Did You Know:
Fact: If two pieces of metal touch in space, they become permanently stuck together
This may sound unbelievable, but it is true. Two pieces of metal without any coating on them will form in to one piece in the vacuum of space. This doesn't happen on earth because the atmosphere puts a layer of oxidized material between the surfaces.
This might seem like it would be a big problem on the space station but as most tools used there have come from earth, they are already coated with material. In fact, the only evidence of this seen so far has been in experiments designed to provoke the reaction. This process is called cold welding.
Cold fusion is a proposed type of nuclear reaction which would occur at relatively low temperatures compared to hot fusion. As a new type of nuclear reaction, it was proposed to explain reports by experimenters of anomalously high energy generation under certain specific laboratory conditions. Others attempting to replicate the experimental results were unsuccessful. as of 2012 the effects haven't been replicated in a reliable way, and there is no generally accepted theoretical explanation that accounts for the reports.
Cold fusion gained attention after reports in 1989 by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann (then one of the world's leading electrochemists[1]) that their apparatus had produced anomalous heat ("excess heat"), of a magnitude they asserted would defy explanation except in terms of nuclear processes. They further reported measuring small amounts of nuclear reaction byproducts, including neutrons and tritium. The small tabletop experiment involved electrolysis of heavy water on the surface of a palladium (Pd) electrode.
The reported results received wide media attention, and raised hopes of a cheap and abundant source of energy. Many scientists tried to replicate the experiment with the few details available. Hopes fell with the big number of negative replications, the withdrawal of many positive replications, the discovery of flaws and sources of experimental error in the original experiment, and finally the discovery that Fleischmann and Pons had not actually detected nuclear reaction byproducts.
By late 1989, most scientists considered cold fusion claims dead, and cold fusion subsequently gained a reputation as pathological science. In 1989, a review panel organized by the US Department of Energy (DOE) found that the evidence for the discovery of a new nuclear process was not persuasive enough to start a special program, but was "sympathetic toward modest support" for experiments "within the present funding system." A second DOE review, convened in 2004 to look at new research, reached conclusions similar to the first.
A small community of researchers continues to investigate cold fusion, now often preferring the designation low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR), claiming to replicate Fleischmann and Pons' results. Since cold fusion articles are rarely published in refereed scientific journals, the results do not receive as much scrutiny as more mainstream topics, and many scientists are not even aware that there is ongoing research.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/Cold-fusion-calorimeter-nhe-diagram.png/250px-Cold-fusion-calorimeter-nhe-diagram.png)
Diagram of an open type calorimeter used at the New Hydrogen Energy Institute in Japan
This story won't go away!.............................