WEBVTT - The Hot Take on Cold Fusion 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:14.000 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:18.040 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:20.639 How Stuff Works in a love of all things tech 0:00:20.720 --> 0:00:23.360 and just a heads up. If I sound a little 0:00:23.360 --> 0:00:27.400 loopy today, it's because I think of coming down with 0:00:27.640 --> 0:00:31.000 a nasty cold and or sinus infection, and it's got 0:00:31.040 --> 0:00:33.960 me thrown for a bit. But gosh darn it, the 0:00:34.040 --> 0:00:38.000 show she must keep happening, as they say in the business, 0:00:38.520 --> 0:00:43.120 and so we're going to forge ahead in our week 0:00:43.320 --> 0:00:47.720 of nuclear discussions. In my last episode, I talked about 0:00:47.760 --> 0:00:50.680 fusion reactors and how if we could just get them 0:00:50.680 --> 0:00:53.320 to work reliably, if we could find a way to 0:00:53.720 --> 0:00:57.840 make the reactions take place without pouring more energy into 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:00.560 them than we're getting out of and we can make 0:01:00.560 --> 0:01:03.720 it sustainable, we could produce enough electricity to meet our 0:01:03.760 --> 0:01:08.080 needs for the foreseeable future while also producing very little waste, 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:11.280 and none of it the high level nuclear waste that 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:15.399 a traditional fission based nuclear power plant would create. But 0:01:15.480 --> 0:01:19.720 I also mentioned that's devilish lee hard to achieve fusion 0:01:19.840 --> 0:01:23.640 because you first have to overcome some fundamental forces that 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:26.680 very much do not want to let that happen. And 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:30.679 by saying want to let that happen, I'm anthropomorphized sizing 0:01:30.760 --> 0:01:34.679 a little bit. They they resist this. So you have 0:01:34.720 --> 0:01:38.280 to force to positively charged nuclei to fuse together. And 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:41.840 because like charges repel each other, that takes a lot 0:01:41.959 --> 0:01:45.760 of energy and effort. But what if it didn't require 0:01:45.840 --> 0:01:49.920 so much. What if we didn't have to have these enormous, 0:01:50.080 --> 0:01:56.080 expensive facilities that use powerful lasers or magnetic fields to 0:01:56.440 --> 0:01:58.640 have this happen. What if you could find a way 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:02.440 to fuse hydrogen ice of topes together at room temperature. 0:02:02.920 --> 0:02:06.840 Will that be a phenomenal transformative achievement. It would mean 0:02:06.880 --> 0:02:09.760 you wouldn't have to spend years building and testing facilities 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:14.160 meant to heat deuterium or tritium into plasma and then 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:17.200 compress it into a space small enough to force fusion 0:02:17.240 --> 0:02:20.480 to occur. It could potentially reduce the amount of energy 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:22.839 you would need to initiate a reaction and you would 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:26.640 end up with the payoff energy and you could just 0:02:26.840 --> 0:02:31.079 harness that to generate electricity. That would be swell. There's 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:34.320 a common name for this concept. Actually, there are a 0:02:34.360 --> 0:02:36.560 few different common names, But the one that we used 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:41.119 to use, and you often will hear people use it deristively, 0:02:42.000 --> 0:02:45.040 is called cold fusion. Now these days we tend to 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:48.320 use other names because cold fusion has a real stigma 0:02:48.480 --> 0:02:52.160 against it. So the new names we might use include 0:02:52.160 --> 0:02:56.600 things like condensed matter, nuclear science, or low energy nuclear reactions. 0:02:57.360 --> 0:03:01.480 No one really agrees exactly how this works. There are 0:03:01.480 --> 0:03:05.080 a lot of different competing hypotheses. No one really agrees 0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:08.600 whether if this works. But some people do argue that 0:03:08.680 --> 0:03:11.520 it does work and it has worked, and a lot 0:03:11.520 --> 0:03:15.720 of other people say, I don't think so. So let's 0:03:15.960 --> 0:03:19.880 dive into the maligned work of two people in particular, 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:25.520 sort of the pioneers of the cold fusion furer, and 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:30.600 that would be Martin Fleishman and Stanley Ponds. And Fleishman 0:03:30.639 --> 0:03:33.720 and Ponds or Ponds and Fleishman had conducted an experiment 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:38.480 involving heavy water and palladium. Now, heavy water refers to 0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:43.320 water that has deuterium isotopes. Uh. Deuterium is an isotope 0:03:43.320 --> 0:03:46.640 of hydrogen, and water is h two O isotopes of 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:49.200 an element. I'll share the same chemical properties, but they 0:03:49.200 --> 0:03:52.320 have a different atomic mass from each other due to 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:58.040 the presence of neutrons. So hydrogen and its most plentiful state, 0:03:58.200 --> 0:04:02.520 protium is a prot on and an electron with no neutrons. 0:04:03.280 --> 0:04:07.880 Deuterium is a proton and neutron with one electron. It's 0:04:07.920 --> 0:04:11.000 still hydrogen, but now it has a neutron, so it's heavier. 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:12.880 That's why we call it heavy water. If you have 0:04:13.360 --> 0:04:17.680 water that is where the molecules are, you have deuterium 0:04:17.760 --> 0:04:22.480 hydrogen atoms as opposed to protium hydrogen atoms, So that's 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:25.560 the difference there. Now, most hydrogen we encounter is protium. 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:28.200 That's the vast majority of the stuff that we see 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:33.839 in our world. But we do have some deuterium in oceans. 0:04:33.880 --> 0:04:37.840 It does occur naturally. Uh So, Ponds and Flishman had 0:04:38.000 --> 0:04:41.240 a high concentration of deuterium in their mixture. So that's 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:44.599 why it was called heavy water. Because the hydrogen atoms 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:46.800 in those H two O molecules were more massive than 0:04:46.839 --> 0:04:50.960 you would typically encounter. They were literally heavier. So why 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:54.840 did they use palladium. Well, that element has the ability 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:59.000 to absorb hydrogen in great volumes. In fact, it can 0:04:59.040 --> 0:05:04.160 absorb about one hundred times its own volume in hydrogen. Now, 0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:07.040 this is because the surface of palladium can react chemically 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:09.960 with hydrogen in a way that draws the hydrogen into 0:05:10.000 --> 0:05:14.919 the palladium itself. So the thinking goes that if you 0:05:14.960 --> 0:05:20.320 could absorb deuterium through palladium at a high enough density, 0:05:20.360 --> 0:05:23.160 you might be able to induce fusion to occur because 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:28.560 you're forcing these hydrogen atoms very close together. You just 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:32.240 have to get those deuterium atoms close enough, and then 0:05:32.400 --> 0:05:35.080 some as yet unknown process would take you the rest 0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:37.159 of the way. That last bit is a heck of 0:05:37.160 --> 0:05:40.240 a kicker if you cannot explain why it happens. That is, 0:05:40.480 --> 0:05:45.479 that's a huge question mark and a big gap in 0:05:45.520 --> 0:05:48.839 your understanding. But science is also filled with stories in 0:05:48.880 --> 0:05:52.640 which someone was messing around with stuff and something interesting happened, 0:05:52.920 --> 0:05:56.359 and they couldn't explain how the interesting thing happened, and 0:05:56.400 --> 0:05:59.120 so they had to look further into it, and only 0:05:59.160 --> 0:06:01.640 after a lot of X lauration did we then get 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:04.960 an understanding of what was actually happening. So while a 0:06:05.000 --> 0:06:07.680 lot of discoveries and science come from carefully crafted and 0:06:07.720 --> 0:06:13.760 tested hypotheses that are building upon previous knowledge, sometimes our 0:06:13.800 --> 0:06:16.839 advances and science come from lucky observations that lead to 0:06:16.880 --> 0:06:20.719 more rigorous scientific exploration. So it might start off as 0:06:20.800 --> 0:06:25.560 something where we noticed there's an interesting phenomena occurring, we 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:29.120 cannot explain why it's happening yet, and then we look 0:06:29.120 --> 0:06:33.960 into it and we gain that understanding. So you've got 0:06:33.960 --> 0:06:37.960 this heavy water, You've got your palladium electrode. How were 0:06:38.040 --> 0:06:42.400 you to absorb the hydrogen? I mean, hydrogen is locked 0:06:42.400 --> 0:06:45.000 in with oxygen when it's water, Right, you've got those 0:06:45.000 --> 0:06:48.320 water molecules H two O. Well, this was through a 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:52.120 process called electrolysis. And I'm not talking about hair removal here, 0:06:52.240 --> 0:06:55.800 although there is a process called electrolysis for that. Instead, 0:06:55.800 --> 0:06:58.600 I'm talking about the chemical decomposition that happens with some 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:01.760 liquids when you pass an elect current through that liquid. 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:04.760 So let's say you've got some water inside a container, 0:07:05.200 --> 0:07:08.480 and we'll call the container an electrolyzer. So this container 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:11.080 is an electrolyzer. It's got water inside of it, and 0:07:11.280 --> 0:07:15.840 inside that electrolyzer you place a pair of electrodes. One 0:07:15.880 --> 0:07:19.760 of those electrodes is a negatively charged electrode, that's the cathode. 0:07:19.920 --> 0:07:23.080 The other one is the positively charged electrode that's the anode, 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:29.240 opposite charges attract, so the negatively charged cathode will attract 0:07:29.360 --> 0:07:33.680 positively charged ions in the water and the positive anode 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:37.160 will attract negatively charged ions. And there are several different 0:07:37.200 --> 0:07:40.760 types of electrolyzers, and each type can separate hydrogen atoms 0:07:40.800 --> 0:07:44.080 from oxygen atoms and water in different ways. So, for example, 0:07:44.120 --> 0:07:47.000 there's the fuel cell method in which you have a 0:07:47.080 --> 0:07:51.440 permeable membrane separating the two electrodes, and when you apply 0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:54.000 a potential difference between the two electrodes, it causes water 0:07:54.080 --> 0:07:57.320 to react at the anode to form oxygen, which bubbles off, 0:07:57.960 --> 0:08:01.400 and the oxygen separates from the hydro gen. So you've 0:08:01.400 --> 0:08:05.960 got these positively charged hydrogen ions. Because that you actually 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:09.640 strip the electrons off the hydrogen and you then use 0:08:09.680 --> 0:08:12.600 those electrons to do work. In a fuel cell, the 0:08:12.720 --> 0:08:17.760 hydrogen ions will move across through the permeable membrane toward 0:08:18.400 --> 0:08:22.760 the cathode because they are attracted to the negatively charged electrode, 0:08:23.400 --> 0:08:25.760 and then the hydrogen would typically bubble up and you 0:08:25.800 --> 0:08:29.400 could capture hydrogen that way and use it for more 0:08:29.480 --> 0:08:32.960 fuel or whatever. If you used a material like palladium 0:08:33.000 --> 0:08:35.600 for your electrode, then you could just absorb the hydrogen 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:40.640 or deuterium in this case type of hydrogen isotope. The 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:43.679 important thing is that this process allows you to separate 0:08:43.760 --> 0:08:47.239 hydrogen in the form of deuterium from those water molecules, 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:49.920 and you should end up with a palladium electrode stuffed 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:53.760 with hydrogen two and then maybe something magical could happen 0:08:54.040 --> 0:08:57.840 which brings us two Ponds and Fleischman. Fleishman met Ponds 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:00.599 when Ponds was a student at the University of Southampton, 0:09:00.760 --> 0:09:04.400 where Fleishman was a professor of chemistry. Ponds had graduated 0:09:04.480 --> 0:09:07.680 and become a professor of the University of Utah, but 0:09:07.880 --> 0:09:11.600 while he had left the University of Southampton, he and 0:09:11.640 --> 0:09:14.040 Fleishman remained in touch and they began to collaborate on 0:09:14.080 --> 0:09:18.000 research projects. In the early nineteen eighties, Fleishman wanted to 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:22.120 explore if there were ways to trigger a nuclear process, 0:09:22.160 --> 0:09:24.480 which would be a process that results in the change 0:09:24.559 --> 0:09:29.160 of nuclei within atoms, and wondered if he could do 0:09:29.200 --> 0:09:34.319 that using a chemical process. Chemical processes are reactions between 0:09:34.400 --> 0:09:38.240 atoms and molecules. So he's saying, I wonder if I 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:41.480 could take a chemical reaction, which typically would only be 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:46.360 at the atomic level or larger atoms and molecules and 0:09:46.480 --> 0:09:50.439 force a nuclear reaction, which is at one level down right, 0:09:50.440 --> 0:09:52.920 you're talking about the nucleus of an atom. Then in 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:57.000 Ponds and Fleishman began to experiment by building what they 0:09:57.040 --> 0:10:00.400 called a fusion cell. This was essentially an electoral lizer 0:10:00.480 --> 0:10:02.920 with an anode made of platinum and a cathode made 0:10:02.920 --> 0:10:06.160 out of palladium, and they use heavy water inside of it, 0:10:06.400 --> 0:10:09.960 and they hypothesized that the palladium would soak up deuterium 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:13.840 produced through electrolysis, and that the deuterium atoms would be 0:10:13.880 --> 0:10:17.080 forced so close together that they would undergo fusion and 0:10:17.120 --> 0:10:19.840 release energy in the form of heat. So what happened, 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:23.840 I'll tell you, but first let's take a quick break 0:10:24.200 --> 0:10:34.880 to thank our sponsor. Well, Ponds and Fleishman conducted their 0:10:34.920 --> 0:10:38.040 experiment and they monitored the temperature of the fusion cell 0:10:38.120 --> 0:10:40.520 throughout the process. They actually did this in a kind 0:10:40.559 --> 0:10:45.440 of interesting way with it gets pretty complicated, but they 0:10:45.480 --> 0:10:47.800 did in a way that wasn't as simple as sticking 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:52.239 a thermometer in the water. And actually their their measurements 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:57.120 of temperature were based on estimations, not on like hard 0:10:57.160 --> 0:11:00.719 readings at that point. So they analyzed the data at 0:11:00.720 --> 0:11:03.080 the conclusion of their experiment, and they found that the 0:11:03.160 --> 0:11:06.000 cell appeared to be producing about one hundred times more 0:11:06.080 --> 0:11:10.200 heat than it would through the chemical process itself. So 0:11:10.240 --> 0:11:13.959 we understand the chemical process, so based on that, you 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:17.880 would expect x amount of heat, but instead what we're 0:11:17.880 --> 0:11:20.720 measuring is one hundred times x amount of heat, So 0:11:20.760 --> 0:11:24.000 something else must be happening. This anomaly seemed to support 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:27.360 that hypothesis that maybe there was some sort of fusion occurring. 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:31.480 According to their calculations, the chemical process alone would not 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:34.120 be able to produce that heat, so something else had 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:36.920 to be doing it. But to be sure, they would 0:11:37.000 --> 0:11:40.040 need to replicate their experiment, which is proper from a 0:11:40.080 --> 0:11:43.160 scientific perspective. You have to make sure that the experiment 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:46.240 you conducted was an accurate and precise one, and that 0:11:46.360 --> 0:11:48.640 you should be able to repeat the process and get 0:11:48.679 --> 0:11:51.559 the same results. If you don't get the same results 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:56.240 after repeating the experiment using the exact same process, something 0:11:56.360 --> 0:11:59.080 has gone wrong. There's some other factor that's at play, 0:11:59.160 --> 0:12:04.640 such as unreliable measuring mechanism. Maybe the thermometer you were 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:08.560 using was not reliable maybe your methodology for estimating the 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:13.200 temperature was off. So replicating is very important because it 0:12:13.240 --> 0:12:18.040 tells you, yes, I'm consistently getting the same result. And 0:12:18.080 --> 0:12:20.920 if you can't say that, then you don't really have 0:12:20.960 --> 0:12:24.240 any conclusions you can draw. If you perform the same 0:12:24.280 --> 0:12:27.160 action over and over and something different happens every single time, 0:12:27.200 --> 0:12:29.920 it doesn't tell you anything about the cause and effect 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:34.360 of that action and the consequences. So here was the problem. 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:38.080 To conduct more experiments would require some funding, and so 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:40.680 Ponds and Fleishman applied for a government grant to get 0:12:40.720 --> 0:12:44.520 money for their experiments, and the grant process included peer 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:47.120 of view. Now peer of you means that you would 0:12:47.120 --> 0:12:51.960 have peers, qualified scientists who would look over an application, 0:12:52.000 --> 0:12:56.400 a grant application to determine if the application was had 0:12:56.520 --> 0:12:59.880 merit you, if it was scientifically sound in its approach, 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:03.480 and it's outlined, and here we get the first kink 0:13:03.679 --> 0:13:07.880 in our story. One of those reviewers was a nuclear 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:12.319 physicist named Stephen Jones, and Stephen Jones was also exploring 0:13:12.360 --> 0:13:16.800 the possibility of cold fusion. However, Jones was not looking 0:13:16.840 --> 0:13:20.320 for changes in temperature the white Ponds and Flashman were. 0:13:20.640 --> 0:13:24.600 He was looking for evidence of neutrons, because in deuterium 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:29.840 fusion reactions, you wouldn't just end up with only helium four, however, 0:13:30.360 --> 0:13:34.160 you would actually end up with one of three possible outcomes. 0:13:34.559 --> 0:13:39.080 So you would either have helium four plus a helium 0:13:39.240 --> 0:13:43.600 three ADAM plus some high energy neutron, or you would 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:49.000 end up with helium for tritium and a high energy proton, 0:13:49.720 --> 0:13:53.520 or you would end up with helium four, another helium 0:13:53.559 --> 0:13:58.840 four ADAM, and uh gamma ray. So those are the 0:13:58.880 --> 0:14:05.160 three potential it comes of the this deuterium deuterium fusion process. 0:14:05.200 --> 0:14:07.800 So you if you were had a way of testing 0:14:08.440 --> 0:14:11.320 for one of those byproducts, then you could look to 0:14:11.320 --> 0:14:14.520 see if there were evidence of fusion reactions happening at 0:14:14.520 --> 0:14:17.880 that point. So if you had a way of just 0:14:18.120 --> 0:14:23.000 detecting helium, then that would be a pretty darn convincing 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:26.840 argument that fusion had actually happened if you're detecting helium 0:14:26.880 --> 0:14:29.880 being given off by this reaction, because they tell you 0:14:30.120 --> 0:14:33.720 something has to be generating that helium. But Jones's work 0:14:34.240 --> 0:14:38.480 was looking at neutrons specifically, so he had detected some 0:14:38.600 --> 0:14:42.280 neutrons through his experiment, but keep in mind he was 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:46.400 only looking for neutrons, not for helium, but there were 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:50.960 so few neutrons detected. The team had concluded that fusion 0:14:51.240 --> 0:14:54.120 might be happening, but at such a low rate that 0:14:54.280 --> 0:14:56.880 it was useless for any practical purpose. You would not 0:14:56.920 --> 0:14:59.480 be able to harness this for energy if in fact 0:14:59.560 --> 0:15:04.160 fusion is happening. Fleishman and Pond's research, however, suggested a 0:15:04.240 --> 0:15:08.520 much higher rate of fusion, much much greater than what 0:15:08.680 --> 0:15:14.280 Jones's research had shown. So Jones gets this article submission 0:15:14.480 --> 0:15:16.680 as part of the peer review process, and he reads it, 0:15:17.200 --> 0:15:19.560 and he reaches out to the Department of Energy and says, Hey, 0:15:19.600 --> 0:15:21.960 these guys over here are doing research that's kind of 0:15:22.000 --> 0:15:24.840 like the research I'm doing, and we're both investigating the 0:15:24.880 --> 0:15:27.960 same thing, but we're looking at it through different evidence. 0:15:28.240 --> 0:15:31.440 How about we collaborate on this. So that offer goes 0:15:31.480 --> 0:15:34.440 to Pons and Fleishman and they decided to turn down 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:37.640 the offer. Some scientists point at this as one of 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:40.880 the big mistakes that they made in the whole affair. 0:15:41.240 --> 0:15:45.240 Ponds and Fleishman had deep expertise in chemistry, but they 0:15:45.280 --> 0:15:49.440 did not have deep expertise in nuclear physics, whereas Jones 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:51.760 was a nuclear physicist, but he did not have a 0:15:51.800 --> 0:15:55.600 background in chemistry, so together they could have combined their 0:15:55.640 --> 0:15:58.440 areas of expertise to search for evidence of this process 0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:01.360 of cold fusion. But it isn't meant to be, so 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:05.960 Ponds decides he's gonna put together a neutron detection experiment 0:16:06.000 --> 0:16:10.440 of his own. So he's already detected an anomaly in temperature, 0:16:10.480 --> 0:16:12.600 he's like, he says, well, maybe I'll check for these 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:15.640 neutrons as well, and if I detect those, then that's 0:16:15.640 --> 0:16:18.200 more evidence to support my claim. So his first go 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:21.120 was a bust. He didn't detect any signs of neutrons 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:25.160 being released through this method, and based on his earlier work, 0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:27.520 he should have been seeing a lot of neutrons getting 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:32.520 produced because there was such a a huge anomaly relatively speaking, 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:36.480 in that temperature. So he redesigns his experiment, and this 0:16:36.520 --> 0:16:39.240 time he did detect neutrons, but nowhere close to the 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:42.240 number he should have been seeing based upon his earlier work. 0:16:42.720 --> 0:16:45.800 One reference I saw said it was one hundred million 0:16:45.920 --> 0:16:50.680 times fewer neutrons in number, which isn't great news if 0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:55.600 you're trying to support a very out their claim. So 0:16:55.680 --> 0:16:58.160 on the bright side, he did detect more neutrons than 0:16:58.240 --> 0:17:01.400 Jones had in his work. So Jones, you know, he 0:17:01.440 --> 0:17:03.920 had said, yeah, there might be some fusion happening, but 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:06.040 it's at a very very low rate that's not really 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:10.680 of any practical purpose. And Ponds found more neutrons than 0:17:10.800 --> 0:17:14.200 Jones had when he ran the experiment, but still wasn't 0:17:14.440 --> 0:17:17.080 at the level that what they would have or what 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:20.280 they had expected based upon their their earlier work. So 0:17:20.880 --> 0:17:24.680 this presents a huge problem. The first Fleischmann Pond's experiment 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:28.040 seemed to suggest cold fusion on a pretty large scale 0:17:28.080 --> 0:17:32.320 all things considered, this neutron test was not consistent with 0:17:32.440 --> 0:17:36.320 that conclusion, and Jones's work had produced different results as well. 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:39.560 So the lack of consistency was troubling, as it could 0:17:39.560 --> 0:17:41.960 mean that the results were the product of error rather 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:46.320 than a replicable process. So here's where the scientific process 0:17:46.440 --> 0:17:48.960 butts head heads with what it means to be a 0:17:49.080 --> 0:17:53.000 human being. So in the scientific community, the general rule 0:17:53.040 --> 0:17:56.720 of thumb is that whomever publishes their work first on 0:17:56.760 --> 0:17:59.760 a new discovery gets the credit for it, and that 0:17:59.840 --> 0:18:02.800 in is up being important because often you'll have multiple 0:18:02.800 --> 0:18:05.639 people working on the same problem at the same time, 0:18:06.040 --> 0:18:08.000 and at some point you have to decide who gets 0:18:08.040 --> 0:18:12.359 the credit and potentially a future Nobel prize or patents. 0:18:13.040 --> 0:18:15.960 The scientifically responsible thing to do at this point would 0:18:16.000 --> 0:18:19.159 be to design more experiments and make sure the design 0:18:19.240 --> 0:18:22.440 is rigorous and conduct more tests to see what happens. 0:18:22.920 --> 0:18:25.320 That would help researchers make sure that there was a 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:30.280 real effect there to observe before moving forward. But with Jones, Ponds, 0:18:30.280 --> 0:18:32.639 and Flishman all working on this problem, it created a 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:35.359 real sense of urgency. It was a race to get credit. 0:18:36.000 --> 0:18:40.000 And then Jones reaches out to Ponds and Flishman and said, hey, guys, 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:42.720 I'm playing on publishing my research. I'm gonna submit my 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:45.639 work to a scientific journal in eighteen days. I was 0:18:45.680 --> 0:18:48.320 thinking you guys could write up your research and submit 0:18:48.359 --> 0:18:50.800 it to the same journal, and that way everyone gets credit. 0:18:51.200 --> 0:18:54.920 I'm paraphrasing, by the way. So Fleishman and Ponds were 0:18:54.960 --> 0:18:58.120 nowhere near ready to publish any work, but they did 0:18:58.160 --> 0:19:01.000 agree to Jones's proposal, and then they went and did 0:19:01.040 --> 0:19:04.480 something a little sneaky, and I'll explain what they did 0:19:04.840 --> 0:19:07.000 in just a moment, but first let's take another quick 0:19:07.040 --> 0:19:17.560 break to thank our sponsor. So Fleishman and Ponds had 0:19:17.600 --> 0:19:20.480 at least a year's worth of work they really needed 0:19:20.520 --> 0:19:23.840 to do before they were going to be ready to publish. 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:28.520 But they felt forced into rushing into publication in order 0:19:28.560 --> 0:19:30.560 to get that credit for their work. And this was 0:19:30.600 --> 0:19:33.400 not just a matter of ego. According to their initial results, 0:19:34.000 --> 0:19:37.040 their approach might potentially allow for a new form of 0:19:37.080 --> 0:19:42.760 generating electricity. Right if they were right and Jones was wrong, 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:45.760 and you were actually seeing fusion on a scale that 0:19:45.840 --> 0:19:48.760 was practical, you could put that to work that would 0:19:49.160 --> 0:19:54.800 transform everything, would be an enormous benefit to all of humanity, 0:19:55.440 --> 0:19:57.640 and it would make you a whole lot of money. 0:19:58.320 --> 0:20:01.640 So you want patents, not just at it. So they 0:20:01.680 --> 0:20:04.879 decided to write up an article on based on their research, 0:20:04.920 --> 0:20:06.840 even though they felt like they needed another year to 0:20:06.920 --> 0:20:09.679 really work on it, and they submitted their article five 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:13.720 days after Jones had proposed a joint submission, so nearly 0:20:13.800 --> 0:20:17.080 two weeks before Jones's own submission was going in, So 0:20:17.119 --> 0:20:19.840 they kind of broke the agreement. They jumped ahead of Jones, 0:20:19.880 --> 0:20:24.720 which is dirty pool old man. Moreover, they had not 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:29.920 conducted their tests with enough rigor to really meet scientific standards. 0:20:30.000 --> 0:20:32.800 For example, They did not run a control test in 0:20:32.800 --> 0:20:35.760 which they would use regular old water instead of heavy 0:20:35.760 --> 0:20:39.040 water to see if they got different results. If you 0:20:39.080 --> 0:20:42.520 were running a really rigorous scientific experiment, you want to 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:45.320 have a control group, right, So you would set up 0:20:45.480 --> 0:20:50.000 one electroalizer with your platinum and palladium electrodes, and you 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:52.240 would have it in heavy water, and you would set 0:20:52.320 --> 0:20:56.119 up an identical one using regular water that doesn't have 0:20:56.200 --> 0:20:59.280 deuterium in it, or at least not to any measurable degree, 0:21:00.040 --> 0:21:02.280 and you would run the same experiment and see if 0:21:02.320 --> 0:21:04.320 you saw the same sort of anomalies. If you saw 0:21:04.359 --> 0:21:08.920 the same anomalies, that would tell you, okay, it's got 0:21:08.920 --> 0:21:11.480 to be something else, because protium is not going to 0:21:11.720 --> 0:21:16.520 fuse the way deuterium will, so something else must be happening. 0:21:16.600 --> 0:21:19.320 But they didn't do that. They also didn't switch out 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:21.919 their electrodes for different materials to see if that they 0:21:21.920 --> 0:21:26.040 would get the same anomaly. And again, if your hypothesis 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:30.080 is based on when you put these materials with heavy 0:21:30.119 --> 0:21:34.080 water and under these conditions you can get fusion, you 0:21:34.160 --> 0:21:35.760 have to be able to say, all right, well we 0:21:35.800 --> 0:21:38.480 also tried it with these other materials and with regular water. 0:21:38.960 --> 0:21:42.400 And it turns out that nothing happened, So that supports 0:21:42.400 --> 0:21:45.320 our argument that these other conditions have to be in place. 0:21:45.720 --> 0:21:47.960 But if you found the same anomally, it would again 0:21:48.000 --> 0:21:51.159 tell you, all right, something else is wrong with this experiment. 0:21:51.720 --> 0:21:54.439 Either we're doing something wrong, or one of the pieces 0:21:54.440 --> 0:21:58.280 of equipment we're using isn't is not performing properly. But 0:21:58.400 --> 0:22:01.280 we know that it's not the effect we thought it 0:22:01.359 --> 0:22:04.320 was going to be, or they could have tried different 0:22:04.320 --> 0:22:07.000 ways to measure the effects that they observed. So, in 0:22:07.040 --> 0:22:09.479 other words, if you think you're seeing an effect because 0:22:09.520 --> 0:22:12.479 of those specific factors in your experiment, you it is. 0:22:13.200 --> 0:22:15.320 You know, something that you should do is change out 0:22:15.320 --> 0:22:19.600 those factors and make sure the effect disappears, because that 0:22:19.640 --> 0:22:22.360 will support your claim. But if you still see that effect, 0:22:22.720 --> 0:22:25.119 that means your hypothesis is wrong because you switched up 0:22:25.160 --> 0:22:27.000 the stuff that you thought was necessary and it turns 0:22:27.040 --> 0:22:29.639 out it's not necessary at all. But they did not 0:22:29.720 --> 0:22:32.560 do that. They did submit their article to the Journal 0:22:32.640 --> 0:22:38.000 of electro Analytical Chemistry, and they that article ended up 0:22:38.080 --> 0:22:40.880 or rather that journal ended up putting the article through 0:22:40.920 --> 0:22:45.199 a very rushed peer review process because it was a 0:22:45.200 --> 0:22:47.600 big deal. It's really you know, there was a lot 0:22:47.600 --> 0:22:51.840 of urgency put behind this report, and as a result, 0:22:52.200 --> 0:22:55.040 the people reviewing the paper didn't have the time they 0:22:55.040 --> 0:22:56.800 would need to really go through it the way they 0:22:56.800 --> 0:23:01.320 would typically, and so the article gets published after going 0:23:01.400 --> 0:23:04.960 rushing through this pure review process. And later on they 0:23:05.040 --> 0:23:07.679 discovered there were a lot of errors in that article, 0:23:08.320 --> 0:23:10.880 but the reviewers had lacked the time to thoroughly analyze 0:23:10.920 --> 0:23:15.119 the paper, so those are those errors went undiscovered until 0:23:15.359 --> 0:23:20.120 the article was published. Meanwhile, before the journal had even 0:23:20.160 --> 0:23:23.840 printed the article, Pons and Fleishman participated in a press 0:23:23.880 --> 0:23:27.360 conference at the University of Utah to announce their results, 0:23:27.880 --> 0:23:31.280 which again is highly irregular. The scientific community had not 0:23:31.359 --> 0:23:34.800 had a chance to read and analyze the research, and 0:23:35.280 --> 0:23:38.680 this press release began to pump up interest and enthusiasm 0:23:38.760 --> 0:23:41.199 in the public before anyone could even attest to the 0:23:41.280 --> 0:23:44.879 validity of the claims, which is always dangerous, right, like 0:23:44.960 --> 0:23:48.600 to go out to the public and say, we definitely 0:23:48.680 --> 0:23:53.080 have a thing that's going to transform our world, and 0:23:53.160 --> 0:23:55.720 no one in the scientific community has yet had the 0:23:55.800 --> 0:24:00.560 chance to test that claim. Then the public is gonna 0:24:00.600 --> 0:24:03.760 sit there and think, oh, well, this person is a scientist. 0:24:04.640 --> 0:24:07.680 Their word is to be trusted, and I can't wait 0:24:07.720 --> 0:24:10.960 to see this magical science fiction world we're about to enter. 0:24:11.920 --> 0:24:15.359 The article was published without really proper review, and the 0:24:15.400 --> 0:24:19.160 scientific community then began to pick the article apart upon publication, 0:24:19.240 --> 0:24:22.400 and about a month later, Ponds and Fleishman would publish 0:24:22.480 --> 0:24:26.199 two pages of corrections to that article to address some 0:24:26.240 --> 0:24:29.880