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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."
Apart from the fact that there were problems reproducing the cold fusion effects, it's very easy to see why cold fusion has always been given the cold shoulder. It would effectively end the fission power-based business aswell as fossil fuel generated electricity.
Patriotism - the last resort of scoundrels.
Too bad Elizabeth Shue isn't spearheading the research. At least she's something to see.
It is good to finally see a fair balance in the study of this idea. It may not generate anything usable, but then agin, it might. I think that is the key... to get real science studying the situation, not having the ideas tested and approved through the media.
With ITER in a political freeze, there is ample time to study cold fusion concepts further. I don't see how one can create fusion conditions at room temperature. But if we understand how to control the collisions of the atoms better, then we may lower ignition temperatures. If the temperatures required were only several tens of thousands of degrees, then we do away with the complex containment systems and have a very viable energy source without multi billion dollar energy stations.
Bottom line: Let real science work. The worst case scenario is that we have a better understanding of the atomic interactions that will be used in whatever fusion reaction processes that we eventually use.
"... and if science Research & Development funding can be stimulated with a positive DoE report (due soon), it might be an interesting rebirth"
When someone says that progress depends on funding it scares me. This is one of the most vaporsearch/vapordev discoveries in history. There have fabrication after fabrication and pseudodiscovery after pseudodiscovery.
I'm SURE that the companies/universities that are doing this research are well funded or have such active "life work" people involved that MORE funding really isn't necessary or even requested.
I'm also relatively sure that the people that are making progress in this field are keeping it mum - this will be one of the greatest discoveries of all time and will make someone very rich - and people think this is going to be just broadcast that someone contactable/killable has achieved it?
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
"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. "
Does this mean Pons-Fleschmann used the 100 percent ratio? Why in the world didn't the other scientists use this exact same setup when trying to reproduce the results? If you're trying to repeat a result, don't you make sure all variables are the same?
From the article it seems like Fleischmann saw more energy coming out than he put in (up to 250% apparently) and thought to himself:
"Aha! This must be cold fusion."
Is it just me, or does that seem to be a bit of a leap of faith? After all, if one sets light to petrol one gets more energy out than a match puts in. Surely there are other possibilities.
Occam's razor anyone?
I'm not sure about "strong evidence" from a single research laboratory either...
Surely there are better things to be spending time and money on?
Pons and Fleischman were liars who fabricated results to get media attention. If that's pioneering then that wacked out cult that claims to have cloned a human ought to get a Nobel prize for their work in "pioneering" genetics.
Read any good sonnets lately?
Well, maybe you decide you understand what's going on, and therefore that particular variable can't possibly be important, or you overlook it, or the variable isn't reported correctly etc.
Scientific papers and experiments are just as susceptible to bugs as software. Generally peer review and repetition and further work on the subject of the papers catches these eventually, but it can take time. The claims of cold-fusion were so startling (and hyped), there wasn't an awful lot of attempts to sort mistakes and understanding out before it was declared unscientific.
Best analogy I can think of is a software project that launches, claiming it will revolutionise user interface or something, but that only works on the developers own system, as they've hacked up much of their OS and hardware. It could be years before the software would work on a general computer, but if nothing works to start with, then most people won't be interested in developing and improving it.
Look how long it took to get the linux kernel reasonably mainstream supporting common hardware, and compare to Hurd...
I suspect that, if this was the case, it was accidental. That is, P&F didn't set out to saturate their electrodes with D, but it just so happened that they were. So they were unaware that they had achieved a special case condition prerequisite for cold fusion.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
However, I'm afraid that 'Cold fusion warmed over' is also an illogical statement. This has connotations with hot coffee, or some other drink or food item that is customarily hot, that has gone cold and has once more been made warm.
Both statements fail abjectly to address the issue at hand. The optimal statement here would be 'Cold fusion might yet be viable'.
Regarding this particular issue, I can only state that I, along with many of my contemporaries, know various facts about cold fusion that are yet unknown in your time. This includes the fact whether it is viable. However, reporting these facts here would be a direct violation of the Prime Directive.
Without the darkness, how would we recognize the light?
What worries me is the military interest. It's all a push to build bigger and better ways to kill people, now powered with more efficient means! Don't get me wrong, historically we have many great things coming from military driven technology (space program, wireless comm., nuclear power, etc.) but at what cost?
Palladium, tritium? Even if they can consistently get more heat out than energy in, that only describes the current event.
It does not describe the entire economic input. That palladium and tritium has to come from somewhere, and it's expensive.
Until this can be done with non-exotic materials, it will probably be a push as its worthiness.
Since when is deuterium toxic?
Though it appears that he may be right in the end -- cold fusion does exist -- that is how science works. It was extremely difficult for people to reproduce it and since the success rate was on par with anomolous behavior, it was regarded as a fluke. Now that it is understood slightly better, some people are getting results. Usually if the theory behind the experiment is understood, the experiments, no matter how inaccurate, are repeated and made better. But nobody understands the theory. I'm still skeptical, but if this pans out in the end, it would be awesome! Imagine sticking it to oil companies with nuclear cars and planes.
But if it were fusion that were doing it, the researchers would be dead from radiation poisoning.
What is with this idiotic groupthink that if its nuclear it must be radioactive? Not everything involving a nucleus is radioactive, and not everything radioactive causes cancer and kills people. For example, at princeton plasma physics labs, they deal a lot with fusion experiments, and there is radiation present... FROM THE TRITIUM AND DEUTERIUM THAT THEY STARTED WITH. The beginning materials in this case are radioactive. It's all this kneejerking nonsense about radiation that makes people pissy every time you try to discuss fusion research with a layman.
And for the record, until I see better results otherwise, I still think cold fusion is horseshit
The article blurb referred to Technology Review as a "leading science journal". It isn't. It's a magazine. I like to think it's a good magazine, as I've written for it, but it is most definitely not a scientific journal.
Oil companies would be richer than ever if this pans out. The oil won't stop being needed, it'll just stop being burned. And quite a few "oil companies" have figured out that they are in the energy business, not the oil business. And would probably be in the forefront of providing high-grade deuterium for your cold fusion units.
"Mr. Fusion", anyone?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I love this notion that "the POWERS THAT BE suppressed the IRREFUTABLE EVIDENCE for their own evil ends!" It's such a charming fantasy.
The Evil Vested Interests of the world are regularly blindsided by new technology. The usual pattern (*cough*RIAA*cough*) is that they ignore it until it really starts to hurt them, and then they try to make it go away through legal action. Those folks do not have a magic ability to predict the future. In fact, they demonstrably suck at it.
When "cold fusion" was announced, the people who discredited it were academics who tried like hell to reproduce the effect, and found it to be irreproducible based on the information they had at the time. This is called "peer review". Scientists are supposed to be profoundly skeptical. In that respect, they differ from conspiracy theorists.
If you RTFA, you'll notice that no extravagant claims are being made. If it turns out that there's something there which really is both reproducible and interesting, we'll hear more about it.
You can't make sure all the variables are the same if you don't know what all the variables are.
If you believe that you are studying the effects of an electrical current on two metal electrodes submersed in water then you would make note of the current strength, the composition and dimensions of the electrodes, the temperature of the water and that kind of thing. You don't often record what kind of shoes you are wearing when you set up the equipment, what you ate for lunch or how long the fluorescent lights in the room had been on before you started taking measurements. Why not? Because it never occurs to you that it would be important.
Good experimental procedure is to document everything as well as you can, but if you are investigating something entirely new you can't always know what matters.
Sometimes even very smart people overlook small things that turn out to be important. Ask Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee about that if you see them.
They didn't fabricate results, their results just became public too quickly, and so when there was trouble duplicating the results, there was serious backlash against them.
I never seem to have modpoints when I want them.
I beg to differ. Palladium only costs about as much as gold, and is used commonly for things like spark plugs and catalytic converters for cars. It's also not consumed by the reaction, so it's a one-time cost.
In regards to tritium, I'll agree that it's expensive now. This may not always be the case, though, especially if there's a use for it besides thermonuclear devices and glowing keychains. The article seemed quite optimistic about the possiblity of getting the needed heavy water from the sea ("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." - emphasis added).
If cold fusion turns out to be the Real Deal (TM), then there will be scientists and engineers falling over themselves to find economical ways of producing the fuel, I guarantee it.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
I guess I need to bow down to Robert L. Park as God. If he says that "cold fusion" is impossible, then it must be. Physics, of course, knows all -- there's no more problems to solve, and the theories explain everything. If there's an effect observed in some experiment which seems to violate all the theories (that cannot be explained in any way), then the effect DOES NOT EXIST and those who observe it must be executed at dawn for their apostasy and unorthodoxy. Of course, no one will be allowed to reproduce the experiment, and those who attempt to do so will also stand against the wall.
All hail Robert L. Park, the keeper of scientific orthodoxy!
I think the article sums it up -- there is clearly *something* going on to produce the excess heat. Apparently the researchers have now figured out how to get more reproduceable results, so others may now verify the effect and thereby focus on studying the effect itself rather than just trying to reproduce it.
Now what that *something* is, is another matter. Maybe it is a chemical reaction of some sort, or maybe some other energy-release mechanism based on the thermophysical or thermochemical properties of the palladium substrate. Or maybe it is some unusual type of catalyzed nuclear reaction ("cold fusion".) Or maybe it is something else heretofore unknown. Now that the effect appears to be more reliably reproducible, it will now be possible to study the effect itself and solve the mystery. Although I am skeptical it is "cold fusion", it nevertheless appears to be interesting enough to study it in earnest.
Regarding "the Second Law" as Mr. paugq mentions, I suggest he brush up on his thermodynamics since I assume he is uttering it with respect to energy conservation, which comes under the First Law.
Nothing is impossible. If you think the limit of our knowledge is already in textbooks, you have quite a rude awakening coming.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Allow me to reiterate; turning out to be right is not the sole pillar of good Science.
I did not assert that their "experiment was made up," but that it was not reproduceable.
I suppose whoever "made" them hold a press conference in spite of this fact does owe them an apology.
-Peter
The second law of thermodynamics is more abused on slashdot than copyright law.
Or do you think fusion bombs have to use five million tons of TNT as primer to release the other five megatons of energy?
Kill, Tux, kill!
If you can't describe the environment in which an experiment can be reproduced reliably, you don't understand the phenominon properly enough to be calling press conferences.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Unfortunately, that is precisely the hallmark of junk science: experiments that appear to show amazing results that cannot be explained by conventional theory and as a result the exact requirements to duplicate the experiment are unclear. The crackpots are then free to argue that negative results by other researchers are due to a problem with their experiment. Scientists have good reason to be skeptical of discoveries with these characteristics.
Now, Pons and Fleischman may have just been unlucky in having discovered a real effect that happened to have these characteristics. On the bright side, if they turn out to have been right their place in history is secure.
I was at the APS meeting where Cold Fusion was officially debunked.
About five different highly respected labs, including at UMD and
Caltech, tried and failed to reproduce the results.
BUT.
Here's the thing: at least one (maybe two?) of the labs noted that
Pons & Fleischmann's results could be reproduced if one neglected one
of the steps needed to reproduce it (stirring?). If one failed to do
that step, you would get a chemical reaction of about the magnitude
P&F described.
Note well that the likeliest reason for any other researcher to
observe the reaction P&F describe would be a similar carelessness.
Could it be cold fusion? Could be. But it's very, very, very
unlikely. The chances of human error are alot higher than the
chances that physical theory is so wrong.
There was one embarrassing mistake. The funding agencies had already
promised funding for cold fusion. Thus, a (sometimes persuasive)
constituency was created for keeping cold fusion research dollars
flowing. That constituency is basically being paid to keep the cold
fusion myth alive. That's anothing thing you should keep in mind when
you hear about cold fusion nonfailures (because it's as likely that
you'll see cold fusion generators as it is that you'll get a real
opportunity to own the Brooklyn Bridge...)
What, "entropy tends to increase in a closed system"? I think you mean first law of thermodynamics. "When _all_ energy forms are taken into account, energy is neither created or destroyed in a closed system".
This isn't about creating energy from nothing, it's about finding a suitable high entropy form of energy to convert to lower entropy kinds, thus allowing physical processes to occur. Physics cannot prove anything impossible by the way, but it can measure how unlikely something is.
let's not be retarded. the scientists found HELIUM and excess energy coming from these devices, not hydrogen gas and excess energy.
secondly, if it were as simple as this chemical reaction, then we would have known by now. We're incredibly knowledgable about studying chemical reactions, and could simply look at the terminal to tell if it were oxidized. Plain and simple.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
It is impossible to say with scientific rigor that cold fusion is "impossible". It doesn't seem likely under current theory, but one can never rule out errors in our current theoretical understanding. The quantum mechanics of solids (like the palladium lattice) are complicated. It's possible (though unlikely) that there is something going on there that we don't yet understand.
I don't think cold fusion is likely, but if researchers are now getting reproducible results, the effect they are observing merits a second look. It might not be fusion. It might be some other interesting effect. Whatever is going on, if it is reproducible it can be studied by science, and will become better understood with time. If the effects turn out not to be reproducible still it will quickly die again, and little will have been lost by checking.
Oil companies would be richer than ever if this pans out.
I disagree.
The oil won't stop being needed, it'll just stop being burned.
The question isn't "will oil still be needed", it's "HOW MUCH oil will still be needed?" And the answer (quite obviously) is "much less than is needed right now."
Yes, some oil will still be needed, but the fact that a great deal of it is burned means that the *demand* side of the "supply and demand" equation will drop. Significantly.
And guess what happens then?
quite a few "oil companies" have figured out that they are in the energy business, not the oil business.
Oil companies currently have it pretty good - why would they want to actually have to go out and *compete* if they don't have to? It's just like the RIAA and the MPAA - when new technology comes out that creates competition for their current business model, they're more inclined to fight the technology, rather than embrace it, even if embracing it would provide a new revenue stream that will dwarf their current profits.
Just as an example: Proton tunnelling has been observed over 0.5 Å with a 2E-23 J barrier. (as a contribting effect in hydroxyl group proton exchange)
It takes 100,000,000 times that energy to get a proton just within 1E-13 m of another proton.
Now consider that the tunneling rate is exponentially dependent on the barrier. Uh-huh.
With all due respect to the above journals, they are not peer-reviewed journals where research results are reported. If the journals had been Nature, Science and Physics Review, then I'd be excited. But they aren't, so I'm not. Besides, I read the articles, and I didn't get the impression they were all that enthusiastic...
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
Pretty much all technology that we currently take for granted was at one time considered impossible by rational people working with the tools of the time, which were not too bad. And, they were usually first postulated by folks who were not widely held to be rational. So, 'the mere impossibility of a task, is a poor excuse for a lack of enterprise in it's undertaking.'
Oh please. "Creation science" isn't science at all. Science makes predictions based on theories, and often has applicable uses. "Creation science" just attacks an evolutionary strawman. Nothing useful has come out of it, and no predictions can be made from it, and its practicioners don't follow the scientific method of empirical research.
To believe that crap, you have to discard physics (radioactive dating), astrophysics (age of the universe), biology (evolution and DNA), geology (age of the earth), paleoclimatology (ancient weather), and probably several other scientific disciplines that I just can't think of at the moment. Every one of THOSE sciences actually produce results. The atomic clock which you set your watch by in the morning is based on the same rate of radioactive decay which allows us to date rocks and sediment and fossils. The rockets that we send into space calculate their trajectory based on the same science which tells us how old the universe is. DNA and evolutionary research have given us new prescription drugs that are used to treat diseases. Paleoclimatology tells us what happens when the cabon dioxide levels get too high and cause global warming.
Has "Creation science" contributed anything to mankind, other than a bunch of wrongheaded thinking? Can you use "creation science" to make a better retrovirus drug? No. It's not science, it's muddle headed philosophy, and it will never be any more than that because it is fundamentally wrong.
When scientists say the earth is billions of years old, that theory is not based on pseudo-science, but cold, hard facts that "creation science" doesn't deal with, because it can't. If we used "creation science" geology to build our buildings, they would collapse. If we used "creation science" nuclear physics to build our nuclear reactors, they would explode. The only way you could possibly believe that crap is if you are woefully or intentionally ignorant of the facts.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
Though it appears that he may be right in the end -- cold fusion does exist -- that is how science works. It was extremely difficult for people to reproduce it and since the success rate was on par with anomolous behavior, it was regarded as a fluke.
The same thing happened to Henry Bessemer when he produced high-quality steel by blowing air through it. When others couldn't reproduce it on a regular basis, he had to go back and review what he had done. It nearly broke him, but in the end he found that by pure chance, he had used low-phosphorus steel in his experiments. Once this was shown, uptake was initially slow, but as soon as it was proven to be reproduceable, it caught on and allowed the widespread use of modern steel -- and allowed Bessemer to become very wealthy.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Nope. Apologies are for scientists who publish their work in good faith in peer-reviewed journals. Apologies are for scientists who submit a short manuscript to Phys. Rev. Lett. saying that under such-and-such conditions we observe extra heat and neutrons.
Apologies are not for scientists who first present a phenomenon they don't understand at a press conference and enjoy being media darlings until other people can't replicate their results.
If you're going to short-circuit proper peer review and go straight to the lay press, you have to accept the risk of being badly burned. If this effect does turn out to be real, by their profound lack of restraint they probably held back any research in the field by a decade or more.
~Idarubicin
Right now, CFML is the only language that will run on either a Java Server or the .NET framework
Sure, there are better cheaper tag-based languages out there, but CFML is still one of the easiest languages I've ever come across. If anything, it's too easy, that's why there is so much disdain for it, in many ways, it's so easy -- it doesn't feel like a real computer language.
Actually, I worked for a bit for "Esso," and while I was there I was told that it owns the mineral rights to more uranium ore than any other entity (whether government or no) in the world.
They also own massive amounts of coal and oil shale. And, believe it or not, they've done solar cell research in the past.
The only difference between ExxonMobil and the friendlier "oil majors" like BP is marketing. BP has gotten incredibly good at fooling gullible people into think that it cares about something besides making money.
Yeah, but that didn't exactly happen by accident...
Why?
I have no personal stake in this. It is an interesting bit of physics if it turns out to be true, but it is a very long way from a workable power source. And I'm not in the energy business anyway. I've never heard that P&F spent a lot of time trying to keep things secret. Nor that they tried to prevent others from duplicating their work.
You seem to be assuming that they were scammers, who, upon hearing that people insisted on proof of their claims, quietly gave out bogus information so that noone COULD prove their claim, then gave up on the claim when people failed to duplicate it. Which they had ensured themselves by withholding information. A bizarre picture of reality, to say the least. Frankly, if *I* were trying to scam someone this way, I'd not make a Press COnference, I'd quietly approach some reasonably rich person who wanted to be even richer, make a few carefully doctored "demonstrations", and ask for a few hundred thousand a year to develop the idea. I expect that with a little care in choosing the sucker, and not too much greed, I could get 5-10 years of comfortable living out of someone that way. Then "discover" what had really been happening, tell the sucker "Sorry, turns out that there was something else going on, and we have nothing".
Then go look for another sucker.
Going public is not the action of a conman. The conman wants to keep a low profile, because there's more chance of someone crying "Bullshit!" if there are more people aware of what is happening.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Cold fusion does not deserve the label "junk science", which refers to pseudoscience and experiments performed in defiance of known standards and practices. At worst, early cold fusion experiments were "science performed poorly", with inadequate control of variables that were not known at the time to be important.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
"If you had, you might have noticed that there have been papers posted from labs around the world with consistent, reproducible results, for the past 10 years."
Ok, I'll bite. Why aren't these people now all billionaires, having developed and sold their new fusion technologies as a practical energy source?
If it is reliably reproducable, someone ought to be able to make a practical 'cold fusion reactor' and sell it, even if we don't entirely understand the effect. People were burning wood for energy long before we knew anything about combustion chemistry.
Twentieth-century physics also gave us the solid state (quantum mechanical) theories needed to understand semiconductor rectification and other phenomena used to make things like, oh, TRANSISTORS. And the atomic physics necessary to make LASERS. So that computer with its CD-ROM drive in front of you wouldn't exist without the efforts of 20th century PHYSICISTS.
None of these were "technologists" working on something they didn't understand, but scientists who actually used the full power of modern physical theories to predict and discover useful phenomena.
And I haven't even reached back to the 19th century to mention a guy by the name of Maxwell, and all the great things made possible by his theoretical research. Like, oh, I don't know, radio.
Even Edison wouldn't have gotten very far if it hadn't been for Ampere, Coulomb, and Faraday. All that funky telegraph stuff that gave Edison his start depended on what was once cutting-edge physics.
I'll freely admit general relativity hasn't (and almost certainly won't) lead to technological breakthroughs. But quantum mechanics has pretty clearly kicked ass.
Definite tinfoil hat response.
Mysterious "vested interests" can't stop you from building one whopping big fusion device and unequivocally demonstrating the effect to all comers. And if you can do that, then there's no shortage of money that will be available. The "vested interests" will be more than happy to buy your company and use it to make even more money than they do now.
Heck, it's not like all the "vested interests" are even all on the same side. They're often bitter rivals, and one of them would fund you just to spite his enemy.
And if you really want to torpedo the "vested interests", you can just release the detailed engineering drawings on the Internet after they threaten to kill you.
If it were as obvious and practical to do as you say, it would be in the market already.