Yoshiaki Arata, a highly respected physicist in Japan, demonstrated a low-energy nuclear reaction at Osaka University on Thursday. In front of a live audience, including reporters from six major newspapers and two TV studios, Arata and a co-professor Yue-Chang Zhang, produced excess heat and helium atoms from deuterium gas.

Arata used pressure to force deuterium gas into an evacuated cell that contained a palladium and zirconium oxide mix (ZrO2-Pd). Arata said that the mix caused the deuterium's nuclei to fuse, raising the temperature in the cell and keeping the center of the cell warm for 50 hours.

Arata's experiment would mark the first time anyone has witnessed cold fusion since 1989, when Martin Fleishmann and Stanely Pons supposedly observed excess heat during electrolysis of heavy water with palladium electrodes. When they and other researchers were unable to make it work again, cold fusion became synonymous with bad science.

But the method Arata showed was "highly reproducible," according to eye witnesses of the event. If nobody calls this demonstration out as a sham, Arata might have finally found the holy grail of cheap and abundant energy—nuclear power, without its destructive heat. [Physicsworld via Slashdot]

Following up on the Sub-Macbook rumor, American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu says now that Apple may introduce a new notebook based on Flash NAND chips «in the second half of the year». It's unclear if Apple will also finally introduce the personal teleporter with cold fusion engine in the same time frame, but that quote alone, coupled with Samsung announcing the first shipment of their hybrid NAND hard drive to OEMs, will probably fill Apple's fanboys' wet dreams for months to come. Myself included. – Jesus Diaz

Apple `chip' laptop in works [Mercury News]
Samsung Starts Shipping 'World's First Hybrid Disk Drive' [The Money Times]