COLLIDING UNIVERSES and COLD FUSION

Here’s a Jupiter-Uranus idea. We know there’s at least one universe, because we live in it. There has also for some time been the idea of a multiverse, that there are lots of universes, with perhaps different physical laws to ours. The trouble is, there has been no evidence for them. Now some scientists have come up with a way of approaching this idea: if there are other universes, they will sometimes collide. If our universe has collided with another one, maybe we could find evidence for it? A couple of scientists think they may have done so through the existence of anomalies in the cosmic background radiation of the universe. This radiation gives us clues to the early nature of the universe, shortly after the big bang. Anomalies here could point to collisions while our universe was still in its early expansion. It is still very speculative, but it’s an interesting idea.

An idea that seems to be back on the table is Cold Fusion. This is nuclear fusion without the extremely high temperatures that are normally understood to be necessary. Controlled nuclear fusion has been the Holy Grail for our energy needs for a long time now (though some environmentalists think its pursuit is sheer madness.)

We currently get nuclear energy from fission, which involves the splitting of large nuclei, releasing energy and leaving nuclear waste. This is governed by Saturn-Uranus, which was in Gemini and opposite the Sun when the first controlled nuclear reaction occurred in 1942: the splitting (Uranus) of matter (Saturn).

Nuclear fusion involves banging together atoms of ‘heavy’ hydrogen to create helium (broadly speaking) and releasing loads of energy and very little or no radioactive waste. This hasn’t been done in a controlled way yet, only as an H-Bomb. The chart for this has Saturn-Neptune opposite the Moon: the fusion (Neptune) of matter (Saturn). It is the Holy Grail because of the amount of energy released, the limitless amount of fuel in the oceans, and the lack of radioactive by-product. And it has proved very difficult to achieve. On Nov 21 2006, under the current Saturn-Neptune opposition, an international consortium signed an agreement to build an experimental reactor (ITER).

The Sun runs on nuclear fusion, and it is the very high temperatures, in the millions of degrees, that makes it possible. However, in March 1989 two American chemists announced that they had created nuclear fusion at room temperature while conducting an electrolysis experiment. This announcement occurred appropriately under an exact conjunction of Saturn-Neptune. The result had no theoretical basis to it, other scientists could not repeat it, and the 2 chemists were laughed out of mainstream science.

The idea hasn’t gone away, however, and it is taken seriously enough for experiments to be sponsored by the US Navy. Their results have been published in a respected scientific journal – under the current Saturn-Neptune opposition. Again it is an electrolysis experiment that is producing more energy than it should, and this time they have a plastic wafer designed to leave tell-tale tracks when particular nuclear particles hit it. And they are hitting it.

The whole thing is strange, because in theory nuclear fusion should be nowhere near happening at these temperatures. But some scientists clearly don’t think that it therefore can’t be happening, which is to their credit. And if it is happening, and the energy can be harnessed, it might indeed be a kind of Holy Grail.