Cold fusion

In this contribution the author the phenomenom of so-called cold fusion, inspired by the memorable lecture of Moshe Gai on his own search for this effect. Thus much of what follows was presented by Dr. Gai; the rest is from independent reading. What is referred to as cold fusion is of course the observation of possible products of deuteron-deuteron (d-d) fusion within deuterium-loaded (dentended) electrodes. The debate over the two vanguard cold fusion experiments has raged under far more public attention than usually accorded new scientific phenomena. The clamor commenced with the press conference of M. Fleishmann and S. Pons on March 23, 1989 and the nearly simultaneous wide circulation of a preprint of S. Jones and collaborators. The majority of work attempting to confirm these observations has at the time of this writing yet to appear in published form, but contributions to conferences and electronic mail over computer networks were certainly filled with preliminary results. To keep what follows to a reasonable length the author limit this discussion to the searches for neutron (suggested by ref. 2) or for excessive heat production (suggested by ref. 1), following a synopsis of the hypotheses of cold fusion