Originally posted by: JAGedlion
Although I may be mistaken, upon reviewing the article
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v434/n7037/full/nature03575.html
the fusion reaction is infact done below room temperature being noticable actually below O degrees C.
Realizing that some may not be able to access Nature I'll paste a peice.
A typical run is shown in Fig. 2. The chamber's deuterium pressure was held at 0.7 Pa throughout the run. First, the crystal was cooled down to 240 K from room temperature by pouring liquid nitrogen into the cryogenic feedthrough. At time t = 15 s, the heater was turned on. At t = 100 s, X-ray hits due to free electrons striking the crystal were recorded. At t = 150 s, the crystal had reached 80 kV and field ionization was rapidly turning on. At t = 160 s and still not above 0 °C, the neutron signal rose above background. Ions striking the mesh and the surrounding aperture created secondary electrons that accelerated back into the crystal, increasing the X-ray signal. At t = 170 s, the exponential growth of the ion current had ceased, and the tip was operating in the strong field regime, in which neutral molecules approaching the tip ionize with unity probability. The neutron flux continued to increase along with crystal potential until t = 220 s, when we shut off the heater. Then, the crystal lost charge through field ionization faster than the reduced pyroelectric current could replace it, resulting in a steadily decreasing crystal potential. At t = 393 s, the crystal spontaneously discharged by sparking, halting the effect.
Though I am no physicist and therefore dont want to draw conclusions the image referenced I will note is said to be an entire run and at the end point the temperature is reported at 282K or around 9 degrees Celcius. Thats pretty chilly in my book.
BTW they do mention that heating such crystals it possible and well known, this experiment was published April of 2005 as something new.
I should also note by the way, this came to my knowledge from slashdot a couple months ago