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Cold Fusion in a Breadbox Instead of a Bottle
rawbytes writes "For the last few years, mentioning cold fusion around scientists has been a little like mentioning Bigfoot or UFO sightings. After the 1989 announcement of fusion in a bottle and the subsequent retraction, the whole idea of cold fusion seemed a bit beyond the pale. But that's all about to change. A very reputable, very careful group of scientists at the University of Los Angeles (Brian Naranjo, Jim Gimzewski, Seth Putterman) has initiated a fusion reaction using a laboratory device that's not much bigger than a breadbox, and works at roughly room temperature. This time, it looks like the real thing." From the article: "Scientists have gotten fusion to occur in the laboratory before, but for the most part, they've tried to mimic conditions inside the sun by whipping hydrogen gas up to extreme temperatures or slamming atoms together in particle accelerators. Both of those options require huge energies and gigantic equipment, not the sort of stuff easily available to build a generator. Is there any way of getting protons close enough together for fusion to occur that doesnt require the energy output of a large city to make it happen? The answer, it turns out, is yes."
...when I see multiple peer-reviewed articles reporting that others have been able to duplicate this experiment. :P
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Is this the Week of the Geek or what? Seriously, how long before this is absorbed by some oil giant or some "mysterious accident" occurs to the researchers?
It's not super clear, but I don't think it's a contradiction. Saying "don't expect fusion to become readily available" doesn't mean that it won't, just that you shouldn't expect it. Saying "it really may not be long" doesn't mean it will happen soon, just that it could.
The summary of that is, "readily available fusion could happen soon, but don't count on it."
you forgot the most important part: "For the time being". That means that, in the future (perhaps not very long), things could change. She doesn't contradict yourself unless you take words out of context. :]
I don't mind dupes. The whining about dupes I could live without though.
:)
Seriously. If you see a dupe, don't read it. I didn't see this the first and second times, so this is cool for me
My other car is first.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this process require the fusing of four hydrogen nuclei to get helium, not just two? Hydrogen has an atomic weight of 1, helium has an atomic weight of 4.
The problem is the same as fission until the discovery of neutrons and subsequent discovery of chain reactions in certain elements -- there's no apparent way to do it without putting more energy into the reaction than you get out. Einstein thought it couldn't be done until Szilard convinced him (which resulted in a few historically significant letters).
Now, these could be duplicates, if the method is the same between them. They could be old news if it is a well known fusion method. Or they could be new methods, worthy of new articles... but they are often written so vague that there is no real way to determine the method.
It's a bit as if every new CPU and GPU announcement read something like: "Engineers release chip on silicon!", and everybody referred to them as duplicates... not because there is not new news there, but rather that there are not enough details to distinguish the stories from each other.
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Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien