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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."
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.
"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...
Cold fusion was dropped because it could never be replicated, and perhaps because of Pons and Flesichmann's attitude. Science is not done by press conference, and you don't call an anomalous heat effect 'cold fusion' and cause a global hoo-hah without some damn good evidence.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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"
Yeah. Physically impossible. It would be cool if you could just, oh, 'tunnel' through the barrier or something, but that would be absurd...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Since when is deuterium toxic?
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.
Yes, just like every other new technology around the world which makes old technologies redundant gets given the cold shoulder. Thats why we're still cooking over fire stoves (after the wood industry prevented any electrical ovens ever being developed), still riding horses (after the horse industry quashed those people trying to invent the automobile), using Windows (after Microsoft quashed Linux and the Mac OS) etc .... although hold on, that one might turn out to be true ....
Anyway, lets just judge the science on its merits, not on conspiracy theories. If it has merit, you can be pretty sure theres lots of investors are going to start seeing the potential for a lot of zeroes after those $$$ signs and jump on it, and that probably the first companies to jump on the bandwagen will be the energy companies you claim are holding it up.
Well, that's the rub, isn't it? It doesn't matter if it's a nuclear effect "in your mind". Your mind doesn't enter into it. Neither does Pons or Fleischmann's minds. What matters is whether nuclear fusion is actually occurring, and that is to be settled by experiment.
Pons and Fleischmann might have seen a real effect. Certainly, carefully-constructed experiments have consistently given hints of excess heat. But that doesn't make them "right". Lucretius wrote about "atoms" centuries before Dalton. That doesn't mean the ancient Greeks invented modern chemistry.
Pons and Fleischmann violated just about every tenet of the open, peer-reviewed scientific process. In so doing they abandoned any claim to legitimacy. If this effect turns out to be real, they didn't "get it right". They just got lucky. And if this effect turns out to be real, it will be the paintstaking, not-by-press-conference slow work of real researchers who understand how science works, that will ironically provide actual justification.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
The only people who claim there is a conspiracy to shush up cold fusion are crackpots.
The physics community would have carried Pons and Fleischmann on sedan chairs to Sweden if they'd really discovered cold fusion. But they didn't, and they ignored all scientific process. They refused to share details of their experiment and refused to acknowledge errors in their experiments.
Read Taubes' _Cold Fusion_ or Huizenga's book for a clear understanding.
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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)
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.
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.
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.
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