Leah Heagy

Known for his extensive research on cold fusion energy, Professor Melvin Miles gave a lecture in the President's Dining Room on Feb. 13. This was the first in a series of lectures that Miles will be giving in the next two months. Miles is an adjunct professor at La Verne, where he has been teaching chemistry since 2002.

Ginny Ceballos
Staff Writer

Most 4-year-olds’ interests lie in toys, cartoons and cookies.

However, Melvin Miles, research electrochemist, was curious about the moon, stars and electricity.

“I tried to generate electricity at about age 4 by using baling wire, a light bulb, and stolen matches, and received one of my early spankings,” Miles said.

At age 8, he became hooked on chemistry when he experimented with his dad’s chemicals in the family barn.

He began reading his father’s books to learn about chemistry.
Miles went on to earn his Ph.D. at the University of Utah with a major in physical chemistry and a minor in physics. He wanted to become a scientist.

Now at age 70, Miles begins his day with a five mile run. He then researches thermal batteries at the China Lake Navy laboratory.

As time permits, he works on his cold fusion project to get ready for new experiments.

Miles’ research is mostly restricted to different areas of electrochemistry, a division of chemistry that studies the relation of electricity to chemical changes.He has published 200 papers and holds about 15 patents. From 1991 to 1995, Miles worked on a cold fusion program funded by the Office of Naval Research.

However, new leaders cut funding because they were uninterested in cold fusion and thought it too controversial.

Cold fusion is the fusing of two hydrogen atoms called deuterium.
When the deuterium fuse, they form a heavier particle called a helium atom. The fusion reaction releases large amounts of energy.

Nuclear fusions usually release more than a million times the energy of chemical reactions, and high temperatures are normally required for a fusion reaction to occur. However, cold fusion can take place in near ordinary room temperatures. This phenomenon cannot be explained and is contrary to all understanding of nuclear reactions, which makes it controversial.

Global warming has become an increasingly important topic.

“The government needs to be exploring energy alternatives and cold fusion is being ignored,” Miles said. “Even if there is a small chance it will work, it should be explored.”

There is enough deuterium in the oceans to fulfill the energy needs of the world for 13 billion years. One gram of deuterium costs $20 and has the energy equivalent of 2400 gallons of gasoline. Also, the fusion of deuterium does not cause greenhouse gases that produce global warning.

There are, however, some problems with cold fusion. There is no government funding, the cold fusion process is not well understood and therefore lacks a complete theory, and reproducibility is poor.

Also, in order for new discoveries to be accepted, major institutions, like Caltech, must first give their approval. However, these institutions dismissed cold fusion and now funding is hard to attain.

“Science today is a new type of religion,” Miles said. “New discoveries or concepts that don’t agree with the scientific scriptures are to be banished without a fair hearing.”

Miles believes that there could be cold fusion energy within five years if a major breakthrough occurs, but he thinks it will more likely take 50 years.
His career was damaged with the Navy because of his cold fusion research. He did not receive funding for any topic, so he decided to go back into teaching.

Iraj Parchamazad, department chair of chemistry, was impressed with Miles’ work and research and invited him to become a chemistry professor at ULV.

“(Miles is) very calm, straight forward and polite,” Parchamazad said. “He has a lot of human value; this is why we worked very close together.”
Miles taught full time at the University of La Verne from 2003-2006.

“I liked working with students and not having to worry about research funding as I did while working for the Navy,” Miles said.

He is now an adjunct professor. He left ULV for many reasons. He had cancer surgery in Jan. 2006 and was unable to teach for a few months.

His wife was tired of living in apartments and wanted to go back to their home in Ridgecrest. He also was offered a position doing research in China Lake as a contractor and a private investor offered him funding for cold fusion research.

“Too bad he doesn’t work for ULV anymore because he was a good lab professor,” biology minor Jon Ordonez said.

Miles now works for the Navy investigating new thermal batteries for weapons that will be able to sit inside a weapon for twenty years and then be activated by sudden heating.

He hopes that his cold fusion research will make the effect larger and more reproducible.

Ginny Ceballos can be reached at gceballos@ulv.edu.