Science Bytes
Low Energy Nuclear Reactions, Part 1: The Barrier and the Bombshell
15:30
Part 1 of 4. Before we can weigh the extraordinary claim of cold fusion, we need the ordinary physics it defies. We build the yardstick: the electrostatic Coulomb barrier that keeps two nuclei apart, the quantum tunneling that rarely lets them through, and the precisely measured rates of deuterium-deuterium fusion. Then we turn to March 1989, when Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons announced…