“Although he’s a tenured Massachusetts Institute of Technology associate professor, Peter Hagelstein leads a life of exile. He has never made full professor. He no longer has a lab. Barely anyone came to a lecture he gave about his research a year and a half ago. Virtually all of Hagelstein’s problems stem from his study of cold fusion, a type of nuclear reaction that — if it exists at all — might have the power to create unlimited, clean energy, essentially on a tabletop. Fifteen years ago, two University of Utah chemists claimed they created such a reaction, an announcement quickly denounced as quackery. Today, cold fusion is as scientifically scorned as UFOs. Now the soft-spoken Hagelstein, who won accolades in the 1980s for conceptualizing a laser critical to Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” defense plan, and cold fusion have a shot at mainstream science again. Three months ago, the US Department of Energy quietly agreed to examine what cold fusion supporters say is increasing evidence — culminating at a conference at MIT last summer — that the reaction exists and is reproducible. If the agency agrees, it will likely mean an injection of both funding and legitimization for the forgotten research.”