Today is March 23, 2019 — thirty years ago in a news conference at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City a news conference was held in which it was announced that two scientists working there, Drs. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann had discovered a means of achieving fusion at room temperature.
The proceedings of that conference can be seen in this video:
I can remember as a young man being very interested in the announcement which was covered widely in the news – not really understanding it very well at the time – but later feeling a lot of disappointment hearing the news reports it being a big mistake, or a even a fraud. I lost interest for many years, and really only started to get interested in the cold fusion/LENR field again after the Rossi/Focardi presentation in January of 2011.
Thank goodness that some people never gave up on the cold fusion project. A small group of researchers continue to try to understand and develop CF/LENR technology. Yes, we are thirty years down the road now, and cold fusion still is underground to a large extent, but I think progress has been made since 1989 and at some time we’ll see the efforts bearing fruit.
Thanks to Drs. Pons and Fleischmann for the courage to stand up and share what they discovered. It did not go very well for them at the time. They were treated very poorly by some in positions of influence, and it is heartbreaking to learn of their ruined reputations and careers. However, I believe their presentation 30 years was as a very important moment in the history of humanity and I think that at some point be recognizes more widely as such.