Platinum, palladium in fusion experiment

Two researchers, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, said in Salt Lake City, Utah that by immersing a positively charged platinum wire and a negatively charged palladium wire in heavy water (water composed of oxygen and deuterium, a heavy hydrogen atom) and passing an electric current between the wires, the deuterium atoms dissolved into the palladium and somehow fused, releasing energy in the form of heat.

For each one watt of electrical energy used, four watts of heat energy were produced, they said.

(Fusion is not to be confused with fission, a process in which energy is released through the splitting of uranium atoms. Fission is the process used in today’s conventional nuclear reactors.

(Should experiments with fusion prove successful, proponents of the process believe less radioactive waste would be generated than by the fission method. Nuclear fusion is what powers the sun and the hydrogen bomb.)

Meanwhile, physics professor Steven Jones recently reported in New York that he has undertaken similar experiments and has achieved his best results using titanium.

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