Word: fusion
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...Fusion is a nuclear reaction which joins two smaller atoms together into a larger atom, releasing great quantities of energy...
...claim was so spectacular that it was difficult to believe. News reports suggested that scientists might have achieved the world's first controlled, energy-yielding nuclear-fusion reaction -- a Holy Grail of physics for nearly 40 years. Moreover, the event had not occurred in one of the great national laboratories; it was the work of a pair of chemists operating on a shoestring budget and using little more than a test tube, a pencil-thin strip of metal and a car battery. Even more incredible was the assertion that this humble apparatus, fueled with a form of hydrogen found...
There were grounds for skepticism. While well respected in their fields, Pons and Fleischmann were far from the mainstream of fusion research. In addition, they had released their results in a manner that tended to cast suspicion on their claims, staging a press conference in Utah complete with television cameras. For several days researchers around the world were dependent on TV and newspapers for scraps of information about what could conceivably be the biggest science story of the year -- if not the decade...
...emerge. By an informal process known as "publication by fax," copies of a paper Pons and Fleischmann had prepared began to circulate from lab to lab. Next, one of the best-known figures in the field, physicist Steven Jones of Brigham Young University, announced that he too had achieved fusion in a jar, although, significantly, with far lower energy output. Even a pair of Hungarian scientists claimed to have carried out room-temperature fusion...
...Nuclear fusion, the process that fires the sun, usually occurs when two atoms are squeezed together at very high temperatures to make one new atom. For example, two atoms of deuterium -- an isotope of hydrogen -- can be fused to form a helium atom and a neutron, releasing a sizable burst of energy. But before that can occur, deuterium nuclei generally need to be compressed with sufficient force to overcome their mutually repellent electrical charges. In H-bombs, that force is supplied by the detonation of an A-bomb. Conventional fusion techniques require giant magnets, powerful laser beams and particle accelerators...