British researchers believe that they have made a groundbreaking scientific discovery after apparently managing to ‘create’ energy from hydrogen atoms. In results independently verified at Bristol University, a team from Gardner Watts – an environmental technology company based in Dedham, Essex – show a ‘thermal energy cell’ which appears to produce hundreds of times more energy than that put into it. If the findings are correct and can be reproduced on a commercial scale, the thermal energy cell could become a feature of every home, heating water for a fraction of the cost and cutting fuel bills by at least 90 per cent. The makers of the cell, which passes an electric current through a liquid between two electrodes, admit that they cannot explain precisely how the invention works. They insist, however, that their cell is not just a repeat of the notorious ‘cold fusion’ debacle of the late 1980s. Then two scientists claimed to have found a way of generating nuclear energy from a similar-looking device at room temperature. The findings were widely challenged and the scientists, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, accused of incompetence, fled America to set up labs in France. ‘We are absolutely […]