🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi there.  I was in my quantum class today and my professor, Keith Johnson,
started talking about Cold Fusion, or at least, what was thought to be
cold fusion.  He said that what was actually being witnessed wasn't a nuclear
reaction at all (big surprise) but a new type of phase transformation of
hydrogen in the paladium.

Apparantly, Toyota has cought on to this new type of energy (well, not new, 
just mis-understood) and is currently funding Pons and Fleishman (sp?) at
a lab in France.

It is pretty much accepted that electric vehicles are feasable and that
hydrogen-burning vehicles will be coming.  This new type of rection which makes
use of the way that paladium "sucks up" hydrogen like a sponge, combined with 
the great deal of energy released with an applied voltage, could combine the
two technologies into a new type of engine that produces as it's only by-product
(after a catalytic converter to extract the nitrous oxides) water.  According
to Japanese sources, Toyota and Nissan are speeding ahead with this research
and may have a working prototype in the next couple of years.

I am interested in this topic and would like to hear some more detailed 
explanations of the mechanisms going on (speculation is fine since the exact\
mechanisms are still not completely understood) along with some response to
why the United States thought that this was a technology unworthy of attention,
whereas Japan realized that something was there and followed it.

 - Dave Walton  (dwalton@athena.mit.edu)

P.S.  1) This is my first posting, so sorry if it doesn't meet some standard
            or another.
      2) Sorry about the spelling of names, and the obscurity of some of the
            technical references.  I'm not well-versed on this subject... yet.