This story has been tiptoeing into a few news outlets, shyly for good reason among those who remember cold fusion. No doubt a few science reporters have proven again that a big part of their job is keeping some stories out of the papers.

It appears to have started with a Sept. 9 story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, by David Templeton, about a researcher who developed a radio frequency generator intended to kill cancer cells. For some reason he touched a match to the water in the culture dish and found that it burned as long as the RF generator was zapping the water. Although some stories have referred to this as burning saltwater, what actually seems to have been happening is that the RF energy was causing hydrolysis, dissociating H2O and releasing hydrogen gas. The initial discovery apparently happened last May.

Word of this reached Rustum Roy, a respected materials researcher at Penn State University. He tried it and found, as he told Templeton, “It’s true. It works.” Roy calls it a major discovery, the most important involving water in a hundred years. “Seeing it burn gives me chills,” Roy said.

Naturally, the bigger news outlets with larger and more experienced science writing staffs have been slow to pick up the story, even though the AP moved a version two days ago. Wired Science blogger Kristen Philipkoski reasonably starts her story with, “This sounds a wee bit nutty.”

A realistic note comes from Michael O’Mara of, notably, a TV station–WKYC, the NBC affiliate in Cleveland. He quotes another expert as arguing that this is no great shakes because it appears to take more energy to liberate the hydrogen than you get back from the gas.

-BR

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 13th, 2007 at 1:15 pm and is filed under About Journalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.