Question #84585
1 Answer
No.
There is no confirmed evidence of fusion processes taking place at room temperature.
Fusion happens naturally at extreme temperatures found in the sun and other stars. The motion of atoms at these temperatures is fast enough to overcome the coulomb barrier between the positively charged protons of two atomic nuclei. The two nuclei merge into a single atomic nucleus and release energy in the form of photons, and a the recoil motion of the new nucleus. These serve as an additional source of heat which keeps the reactions going.
Pons and Fleischmann attempted to produce fusion by dissolving lots of hydrogen gas in palladium. It is known that palladium and several other metals are capable of holding a remarkable amount of hydrogen gas. The research team assumed that if they could get enough gas into the palladium, some of the atoms would move close enough to each other to force their nuclei together.
When their temperature readings showed a slight deviation from the predicted values, the team held a press conference to announce the result. The news spread quickly. More cautious researchers (with backgrounds in nuclear physics) asked difficult questions like, "If this amount of heat was produced by nuclear fusion, why didn't the resulting radiation kill you?"
A small group of researchers continues to claim that the results are real. They hold their own conferences. Respected journals refuse to publish their results.
The US Patent office rejects patents claiming cold fusion.
Also see this discussion from Berkley .
There is a nice history of the Cold Fusion debate on Wikipedia: Cold Fusion
