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I've been reviewing the information pertaining to Fleishmann and
Pons' cold fusion attempts, back in the late 1980s, and have some
questions that I can't find answers for.
Did anyone witness the reported "melt-down", or was this an
unverified report?
Is it at all possible that they did observe the effects of
hydrogen fusion, but did not fully understand what had caused it?
That is, could there have been some "accidental" perturbation to
their experiment that they weren't aware of, and which caused a
very brief, one time only sequence of fusions to occur?
They were using palladium and platinum for electrodes, bringing
the hydrogen ions into the palladium interstitial spaces, where
they anticipated that a very large hydrogen pressure would
develop, and, hopefully, random thermal motion of the hydrogen
ions would result in some collisions with enough energy to
produce fission.
Is it possible that some perturbation in their electrolysis power
supply might have produced some form of resonance in the
palladium interstitial spaces that actually did result in a one
time sequence of fusion events?
Hydrogen embrittlement has always been a problem in the
electroplating of iron and steel alloys. The plating process
brings monatomic hydrogen ions into the steel. These hydrogen
ions then migrate into interstitial cavities in the steel, where
they form bonds with other hydrogen ions, becoming ordinary
diatomic H2 molecules. Because they are too large, these H2
molecules can not migrate out of the interstitial space, but
become entrapped there. As more H2 molecules form and accumulate
the static pressure builds until the steel ruptures, forming a
micro crack. This process repeats again and again until the steel
item fails.
Are we sure hydrogen embrittlement is an ordinary, low temp. H2
pressure rupture, or could it be a now and then hydrogen fusion
event with the liberation of sufficient energy to bump the local
temperature up enough that adiabatic pressure then causes the
rupture?
Gordon
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