Participants Debate Cold Fusion During MRS Spring Meeting Panel Session

Extract

Capping an exciting day at the 1989 Spring Meeting of the Materials Research Society in San Diego, a special three-hour session on “cold fusion” was held Wednesday evening, April 26, following the plenary lecture by two-time Nobel laureate Prof. Linus Pauling. (See “Linus Pauling Addresses MRS in San Diego” elsewhere in this issue.)

The session, the largest session in MRS history with over 1,700 participants, was sponsored by the Society to provide MRS meeting attendees with an unbiased scientific forum for the presentation and discussion of results and issues regarding recent “cold fusion” announcements in the press. The announcements had captivated the world's interest the preceding month while being met with a healthy amount of scientific skepticism. Such skepticism was not lost on the nation's cartoonists, many of whose works on “cold fusion” were shown during the evening's proceedings.

The special session was organized and moderated by Meeting Cochair Richard W. Siegel, with the help of Angelica M. Stacy and Robin F.C. Farrow (also Meeting Co-chairs) and MRS President R.P.H. Chang. A distinguished panel of invited speakers from the nuclear fusion and materials research communities was assembled to discuss the purported fusion of deuterium nuclei dissolved in palladium or titanium at or near room temperatures.