Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Cold Fusion

Did I ever mention how much I love my job? While I enjoyed working at Kyocera I really did miss the research. I now get to work with cool things like Scanning Electron Microscopes, transmission electron microscopes, Ion implanters, Auger analyzers, diffusion pumps, cryopumps, focused ion beams, magnetron sputtering machines, molecular beam epitaxy platers and many other things that are almost as cool as they sound. The most exciting thing that we are working on is quantum well super lattice thermoelectric modules. We have made some major breakthroughs in the last couple of months and I expect that within the next year or two you will actually hear about quantum well thermoelectrics.

Perhaps the most exciting thing I've heard about lately (other than quantum wells) is cold fusion. Does anyone remember Pons and Fleischman? In 1989 they announced to the world that they'd actually been able to make cold fusion work. I clearly remember just how excited I was but unfortunately no one could replicate their work. Almost as fast as they became famous they were run out of the scientific community as a couple of crack pots. Now, twenty years later it appears that they may have been right after all. You really need to watch this episode of 60 minutes that aired on Sunday. As you watch this just remember that all cold fusion does is generate heat. If you ever get cold fusion in your laptop or car it will be quantum well thermoelectrics that converts that heat into electricity. We really do live in a very exciting time and I'm thrilled to be positioned right on the cutting edge.

**** how sad, they removed the video I wanted to show ****

3 comments:

Lynn said...

Sad. IT says the video has been removed.

Your post got me really "pumped" to view it. I will do more research on cold fusion. It sounds fascinating.

I'm glad you enjoy your work and job Fred. Not many can honestly say that about their job.

Fred ... said...

I don't know why that didn't work. I reinstalled it and hopefully it is working now. If not I added a link at the end.

Kira said...

I think that you speak a different language than I do!