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Can NASA Warm Cold Fusion?
TomOfAmalfi writes "Andrea Rossi says he can provide domestic energy sources (about 10 kW) based on his E-Cat system (a Low Energy Nuclear Reaction or Cold Fusion energy source) for between 100 and 150 US$/kW and begin shipping this year. Many people are skeptical about Rossi's claims because he has not explained how his 'reactors' work (apparently the reactors contain ingenious security devices to prevent reverse engineering), there is no theoretical basis to support his process, and no one has supplied independent measurements to support the specs on his black boxes. However, buried at the bottom of a NASA web page there is a comment about progress in 'cold fusion' research and a link to the slides used in a September 2011 presentation (PDF) which talks about LENR research. NASA has also released a video describing the great benefits we will get from NASA LENR research. Could Rossi be on to something?"
No.
Tests conducted at NASA Glenn Research Center in 1989 and elsewhere consistently show evidence of anomalous heat during gaseous loading and unloading of deuterium into and out of bulk palladium. At one time called “cold fusion,” now called “low-energy nuclear reactions” (LENR), such effects are now published in peer-reviewed journals and are gaining attention and mainstream respectability. The instrumentation expertise of NASA GRC is applied to improve the diagnostics for investigating the anomalous heat in LENR.
Whether this is a hoax or not, it's the right direction. Nuclear and hopeful thermonuclear for use in homes and in vehicles - heavy machinery and private cars, trains, boats, planes and spacecraft.
You can't handle the truth.
No. Rossi us a fraudster, this will be proven to be a scam too. Did you not notice him give a price before giving the science?
There's always the possibility a snake-oil salesman is on to something.
But without independent verification and independent PROOF that it works, everyone will continue to think it's just snake oil. There have been too many claims by "inventors" of cold fusion devices, perpetual motion machines, "free energy" theories, etc. for people to take anyone at their word.
I wouldn't give Rossi a DIME until there was independent verification.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
People can "get in at the start" on this miracle by investing small fortunes and they'll receive continuous updates over the next 10 to 20 years how the device is close to manufacturing, and how nefarious powers are trying to "suppress" the device, and how Mr Rossi's eventual prosecution for fraud is all part of this conspiracy to silence him.
Hell, no.
At one time called "cold fusion," now called "low-energy nuclear reactions" (LENR), such effects are now published in peer-reviewed journals and are gaining attention and mainstream respectability. The instrumentation expertise of NASA GRC is applied to improve the diagnostics for investigating the anomalous heat in LENR.
A herring by any other name would smell as fishy... in any event if LENR, as you put it, were a practicable possibility I'd expect to be hearing announcements from someone more reputable than this Rossi character. He claims to have invented not one but two cold fusion technologies*. Now this may be a terrible, terrible bit of prejudice against someone who may end up in the history books, but I tend towards a more cynical or pragmatic attitude when it comes to parting with my or the public's money.
*"The 1 MW plants have a totally different technology and engineering."
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
There was no independent test of his device yet, so I consider it highly unlikely to work.
Rossi claims he's heating a factory in italy with one of his devices. I wonder how the authorities would react if they learn that an unauthorized nuclear device is being used there, considering that italy has laws that prohibit nuclear facilities.
Here's Reddit's discussion of the story: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ofz9f/nasa_developing_a_low_energy_nuclear_reactor_its/
A couple from that thread claim that NASA hasn't discovered cold fusion here, but 'merely' radio active beta decay, which is similar to an atomic battery: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_battery
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For confirmed peer reviewed low temperature fusion see Muon-Catalyzed fusion. What we are approaching here is a whole new field of very promising catalyzed fusion science. NASA already has patents on some approaches and deems it OK to spend public funds on further research.
This is a sophisticated fraudster. It is unclear what he is doing to simulate success, but one credible suggestion was that he could have gotten his hands on a nuclear battery, e.g. from the former soviet union. Such a device could easily produce the amount of energy observed in the given volume.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The difference between your examples and this Rossi character is that black hole and planetary discoveries were verifiable science that could be reviewed by others. Rossi's got a black box that no one really knows anything about. His evasion and roadblocks he puts in the way of trying to determine exactly what is going on is highly suspect.
~X~
Science that works cannot be kept secret. Observe that over centuries, every single real invention has been independently discovered by multiple scientists in such close succession that it might as well be simultaneous. That is not a coincidence. New discoveries build upon existing discoveries and technologies, and when their time has come, they will appear.
If this invention were based on a theory that actually had some basis in reality, other physicists would have grasped it by now, at the very least by knowing what to look for. This scam is targeted at the gullibility of people who don't understand how scientific advances are made.
"No one else has figured it out, so there must be something to it" is the wrong argument. If it's a magic box, we should be treating it as a magician's sideshow: Not to be believed until proved fake, but to consider it fake until all its workings are fully and extensively public and shown to be sound by other scientists.
Five hundred years ago, self-styled alchemists and sorcerers parted investors with their money by claiming to have some secret apparatus to turn lead into gold. It's depressing to see that now, after the periodic table, the theory of relativity and the discovery of the atom, we're falling for the same trick. We shouldn't even be debating whether it's real, just like we don't debate whether the world will end this December. It should be dismissed out of hand until the inventor decides to either cough up how it is done or shuts up and goes away.
Tests conducted at NASA Glenn Research Center in 1989 and elsewhere consistently show evidence of anomalous heat
There are plenty of ways "anomalous" heat can be generated during chemical/mechanical processes without jumping right to the conclusion that it must be two nuclei fusing - the same way that seeing something unknown in the sky does not automatically mean it came from some other planet.
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Tests conducted at NASA Glenn Research Center in 1989 and elsewhere consistently show evidence of anomalous heat
There are plenty of ways "anomalous" heat can be generated during chemical/mechanical processes without jumping right to the conclusion that it must be two nuclei fusing - the same way that seeing something unknown in the sky does not automatically mean it came from some other planet.
This is true, but cold fusion research never really stopped, and there are a half dozen large labs around the world that have spent 20 years doing research, trying to figure out what is going on, even if there's no good theory behind the science yet. Discounting their work out-of-hand without a theory is just ignorant. There is vastly more published evidence *for* those reactions happening than against them, no matter what the theories might say. (And the variables that impacted the rapid set of tests that couldn't reproduce the P&F experiments are much better understood now -- according to published papers, the reproduction rate is near 100% in the last ten years.)
So the real electrochemists working on the problem don't claim to know *what* is causing the excess heat, but from a power generation standpoint, it kind of doesn't matter. They also have proven they're getting at least some transubstantiation going on, which suggests at least *some* of that heat is coming from nuclear processes.
Its weird (and strangely ignorant) that on this one subject, so many researchers take the "we don't know any way that COULD be happening, so lets not research it" position instead of the "something we don't understand is happening, and that is exciting to research" position. Even if it was a purely chemical reaction, there's something exciting about figuring out THAT, too!
There is vastly more published evidence *for* those reactions happening than against them, no matter what the theories might say.
Nonsense. After 20 years of research, they still only have measurements that are barely statistically significant, occurring irregularly, primarily amongst "researchers" who already believe there's an effect. If you're going to call that evidence, then you have to conclude that "psychic powers" are real, also, because we've been getting the same kind of "evidence" from the "psi-researchers" for a couple decades now. It's nonsense. It's a perversion of the scientific method - sifting through noise until you find something that looks like a pattern, then using publication bias to reinforce your presuppositions, and sticking them in your conclusion. It's a waste of time and money, and it's a shame that so many people can't see that kind of "research" for the scam it is.