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1 MW Cold Fusion Plant Supposedly To Come Online
First time accepted submitter Jherico writes "Andrea Rossi (covered here a few times before) is scheduled to bring his 1MW plant online Oct. 28th. This will likely either be the point where 'unexpected technical difficulties' unmask this for the scam it is, or the presence of an actual 1MW plant with no chemical fuel source will silence a lot of skeptics. What would you do if it were real?"
take short positions in oil and gas?
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
This will not work. There's absolutely no reason not to publish such stuff in respected journals -- if it really works, it will pass the muster. The guy is a scam artist with a long history, it's irresponsible to expect anything else from him without a lot of due diligence. Since he doesn't let anyone do their due diligence, I say it's still a scam.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Entertaining scams about pseudoscience are still "news for nerds", IMO. I realised more about the importance of being a good scientist from watching bad ones than anything else.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
You know who did those things? Scientists.
You know who didn't do those things? Shamans mixing pastes in sheds according to arcane rules.
Rossi's work falls into the latter category.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
"But the prize is so great that I can't help but hope a little."
And that is how a truly great scam works. "They more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie," as it says in Mein Kampf. And likewise how religion benefits from Pascal's Wager.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
They laughed at Galileo.
They laughed at Einstein.
They also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
From my study of cold fusion, it is at best an intellectual curiosity where it might rival the Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor as something to produce a neutron radiation source that can be turned on and off with a light switch. There certainly are some applications for a device like that, even if you don't have "net energy", and indeed with the Fusor such devices are sold commercially. It is a niche product that only a nuclear physics researcher or some applications in nuclear medicine would have a use for such a device.
One of the better run studies conducted a study of "cold fusion" where they were checking for radioactive products (as opposed to a calorimeter) and they were able to measure a significant statistical deviation from the "background radiation" of the environment of the laboratory where the experiment was being made. In other words, real fusion was taking place, but the amount was so low as to be something only for a research paper or to discuss at a fusion conference. The problem is that Pons & Fleischmann made such a circus out of the concept that anybody saying "slow down a minute.... it isn't really that big of a deal" were dismissed as crackpots and the entire concept was shot down.
Where Rossi and his "fellow researchers" are coming off as completely off their rockers isn't that they've discovered a repeatable way to create fusion through packing Palladium with Hydrogen (a known property of Palladium), but that they have basically said that Pons & Fleischmann are just pikers and didn't know how to generate manly amounts of energy from their device. The claims for the amount of fusion, that the reaction is aneutronic, and method of presenting their discovery via press conference (like Pons & Fleischmann) instead of through scientific journals is what makes those in the field look at Rossi as a crackpot or even a flagrant fraud.
Either the guy is a stinking genius and has discovered the cure to world peace (depending on how it works out), or the guy is a brilliant con artists that would make Frank Abagnale look like a rank amateur. From what I've seen of the thing, I put it more like 80% likely he is a con artist, but I'm still giving that 20% wiggle room he might be telling the truth. He isn't violating thermodynamics or even basic principles of physics, but it does seem unlikely that he has discovered a genuine power source based upon current knowledge of materials and previous attempts to generate power.
On the other hand, because it seems like Rossi doesn't have a firm scientific theory on how his device works (he sounds more like a tinkerer along the lines of James Watt or Thomas Edison), if this device does work out it will unlock a whole new field of scientific exploration with real money. I expect it will be something more akin to room-temperature superconductors, where new classes of materials can be discovered to incorporate the basic principles and perhaps even get higher efficiencies than what Rossi has discovered. But that is a big "IF" the device actually produces energy in the manner that he claims it does right now. At some point this device is going to need to be dropped on the desk of some competent nuclear energy researcher at Los Alamos, and likely other major labs, where it will be tested, dissected, poked, rebuilt, and critically examined just to see if it works before it gains any real credibility.