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Twenty years ago it appeared, for a moment, that all our energy problems could be solved. It was the announcement of cold fusion--nuclear energy like that which powers the sun--but at room temperature on a table top. It promised to be cheap, limitless, and clean. Cold fusion would end our dependence on the Middle East and stop those greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. It would change everything.
But then, just as quickly as it was announced, it was discredited. So thoroughly, that cold fusion became a catch phrase for junk science. Well, a funny thing happened on the way to oblivion--for many scientists today, cold fusion is hot again.
"We can yield the power of nuclear physics on a tabletop. The potential is unlimited. That is the most powerful energy source known to man," researcher Michael McKubre told "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley.
McKubre says he has seen that energy more than 50 times in cold fusion experiments he's doing at SRI International, a respected California lab that does extensive work for the government.
McKubre is an electrochemist who imagines, in 20 years, the creation of a clean nuclear battery. "For example, a laptop would come precharged with all of the energy that you would ever intend to use. You're now decoupled from your charger and the wall socket," he explained.
The same would go for cars. "The potential is for an energy source that would run your car for three, four years, for example. And you'd take it in for service every four years and they'd give you a new power supply," McKubre told Pelley.
"Power stations?" Pelley asked.
"You can imagine a one for one plug-in replacement for nuclear fuel rods. And the difference only would be that at the end of the lifetime of that fuel rod, you didn't have radioactive waste that needed to be disposed of," McKubre replied.
He showed "60 Minutes" just how simple the experiment looks; there are only three main ingredients. First, there is palladium, a metal in the platinum family. Second, one needs a kind of hydrogen called deuterium which is found in seawater.
"Deuterium is essentially unlimited. There is ten times as much energy in a gallon of sea water, from the deuterium contained within it, than there is in a gallon of gasoline," he explained.
The palladium is placed in water containing deuterium and the third ingredient is an electric current.
The experiment is wrapped in insulation and instruments. They're looking for what they call "excess heat." In other words, is more energy coming out than the electric current puts in?
No one knows exactly how excess heat would be generated, but McKubre showed "60 Minutes" what he thinks is happening.
... Read moreUpdate 6:42 a.m. PST: Added more video segments from the report.
In a 60 Minutes segment titled "Brain Power," the CBS TV news magazine follows Andrew Schwartz, a neuroscientist at the University of Pittsburgh who has implanted a grid of electrodes inside a monkey's brain in order to listen to the different brain cells (or neurons) in an attempt to decode the language of the brain.
By implanting a grid of electrodes inside the brain of monkey, Schwartz has found a relationship between how fast a neuron fires and the way the monkey moves its hand. Once they can understand the relationship, they can write a set of equations that will decode the monkey's intended hand movement in order to find a way to control a prosthetic device.
One of people researchers are hoping to help is Cathy Hutchinson. Hutchinson, who suffered a stroke that left her mentally sharp but paralyzed and unable to speak, is among the first humans to have her brain directly wired to a computer. Three years ago, Hutchinson volunteered to have the same kind of sensors used on the monkeys, implanted into her motor cortex. By using only her mind, Cathy was able to control the movement of a cursor on the computer screen.
A prototype of a device is currently in the works which would integrate a wireless communication system that would allow the signals from the brain to be transmitted to the outside.
Segments of the report are below, For the full 12-minute report, click here: '60 Minutes' video: Brain power.
'60 Minutes' video: BrainGate: Movement
'60 Minutes' video: Development of wireless system
'60 Minutes' video: Relationship between neurons and movement
'60 Minutes' video: Decoding the language of the brain
One technology more than any other has stood out as a success story for the U.S. military in Iraq: unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs.
The best-known of the UAVs, the MQ-1 Predator, has evolved from its early use as simply a reconnaissance and surveillance aircraft to become a highly valued weapon in its own right. Armed with Hellfire missiles, it can both track enemy combatants and fire on them. A more recent version of the Predator, called the MQ-9 Reaper, was specifically put into service as a "hunter-killer" drone.
The Pentagon has been so impressed with the use of UAVs in combat zones that it has made a high priority out of training and assigning new pilots for the aircraft (though not without some controversy). While the Predators carry out missions in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and are handled by ground crews there, the pilots generally operate from thousands of miles away, in places like Creech Air Force Base in Nevada.
In Sunday's installment of the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes, correspondent Lesley Stahl traveled to Iraq to talk to Gen. Ray Odierno, the new top commander there, and other senior U.S. military personnel about the role of UAVs.
During last spring's fight for Sadr City, for instance, UAVs including the Predator and the RQ-7 Shadow proved instrumental in finding and destroying insurgent targets. Cameras on the aircraft help commanders on the ground see and map out a wide area of operations with their "persistent surveillance" capability.
Stahl's report shows rare footage of the weaponry in action as the military pursued "fleeting and perishable" targets.
U.S. officials credit the high-tech aerial systems as among the top reasons that violence in Iraq dropped so dramatically this year. And earlier this year, although still a young technology, the Predator and the Shadow were among the half-dozen UAVs recognized with an exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution.
The Predator--with its "snowmobile" engine and unobtrusive presence--has also become a favored tool of the CIA. Take a closer look in the January 2003 video below, from the 60 Minutes archives.
Dubbed the "Big Bang machine," the Large Hadron Collider could be the biggest science experiment in history--the goal of the scientists working there is to re-create what the universe was like just nanoseconds after it began.
The particle physics at the core of the LHC may be daunting for those of us who last reckoned with protons and neutrons in high school, but the real-world aspects are much more straightforward--if staggering in their own way. The project, 20 years in the making, has a price tag of $8 billion and involved the work of 9,000 physicists. The massive machinery sits more than 300 feet underground, stretching in a 17-mile circle across the French-Swiss border.
There's even a rap video that imparts a sort of Schoolhouse Rock vibe to the supercollider--and that became a YouTube hit.
On Sunday, in the season premiere of the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes, correspondent Steve Kroft takes you underground to get a closer look at the Large Hadron Collider and the people who made it possible.
See also:
• Images: Where particles, physics theories collide
• When rap, physics, and fame collide
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