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Cold Fusion Back From The Dead
misterfusion writes "Looks like the IEEE is warming up to cold fusion with the latest story "Cold Fusion Back from the Dead". This has been a good year for this field with several leading science journals (Physics Today, MIT Technology Review, etc) contributing stories. Things are warming up and if science Research & Development funding can be stimulated with a positive DoE report (due soon), it might be an interesting rebirth."
Waffle waffle
Cold fusion regarded as a joke for ages
waffle waffle
"THE FIRST HINT that the tide may be changing came in February 2002, when the U.S. Navy revealed that its researchers had been studying cold fusion on the quiet more or less continuously since the debacle began. "
waffle waffle
"At San Diego and other research centers, scientists built up an impressive body of evidence that something strange happened when a current passed through palladium electrodes placed in heavy water. "
waffle waffle
"Other researchers are finally beginning to explain why the Pons-Fleischmann effect has been difficult to reproduce. Mike McKubre from SRI International, in Menlo Park, Calif., a respected researcher who is influential among those pursuing cold fusion, says that the effect can be reliably seen only once the palladium electrodes are packed with deuterium at ratios of 100 percent--one deuterium atom for every palladium atom. His work shows that if the ratio drops by as little as 10 points, to 90 percent, only 2 experimental runs in 12 produce excess heat, while all runs at a ratio of 100 percent produce excess heat. "
Summary: Cold fusion wasn't reproducible because not all factors were accounted for, and millitary scientists think they nailed it.
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
bleh. i did CF development for 6 years before moving into IT security. CF is still quite qidely used in the private (bank of america, etc) and is extensively used in public sector shops. the majority of DoS and many DoD sites use it (and they port it to linux, so pbbt.) don't confuse their questionable products like flash and shockwave with a really solid, open standard web application language.
Cold Fusion Back From the Dead
U.S. Energy Department gives true believers a new hearing
Later this month, the U.S. Department of Energy will receive a report from a panel of experts on the prospects for cold fusion - the supposed generation of thermonuclear energy using tabletop apparatus. It's an extraordinary reversal of fortune: more than a few heads turned earlier this year when James Decker, the deputy director of the DOE's Office of Science, announced that he was initiating the review of cold fusion science. Back in November 1989, it had been the department's own investigation that determined the evidence behind cold fusion was unconvincing. Clearly, something important has changed to grab the department's attention now.
The cold fusion story began at a now infamous press conference in March 1989. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, both electrochemists working at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, announced that they had created fusion using a battery connected to palladium electrodes immersed in a bath of water in which the hydrogen was replaced with its isotope deuterium - so-called heavy water. With this claim came the idea that tabletop fusion could produce more or less unlimited, low-cost, clean energy.
In physicists' traditional view of fusion, forcing two deuterium nuclei close enough together to allow them to fuse usually requires temperatures of tens of millions of degrees Celsius. The claim that it could be done at room temperature with a couple of electrodes connected to a battery stretched credulity [see photo, "Too Good to Be True?"].
But while some scientists reported being able to reproduce the result sporadically, many others reported negative results, and cold fusion soon took on the stigma of junk science.
Today the mainstream view is that champions of cold fusion are little better than purveyors of snake oil and good luck charms. Critics say that the extravagant claims behind cold fusion need to be backed with exceptionally strong evidence, and that such evidence simply has not materialized. "To my knowledge, nothing has changed that makes cold fusion worth a second look," says Steven Koonin, a member of the panel that evaluated cold fusion for the DOE back in 1989, who is now chief scientist at BP, the London-based energy company.
Because of such attitudes, science has all but ignored the phenomenon for 15 years. But a small group of dedicated researchers have continued to investigate it. For them, the DOE's change of heart is a crucial step toward being accepted back into the scientific fold. Behind the scenes, scientists in many countries, but particularly in the United States, Japan, and Italy, have been working quietly for more than a decade to understand the science behind cold fusion. (Today they call it low-energy nuclear reactions, or sometimes chemically assisted nuclear reactions.) For them, the department's change of heart is simply a recognition of what they have said all along - whatever cold fusion may be, it needs explaining by the proper process of science.
THE FIRST HINT that the tide may be changing came in February 2002, when the U.S. Navy revealed that its researchers had been studying cold fusion on the quiet more or less continuously since the debacle began. Much of this work was carried out at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego, where the idea of generating energy from sea water - a good source of heavy water - may have seemed more captivating than at other laboratories.
Many researchers at the center had worked with Fleischmann, a well-respected electrochemist, and found it hard to believe that he was completely mistaken. What's more, the Navy encouraged a culture of risk-taking in research and made available small amounts of funding for researchers to pursue their own interests.
At San Diego and other research centers, scientists built up an impressive body of evidence that something strange happened when a current passed through palladium electrodes placed in h
Over the years, a number of groups around the world have reproduced the original Pons-Fleischmann excess heat effect, yielding sometimes as much as 250 percent of the energy put in.
(snip)
Other researchers are finally beginning to explain why the Pons-Fleischmann effect has been difficult to reproduce. Mike McKubre from SRI International, in Menlo Park, Calif., a respected researcher who is influential among those pursuing cold fusion, says that the effect can be reliably seen only once the palladium electrodes are packed with deuterium at ratios of 100 percent--one deuterium atom for every palladium atom. His work shows that if the ratio drops by as little as 10 points, to 90 percent, only 2 experimental runs in 12 produce excess heat, while all runs at a ratio of 100 percent produce excess heat.
Something is going on here that we don't understand, and it looks like it can be reproduced. Yeah I would say it would be worth looking into further. The 250% heat output sounds like a good thing (especially if no toxic by-products are produced) so how does that compare to other types of heat generation I wonder?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
I haven't made any great study of what happened, but I'm not sure any apology is in order.
As I understand it, they made an astonishing scientific claim. That claim, while it might be absolutely true, was not substantiated by the experiment they describe.
There is more to good science than turning out to be right.
-Peter
Oh, shit! This again and again.
Cold fusion is impossible and Physics have long demostrated it.
Robert L. Park, the President of the American Physical Society, wrote a book that deals with this and explains it clearly: Voodoo Science. He will probably treat this "rebirth" of the hype on his What's new science column.
How long until the USA Government understands they cannot beat the Second Law of Thermodynamics?
As I understand it, they made an astonishing scientific claim. That claim, while it might be absolutely true, was not substantiated by the experiment they describe.
If you read the article (I know, this is Slashdot...), you'd note that some of the problems in reproducing the effect have been discovered. One problem turned out to be the "density" of deuterium atoms in the palladium electrodes. Above a certain threshold, you'd see the excess heat every time. Below that, even by only 10%, you'd only see excess heat in one out of every six trials.
From this, it seems like the problem wasn't that the experiment was made up, but that the problem was the researchers had no precise concept of what steps and requirements were necessary to repeat it accurately.
While apparently hard (but not impossible) to reproduce, and not well understood, there is now credible evidence that something happens that generates heat and helium out of hydrogen.
If the phenomenon is real, and we manage to reproduce it reliably, it probably is fusion, albeit only a couple of atoms at a time (which has the side effects of (1) no harder-to-control chain reaction over vast amounts of fissible material and (2) trivial to contain generation).
Might not be too easy to use, though. I could see how the heat could be made to give energy to a conventional steam turbine though.
At any rate, your quip about dead from radiation poisoning is a strawman. Even if all is as the researchers hope, we are observing the fission of minuscule amounts of atoms at a time (hence the manageable heat) and what little radiation escapes from the reaction medium unabsorbed and unconverted into heat is most likely unmeasurably small and completely drowned out by the background radiation we live in.
-- MG
The article is a good look at the whole CF phenomenon as of 1993.
Think quantum mechanics/quantum probabilities. 'Tunneling' is a very real possibility. Electron tunneling is widely used in electronics.
My thinking is that the palladium matrix is somehow modifying the quantum probability functions such that when the matrix is sufficiently saturated with deuterium nucleii, it allows superposition, which gives rise to fusion. I actually came up with this explanation years ago when some people had success and others failed, now it turns out there may actually be evidence to support it.
I'd highly recomend the wikipedia article on cold fusion, here.
This sig wasn't worth reading, was it.
Cold Fusion is simply Fusion at a lower macro-temperature (as in a room-temperature room). Fusion clearly is possible, unless you care to explain atomic weapons, stars, nuclear power another way (do I hear giant government conspiracy maybe? matrix-like pseudo-reality?).
Cold fusion may or may not be possible, but clearly science hasn't proven it either way. And as another form of Fusion, it certainly does not violate the 2nd law.
Ahem, RTFA. The point of the article is that the excess heat effect HAS been replicated now plenty of times, and the researchers are trying to figure out how it happens and why. Also, why they so rarely detect the generation of helium and tritium that one would expect from an actual fusion reaction. What is happening may not be fusion, but the point of the whole article is that it would be beneficial to understand what is going on here with the Pons/Fleischmann effect. If it isn't fusion, then what the hell is it? And can this really be developed into an inexpensive source of energy?
I agree that Pons and Fleischmann essentially sabotaged their careers with the ill-conceived press conference, rather than have their work peer-reviewed as most scientific research is done, but the point of the article (again RTFA) is that quite a few well-credentialed researchers have been working on this for the past decade and have come up with some startling results. And they are doing it right by presenting their peer-reviewed work at scientific conferences.
Insightful? Would wondering if Val Kilmer might steal her research from her get me a '+1, Informative' moderation?
I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens. --Isaac Bashevis Singer
You've missed my point entirely.
I am focussed completely on the question of "How does the energy wind up as heat?"
I will grant you any number and type of exotic processes to create the energy in the first place.
But I will not grant you any new physics with regard to converting that energy into heat, because all of the scenarios posited ultimately involve either excited nuclei, or nuclei moving in the lattice, and we know with as much certainty as we know anything what happens when we have excited nuclei or nuclei moving in the lattice.
So you have two completely unrelated problems: one is that there is no known mechanism that can produce the energy in the first place. The second is that once the energy is created, there is no known mechanism that can convert it into heat without a clear-cut radiation signature. That is, even if you have pure d+d->4He fusion, you will always still get both nuetrons and x-rays (and gamma rays, in some cases) due to standard slowing down processes or de-excitation.
No matter what process produces 4He plus a few MeV, the same physics governs the thermalization process, and you have to invoke entirely new physics to govern this process in this case, as well as entirely new physics to govern the generation of the energy in the first place.
So it isn't the lack of explanation of the generated energy that is the big concern for most nuclear physicists. It is the fact that once the energy has been generated, the reaction products have to behave in ways that are completely contrary to a huge body of existing knowledge, both theory and observation.
--Tom
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.