NUCLEAR fusion could be responsible for at least some of the
Earth's heat, according to one of the researchers involved in
the current controversy over producing cold fusion in a test
tube. Steven Jones and his team at Brigham Young University,
Utah, who last week published the results of their experiments
on cold fusion in Nature (vol 338, p 737), suggest that the
fusion of deuterium and hydrogen could produce the isotope
helium-3 deep inside the Earth. This mechanism would also
explain the high levels of helium-3 found in rocks, liquids and
gases from volcanoes and regions in the Earth's crust where
tectonic plates are active. It was this implication that
provided the impetus for Jones's efforts to achieve fusion
between deuterium nuclei in an electrolytic cell with titanium
and palladium electrodes. Jones detected a few neutrons with a
specific energy that indicated nuclear fusion. Three years ago,
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