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Bubble Fusion Inquiry Under Wraps
hubie writes "Purdue University launched an investigation last March into the questionable research behavior and actions by Prof. Rusi Taleyarkhan following his controversial claims of achieving bubble fusion. The investigation has completed but the results are being kept secret. The alleged behavior is remeniscent of another tabletop fusion incident from a number of years back.
Coincidentally, Purdue University has just secured Federal money to open up a new energy center. A more cynical person than I might suggest that there is a connection between the two."
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060121/fob7. asp
Fusion reactions take place in the vat because clusters of bubbles form and then violently collapse, explains nuclear engineer and team leader Rusi P. Taleyarkhan of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. A neutron or another energetic particle triggers a bubble to form in a low-pressure trough of the ultrasound waves, he says. Then, high pressure from the wave crushes the orb to an enormous density and temperature that fuse some atomic nuclei of the bubble's gas.
Amazing sounding... I wonder how they stumbled on it.
Well.. I had a vat of this matter, and I was thinking... I should bombard that bastard with ultrasonic waves.
And that was cool, we all laughed and then Dobie thought it would really put a party in that vat if we fired some neutrons through it.
I was just about ready to laugh at your joke, but then realized you are probably spot on.
If I was even remotely connected to the group that finally provides indesputable proof of cold fusion, I'd hide and keep running. The powers that be do not play by any rules, and anything or anyone who threatens their power are fair game. No doubt in my military mind about that.
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act!" -- George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
Quote from second article:
Karl Popper argues that a scientific idea can never be proven true, because no matter how many observations seem to agree with it, it may still be wrong. On the other hand, a single contrary experiment can prove a theory forever false. Therefore, science advances only by demonstrating that theories are false, so that they must be replaced by better ones. The proponents of Cold Fusion took exactly the opposite view: many experiments, including their own, failed to yield the expected results. These were irrelevant, they argued, incompetently done, or lacking some crucial (perhaps unknown) ingredient needed to make the thing work. Instead, all positive results, the appearance of excess heat, or a few neutrons, proved the phenomenon was real. This anti-Popperian flavor of Cold Fusion played no small role in its downfall, since seasoned experimentalists like Lewis and Barnes refused to believe what they couldn't reproduce in their own laboratories. To them, negative results still mattered.
End quote.
This seems a grand failure of basic logic. Getting negative results does not mean that something (in this case, cold fusion) can not actually happen.
For instance, I make an announcement that I have tied a piece of string to an object, threw the object in the air, and it stayed up floating for over an hour. Seems impossible, but heaps of people try to replicate it. Some try tying string to a wooden table, and throwing it in the air. It comes down after a couple of seconds. Other try other objects with similar failures. However, someone tried attaching string to a sheet of paper, and it floated for over 20 seconds before coming down. A partial success perhaps? But most people look at the equations of gravity and acceleration, and say that nothing will stay up for more than a few seconds, depending on how high you throw it. The original announcement is written off as a joke.
A few years later, it is well known that if you shape paper over a frame of rigid sticks in a diamond shape, add a tail, and have an air flow of at least so many metres per second, the object will fly so long as the wind keeps blowing. It is now called a kite. So do the initial negative results mean that the positive result is false, even though there was currently no known theory??
I respect several people who work in my field of science and they are not idiots. I assume the same applies to other scientific fields. So when several top-class individuals (eg. McKubre, director at SRI) say after a period of time they have achieved worthy cold fusion experimental results, I assume they are not incompentent or idiotic, and have actually achived something worthwhile. Perhaps one could be wrong, but the if all of them are wrong, then we are talking mass hallucinations of a lot of previously highly respected and compentent (in their field) people.
Or I could believe the other side, who seem to all have multi-trillion dollar interests in keeping cold fusion passive for as long as possible (energy companies and high energy physicists eg. CERN).
It's clear (supposedly) whether it worked or not . . .
No. While it may be clear to people on the team that it "worked," it is not clear to anyone else that it "worked," ever, using the team's own data.
In fact, the team's own data is not consistent with the results they claim to have taken place. This is not merely a case of unreproducability.
Others attempts to duplicate the results with more sensitive equipment suggests that what is happening is "hopeful misinterpretation" of random events measured at the margin of error. Once one starts down this path and feels professionally commited it really isn't all that hard, for anybody, to go from "hopeful missinterpretation" into "panicked delusion," or, for some, dare I even say it, minor boughts of fraud.
In other words, it seems they've built themselves a very expensive N-ray detector.
i.e., the results are subjective. Only people who can see them can see them; and even they now express some puzzlement over what they believe they see, because they don't see what they think they're seeing.
See?
KFG
If you were to read the articles on Wikipedia and around the web in general regarding cold fusion, somoluminescence, and other "cold" fusion reactions you would come away with two very wrong impressions. First would be that these technologies are very close to fruition and second that they are the holy grail of energy production and the answer to all of our problems. You would think that the fusion reactions are not dangerous, do not pollute, and the fuels involved are of infinite supply.
The reality is that the only reproducable, controlled, fusion reactions mankind has managed to generate in a reproducable manner consume much more power than they generate, and are many, many years before becoming a source of power.
Regarding fusion by-products, the fact is that most fusion reactions produce deadly forms of radiation, weather "cold" or "hot", and the fuels required for a-neutronic reactions are not in infinite supply.
Granted that the idea of "Mr. Fusion" powering our automobiles on flat beer with helium, water vapour, and heat as it's only waste is captivating. Having a near infinite supply of energy would solve many of our and the world's problems (and I'm sure cause many of it's own as well).
We should not lose sight that there are real, proven sources of energy that are renewable, cleaner and longer term than fossil fuels, that also require our investment of research, money, time, and education. Although they are not a "Magic Bullet" like Cold or Bubble fusion, they are the reality we should be focused on.
BEDEVERE:
Ah, but can you not also pop bubblegum?
VILLAGER #1:
Oh, yeah.
RANDOM:
Oh, yeah. True. Uhh...
BEDEVERE:
Does helium lower the pitch of your voice?
VILLAGER #1:
No. No.
VILLAGER #2:
No, it raises it! It raises it!
VILLAGER #1:
Inhale the gas from the bubbles!
CROWD:
Inhale it! Inhale the gas from the bubbles!
BEDEVERE:
What also raises the pitch of one's voice?
VILLAGER #1:
Bread!
VILLAGER #2:
Apples!
VILLAGER #3:
Uh, very small rocks!
VILLAGER #1:
Cider!
VILLAGER #2:
Uh, gra-- gravy!
VILLAGER #1:
Cherries!
VILLAGER #2:
Mud!
VILLAGER #3:
Uh, churches! Churches!
VILLAGER #2:
Lead! Lead!
ARTHUR:
A kick to the groin!
CROWD:
Oooh.
BEDEVERE:
Exactly. So, logically...
VILLAGER #1:
If... the bubbles... hurt... the same as a kick to the groin,... they are made of helium.
BEDEVERE:
And therefore?
VILLAGER #2:
Fusion!
VILLAGER #1:
Fusion!
CROWD:
Fusion! Fusion!...