NUCLEAR fusion could be responsible for at least some of the Earth's heat, according to one of the researchers involved in the current controversy over producing cold fusion in a test tube.
Steven Jones and his team at Brigham Young University, Utah, who last week published the results of their experiments on cold fusion in Nature (vol 338, p 737), suggest that the fusion of deuterium and hydrogen could produce the isotope helium-3 deep inside the Earth. This mechanism would also explain the high levels of helium-3 found in rocks, liquids and gases from volcanoes and regions in the Earth's crust where tectonic plates are active.
It was this implication that provided the impetus for Jones's efforts to achieve fusion between deuterium nuclei in an electrolytic cell with titanium and palladium electrodes. Jones detected a few neutrons with a specific energy that indicated nuclear fusion.
Three years ago, Paul Palmer, ...
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