Foreword: I gave Ric Werme permission to do this essay. I don’t have any doubt that the original Cold Fusion research was seriously flawed. That said, this recent new development using a different process is getting some interest, so let’s approach it skeptically to see what merit it has, if any. – Anthony
Cold fusion isn’t usual fare for WUWT, at best it’s not a focus here, at worst it’s sorry science, and we talk about that enough already. However, it never has died, and this week there’s news about it going commercial. Well, it won’t be available for a couple years or so, but the excitement comes from a device that takes 400 watts of electrical power in and produces 12,000 watts of heat out.
Most people regard cold fusion as a black eye on science. It’s credited with the advent of science by press release and its extraordinary claims were hard to reproduce. Yet, unlike the polywater fiasco of the 1970s, cold fusion has never been explained away and several experiments have been successfully reproduced. Neutrons, tritium, and other products kept some researchers working long after others had given up. Even muons (from Svensmark’s Chilling Stars) have been suggested as a catalyst. Everyone agrees that theoretical help would provide a lot of guidance, but for something that flies in the face of accepted theory, little help has come from that.
Grandiose claims of changing the world have been lowered to “show me something that replaces my water heater.” Attempts at scaling up the experiments that could be reproduced all failed. Even had they worked, a lot of systems used palladium. There’s not enough of that to change the world.
As media attention waned, the field stayed alive and new avenues explored. Some people active in the early days of Pons & Fleishman’s press conference are still tracking research, and research has continued around the world. There are publications and journals, and conferences and research by the US Navy. And controversy about a decision to not publish the proceedings of a recent conference.
The term “Cold Fusion” has been deprecated, as focus remains on generating heat, and heat to run a steam turbine efficiently is definitely not cold. Nor is it the 30 million degrees that “Hot Fusion” needs. The preferred terms now are LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions) and CANR (Chemically Assisted Nuclear Reactions). I’ll call it cold fusion.
I keep a Google alert for news, and check in from time to time, and last week came across notice of a press conference about a cold fusion system that is going commercial. The reports beforehand and the reports afterward said little useful, but some details are making it out. Whatever is going on is interesting enough to pay attention to, and since WUWT has developed a good record for breaking news, it’s worth a post.
The bottom line is that Italian scientists Sergio Focardi and Andrea Rossi have a unit they claim takes in 400 watts of electricity and, with the assistance of nickel-hydrogen fusion, puts out 12 kilowatts of heat. Okay, that’s interesting and the power amplification doesn’t require some of the extremely careful calorimetry early experiments needed. The elements involved are affordable and if it works, things become interesting. (There are undisclosed “additives” to consider too.) The reactor is going commercial in the next few years, which may or may not mean it’s ready.
Several details have not been disclosed, but there will be a paper out on Monday. Dr. Rossi reports:
Yes, I confirm that Monday Jan 24 the Bologna University Report will be published on the Journal Of Nuclear Physics. I repeat that everybody will be allowed to use it in every kind of publication, online, paper, written, spoken, without need of any permission. It will be not put on it the copyright.
Major caveat – the Journal Of Nuclear Physics is Rossi’s blog. Peer review is:
All the articles published on the Journal Of Nuclear Physics are Peer Reviewed. The Peer Review of every paper is made by at least one University Physics Professor.
So it’s not like they’re getting published in Nature, Scientific American, or even a reputable journal. Still, it ought to be a welcome addition.
The mechanism involved is claimed to be fusion between nickel and hydrogen. This is a bit unusual, as the typical claims are for reactions involving deuterium (proton + one neutron) and tritium (proton + two neutrons) with the gas filtering into a palladium lattice. In this case, it’s reacting with the substrate.
Nickel has several isotopes that naturally occur, the belief is that all participate in the reactions. In http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/files/Rossi-Focardi_paper.pdf discusses finding copper, which has one more proton than nickel, and various isotopes that do not occur in natural nickel. It also observes that gamma radiation is not observed while the reactor was running. Comments in other articles make suggestions about why that is. Apparently they see a short burst of gamma waves when the apparatus is shutdown.
Rossi leaves several hints in his comments, e.g. instability when the pressure of the hydrogen is increased, including explosions. (The commercial unit is designed to need enough electrical power so it can be shut down reliably.)
The best summary of the calorimetry involved is by Jed Rothwell who has been involved since the early days. He notes:
The test run on January 14 lasted for 1 hour. After the first 30 minutes the outlet flow became dry steam. The outlet temperature reached 101°C. The enthalpy during the last 30 minutes can be computed very simply, based on the heat capacity of water (4.2 kJ/kgK) and heat of vaporization of water (2260 kJ/kg):
Mass of water 8.8 kg
Temperature change 87°C
Energy to bring water to 100°C: 87°C*4.2*8.8 kg = 3,216 kJ
Energy to vaporize 8.8 kg of water: 2260*8.8 = 19,888 kJ
Total: 23,107 kJ
Duration 30 minutes = 1800 seconds
Power 12,837 W, minus auxiliary power ~12 kW
There were two potential ways in which input power might have been measured incorrectly: heater power, and the hydrogen, which might have burned if air had been present in the cell.
The heater power was measured at 400 W. It could not have been much higher that this, because it is plugged into an ordinary wall socket, which cannot supply 12 kW. Even if a wall socket could supply 12 kW, the heater electric wire would burn.
During the test runs less than 0.1 g of hydrogen was consumed. 0.1 g of hydrogen is 0.1 mole, which makes 0.05 mole of water. The heat of formation of water is 286 kJ/mole, so if the hydrogen had been burned it would have produced less than 14.3 kJ.
What should we make of all this? In a skeptical group like this, some healthy skepticism is warranted. On the other hand, the energy release is impressive and very hard to explain chemically or as physical storage in a crystal lattice. It will be interesting to see how things develop.
Your commenter BarryW wrote on January 23, 2011 at 7:08 am:
The Greens are going to go nuts since deep down they hate civilization. Cheap energy and even cheaper consumer goods are two of their worst nightmares.
Not necessarily. I am about as green as you can get but I wrote this article in 1996 for a magazine that has been following the subject for decades.
Cold Fusion and New Energy – an Environmentalist’s Perspective I think it holds up quite well after 15 years.
Nick Palmer
Blogspot – “Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer”
In it I refer to the fact that the mainstream green organisations, at the time, were far less hostile to the subject than was the scientific establishment.
Ed Zuiderwijk says:
January 23, 2011 at 2:17 pm
You are right if you look at the mass deficit. But there is something else: Look at the spin of the nuclei involved:
Ni 58 0 Cu 59 3/2
60 3/2 61 3/2
61 3/2 62 1
62 0 63 3/2
64 0 65 3/2
The proton carries a spin 1/2. The reactions proposed therefore violate the conservation of spin, a very fundamental conservation law at the sub-atomic level.
I see. Nuclear spin of 60Ni of course can’t be a half-integer (even number of nucleons, in fact 0 instead of 3/2) , but that’s not a game changer. What about the 61Ni+p -> 62Cu transition? (61Ni is 1.14% in nature).
Being skepticak does not mean that one should denounce this claim of unlimted energy by an LENR system as a scam. I f we analyse the people behind the calim we find:
Learned and experienced PhD professors at an established university
I cannot imagine any reason why such man of high standing should create any type of scam or sham science.
Established scientific theories can be applied to explain the claimed reaction
But most important of all is the demonstration of excess energy measured during the demonstration. Rossi and Focardi even claim that the first commercial heaters will be on sale soon:
Quote>>”They also claim to be going into production, with the first units expected to ship by the second quarter 2011, with mass production commencing by the end of 2011.
This would become the world’s first commercially-ready “cold fusion” device. Licensees are mentioned, with contracts in the USA and in Europe. Mass production should escalate in 2-3 years. Presently Rossi says they are manufacturing a 1 megawatt plant composed of 125 modules. These modules should begin shipping in about three months. “<<
They also claim that energy generated by this sytem will cost one cent each KWHr if electrical and a fraction of that if thermal. If this science is real and not junk, then the energy market is going to get a big shock. we'll see.
Valkyrie Ice claims cold fusion has been demonstrated in “thousands” of experiments. Far from it. The major problem that cold fusion researchers have not and cannot overcome is that of replicability. They can’t reliably replicate their own results nor can anyone else. If it was a simple matter of do this and see that — every time — the matter would have been settled long ago. When we do this every so often we see that simply isn’t good enough to pass as science. Good enough for pathological science, perhaps.
I have been following what is called the cold fusion saga for a long time.
I think it is something that is taking place and that there is a lot more to this that is being told in the media or in academia.
There are many parallels between the culture CAGW theory and cold fusion. Anyone who is skeptical about CAGW is a nutter. In the same way anyone who think there is something real about cold fusion is a nutter and a believer in voodoo science.
Of course those who proclaim this often make this from an authoritative position by claims that the people on the other side are a bunch of nutters. They have themselves seldom looked it this in depth because they have alredy made up their mind based on what they have read.
There seems to be two thoughts of lines of evidence for cold fusion which has to be fullfilld for it to be true.
1 Those who make these experiments must get a leathal dose of radiation for it to be true given the amunt of energy released. If they don’t get that, it can’t be fusion.
2 The experiment must produce elevated amunts of Helium or Tritium equivalent to the amount of heat released. This has been observed repetadly. Also tracks of what is believed to be alpha particles has been observed using a gel at a naval research center in San Diego.
So here we have two contradiconary evidence.
The people making these experiments don’t get leathal doses of radiation. Indeed they don’t seem to register any elevated levels of radiation at all. And with excess energy there seems to be nuclear fusion produced atoms.
I studied material science. What seems to be happening, I think, is that the energy released in the “fusion” process is as heat via quanta released phonones.
The reason can be, because of dislocation or edge structure in the lattice.
Heat in cristalls that is heat vibrations, follow quantum rules in the form of standing discrete waves known as phonones, similar to photones.
We are here talking about quantum mechnics.
Traditional physics say this shouldn’t happen, but there is no physical law which says it can’t happen.
“Dave Springer says:”
“Nuclear power plants are rated in watts. People understand how much useful power is in a watt like for instance a 100-watt light bulb or a 1000watt blow dryer. Some might even know that one horsepower is about 750watts so a 25kw electric vehicle motor is about 33 horsepower. Joules are for physicists. Watts, BTUs, and horsepower are for laymen. We’re mostly laymen here including me. I have difficulty relating joules to real world applications but have little problem with watts, BTUs, and horsepower although I don’t care for converting between those either and prefer my motor and engine ratings in horsepower, furnaces and air conditioners in BTUs, and electrical appliances in watts.”
Dave,
My point was that we are evaluating this system from a thermodynamics perspective. As with any thermal system you determine performance and validity by looking at energy in and energy out. There are two energy transfer rates in this experiment, one for heating water and one for generating steam. The two are very different!. However, by averaging them as if they are the same we have lost information. This is the issue I am concerned about. Many times these type of tricks are done to hide problems that are important.
I would like to know how how they go from heating the water with an energy input of 1,387J/s and produce steam with a power input of 10,649J/s. while the total still equals the approximately 12kW as listed, this information is lost.
What is happening at 100C?
Unless you increase the pressure, the water is at 100C. Since the steam generated is at 101C, this would indicate the pressure is not very high.
How does the energy into the system change with temperature?
Can you generate steam with the pressures higher?
The more I think about it the more questions I have. If this is working then, these questions and many more should be easily answered. Even more important the process should be repeatable by others.
Being a true sceptic means also being sceptical of your OWN position. What I see here is pseudosceptisicm, where individuals are in pursuit of an pre-arranged agenda which sets out to defend the establishment and dogma at any cost.
Dave Springer says:
January 23, 2011 at 10:48 am
Steam turbines require superheated dry steam at very high pressure. My understanding at this point is that the catalytic substrate is destroyed by high temperature so this thing right now can only provide low-quality heat i.e. above the boiling point of water but not hot enough to drive a steam turbine. …
So, use alcohol as a working fluid (b.p. 78C). An ethanol turbine, or any number of other less flammable working fluids. At 12 kW output and 400 W input, they need an efficiency of 3%. Stirling engine anyone? The essential requirement for practical fusion energy is breakeven. They have an unbelievable power advantage and they didn’t take advantage of it. Doesn’t that sound like fraud?
Craig, It should be noted that this community is not monolithic, but if one were to characterize it, setting “out to defend the establishment and dogma at any cost”, would hardly fit the data. Refusing to close our minds despite an establishement proclaimed “consensus” is hardly defending the establishment, and the light hand of moderation and lack of censorship at this site belies your claim of “at any cost”. The open minded consideration of the claims of low energy nuclear fusion doesn’t fit establishment dogma either. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t hope for a new low cost abundant source of energy, but that hardly qualifies as an agenda, it is possible to be both skeptical and open minded. Perhaps we should just be characterized as lovers of science and technology, or as humble seekers of wisdom and truth, or as humanists, since few of us seem to operate from the assumption that humans are a scourge upon the earth.
So, what is there to comment upon until the paper by Sergio Focardi and Andrea Rossi comes out relatively soon (I think it comes out tomorrow on Monday)? I will wait one day.
Having said that, I will add that I am much much more than skeptical; I don’t know a word for much much more than skeptical. Does anyone have any suggestions for a word that means much much more than skeptical?
On another thought, the ideological environmentalism response to an extremely cheap and a relatively much cleaner new energy source will be (if they are consistent with their past ideology) that they are generally against it, since it would give mankind a huge increased ability for progress. Human progress isn’t their ideal.
John
I love how this phenomenon brings out the skeptic in people,
despite evidence which is hard to beat.
Condsider: http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/OrianiRAdetectiono.pdf
Consider also that with a certain electrolysis cell design, I managed to make a radon detector (direct readout, SIREN model) to go from normal background of 2 pc/Liter to 20 to 30, when placed above the cell. Non-CF design results in no rise.
Hours of exposure to air ionization devices cause no rise.
Dr. Oriani subsquently did polarized light studies on the tracks and found they pointed to a central source, about 1.5 cm from the sample CR-39, allowing back calculation to an emssion of 200,000 particles at one time.
But then, obviously, there is NOTHING to CF! The experts say that!
Max
Look… when I can go down to Home Depot and buy a Cold Fusion furnace to replace my old wood burner, then I’ll c0ncede that Cold Fusion has gone commercial. Until then…
(Skepticism aside, I’m rootin’ for ’em. I remember the original release and hubub and I’ve been waiting for cold fusion ever since.)
Max Hugoson says:
January 23, 2011 at 6:23 pm
I love how this phenomenon brings out the skeptic in people,
despite evidence which is hard to beat. … But then, obviously, there is NOTHING to CF! The experts say that!
I’m convinced that LENR occurs in many experiments. That’s not the issue. Throughout history this sort of device keeps popping up where nobody does the obvious thing of making money using it. Science has a performance principle, and, I’d like to see it exercised more often w.r.t. energy generation schemes. Is that too much to ask? How long would it take to fit a 1 kW Stirling engine to this beastie? http://www.suction.co.jp/stirling/ya2.html
http://www.infiniacorp.com/howitworks.html
So far, so sad just a big snowball fight.
I thought Domenec had got it but then he said…….
Quote
Any time energy is generated
Unquote
Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It IS. I asked “What is it” nobody answered but the bun fight continued.
Resonance, ring any bells.
We are fixated on a particulate universe, it is not. It is waves forming Solitons that form fractals and all is interlinked. String theory is a pretend theory, it ignores the both the source and the medium.
Greys Observation
If it works, it works, matters not what the strongest brains say.
Energy is movement, work is the byproduct of that movement. Movement is three dimensional. It follows the law of harmonics.
Simple and elegant
Interesting discussion. It sets up a great argument between the chemists and the physicists. The chemist think they have something real. The physicists think they don’t. Gonna be a lot of fun to find out who is right. For more information on the Cold Fusion side of the world today, go to :
http://www.lenr-canr.org/
Testing Apparatus Notes:
There is a high resolution B&W photo available:
http://newenergyandfuel.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Focardi-Rossi-with-apparatus.jpg
In the foreground a Watts up? power meter is pictured. (Watts up? product link) Specifically a PRO ES model, with USB data port. There are Universal Outlet (UO) versions available, yielding unit ratings of 100-250V, 15A, 50/60Hz AC. I would expect such a unit to be “pass through,” using a current transformer for amperage measuring.
The cord leaving the top of the unit, thus going to the load being measured, is passing through a clamp-on ammeter, a common electrician’s device. (General info, Google search showing currently made versions.) Specifically a digital multi-meter version is shown, at the bottom you can see where the “banana jack” test leads plug in. Accuracy is normally about 3%. You “clamp” them around, not on, insulated cables, often large ones as found in electrical panels, to read the amperage going through the cable.
I can tell from the thick blocky shape it’s most likely an older version, although possibly it’s a newer cheap import model. (Temporary eBay listing to a near-identical model, presumably longer-lasting pic link.) Older and cheaper models can be AC only. Even if it is an AC/DC model, it is expected that the meter must be set specifically to which one it is reading, AC or DC.
The power being consumed by the heating unit was measured. These two pieces look like what was doing the measuring. The possibility seemingly exists that DC could be fed to the heating unit that was not detected, with the power meter being made for AC and the ammeter either made for or set to AC only. Perhaps it could be straight DC when the AC is supposed to be shut off. Perhaps the AC could be “floated” on a DC current, leading to higher energy amounts being delivered than the AC measurements show. It also seems possible that a form of alternating current could be passed through without noticeable detection, as the measuring units were designed for sinusoidal AC of the expected frequency range for electrical devices of 50/60Hz.
Rigorous independent verification using better electrical measuring equipment is indicated.
If it truly does “takes in 400 watts of electricity and, with the assistance of nickel-hydrogen fusion, puts out 12 kilowatts of heat”, this would be a great break through. I have my doubts though…
David says:
January 23, 2011 at 3:03 am
Since nobody else has mentioned it yet, I thought people might be interested to see the patent application Rossi has made, which provides some details about the experimental setup used. This is available here. The written opinion of the international searching authority (the European patent office) is particularly interesting. It seems unlikely that the application will be granted, at least by the EPO.
Thanks David – useful patent link. Interesting reading.
“Preferably, but not necessarily” – rather dodgy!
Here is the nuclear reaction that they are proposing:
“.. generating an impressively high energy amount by so bombarding a nickel atom by a hydrogen atom, to provide a large atomic mass loss copper atom to be transformed into energy, based on the Einstein’ s equation, plus a beta decay energy of the radioactive copper atoms. The following discussion may be considered as valid for some (radioactive) Cu isotopes, but not for the two stable copper isotopes (Λ63Cu and Λ65Cu) which do not decay.
As the copper atom decays, an energy emitting positive beta decay occurs, according to the following equations:
P = N+ e+ + v, where
P = proton N = neutron
E+ = positron v = neutrino
The positron forms the electron antiparticle, and hence, as positrons impact against the nickel electrons, the electron-positron pairs are annihilated, thereby generating a huge amount of energy.
So the “huge amount of energy” that they claim is produced, comes from annihilation of a positron. THIS IS NONSENSE. What happens when a positron meets an electron and annihilates, is the disappearence of both particles and the emission of two photons of exactly 512 keV energy, travelling in exactly the opposite directions – this is the basis of positron emission tomography (PET).
These quite energetic and penetrating 512 keV photons would NOT heat the reaction liquid, most of the photons would leave the mixture and be a source of significant, and easily measurable (with any Geiger counter) gamma radiation around the chamber. If the energies they are claiming came indeed from positron annihilation, then the system would be seriously radioactive and need lead shielding. It would not generate any significant heat.
Thomas says:
January 23, 2011 at 1:14 am
> Why bring up Svensmark in regard to muon catalyzed fusion? The idea is much older (Sakharov, If I recall correctly) nor have Svensmark done any work on it.
1) People here are familiar with Svensmark’s hypothesis of muon induced cloud formation.
2) I was intrigued with some suggestion about muons being involved with cold fusion.
3) I like the coupling with muon catalyzed hot fusion.
—–
Logan says:
January 23, 2011 at 2:02 am
> One should at least mention the central websites for Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) work, and the recent Widom-Larsen theory that allegedly resolves the controversy. The first stop is –
> http://www.lenr-canr.org/
I did, sort of. I didn’t want to dwell on the cold fusion history part of my post much. Note that if you clicked on “Jed Rothwell” you’d be taken to http://www.lenr-canr.org/News.htm . Curious folks would quickly discover breadth of Jed’s collection.
BTW, all: Anything that has Jed’s involvement can be taken seriously. That doesn’t necessarily mean it be taken as gospel, he could be shooting it down. For the matter at hand I don’t know how directly involved Jed has been.
—–
Brian Josephson says:
January 23, 2011 at 2:33 am
> Since Park’s book Voodoo Science has been brought up in the discussion, here is an extract from my review of the book for Times Higher Education:
I took the liberty of tweaking your comment, adding “review of the book” and ending the link there. I think that was your intent.
I noticed your name at Rossi’s blog, I’m glad to see you here. Umm, I see it’s not a coincidence that there is a device called a “Josephson Junction.” Welcome, indeed.
—–
Martin Lewitt says:
January 23, 2011 at 3:36 am
> Pons & Fleishman got a raw deal.
Yeah, but they also jumped the gun. They had heard of Steven Jones’ (BYU) research involving LENR and rushed their work out to get primacy. Jones’ work was of a much lower energy reactor and is best known for a study of tritium releases from the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii.
Some people trying to replicate the P&F cell got a hint from P&F to the effect of “don’t run it too clean,” which made it pretty clear to me they had little idea of just what made things work.
BTW, all: Jones work was interesting, but seemed to have little follow-up. The original paper is preserved at http://preterhuman.net/texts/science_and_technology/physics/cold_fusion/COLD_F02.TXT, more recent work at different sites seems to conclude the volcanic tritium comes from rain water that percolates into magma, see http://www2.agiweb.org/geotimes/aug00/geophenomena.html
—–
Douglas DC says:
January 23, 2011 at 8:10 am
> [M]y Cowboy Pop grew up on a ranch with no electric lights and a wind charged dry cell radio. then in 1933-Electricity. The day the world changed. Pop was 22.
I imagine a lot of people spent the first night with electricity marveling at how you could turn the electric light on and off instantly. No oil, no candles, no matches, just turn a switch and there’s light.
Patents and IP are antithetical to science. It is all the lawyers crowding into the room trying to patent everything and keep it secret for commercial reasons that have created such a mess in this area. Science can’t work properly under such constraints. The lawyers at the university of Utah caused the original mess by constraining Pons and Fleischman from consulting more widely about the unexpected results they were seeing. Instead we had that ridiculous grandiose press conference and the greatest scientific “oops” of all time. I have concluded that any scientific claim where the details are hidden to `protect the IP’ is pretty much guaranteed to be a total load of garbage.
There are, however, unexpected and little understood sources of nuclear reactions and ionising particles out there. For instance, pulling sticky tape off a reel generates x-rays (~15 keV) sufficient to image the bones in your finger – see this New Scientist link:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn15016-humble-sticky-tape-emits-powerful-xrays.html
WUWT?
It’s Monday in Italy, the report on the experiment/demonstration is out, see http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/
A first glance shows it describes behavior of the device over time from a black box view, but doesn’t go into any more details about the innards (or the additional stuff besides nickel and hydrogen).
The file doesn’t seem to work on my old Acrobat reader, but does on a new system.
“That was in 2007. I haven’t heard anything about it since. Very disappointing. Did big oil buy the patent and burry it?”
I know you’re just joking but this always makes me laugh…. think about it. A large oil company has truly obscene amounts of cash on hand/cash flow. If anyone has the pockets to grab a revolutionary new technology and position themselves to run with it (not bury it), they do. Why guard your pile of money against the inevitable future when you can take control of it and get a head start instead?
Oh, sure, people and institutions do stupid things. But still…
“And controversy about a decision to not publish the proceedings of a recent conference.”
Anybody got a link to this?
@Lucy Skywalker
Read his wiki article for a bibliography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Mallove
He was the PR person for MIT who gave the “negative” report to the press, and he discovered that it had been adjusted so the baseline level was above the anomalous heat readings that the Hot Fusion Lab had actually found. Much like Mann et. al, they had “cooked the numbers” to make the reading they wanted it to show happen.
Why is it so easy to believe that the AGW crowd is fully willing to fudge data to preserve funding, but so hard to believe that the Billion Dollar Grant for a Tokamak fusion crowd would not do exactly the same?
We use electron tunneling daily as a factor in electronics, is it truly so hard to think that under precise conditions perhaps proton tunneling is also possible? It’s a quantum effect, and yes it’s hard to figure out which exact factor in a given experiment is the crucial factor, but there’s been 20 years further research that has confirmed something is happening, but as yet, no-one has figured out How or Why. Now many thousands of years did we use fire without understanding that it is the rapid oxidation of a material?
If it works, it works. First we figure out how to make it work on demand, then worry about theory later.