Live Wire Blog

Vice Chancellor Rob Duncan to appear on 60 Minutes

Posted on April 16, 2009 by Karen Pojmann

The CBS television news-magazine show 60 Minutes has called on the scientific expertise of Rob Duncan, MU’s vice chancellor for research.

In “Cold Fusion is Hot Again,” Scott Pelley reports on new research results in the emerging field of low-energy nuclear reactions, which some scientists believe could lead to breakthroughs in energy production. Pelley interviewed Duncan for the report, which airs at 6 p.m. Central time Sunday, April 19.

Duncan will present a synopsis of the 60 Minutes program at the University of Missouri System’s Missouri Energy Summit, to be held April 22-23.

First presented in 1989 by physicists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, cold fusion is nuclear fusion taking place at or near room temperatures. The Fleischmann and Pons reports were dismissed when the scientists’ experiments could not be replicated. Now, 20 years later, interest in cold fusion — along with its possibilities for producing inexpensive and abundant energy — has resurfaced.

Duncan, who joined MU in September 2008, is an expert in low-temperature physics. Formerly chief operating officer of the New Mexico Consortium and founding director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Duncan has conducted research that will provide critical information for future NASA missions.

Duncan holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a doctorate in physics from the University of California-Santa Barbara. He has taught at the University of New Mexico (UNM) and the California Institute of Technology, and he served as an associated dean at UNM.

Tune in to CBS Sunday to watch the report.