Can a fusion dislocation be good for us?
THE FUTURIAN #4
Kim was aghast. The events that his grandfather was recounting seemed to be from another time. Another planet even.
For decades it was a technology that did not have a good reputation. After the widely panned Fleischmann and Ponn “breakthrough” in 1989, no scientist of any repute would go near cold fusion. “Junk science” they said.
Until this incident, cold fusion was held to be the miracle energy source. Unlike nuclear fission with its lethal waste products and nuclear fusion with its high energy requirements, cold fusion was theorised to be a room-temperature nuclear reaction of unlimited potential.
As the technology of quantum computing matured in the late 2020s various threads came together. For this now mature technology was able to very quickly process the physical world as it is — at the atomic and subatomic level — as opposed to the relatively slow representations of the real world afforded by classical computers. And these combining quantum-related threads opened up a scientific door to new and precise calculations of the very essence of nature itself.
Threads that ultimately influenced two types of fusion research. For cold fusion, it meant that scientists in labs around the world, using acceptable program names such as “Low Energy Nuclear…
