TL,DR: cold fusion is real, apparently. Yes, really - cold fusion. I know. I wouldn't have thought so either.

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The point of this post is basically to promote to your attention the hypothesis that cold fusion is a real physical phenomenon. For those of you not in the know, this very much flies in the face of current scientific consensus (something I'm not usually in the habit of opposing). In this case though the evidence seems to be quite straightforwardly in favour of the cold fusion advocates.

[Note: most researchers working in this area don't like the term cold fusion; partially because of the negative scientific connotations it drudges up, and partially because fusion might not be an accurate description of what's going on physically. The two preferred terms seem to be low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR) and lattice-assisted nuclear reactions (LANR). I use cold fusion in this piece mainly for convenience and name-brand recognition]

Quick background - in 1989 Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, leading electrochemists of their day, announced a truly startling discovery: a tabletop apparatus of theirs had produced anomalous heat that was (according to them) orders of magnitude beyond what could be produced by chemical effects alone. The only process that can produce heat like that is a nuclear reaction, but such reactions were thought to be impossible at such low temperatures. Thinking they had discovered a new source of energy, Pons and Fleischmann were justifiably excited and hurried to publish their results. In the subsequent months a huge number of researchers tried to replicate their findings, with most being unable to do so. Of the few scientists who did get positive results, some later retracted their work, and others were criticized for sloppy experimental design. To make matters worse, errors and exaggerations were found in Pons and Fleischmann's original paper. Very quickly the scientific community as a whole had cold fusion pegged as "pathological science", and most researchers forgot about the whole affair and went back to their normal, non-energy-crisis-solving work. Pons and Fleischmann, disgraced, ended up quietly leaving the country to continue their work elsewhere, and that was the end of the cold fusion story, as far as most people were concerned. [1]

Here's where it gets interesting. Naturally, the prospect of...

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