Intellectual dark matter? A reputation trap? The case of cold fusion, with Jonah Messinger

Could the future see the emergence and adoption of a new field of engineering called nucleonics, in which the energy of nuclear fusion is accessed at relatively low temperatures, producing abundant clean safe energy? This kind of idea has been discussed since 1989, when the claims of cold fusion first received media attention. It is often assumed that the field quickly reached a dead-end, and that the only scientists who continue to study it are cranks. However, as we’ll hear in this episode, there may be good reasons to keep an open mind about a number of anomalous but promising results.

Our guest is Jonah Messinger, who is a Winton Scholar and Ph.D. student at the Cavendish Laboratory of Physics at the University of Cambridge. Jonah is also a Research Affiliate at MIT, a Senior Energy Analyst at the Breakthrough Institute, and previously he was a Visiting Scientist and ThinkSwiss Scholar at ETH Zürich. His work has appeared in research journals, on the John Oliver show, and in publications of Columbia University. He earned his Master’s in Energy and Bachelor’s in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was named to its Senior 100 Honorary.

Selected follow-ups:

• Jonah Messinger (The Breakthrough Institute)
• nucleonics.org
• U.S. Department of Energy Announces $10 Million in Funding to Projects Studying Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions (ARPA-E)
• How Anomalous Science Breaks Through - by Jonah Messinger
• Wolfgang Pauli (Wikiquote)
• Cold fusion: A case study for scientific behavior (Understanding Science)
• Calculated fusion rates in isotopic hydrogen molecules - by SE Koonin & M Nauenberg
• Known mechanisms that increase nuclear fusion rates in the solid state - by Florian Metzler et al
• Introduction to superradiance (Cold Fusion Blog)
• Peter L. Hagelstein - Professor at MIT
• Models for nuclear fusion in the solid state - by Peter Hagelstein et al
• Risk and Scientific Reputation: Lessons from Cold Fusion - by Huw Price
• Katalin Karikó (Wikipedia)
• “Abundance” and Its Insights for Policymakers - by Hadley Brown
• Identifying intellectual dark matter - by Florian Metzler and Jonah Messinger

Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration