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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?"
The discussion for events happening today has been moved onto its own thread:
http://www.e-catworld.com/2011/10/e-day-thread-rossis-1-mw-e-cat-plant-tested-by-first-customer/
PES Network is going to be tweeting about it:
https://twitter.com/#!/PESNetwork
Prepare for some real-time cognative dissonance from Rossi et al.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
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?
"Sometimes it's desirable to put these scams under a spotlight, don't you think?"
Yes, it worked wonders a couple of weeks ago, for the moron who claimed he had discovered quasi-crystals, when everybody knows no such thing exists.
"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
.
That being said, this one is obviously a scam. Why do I say so? Dig back through the previous stories and you will see a picture of a shipping container full of little black plastic buckets in racks, which is supposed to be a 1MW reactor. Excuse me? You but 1MW of thermal energy in a confined space like that and it will heat up so much that all the liquid would evaporate and the steam would kill anyone attempting to maintain it. The reaction produces heat energy, and plastic buckets aren't going to last very long. These CF reactions have been known to scorch the tables that the apparatus were sitting on. A plastic container is just plain stupid and this photo only demonstrates a man with a limited intelligence at work. Also, where is the generator? The reaction does not create electricity, it produces thermal heat. You need a generator my friend, and preferably a brain containing half a conscience would not hurt either..
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.
If you want to know what's really going to happen, it's pretty simple. First tomorrow their will be a lot of heat but not near 1 MW. However, real Scientists will take a look at the device and figure out how it works sometime before Thanks Giving. One these scientists will get a little over ambitious and build large a more efficient device. It will fire up on December 12, 2012. However, the cold fusion will produce a lot more heat and huge magnetic field that will fuse the moisture(Hydrogen) and co2 (carbon) in the air this will spread out in about 2.5 seconds across the globe. The reaction will be so intensive that earth will covert into a star for around 10 minutes. The spiral of the star earths magnetic field which is such that it causes sub-atomic particles to vibrate in the electromagnetic plan (or dimension if you prefer). When this happens atoms exposed to this field will fuse because of a loss of magnetic repulsion causing the atoms to collide and fuse. This BTW is how cold fuse works because when the hydrogen is exposed to the electromagnetic forces it's proton vibrates on in the electromagnetic plan. But what people won't know is that when it fuses it create a never before seen spiral magnetic field that cause other atoms to be vibrate in the same dimensional plane. The Sun will follow suit burning a large amount of it's own fuel in about 16 minutes. The other plants will also follow suit. This will create a HUGE magnetic spiral that might chain react across the universe transforming it. Over trillions of years the subatomic particles no longer repelled by electromagnetism will continue to fuse and grow ever large masses this will lead to the next big bang. Anyway, that's what the Mayans were saying would happen.
I suspect this is feeding a troll, but I also suspect more than this one actually shares this view.
Believe it or not, the motorheads that actually look into this stuff WANT electric cars. Having full torque from rev one all the way up to the maximum potential of the engine would be a panacea. Neck snapping acceleration could be the NORM, not the exception. The simplification that the electric drivetrain would bring would also be wonderful. Assuming the packaging of the power plant is small enough, or can be flexibly packaged, you put the thing anywhere you want and put electric motors at the diff or on the wheels. You don't have to worry about where to store a cubic meter of engine/transmission in one place. The properly designed electric car brings HUGE design advantages. You can make truly beautiful and/or functional things with much less concern about "how can I shoehorn enough engine in here?".
The current problem with the electric car is energy storage. Batteries suck compared to petrol/diesel. Gas/go doesn't happen with batteries. Range is problematic, and even if you did get 300 miles out of a single charge, it's still 2-4 hours (in an ideal world, even) to do it again. Weight is problematic.
And finally, The US doesn't have the corner on petrol powered vehicles. Last time I looked, most of the most desirable cars came from Germany (Mercedes, BMW, Bugatti, Audi), England (Aston Martin, Rolls Royce), and Italy (Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Lamborghini). I don't recall ANY of them making electric cars either. As a matter of fact, the only "mass production" electric cars that I'm aware of have come from US companies: GM (EV1) and Tesla (Roadster). I could be wrong on the latter, tho.
But, yaknow... if all you want to prove is how witty you can (not) be by taking shots at people who love cars and happen to be from a certain country, that's fine too.
currently has a power cable
I have the same problem with my Evangelion.
"Lame" - Galaxar
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.