Stanley Pons, co-discoverer of cold fusion, left the United States in 1991 amidst an unprecedented assault. Physicists wedded to the 100-year-old standard model of nuclear theory, and whose funding would be jeopardized by this seemingly simpler approach to energy production, ‘threw tantrums’ and attacked with vehemence.
Steven E. Koonin, who left Caltech Institute to work for BP Oil and later became the U.S. Under-Secretary of Energy 2009-2011, Robert Park, then-Director of Public Information for the American Physical Society and author of Voodoo Science, and John Huizenga, co-Chair of the Department of Energy panel charged with evaluating the scientific claims and author of Cold Fusion: The Scientific Fiasco of the Century, were just a few of the men who used their authority to create a myth that ultimately denied funding to anyone interested in researching the Fleischmann-Pons Effect (FPE) of excess heat, and to blacklist all scientific papers on the topic from mainstream publication.
Sheila Pons documented the absurd melee in her editorial ‘Fusion frenzy’ stymies research published in the Deseret News March 28, 1990. For the Pons family, as well as the Fleischmanns, the emotional cost was great.
A new laboratory in the south of France funded by Minoru Toyoda, of the Toyota Corporation fame, was set up to continue research. The Institute of Minoru Research Advancement (IMRA) provided a peaceful, supportive setting for the embattled scientists to work.
Dr. Pons describes his early experience in France in the Preface to La Fusion dans Tous ses États: Fusion Froide, ITER, Alchimie, Transmutations Biologiques (Fusion in All Its Forms: Cold Fusion, ITER, Alchemy, Biological Transmutations) by Dr. Jean-Paul Biberian. Published last December 2012 in French, a new English version is expected later this year.
Dr. Biberian has worked on cold fusion cells for the past two-decades at the University of Marseille Luminy where he was a physics professor until retirement last summer. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science published by the International Society for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (ISCMNS).
From the French version, he wrote:
À l’annonce de la découverte de la fusion froide, en 1989, l’ensemble du monde scientifique entre en ébullition. Il serait donc possible de produire de l’énergie illimitée à moindres frais ? Dans de nombreux laboratoires, connus ou inconnus, réputés ou non, chacun tente de reproduire l’expérience dont tout le monde parle. J’ai fait partie de ces pionniers, de cette aventure prometteuse extraordinaire. Mais la fusion froide ne s’est pas faite en un jour.
Laissez-moi vous raconter la petite et la grande histoire, humaine et scientifique, alchimique et biologique, de la fusion froide. Une histoire qui me passionne et qui se poursuit aujourd’hui…
with a Google translation:
At the announcement of the discovery of cold fusion in 1989, the entire scientific world boils. Is it possible to produce unlimited energy at a lower cost? In many laboratories, known or unknown, ‘deemed’ or not, everyone tries to replicate the experience the world speaks of. I was one of the pioneers of this extraordinary, promising adventure. But cold fusion was not built in a day.
Let me tell you the small and the great history, human and scientific, biological and alchemical, of cold fusion. A story that fascinates me and that continues today … —Jean-Paul Biberian La Fusion dans Tous ses États: Fusion Froide, ITER, Alchimie, Transmutations Biologiques (Fusion in All Its Forms: Cold Fusion, ITER, Alchemy, Biological Transmutations)
Dr. Biberian has been a colleague and friend to Stanley Pons since they first met in 1993 at the IMRA lab.
Infinity Energy Magazine has obtained special rights to publish the translation to English of Stanley Pons‘ Preface and has made it freely available to the public. [ download .pdf]
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Related
Edmund Storms at NPA-19: What is cold fusion and why should you care? video August 7, 2012
Too Close to the Sun: 1994 BBC documentary profiles early history of ‘cold fusion underground’ June 7, 2012
World Wide Lab September 18, 2011
Cold Fusion, Derided in U.S., Is Hot In Japan by Andrew J. Pollack NYTimes November 17, 1992
Video: 1989 Steven E. Koonin “we are suffering the incompetence and perhaps delusion of …. New Energy Times