APS Blog on "NASA's Cold Fusion Folly"

A blog post published on April 19th on the American Physical Society’s Physics Buzz Blog laments that scientists at NASA are getting involved in cold fusion, and specifically gives a strong critique of the Widom-Larsen theory, which is the theory that Joseph Zawodny and Dennis Bushnell at NASA have been investigating.

The author of the blog is identified only as ‘Buzz Skyline’, and gets straight to the point in the opening sentence of the blog:

I am sad – horrified really – to learn that some NASA scientists have caught cold fusion madness.

The remainder of the article is mainly devoted to explaining why Buzz Skyline doesn’t think that the WL theory canwork, mainly because there is no detection of neutrons in any cold fusion devices. He also mentions that even if the neutrons are absorbed in the matter there should be some evidence of transmutation, which he says has not been reported in any peer reviewed journals.

There are some responses in the comments from Steven Krivit, a strong proponent of the Widom-Larsen theory, who challenges the blogger’s assertions and invites readers to study the various papers and articles on the theory.

I suppose this is nothing really surprising to hear — these kinds of critiques of cold fusion have been common over the years, and apparently there has been nothing in the news of late to change the prevailing attitude.

BTW, Andrea Rossi is not a supporter of the Widom-Larsen theory either. Recently he responded to a question to the WL theory by saying:

My opinion is that the WL theory is wrong, because, for example, does not respect the leptons conservation law and considers virtual particles, which are very shortlived resonances between actual particles during a decay process, as if they were elementary particles with consistent lifetime.