Attempts to duplicate the experiment proved largely unsuccessful, prompting most researchers to dimiss the original report and the few others that followed as incorrect. Still, in the face of strong skepticism and even disdain from the majority of physicists, a small band of believers have continued to experiment and have reported some unusual results. Speaking before a small audience at a lecture sponsored by MIT's Laboratory for Nuclear Science, Dr. Frederic J. Mayer, a plasma physicist with his own company in Ann Arbor, MI, detailed a paper, appearing in next month's issue of Fusion Technology, that attempts to explain the experimental inconsistencies that have been observed over the past 24 months. However, this new theory bypasses fusion reactions and proposes a novel energy-producing nuclear reaction that involves a new class of atomic particles not yet directly detected. Mayer's paper, co-authored with theoretical physicist Dr. John R. Reitz, suggests that the excess heat and other nuclear products detected in various cold fusion experiments are not the result of fusion, but instead a reaction involving an isotope switch.
Isotopes are atoms that are chemically identical, but have different numbers of neutrons.
For example, carbon has a number of isotopes. A carbon atom may have up to twelve or more neutrons in its various isotopic forms. An isotope that is stripped of a neutron, or picks ups one, can often release energy. These reactions, which Mayer calls Resonant Direct Nuclear Reactions, may be the explanation for the cold fusion phenomenon, according to the new theory. There are a number of these isotope reactions, many of them occuring in metals that have been accused of contaminating cold fusion experiments.