produce steam which drives turbines. Plus it produces lethal radiation which has to be protected against.

      Nuclear fusion goes in exactly the opposite direction. It too produces energy but this time by combining atoms which then decay and produce energy. It’s like the two sides of the same coin. The one approach breaks the atoms down, the other builds them up.

      Nuclear fusion is what powers the Sun and Hydrogen Bomb. But to produce nuclear fusion colossal temperatures (27 000 000 degrees F) and compression forces are necessary to overcome the massive forces of repulsion between nuclei. This repulsion is formulated in Coulombs law and is known as the Coulomb barrier. The Sun achieves this by force of gravity.

      What is the most abundant resource on Earth? Simple seawater! And in seawater can be found an abundance of an isotope of hydrogen, called deuterium. The big difference between the nucleus of a hydrogen atom and the nucleus of the deuterium atom is that both have a single proton whereas the deuterium nucleus has a neutron as well. If, by some means the Coulomb barrier could be overcome, and 2 atoms of deuterium forced together, once they get close enough, nuclear fusion will occur. An atom of high energy helium-4 will be produced, which is unstable and would decay into helium-3 (and emit a high energy neutron), or to an atom called tritium (and emit a high energy proton), or simply emit a gamma ray. All would produce excess energy which would produce heat.

      The ITER process, described above, using a process that fuses deuterium, and another isotope of hydrogen, called tritium, which has an additional neutron over deuterium and has an optimal output of energy. However Tritium is extremely rare in the earth’s crust so it has to be obtained as a by product of bombarding lithium.

      One can see how many complex issues are at play here. Logically, this whole topic belongs to hard core physicists with gigantic research budgets. Apart from anything else, nuclear fusion is inherently dangerous with the radioactive threat posed by escaping neutrons..

      Yes, the present road to nuclear fusion is paved with colossally expensive reactors to bombard hydrogen gas with unimaginable magnetic and electric fields or laser and ion beams in highly complicated apparti straight out of science fiction.

      The comparison between the two approaches, the one costing literally billions and billions of dollars using the utmost high tec and the other, basically just a pair of electrodes in a beaker of heavy water and some palladium, could not have been more pronounced. They were asking for trouble, and they sure got it.

      Martin Fleischmann & Stanley Pons

      With the vital press conference on March 23, 1989 only minutes away, and a packed conference room filled with the world’s press and TV networks assembled and waiting to hear the Cold Fusion announcement, Dr. Fleischmann could see that his junior colleague and friend, Dr. Pons was clearly nervous. It’ll be OK Martin encouraged him.

      Maybe at that moment he reflected on how their paths had crossed and hooked up in this bold experiment and how totally different their personal histories and backgrounds were.

      Martin Fleischmann was born in Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad), Czechoslovakia, on March 29 1927. His mother was a Roman Catholic. His paternal grandfather, an orphan, was adopted by a Jewish family called Fleischmann. His father was an anti-Nazi lawyer.

      The London Daily Telegraph reported on his early history: When Fleischmann was an 11 year old boy, he and his family got caught up in the Nazi occupation of western Czechoslovakia in 1938 but managed to escape — twice. The first time they were driven across the border into the unoccupied part of Czechoslovakia by a First World War comrade-in-arms of his father. Then, after the Nazi occupation expanded, they fled to England. It was a close-run thing: We all got on the train in Prague and came to the Dutch border, he recalled. Then the Germans cleared the train of all refugees. We were in the last coach, and my father said, 'No, sit tight, don’t get off the train’, and the train pulled out of the station. So that’s how we got away the second time, and arrived at Liverpool Street Station with 27 shillings and sixpence between us.

      Shortly thereafter his father died from abuse inflicted by the Nazis and he was taken in by foster parents. Despite such difficult beginnings Fleischmann went on to win a scholarship to study chemistry at Imperial College and acquired a PhD in 1950. By 1967 at the young age of 40 he was Professor of Electrochemistry at the University of Southampton and his research efforts gained an international reputation for the faculty.

      Martin Fleischmann

      In 1970 he became President of the International Society of Electrochemists. Further honors followed fast including medals for electrochemistry and thermodynamics from the Royal Society of London and in 1986 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. By the time the cold fusion experiment came by Martin was an internationally respected scientist in his field and basically he had bootstrapped himself up the scientific ladder with very little help

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1