Google sunk $10 million in hopes of proving one of science’s most controversial experiments

• Google spent four years and $10 million to claim that there is “no evidence whatsoever” of cold fusion on Earth.
• Scientists claimed to have cracked the conundrum thirty years ago, only to be debunked but credited with conducting one of science’s most controversial experiments.
• Lead author of the study maintains that, “This is what we are supposed to do as scientists.”

Google leaves no stone unturned, even when it comes to cold fusion — a theory that was shunned 30 years ago.

Researchers at the company felt that the initial judgement “may have been premature” and went on to spend $10 million to prove their point. But their project, published in Nature Perspective, yielded no results.

Curtis Berlinguette, the lead author of the study, was skeptical of the theory but maintains, “This is what we are supposed to do as scientists.”

Cold fusion — creating the heart of stars at room temperature — can theoretically provide clean energy, and lots of it. It is essentially a nuclear reaction, but on a table top without all the heat.



Cold fusion’s controversial history

Stanley Pons and Martin Flieschmann from the University of Utah claimed that they had achieved success with cold fusion, back in 1989. But when nobody could reproduce the results, the theory was shelved as an embarrassing debacle which was kept out of history books.

Google tried to recreate the experiment themselves along with two other methods of trying to generate cold fusion within the confines of a lab.

The whole point of the experiment is to replicate how two atomic nuclei merge in a stable way. Right now, nuclear fusions only occur in extremely high temperatures like the heart of the Sun.

Experiments that are trying to replicate the phenomenon right now expend more energy than they actually produce, not to mention the many risks associated with nuclear reactions.

Four years and 30 researchers later, Google officially states that there’s “no evidence whatsoever” that cold fusion is possible.

See also:
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