Slashdot Mirror
Does Italian Demo Show Cold Fusion, or Snake Oil?
An anonymous reader writes "Today, Wired.co.uk is running a story, 'Cold fusion rears its head as "E-Cat" research promises to change the world.' It gives an overview of the technology that claims to fuse hydrogen and nickel into copper, with no radioactive by-products, to produce copious amounts of heat, inexpensively, with a 1 megawatt plant scheduled to come on line later this month. Apparently, Wired was not aware that today is a big test in Italy by scientists from around the world, who will be observing the technology in operation, including self-looped mode. A real-time update page has been set up at PESWiki, which has been a primary news provider of this technology since it was announced last January." Wired's article is remarkably optimistic. I'd love for this to be true, but many decades of scientific-looking free-energy machine scams make it hard to be other than cynical; the claim of a secret catalyst which "can be produced at low cost," controlled-access for outside observers, the lack of published science to explain the claimed effect, and skepticism even from the free-energy world — along with a raft of pro-E-Cat websites registered anonymously earlier this year — all make it sound like this follows the marketing style of previous "over unity" / perpetual motion machines. I invite Andrea Rossi to take part in a Slashdot interview, if he's willing to answer readers' questions about his claims.
Wired's article is remarkably optimistic.
Parts of it, yes. But I think the article does an okay job of keeping cautious. Maybe you read only the sentences you want to? Allow me to cherry pick a few:
Rossi's heavyweight supporters include 1973 physics Nobel prize winner Brian Josephson. Josephson also supports telepathy research.
Skeptics point to the lack of published science, and the way that Rossi keeps details of his special catalyst secret. They also point to his past involvement in Petroldragon, a company involved in converting organic waste into fuel, which collapsed in the 1990's amidst allegations of dumping toxic waste. (Rossi maintains that he was the victim in this complex case).
Until August of this year, Rossi was planning his big launch in Greece, and an E-Cat factory was being built in Xanthi. But the deal has somehow fallen through for unexplained reasons, vaguely blamed on pressure from "international energy interests" who may be threatened by the invention.
"According to my analysis, his claim has no scientific credibility," Krivit told Wired.co.uk. The device he claimed to heat a factory in Bondeno seems to exist only on paper."
At this point, I'm calling it 'tabloid science journalism.' This guy is looking to get rich quick not contribute to human knowledge so I'm not paying attention to him just yet. Hopefully I get to backpedal in a couple months when he starts shipping but ... well, I'm betting there will be some 'delay' imposed by 'ominous forces' as Rossi's wallet fattens.
My work here is dung.
No reason to even look at this since there is absolutely no proof that this works because it's "Secret!!!!"
Why would you want to waste slashdot readers time by doing a question and answer with someone that has a magic spell to create energy, but of course no one can verify it.
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
Is the process pulling hydrogen out of water or are they providing pure hydrogen? If pulled from water would that mean the only byproduct is oxygen? If so this could be huge. Yes I did RTFA.
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/neutrinos.png
Most of the world operates on first-to-file, not first-to-invent. If you had a working "secret sauce", how insane would you have to be to not file a zillion patents on it? Protecting such inventions is exactly what the patent system is actually for.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Strange contraption with stuff attached to it for no apparent reason other than maybe to look 'scientific'. Weird guy in sort-of business atire presenting it. Bad lit 'Prototype Powerplant' shed that looks like it's salvaged from a junkyard. Crappy website covering the issue. ... It all looks like a scam to me. That's my very first impression anyway,
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Professor Rossi is already independently wealthy, money is not his motivation. You can ask him questions on his blog and expect a prompt response... journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/
The summary says that the device consumes hydrogen and nickel to produce copper by fusion (something that seems naively likely given their atomic numbers but a bit unlikely given their mass numbers, unless we're creating weird and radioactive isotopes here) but the article says that the nickel is just a catalyst over which the hydrogen passes.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
... we obey the laws of thermodynamics !
its called the "sun".
I invite Andrea Rossi to take part in a Slashdot interview, if he's willing to answer readers' questions about his claims.
The guy doesn't answer to us. We're not experts; the vast majority of us aren't even educated layman on the topic of nuclear physics. How pretentious and pointless is it inviting him to waste time justifying his "claims" to us rather than suggesting he have an open Q&A with the staff at CERN or something?
Look at this graph.
Am I imagining that they've not actually graphed an object giving off energy over time, but an object being heated up and then slowly cooling?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
You probably want to be more specific and say, "... people had taken that much scepticism to anthropogenic global warming."
Climate has always been warming or cooling, it's only in the last few years that we started blaming ourselves.
Professor Rossi is already independently wealthy, money is not his motivation.
If his motive is pure and he does not want money, why must his nickel based catalyst remain so secret?
From the article:
The catalyst is secret, but Rossi says it can be produced at low cost.
Why doesn't he just file for an international patent and release a paper to a journal like all other scientists who are financially interested do? Hell, if he's "independently wealthy" he can screw the patent or anything and go down as one of the greatest men of all time. Think about how many wars, death and resource contention this could alleviate. Right now I view this as either a hoax or a person so filled with greed he's willing to let the world fester while he makes sure his cash and unimaginable wealth is secured. He certainly has a right to do the latter but talk about being an asshat.
My work here is dung.
The rest of the world wastes its time and money and effort on worthless green shit.
Nickel-hydrogen reactions were reported and written up by Focardi and Piantelli in the 1990s, this is old news.
Only her and Val Kilmer know if this is possible.
journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/files/Patent_WO-2009-125444.pdf And this test is not secret, there are scientists from around the world present including a Nasa rep.
Because it's the same one whenever claims violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics...
"I fought the law and the law won"
I bet you $200 it's not cold fusion, or any other kind of new physics.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
In one of Heinlein's novels (Friday?) a corporation takes over the world because an inventor creates a perfect energy source and he's so certain that no one will ever duplicate or reverse engineer his work that he refuses to patent it-- and thus maintains a monopoly for 100's of years.
Only her and Val Kilmer know the validity of this story.
Nickel has the highest binding energy of any nucleus. When stars die it is because they've turned every element into iron and nickel and it is impossible to fuse anything further exothermically. Heavier elements, including copper, can only be produced in supernovas and they take excess energy to make. How could you get energy out of changing nickel to copper if copper has a lower binding energy? You can't. This process, like most free energy scams, defies the conservation of energy at a fundamental level.
It's vitally important that the entire species get off this mudball so I hope this will let us build a space elevator so I can get my bungalow on Mars and eat Saturn's rings for breakfast.
http://www.wipo.int/patentscope/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2009125444&recNum=1&tab=PCTDocuments&maxRec=&office=&prevFilter=&sortOption=&queryString=
journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/files/Patent_WO-2009-125444.pdf
We've only got a couple more years before we're supposed to have Mr. Fusion providing at least 1.21 gigawatts!
End of line..
NASA is also working on the LENR project
http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/05/06/nasa-working-on-lenr-replication-and-theory-confirmation/
I thought PHP replaced Cold Fusion years ago.
The CB App. What's your 20?
You really find a lack of skepticism about global warming out there? Rather, despite more skepticism than about any other topic in current science, 98% of scientists with expertise in the field conclude that anthropogenic global warming is a major threat to our species.
Sometime you might try skepticism about skepticism. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. A skepticism that's promoted by a PR firm working for the oil companies, that previously promoted skepticism about tobacco and cancer on behalf of the tobacco companies, is a good target for skepticism about skepticism. Or do you believe that loading up the lungs with tobacco is health, too, just as you apparently believe that loading up the atmosphere with CO2 is benign?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Sometime you might try skepticism about skepticism.
I see it as an abundance of skepticism coupled with a lack of scientific knowledge. Same with the cigarettes.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
looking forward to the compelling 2020 documentary "Who Killed The E-Cat?" :/
One axis is degrees C, with the temperature rising to 70C (at which you don't get dry steam...) The legend refers to energy. What is it supposed to mean?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
They appear to claim that injecting a nickel powder with hydrogen gas under high pressure forces hydrogen into situations where the nickel will capture a proton, turning into an unstable copper isotope, which will beta decay back to nickel emitting a positron which annihilates with an electron, producing heat energy.
As far as I know there is no known theoretical basis for such a reaction. Even if you could squeeze the hydrogen into really tight spaces in a heated crystal structure then cool it to get atomic forces to squeeze the hydrogen to an insane degree, you still won't come close to enough force to get proton capture. And the heat levels they are talking about aren't going to get there either.
History is littered with crackpots who believed their own nonsense and fakers who drummed up hype to get investor's money (or just coast for a few years while drawing a paycheck and not having to get a real job). I predict more of the same in this case.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
I bet this thing will bring about the Age of Aquarius and let me make real unicorns. Am I right?
Besides hydrogen which is supplying the needed electrons to turn nickle into copper but that he is also using Iron Ferrite Magnets.
Magnets have been shown to help in HHO production in fuel cell experiments
The Iron found in the used nickle would be explained by Iron Ferrite magnet deterioration in unit use.
The idea of getting more energy out of something than put in is NOT contrary to physics, in fact it fits quite well.
Otherwise life would not be able to sustain itself. Its really quite obvious it really about translation from one for to another, and how much the translation process require in energy.
I really do want to believe, but after finding an article that has real facts about the E-Cat, it seems like a joke.
Ok, when I have a rapidly boiling pot on the stove and turn it off, the boiling does stop in 1 minute, not 35. So, I can see why people are stumped after witnessing this "parlor trick."
You and I have very definitions of "a very large amount of energy". We're talking about nuclear fusion, and you say that keeping a pot of water at 125 degrees qualifies as "a very large amount of energy"?
The Steam temperature is very different than the water temperature. I'm assuming that while the steam temp dropped from 130 C to 120 C, the water temp dropped from 400 C to 99 C. If you put the steam temp sensor far enough away from the production source, this seems about right. Even at 400 C, the water won't instantly boil away, and especially not if it is under pressure. I'm beginning to understand exactly how this parlor trick works.
The Wired article makes it sound as if the company has already designed the consumer unit, and is ready to put it in production. The facts I've listed above make it sound more like a strange phenomenon that warrants a bit of investigation. These are very different things. If the reaction in the lab isn't even self-sustaining, how can they be discussing the design of consumer units yet?
Free unix account: freeshell.org
You really find a lack of skepticism about global warming out there? Rather, despite more skepticism than about any other topic in current science, 98% of scientists with expertise in the field conclude that anthropogenic global warming is a major threat to our species.
The question I'd like to ask the OP is, what is your track record on these issues? Has your skepticism on these subjects proven to be founded in the past, or have you had to eat crow over and over again before you move on to your next conspiracy?
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Well, we got slashdotted, and we were already getting bogged down on the server from the traffic we were getting; so we're in process of moving the site to a high-traffic server. Sorry for the inconvenience. It should be resolved shortly. Today is a historic day for cold fusion. Lots of people will be watching.
Tomorrow's news yesterday -- the bleeding, visionary edge.
Add to that: deliberate for profit misinformation with a sprinkling of the fevered apocalyptic dreams of the ultra right wing fundamentalists and you have a deal.
I'm no super scientist, but Ray Charles could see a gaping hole in this science. You have to have Hydrogen in the first place to pass throught the "Illudium pu36" secret catalyst or whatever it is. I don't see how they can get more out of it than they put in from a big picture perspective when currently the only method for producing Hydrogen that is close to economical is steam reformation of natural gas. Anybody got any input on that?
This place went from a news site, to a warez site, then to a Window$ fanboi site , and now it is a nutball krackpot site.
Hey now! It's just plain krackpot. It's not nutball krackpot until timecube gets its own story.
Pronounced BAH-LONEY. I will take +5 Funny if I was correct, or -5 Troll if the device is proven a fake.
input power was removed. Independent physicists from around the world are observing.... FYI there are two 1MW plants, the one at the University of Bologna and the other at a customer site in US.
It's not new physics at all, if you read the patent application. Nuclear reactions are a well understood part of physics.
What he is claiming is fusion of Nickel and Hydrogen to make Copper. A simple inspection of the Periodic Table shows that much is plausible since Copper is one place higher, and adding a proton moves you up one place. Next you would look at the accurate atomic weights. When you do hot fusion, such as Deuterium + Tritium = Helium + proton, If you sum the atomic weights of the starting materials, they are slightly more than the atomic weights of the products. The difference shows up as energy via Einstein's well known formula. So the question is for the Rossi reaction, what are the atomic weights of source and products? Without knowing the exact isotopes involved, I can't say, but someone can check all the possible combinations and see if any of them could be net energy producers.
If none are, then his patent application is invalid, as it would violate conservation of energy. If the device appears to work, it must be by some other method, or a fraud. If there are some candidate nuclear reactions with positive energy output, the next question is how does the proton in the Hydrogen atom get to the Nickel nucleus? Atomic nuclei are positively charged and tend to repel each other. If you can overcome the repulsion and get them close enough, the strong and weak nuclear forces can take over and bind them together. In hot fusion that is done by heating them to millions of degrees so they are moving very fast, and can get close before the repulsion brings them to a stop. In cold fusion there would have to be some catalyst or quantum effect. I'm not qualified to speak on that, but perhaps some nuclear physicist could.
See the E-cat run in self-sustained mode.
The comments about this is that they are very very skeptical.
Interesting perspective. It certainly works for the vain and greedy, both of which appear to be true here.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
Chances are that this "e-cat" is crap. However all of the above blather is not relevant. 1. Catalysts can and do change the nature of reactions, whether they occur at all, and how exothermic or endothermic the reaction is - this can occur with chemical reactions 2. Chemical catalyst properties are irrelevant to the proposed process, which is supposed to be a fusion process. 3. The solar fusion reference makes sense only in the case of solar fusion -- yes -- in that process you bind up a tremendous amount of energy in nickel and iron. No it doesn't fuse higher naturally. So? Does that mean it's impossible? Absolutely not. We do all sorts of things that don't happen naturally. If as the original poster said: the binding energy is stronger for nickel than copper (I must admit I don't know if that's true -- but I'm willing to believe that it's possible) Quote: "Nickel has the highest binding energy of any nucleus. When stars die it is because they've turned every element into iron and nickel and it is impossible to fuse anything further exothermically." If a catalyst changes the fusion "activation energy" could heat be released in that process? I'm betting that it could. This is a bit like the folks that jumped on the ice melting and assuming that it proves that climate change is caused by human factors. No, it simply proves that it is significant warming trend -- and NOTHING else. It's probably caused or helped by human input to the ecosystem -- but proving that is separate from proving warming.
Don't use a bit of knowledge to spread confusion and ignorance. This isn't a "free energy" scheme -- it's a fusion scheme. It may be highly improbable, but it's not a violation of thermodynamics. You eventually run out of nickel or hydrogen. Fission seemed like free energy at first as well - the fuel didn't burn or blow up, but still generated heat -- preposterous! If you know enough detail to really critique it, please do! If you don't -- please don't pretend you do. - Jeff Dodge
There are no taboo subjects. If you have evidence that your cold fusion device works, and are competent enough to write a real paper demonstrating that it works, you'll be getting handed the Nobel prize within a couple years, while raking in billions of dollars from the thousands of corporations which are licensing reactors based on your patented design. Your comment might be a reflection of how quacks rationalize their inability to show evidence, but it has no reflection on how inventors and scientists develop new products/theories.
What do you bet someone sold him the secret to fusion for a rock-bottom low price? Of course, all it needed was someone with enough resources to get it started.
As of now, it appears to be running in self-sustained mode (creating heat with little or no electrical input) for over 2 hours.
Wasn't helium seen as a mandatory byproduct in the theory?
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Even if it works this is how ti's gonna play out.
- Scientists owned by eastern and western oil cartels will ridicule the findings.
- Media, again mostly owned by above mentioned cartels will write ridicule of the above mentioned douchebags scientists.
- Real findings will be swept under the rug (read; locked away)
- When fossil fuel is couple decades from being used up, above mentioned oil cartels (one of their divisions) will publish sensational story in all scientific papers about 'New" discovery which will produce the energy...but it's not gonna be free. Fuel cells (what ever and how ever created) will be first very expensive and once globally in use will be cheap but will have to be replaced very often.
Either way middle/poor....errr poor class will pay the price.
This is a good example of the prevailing flaw in scientific research.
You are saying, in effect, that this can't be right because it doesn't conform to your model.
That's fine, we use models all the time in science, but a model is only useful in predicting the experiment described by the model.
If you want to build something exactly described by the model, then the model will predict the outcome and your chances of success. If you want to ask interesting questions, then the model may inform your beliefs as to whether you will get interesting answers... but your model isn't more important than evidence. The model *never* trumps evidence.
Here's a man so sure of his results that he is willing to give us evidence. I agree completely that this looks a lot like frauds of bygone times, I don't personally think that he will be able to provide results, but I'm not so vain as to state he *won't* provide results.
Let's let him have his moment, and then judge the evidence. It's only a month, after all.
(Another good example is Burzynski. Everyone in that case is arguing the model, not the evidence. Don't explain *why* it doesn't work, talk about *whether* it doesn't work. Why can come later.)
IANANP, but I did take some nuclear physics courses as part of my degree.
It's somewhat unlikely that there's an exothermic nuclear reaction in there. Iron/Nickel is the tipping point where you go from fusion being exothermic to fission being exothermic. (This is why elements up to and including Iron and Nickel are much more common than elements from Cobalt onwards; they can be made in a stable way in the core of a star for a while. Once you start to (try to) fuse these elements though, you suck energy out of the star and things go bad.) Copper is the wrong side of that limit.
Even putting that aside, while you're correct that fusion is not "new physics", "cold fusion" is, because of the need to get the nuclei together in spite of the electrostatic repulsion. Yes, catalysts/quantum tunnelling/whatever aren't "brand new physics" in that they are concepts we are aware of, but finding a way in which they can be applied to allow cold fusion would be a new application, and is what I was intending to encompass in my meaning.
However, this is kind of beside the point, as all I was really doing was obligatorily referencing xkcd.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
the "magic catalysts" are contained in a box that has + and - leads coming out of it.
...it's critical thinking.
Someone farther up mentioned Ni-62 and Ni-64. The numbers I found are:
Ni-62: 61.9283461 Ni-64: 63.9279679
Cu-63: 62.9295989 Cu-65: 64.9277929
With a proton having an atomic mass of 1.007, it looks you should get a little energy out of the fusion.
Actually, the invite from /. may be a great litmus test - if he eagerly agrees, it suggests that he's a charlatan who will take any publicity he can get--which he almost certainly is.
...and if he declines/ignores the invitation, it clearly suggests he's a charlatan who is afraid his scam will be exposed under scrutiny!
The guy is obviously yet another perpetual motion crackpot, but your 'litmus test' essentially takes a page from a 16th century witch trial. After parsing this logic, perhaps we should short-circuit the test condition and jump ahead to the burning-at-the-stake part?
P.S.: I know that iron is the bottom of the hill, which means I've clearly missed something here. Others are free to make corrections.
ANY time you read some Free Energy loon complain about shadowy international conspiracies to supress their world-changing invention, you can usually just write him/her off.
If you have a legit invention, protecting your precious secret from all these shadowy forces is easy; you file a patent, the whole world can then read exactly how to perform your miracle. You rake in the profits by licensing it, and it's impossible for The Man to put the genie back into the bottle.
If, on the other hand, you are a thinly transparent scammer, you leave everything black boxed, talk about vast forces arrayed against you, and then perform a few tricks meant to fool credulous marks...err... "investors."
have been observed during ecat operation.
E-cat research? I see a bunch about fusion and energy, but no cats. No meowing. No purring. No cats. I came here hoping for some cats.
Isaac
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For those saying "why aren't there patents" - there have been attempts, which were rejected for lack of clarity on what was being patented. For most of the time (including now as far as I know) the only people willing to publish their papers are owned by, well, themselves.
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I've not looked up the masses, but yes, this end of the periodic table doesn't have much you can do with binding energy in it. I probably should, so I could state definitively that this can't work. If it was really that easy, would we not have seen it before now, happening by accident and so on? I put hot H (actually mostly other H isotopes) in nickel containing stainless steel daily -- nothing special happens at any energy regime I reach (which are in general well above what the Rossi claims are).
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I think everyone honestly in the fusion field wants some form of it to be real, and to work. But we also realize that there are a lot of people in this field for various dishonest reasons, from gaining corner offices with perks, to tenure, to just making sure they have a job for life, as in give us X billion more dollars and Y more years, and we'll really make it work this time - we just didn't make it big and expensive enough the last 4-5 roundy rounds. Even fairly honest people fall into that trap when it means lifetime security at a cushy job, and those of us in the open source fusion world (yes, it exists and is thriving) wish it were otherwise - but there it is.
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I AM a betting man - my day job is as a trader. Anyone want to take a bet with me? You get the side that "this is real" to win, I'll take the other side for plenty of money and a year time limit. I'll put my money where my mouth is. I'll take anyone, but what would be fun is say if Rossi himself would take that bet for say, half a million -- with a registered agent holding the bucks (must be real money, and guaranteed no counterparty risk). I note that while they've taken plenty of "bets" it's under conditions where it's not actually a bet -- they don't pay back if they fail.
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To me it looks like they climbed to the top of the snake oil tree and fell out, hitting every branch on the way down. No disclosure. No duplication of the results in independent labs. No explanation of why it could work. No patent apps that actually disclose the process. Just the usual "gimme money and someday it will work". A couple of prominent boosters mean nothing - those guys can be had with the average financier's lunch money, famous or not, and examples abound on both sides of every science controversy.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
1. Catalysts can and do change the nature of reactions, whether they occur at all, and how exothermic or endothermic the reaction is - this can occur with chemical reactions
No, they absolutely do not change how endo- or exo-thermic a reaction is. They can reduce activation energy, which is different. Reducing the activation energy means the reaction can happen more readily and thus can be more economical. But the starting and ending energy states are unchanged, and thus the total energy produced or consumed is unchanged also.
Anyone who tells you they can make an energy-consuming process (like, say, splitting water) into an energy-producing or just free process via a catalyst is completely full of shit or being hoodwinked by someone who is.
3. The solar fusion reference makes sense only in the case of solar fusion -- yes -- in that process you bind up a tremendous amount of energy in nickel and iron. No it doesn't fuse higher naturally. So? Does that mean it's impossible? Absolutely not.
Solar fusion is not special, and it's not impossible to fuse these elements. Stars do fuse nickel and iron. The reason this is catastrophic for a star is that the reaction consumes energy rather than producing it. Without a net release of energy from the fusion, the star can no longer hold up its own mass against the force of gravity and collapses. Without a net release of energy from the fusion, no "fusion reactor" can ever be a source of power.
If a catalyst changes the fusion "activation energy" could heat be released in that process? I'm betting that it could.
No, it cannot. It doesn't matter if a "catalyst" makes the reaction happen easier. What matters is the starting and ending energy states of the reactants and products. If the delta between them is negative, then the reaction is not a power source no matter how you catalyze it. All making the reaction happen easier with a catalyst will do is make you lose energy faster.
The enemies of Democracy are
Tesla coil process and maybe sonoluminensence method produce measurable neutrons hinting at cold fusion. But they require an input energy at least thousand over whatever is created. The Pons battery method doesnt reproduceably generate neutrons, so few people believe that one.
They're using a palladium element as their "fusion" site. Palladium can absorb an absolutely amazing amount of hydrogen (900 times its own weight at the proper temperature). That's a supidly large amount of hydrogen which you can use for self-powering a demonstration for quite a long time.
Here's a man so sure of his results that he is willing to give us evidence.
No, he hasn't. He has stated that it works. When asked for proof, he's pointed to his own data and said "because I said it does". It is not independent, it is not testable (i.e. you couldn't go out and build your own to see if it works), it is not verified, it is not evidence.
Iron, atomic number 26, is the minimum energy product for fission and fusion reactions. Going to a higher number above that (fusion) takes more energy than it yields, going to a lower energy below that (fission) ditto. Of course fusing lighter elements towards iron or fissioning heavier elements towards iron releases net energy. (Net per reaction, not counting whatever you're throwing away in e.g. confinement fields for hot fusion).
Nickel is atomic number 28, copper 29. Yes, you can bombard nickel with protons (H nuclei) and get copper, but at a net loss of energy per reaction.
At least, so says everything we've learned about nuclear chemistry in the last 70-plus years.
If this thing is real, and that's a bloody huge if, then we've got some physics to re-learn, or there's something else going on they're not telling us (eg load up the nickel crystalline matrix with deuterium or tritium and get some of the energy from straight hydrogen fusion). Myself, I think tachyonic neutrinos are more likely than Ni+p -> Cu producing energy.
-- Alastair
The model *never* trumps evidence.
The model is based on the evidence of hundreds of past experiments. Yes, it's possible that those experiments could have missed something, but you'll need your own pile of evidence that can stand toe-to-toe with all the evidence you're effectively dismissing to show it.
Put another way, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
In the broadest sense, I think there are many "spider senses" that have gone off when confronted with Mr. Rossi. Not altogether unlike Tesla's famous demonstrations, Mr. Rossi has surrounded him self with promotional hype. The hype should have come after the fact. Instead, evaluating the LENR has to be done by ignoring the blurriness that hype presents science.
If I were the hypothetical Mr. Rossi, who was observing 33:1, non-chemically explainable energy outputs, and, the massive body politic which "decided" this issue in 1989, I think I might be tempted to move to an invention that I can take public, scientific bull-headedness be damned. However, there is a day when Mr. Rossi has to pay the piper. The public is especially jaded because of Mr. Rossi's previous history. But on the other hand, this time he hasn't been going around asking for money. Instead apparently, he sold his house to fund the last part of the push. That isn't to say he doesn't have financial backers in the wings, but if they were already supporting it, then he shouldn't have to have sold his house.
Science and all the nay-sayers of the day were pretty hard on the Wright brothers. And certainly the science of aerodynamic lift was at best poorly understood or not at all. Science can give the comfort of safety, it rarely engages in risk. There have been a few times in the last 2 hundred years, it had to go back to the black board.
Personally, I'm tired of these rushed claims that someone has implemented cold fusion, solved the 3n+1 problem, proved N != NP or whatever. Why can't people wait until their findings are double-checked by running them through the well-established "1) write paper 2) peer review 3) publish" scientific pipeline? If that's acceptable for small finds, then it should be mandatory for big discoveries.
If 'E-Cat' works as it is claimed, it will change the world forever bringing an inexhaustible supply of cheap energy. And if it's not, anyway, there is the aneutronic fusion reactor as a backup to power world's future energy needs.
tonight after cool down period. 30+ scientists, reporters. Full report to be published tomorrow.
Here is my theory about what is happening in the energy catalyzer:
* In the reactor, hydrogen becomes so compressed that it is transformed to neutrons when the proton and the electron come together.
* As the neutrons do not have any electric charge they can easily cross the Coulomb barrier and when more and more neutrons enters the nickel it will be more and more dominated by heavy isotopes.
* When the nickel atoms are overloaded with neutrons, some of the neutrons re-transform to a proton and an electron. This creates copper out of the nickel.
* If the creation of heavy nickel is too slow, the process dies. If the creation of heavy nickel is too fast, the reactor will get too warm and melt down.
* Some e-cats burn up the fuel, while others build up fuel. Fuel from the “breeder-cats” can be shared among the ordinary e-cats.
* One has to remove the copper from the nickel powder and if there is too much heavy nickel, one has to blend it with ordinary nickel powder.
* The “catalysts” might possibly rather be neutron absorbers.
Am I right or am I very wrong?
About a month ago I got an email from my dad in which he asked my opinion on this issue, since I have a PhD in engineering and work as a researcher. The case had been presented to the public in a Italian TV magazine. I drafted a debunking on various grounds, which for your benefit I report here.
Short version: this Rossi guy is a convicted felon, his buddy Focardi an old, crooked professor with no relevant publications since the 60s, and they are after the money of naive investors.
Detailed version:
Mr. Rossi is therefore only looking for rich, greedy fools that will pump money in his next bankruptcy fraud. As a consequence of a certain prime minister and his modifications to the legal system, crimes like bankruptcy fraud are now very difficult to prosecute in Italy, so Rossi could just get away with it this time.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
The minute you claim to have it, people will jump all over you. They'll call you at home to call you a quack. They'll email. They'll stuff your mailbox. They'll picket you.
Mind you, these won't be scientists doing that. It'll be random jerks from the internet. But it doesn't matter, because they'll make your life a living hell.
Even if you're right.
Why would you put yourself through that?
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Unless the observers replicate the experiment with their OWN hardware, all "results" are suspect.
Scientists don't necessarily expect sophisticated deception.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The E-Cat is deceptively simple: hydrogen is passed over a special catalyst based on nickel in a container about a litre in size, and enough heat is produced to boil water. A demonstration in January appeared to show a several kilowatts of output from a four hundred watt input.
From the picture, which shows tubes marked "H" and "O2", this looks like a system for converting hydrogen and oxygen into water and heat with a catalyst. That's a routine technology; after all, you can burn H and O2; a catalyst just lets you do it at a lower temperature. This doesn't appear to be a closed system; for that they'd have to crack the water produced (they get steam out) back into H and O2.
How are the volumes of H and O2 going in measured? How is the heat coming out measured? There's some detail on NyTeknik but not much. It's not clear why there's 30Kg of lead in the thing. I wonder what's inside that lead. It's supposedly not producing any high-energy particles. If it did, that would be interesting. They don't seem to have radiation detectors around.
(Some years ago, when the Pons- Fleischmann cold fusion flap was underway, I went to a talk at Stanford by some physicists who were trying to reproduce the experiment. They'd started out with radiation detectors and alarms surrounding the apparatus in case it suddenly produced dangerous amounts of radiation. After a while, it was clear that nothing dramatic was going to happen. They were trying to measure neutron output, and background radiation was more than whatever the cold fusion apparatus was putting out. They finally put it in a big box of lead cubes to get rid of background neutrons, and still couldn't measure any neutrons coming out. General feeling of exasperation after weeks of work.)
All these short tests of an hour or day are suspicious. If this thing really worked, they could set it on a glass table (so observers could check for external connections) and run it for a month. The short runs hint that some consumable is being used up.
There appears to be a pattern of the boss keeping calculated distance from the corporate end to provide deniability.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Allaire/Macromedia/Adobe has prior art on that.
Of course, it works! See? I put some hydrogen and nickel in this area, press the button labeled "Fusion" and out pops some copper. There's even a little light bulb that lights up showing that it is producing electricity. How does it work? Well, that's complicated and a trade secret and... no, those aren't wires going from my box to that power outlet... no, they aren't powering the light. No, the table doesn't contain a trap door and a hidden assistant changing out the nickel for the copper. Ok, no more questions unless you're asking who to make checks out to!!!
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Somewhere on the page is a detail picture of "one of the 52 units of 27kW", out of which come a few wires that look way too thin to pass a 27kW output.
You didn't miss anything. Nickel is the bottom of the hill in a sense. But hydrogen is pretty much the peak of the hill, as it has no binding energy of its own. So while copper might not be the bottom of the hill, it is a lot lower than a mixture of hydrogen and nickel.
It seems reasonable to assume these two things: Nyteknik are right about this producing more energy than would be expected if reactions were chemical The whole thing is a scam. Did this guy just invent the revolutionary battery that will popularize electric cars?
Because for many of us science, invention, and knowledge are an end that more than justifies the means. Your entire thought process demonstrates you're not fit for science. If you were correct why would Galileo and Shechtman have ever released or espoused their work?
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
and that's my summary of how it works.
Neutrinos,
Is PEOPLE!!!!
Wow, that is one of the most elitist things I've ever heard. Just because I'm not willing to bend over and take abuse, I'm suddenly not good enough to be a scientist.
That's what wrong with the scientific community today. More people need to have conviction and stand up for what's right, instead of doing whatever they need to 'for science'.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Except you just finished saying you WOULDN'T stand up for what is right because it would be too much trouble... You said you would quietly hide it away...
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
If this works as advertides this should be stopped immediately and the research burned. The last thing we want to do is give Humanity a cheap, efficient, and minimally polluting power source.
Why would we want humanity to spread like a parasite out across the cosmos? We should scale back the population to 100-50 million and live with harmony with nature by using renewable resources. Cheap energy would allow the virus that is humanity to spread and infect more of the universe, one planet of parasites is enough.
I will wait till Paul Elrich kicks the bucket of natural causes and then I will dance on his grave.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Can I use one of these to power my Moller volantor?
Wow, that is one of the most elitist things I've ever heard. Just because I'm not willing to bend over and take abuse, I'm suddenly not good enough to be a scientist.
Yep, pretty much. Someone who doesn't want to take orders isn't good enough to be a soldier. Someone who doesn't want to run into burning buildings isn't good enough to be a firefighter. And someone who isn't willing to publish controversial work in the face of opposition isn't good enough to be a scientist. You can call that "elitist", if you want, but anyone with an IQ above the boiling point of Ether will realize that you're just whining because you want to be granted the same kind of respect and deference without having to do any of the work that's required to get there.
Plus, the fact that you think "elitist" is a dirty word also suggests that you're not good enough to be a scientist.
The minute you claim to have it, people will jump all over you. They'll call you at home to call you a quack. They'll email. They'll stuff your mailbox. They'll picket you.
Says who? You got any evidence of this?
Why would you put yourself through that?
Because it's the right thing to do? Because that's what real scientists do every day? Or did you not hear about the guys who claim they've detected neutrinos which travel faster than light?
How many harassing letters and phone calls have those guys received, btw? I don't expect you to have the exact number, but a rough figure would be nice.
This thread on weldingweb shows how the Magnegas project pitches their "product". Read the thread and note their marketroid's responses.
http://weldingweb.com/showthread.php?t=53589&highlight=magnegas
If it sounds like the Petroldragon spiel that's no surprise.
http://translate.google.com/translate?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF&u=http%3A%2F%2Fit.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPetroldragon&sl=it&tl=en
When you encounter such folk on web forums, draw them out that they may bury themselves!
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Oh, come on guys. Esowatch has a huge dossier on that guy and his "research". http://www.esowatch.com/en/index.php?title=Focardi-Rossi_Energy-Catalyzer A convicted felon, who pulled a similar stunt before, the so called demonstrations of the E-Cat are ridiculous. He never measured the dryness of the steam, all his results are explainable by conventional physics. And of course: Cheating.
If this works as advertides this should be stopped immediately and the research burned. The last thing we want to do is give Humanity a cheap, efficient, and minimally polluting power source.
Why would we want humanity to spread like a parasite out across the cosmos? We should scale back the population to 100-50 million and live with harmony with nature by using renewable resources. Cheap energy would allow the virus that is humanity to spread and infect more of the universe, one planet of parasites is enough.
Read misanthropy.
Yea, lets kill-off half the people on the planet, dig holes to live in and commune with nature.
Nah!
Ad Astra!
Skeptics are taking the reasonable position, which is that the evidence thus far isn't convincing enough. There have been a lot of quacks in this area (free/cheap energy), so the skepticism is warranted. What you never see from the free energy quacks are large scale demonstrations, i.e. build an energy factory and start pumping out loads of energy. If this guy does this, he'll shut the skeptics up. If he's choosing to do things this way then fine, just don't expect people to accept its veracity until it becomes self-evident.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
If the key to fusion turned out to literally be, snake oil?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
New evidence does not trumps old evidence, though, it merely extends it. It might be that past experiments gave you points on the graph that indicated linear progression, for example, but they just didn't cover some corner case which puts a new point in a place that clearly indicates nonlinearity. Old points are still valid, it's just that the conclusion was wrong, because it was founded on incomplete data.
It is claimed transmutation is occurring. The Swedish skeptics society examined what were purported to be byproducts. However, everyone must remember and treat this like a black box experiment. Until it is independently observed what goes into the reaction chamber, and then what comes out of it, we are forced to take every claim as unsubstantiated, and refuse to draw conclusions. That said, there is no harm in speculating. What sorts of things would have to happen to accrete and decay until one has a stable copper isotope in the sample? Or a nickle one of higher atomic number? BUT then one must hold their conclusions loosely. This is a black box experiment, so all that can be known is what is put into the apparatus and what comes out in terms of energy. To attempt to make more of it is to begin to break the laws of scientific experimentation. Unless, what can be inferred is done so with qualification. For example the Swedish Skeptics determined that the output energy was too high to be explained by any known chemical process. The test ran long enough they were satisfied the energy derived was more than could be derived by any chemical process of that size. That conclusion, has validity. Because it was an indirect but acceptable conclusion from the observed facts.
I agree completely that this looks a lot like frauds of bygone times,
Such frauds are not "bygone". There's plenty of them around today.
The scientist did do the skepticism bit for a long time but eventually went with the evidence.
The current crop of "climate skeptics" will believe just about anything to make their fears of AGW go away. It's a whopping great crankfest.
Yeong Kim's credentials are longer than mine, probably longer than all the commentators on this forum together. That is why it is important to read his published, peer-reviewed work before going out on a limb here. http://www.physics.purdue.edu/people/faculty/yekim/BECNF-Ni-Hydrogen.pdf Worried about Ni->Cu being endo-thermic , this will fix you right up. Wondering how such a fusion reaction *could work? This is a theory that is at least peer-reviewed.
Uh, what incomplete data? The binding energies of each and every isotope are known and can be measured through experiments. Each isotope also represents a discrete data point - there are no (relevant) fuzzy boundaries where you'd have to interpolate.
You know where you're starting and you know where you end up. There's no ambiguity, there's no missing data, you simply know the binding energies of both the educts and the product. And thus you also know the mass defect which determines whether you need to exert energy to make fusion/fission happen or you'll actually gain energy.
Building on your theme (by me): http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
"I guess you might say what I am trying to do here is save you a million dollars, so you can keep it around to keep debunking the more usual paranormal claims related to ESP and so on. :-) In general, I think your skepticism about cold fusion is commendable and well warranted, but, a flat denial of its possibility is shading into the area where science progresses by going beyond what we know well and exploring into that which we are just speculating about (such as the exploration of human flight over a century ago that eventually led to success after much skepticism and many failures). I am concerned that you may have not been skeptical enough about the claims of mainstream hot fusion scientists when they dismiss something like cold fusion that might impact their funding. As I reflect on that issue of cold fusion, and think as well about another contentious human enterprise like homeopathy and as it compares to mainstream medicine with its own problems, I guess I begin to wonder about the general issue of the limits to knowledge given it is part of a social process. You have made it all too clear how anything involving people is subject to corruption and confusion for several reasons. I quote several fairly mainstream academics who say the same thing. So, this is plea in a way for skepticism about mainstream science. Of course, if one is skeptical about mainstream science, then that opens the door to all sorts of possibilities, either now, or in the future as our technology and science continue to change. I also mention in passing nutritional interventions to cure heart disease that you may have an interest in following up on. ..."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
"If what he's selling is true (my money is on not for the record) he can get rich and change the world for the better. I can't hardly blame someone with a potentially world altering invention wanting to keep it under wraps for as long as possible. Yeah, it's against the open source ethos, but it's also how reality works for 99% of the people out there; you don't give your work away for free."
I wrote an essay on why that logic does not hold up and sent it to Rossi months ago, and then posted it here too:
http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation
=== The text
This is taken from material written by Paul Fernhout and posted under a free license in a comment to Andrea Rossi's Journal of Nuclear Physics, and is posted here by the author under the GFDL.
The key point here is that breakthrough clean energy technologies will change the very nature of our economic system. They will shift the balance between four different interwoven economies we have always had (subsistence, gift, planned, and exchange). Inventors who have struggled so hard in a system currently dominated by exchange may have to think about the socioecenomic implications of their invention in causing a permanent economic phase change. A clean energy breakthrough will probably create a different balance of those four economies like toward greater local subsistence and more gift giving (as James P. Hogan talks about in Voyage From Yesteryear). So, to focus on making money in the old socioeconomic paradigm (like by focusing on restrictive patents) may be very ironic, compared to freely sharing a great gift with the world that may change the overall dynamics of our economy to the point where money does not matter very much anymore.
There have always been four interwoven economies, and the balance of them is shaped by our society:
* A subsistence economy ("There's some lovely berries over here.");
* A gift economy ("The meat from this deer is going to spoil; let's share it with the tribe.");
* A planned economy ("Let's put the longhouse here."); and
* An exchange economy ("You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.");
[* Someone on Slashdot later pointed out there was essentially a fifth "theft economy" too; more on all that here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY ]
Paid human labor has less and less value due to several causes including due to robotics, AI, and other automation, due to better design, due to the accumulation of physical infrastructure, due to cheaper energy (which can often substitute for human labor), and/or due to the emergence of voluntary social networks.
Mainstream economists try to get around this long term trend by assuming infinite demand, but that is just not in accord with human psychology or social dynamics. See Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, or an emerging "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" ethic, or see any of the world's major religions â" including humanism â" about moving beyond materialistic values.
So, we can expect the balance between those four economies to change as our technology and society changes, perhaps with:
A subsistence economy through 3D printing and local PV solar panels or other clean energy technologies (like cold fusion or something else);
A gift economy through the internet, like sharing digital files to use with our 3D printers;
A planned economy on a variety of scales, including through taxes, subsidies and regulation affecting market dynamics; and
An exchange economy marketplace softened by a basic income.
Andrea-
When Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons made their original cold fusion announcement, I sent them a co
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
This is the same thinking that led the Epicyclists to reject Aristarchus's heliocentric theory of the solar system.
Put another way, instead of staying so psychologically attached to their model, the Greeks should have spend energy developing the technology to measure parallax motion of the stars.
> As far as I know there is no known theoretical basis for such a reaction.
Read about the Widom-Larsen Theory here:
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Widom-Larsen.php
Widom-Larsen Theory Explains Low Energy Nuclear Reactions & Why They Are Safe and Green
Widom-Larsen theory of LENRs predicts ultra low momentum neutrons created by collective weak interactions
let x1 be the cost of the input energy over time, t.
let y1 be the cost of the catalyst over time, t.
let z1 be the sale of output energy.
let z1 - (x1+y1) = profit over t.
actual energy produced of course is more like
x*y = z where x is the input energy, y is the catalyst and z is the output.
If this device works anything like the above equations, cold fusion or not, it makes money. And that's all some of us need to know.
I don't really need or want to know the science, it just needs to work the way it's advertised.
You don't think it's a little circular that in order to be considered a climate scientist that you must support anthropogenic global warming? Contrarians need not apply?
In fact the slightest contrarian attitude is hunted down and ridiculed out of the profession.
I'd also like to know where you pulled that "98%" figure, besides out of the air.
Like any geek we can but hope that one day something like this will be more than smoke and mirrors.
It reminds me of this case http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article2748936.ece
The model *never* trumps evidence.
The model is based on the evidence of hundreds of past experiments. Yes, it's possible that those experiments could have missed something, but you'll need your own pile of evidence that can stand toe-to-toe with all the evidence you're effectively dismissing to show it.
Put another way, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
See for example, the way the lab which may have observed faster then light neutrinos dealt with the situation.
Why would you put yourself through that?
Because it's the right thing to do? Because that's what real scientists do every day? Or did you not hear about the guys who claim they've detected neutrinos which travel faster than light?
How many harassing letters and phone calls have those guys received, btw? I don't expect you to have the exact number, but a rough figure would be nice.
Also because the Nobel prize (which you would be certain to get if you were right) pays $5 million USD and that's going to be a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of free travel, research grants, book deals and all the other benefits of fame and status as a celebrity scientist will get you?
You would be able to tour as a paid-for speaker for the rest of your life - you'd be set.
I am amazed at the amazing show of observation demonstrated by many on this forum. They can see that this is a fraud without actually viewing the demonstration or reading the reports from the 30 highly intelligent observers that were present!
When did nuclear reactions become "free-energy"?
So a fission reactor is an "overunity device"?
http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3284823.ece
Well...I think very big fishes would be extremely worried if some "inexpensive" device can produce cheap energy. There is a lot of money and powerful people involved in the energy business around the world. Let's see....
I think the best this guys can do is to put the blueprints in torrent, as a "LastJustinBeaveralbum" or "LadyGAGAsuperhits".
Rossi stands on the shoulders of giants.
Seastead this.
There is insufficient data in the presentation to evaluate it scientifically.
The claimed results disagree with established science.
This has been bouncing around for many months now, and there is still no proof that it works at all, let alone at the levels claimed.
Therefore, scientists are perfectly justified in dismissing his claims without further examination.
Forget diamonds, copyright is forever.
I'm sick of hearing people getting pooh-pooh'd because there is a "lack of published science to explain the claimed effect". So what? Take a look at the documentation of the vast majority of the drugs you are popping into your piehole. You know what the most common phrase you will find in that stack of information is? "The mechanism of action is unknown." or something similar. Just because no one can explain how it works doesn't mean that it doesn't work. Wait for them to fall on their face before you start kicking them.
Thank you for your illuminating post!
Rossi is claiming to have discovered a "fusion catalyst". Just as a chemical catalyst overcomes energy transfer requirements for normal wet chemical reactions without being consumed, he says he can likewise bypass some of the normal restrictions of fusion.
Yes, clearly, a very extraordinary claim. One I do not suggest we should believe without extraordinary proof!
But dismissing the claim out of hand seems just as unwise as sinking one's life savings into it.
You wrote:
Doesn't that set up an unsuperable obstacle to progress? I'm reading that as "prove it to me even though I refuse to look at your proof" which can't be what you meant.
Rossi says he will prove his process, under his conditions, in his own time. Unlike others who have said similar things, he is apparently not asking for money. I am witholding judgment, personally, but I have to scoff at those who credulously believe or disbelieve without waiting for real evidence.
There's types of proof for a case like is proposed that are difficult enough to fake and easy enough to test that the failure to even make the attempt is damning.
For an energy source that is supposed to be able to provide steady-state energy supplies, a steady-state power analysis is a test that is so blindingly obvious to perform that the lack of one is a major alarm bell.
To do a steady-state test you take a system like the one they are showing off, go through the tests that they have displayed, then when the output temperature stabilizes you put a load on the output. The load in this case could be a simple steam engine instrumented to read the output power, though any sensor suite that could measure flow+temperature+pressure would suffice.
The key to the steady-state power analysis is it starts at the end of the tests they have released.
There are other tests that would show what is going on internally that would prove or disprove their claims for a mechanism quite clearly, but they have consistently denied the level of access required for an independent researcher to perform an isotopic ratio measurement or any similar test.
It is the lack of tests that demonstrate what they are claiming to produce as well as failing to give evidence for their proposed mechanism that cause me to dismiss their claims out of hand.
Forget diamonds, copyright is forever.