Ironically, a pundit often meant a learned expert or a teacher of an idea, for example, an idea about the feasibility of cold fusion. Usually rather than unusually, this person is adamantly critical of other’s idea toward the same subject in question. With regard to cold fusion, the pundit knows exactly how it will work. But the most important thing is why doesn’t the pundit go ahead and make it working instead of talking about it and criticizing others? The answer is very simple, testable ideas cannot be done by the creator of the ideas alone, single-handedly. Helps are needed from various fields of expertise. These helps can never be realized unless the pundit has already convincingly proved to the others how it will really work.


One relevant question is how many pundits it takes to screw a light bulb? The simple answer is: one is enough. However, the word “screw” has a double meaning. It can mean a successful try or a failure depending on the outcome. There are a few workable thermonuclear fusion reactions. For the Sun, some of these nuclear reactions combined to form a Carbon Cycle. In this case, the pundit was Hans Bethe who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1967 for the ideas he discovered in 1938, almost 30 years later that the scientific community was finally convinced his ideas will work and this realization comes years later after the successful detonations of both the atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb. On the other hand, aside from the claims by the chemists: Fleishman and Pons in 1989, there are still no duplicated successful experiments that make the cold fusion of deuterons (nuclei of hydrogen isotopes called deuterium). Deuterium atoms are byproducts of the electrolysis of heavy water. Coincidentally, the fusion of two deuterons creates a nucleus of helium atom. Fast moving nuclei of helium are called alpha ray, one of the three byproducts (alpha, beta, and gamma ray) of natural radioactivity also known artificially as nuclear fission reaction. Clearly, nuclear fission is dangerous to all living things. But if the three byproducts of radioactivity can be contained then the fusion of beta ray and alpha ray forms the inert (non-reactive) noble gas of helium with much energy to spare as gamma ray.