Berkeley Labs Table-top Pulse Plasma Experiment Producing Fusion ‘At Will’

Thanks to Greg Daigle for posting this link to an episode of a podcast from the Materials Research Society Bulletin in which host Philip Ball talks with Prof. Yet Ming Chiang of the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering about the work of the Google-sponsored research team to re-investigate the case of cold fusion and see if there is worthwhile research possibilities in the field

You can listen to the podcast here:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/244633/1954191

Below are some quotes from Prof. Chiang that I found particularly interesting. It seems that the work is bearing some interesting results which they are continuing to pursue, and he states that they hope that in the future they will be able to get to point where greater funding, possibly from governments, can be obtained for research in this field.

“In a particular experiment which Thomas Schenkel at Berkeley Labs is doing which is essentially a table-top pulse plasma experiment in which he is able to create neutron emitting fusion essentially at will, at the turn of a knob, there’s an experiment that Thomas is doing which we regard as a reference experiment because it’s very well-behaved . . .

“In using just the palladium wire target and going to lower energies, what Thomas will tell you is that he is seeing a neutron yield which is about a factor of 100 higher than what theory would predict, but he will be very careful to explain that that is the difference between almost nothing and something slightly greater than nothing. As you know we have been very careful not to get out ahead of our ski-tips in looking at these phenomena. So we’re trying to be very cautious and to not make any claims that we are not able to verify.

“The response to the article has been interesting. We’ve received almost no negative responses. Of course not everyone who has a negative response would contact us, but we have received a lot of positive and encouraging responses . . . That was one of our objectives, to see if we could reopen the interest in research in this area in such a way that it would be legitimized to the extent that the pursuit, the objectives, the result all warrant.”