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A Cold Look at Cold Fusion Claims: Why E-Cat Looks Like a Hoax
In the past few days, several readers have submitted word of a paper published on Arxiv allegedly confirming the efficacy of Andrea Rossi's "E-Cat," a device Rossi says transmutes nickel into copper, producing cheap energy in the process. (Mentioned before on Slashdot.) Ethan Siegel of ScienceBlogs takes a skeptical look at the buzz surrounding this paper, and asks some seemingly obvious questions, pointing out various ways in which the cold-fusion / cheap-energy claims could be either confirmed or debunked. First time accepted submitter CdXiminez writes with a capsule of Siegel's points: "What would it take to convince a reasonable observer that you've got a controlled nuclear reaction going on here? Things not shown in the earlier report: Show that nuclear transmutation has in fact taken place; Start the device operating by whatever means you want, then disconnect all external power to it, and allow it to run; Place a gamma-ray detector around the device; Accurately monitor the power drawn from all sources to the device at all times, while also monitoring the energy output from the device at all times."
That quote is P.T. Barnum. If you are looking for a W.C. Fields quote for this article, I suggest "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull."
NASA is "looking into this": don't misinterpret investigation as validation. If it's not reproducible, more work needs to be done. If the process appears to violate the laws of thermodynamics, your first reaction should be "scam", not "how do I get in on this?". Your second reaction should be "how do they do it"? It's been many years since cold fusion and while there have been tantalizing hints that there may be something to it, nobody has been able to reliably reproduce the phenomenon for objective observers.
NASA looks into all sorts of silly things from time to time on the off chance that perhaps one of those wacky ideas might pan out... and because some congressman or senator has made a gentle inquiry wondering if it is bullshit or not. That has nothing to do with the validity of what it is that may be claimed and sadly tax dollars are still being wasted on utter garbage that has nothing to do with science.
Besides, even this crazy theory you are quoting here doesn't seem to have anything to do with the e-Cat other than it is what Ross claims the device is doing without any real proof that anything is happening at all. That isn't happening, and no real 3rd party investigations into the device have happened. Heck, the guy can't even get patents accepted much less prove that anything is going on.
Rossi even claims to have a factory making these things somewhere in Florida, but when the State of Florida decided to go in and check out what was going on (after a "concerned citizen" made a complaint about a nuclear reactor being built in the state without permits and such) Rossi and his agents had to back off and assert that no manufacturing was even taking place in the state. Yeah, funny how that works out when your bluff is called.
I've made my own private inquiries about the device, and the more I push the more I am firmly convinced this is a hoax of the worst possible kind. I don't know what Rossi's end game is, but he doesn't even merit being a good charlatan as well.
If they want to know if the E-Cat works, why don't they just measure it with an E-meter?
Ezekiel 23:20
What I feel sorry for is any researcher who wants to do some genuine research into cold fusion.
The trick is that you don't put your conclusion before your hypothesis. "Cold fusion" is the conclusion, or the result, of the whole process that would result in your utopian revolutions (again, something that is post conclusion or desired symptoms of the result of this sort of research). When your research begins by you working backwards, that's when the red flags should go up because there is no logical way to work backwards. Sometimes a sci-fi author will imagine something but it takes a very talented scientist/research/inventor/engineer/whatever to go from hypothesis to that end construct -- even then there's often a slight catch or permutation of nonfiction idea.
... which is great (any more transparency is always welcomed). But it's also curious, wouldn't you say? We've been hearing about this for years now and no one can tell me what, exactly, is going on in this solution filled chamber. The critics are rightly asking questions about why the next steps aren't being taken (like getting real world measurements on its power draw versus its power emission). And are suspicious not of the data that is provided by this paper but of the data that aren't provided and would be obviously interesting.
What this paper appears to do is formalize observations
The fear is that Rossi stumbled upon a neat trick that is just not sustainable but he realizes that if he controls the parameters on the experiments, he can make it look like this thing works. Then he rakes in billions and walks away from any involvement in it. It is suspicious because it's being conducted at a university that should be making obvious logical steps forward. Yet we continually only see "demonstrations" like his "public displays" and "observations" like this paper.
My charges are still borderline character assassination/ad hominem and this could very well work. But I've had enough talk of what is "perceived to happen" and I'm afraid that someone has a really neat trick that they've already thoroughly investigated and figured out why it works. And maybe it even fooled them in the beginning. But truly there is no good way to monetize this trick. So they give everyone else only enough information to make them think that it works. Then they capitalize on this public interest and walk away from it just before the reveal.
If not, I apologize but I also wouldn't be buying into this idea until we start with a hypothesis and tests are reproduced around the world and the true reason behind this anomaly is well understood and indeed a good energy answer. It's totally possible he doesn't know yet and his greed is the reason we only get tastes of this device. If that's true, however, we still don't know if it's a good answer to our energy addiction.
I only hope there are enough details in this paper for other researchers around the world to better reproduce and analyze these results. I'm sorry if this is just a matter of an ill-equipped laboratory at Bologna University but with all the interest this has generated, I would be surprised if that was reason.
In conclusion, start with a hypothesis, openly publish your methods and results. Wait for others to reproduce. Your rigor and its results will be your vindication if you fear being attacked for doing research. Just don't start your research by saying, "I'm going to make cold fusion and cheap energy is just ten years away." That's when you're openly attacked for good reason -- that's not science, those are words that you spout to get money.
My work here is dung.
Largely because it's all been demonstrated to be either fake, a gross misunderstanding of what's happening, or so totally un-repeatable by anyone else as to be suspect.
Right, all those people who still think we live on a flat earth or that the world is only 6000 years old are the victim of groupthink.
Or, you know, if you make an extraordinary claim, you're gonna need proof.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Actually it's not PT Barnum either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_sucker_born_every_minute
Your URL makes it sound like the quote is "There's 27 suckers born every minute."
Must be due to inflation.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
goes out of his way to make it look like it's a hoax.
If cold fusion were invented tomorrow everything changes, world politics, anything involving oil or energy production, the environment, space travel, food production, basically everything.
and how would that work ?
Assume for a minute you can head down to your local Home Depot and pick up a portable "Mr. Fusion" 1 MW reactor powered by a single box of Borax laundry detergent (that is a 100 year supply of Boron I should note too). How do you think that would change the world?
First of all, you would no longer be dependent upon utility companies for heating or cooling your home, and even worrying about things like insulation or energy efficiency would go out the window. People living in cold weather climates could put either wires or warm water under their driveways and sidewalks to melt snow and ice and not give a damn about how much that costs. As a side note.... you thought global warming was bad with coal plants and such, just wait until everybody is turning out gigawatts of energy on a personal basis and wondering where all of that heat is going after it has been used for something else!
It would change international relations as oil would no longer be nearly so important except as a lubrication fluid, and even that can be mostly done with renewable resources like corn oil or other vegetable stock sources. Most of the recent wars would become irrelevant as control of petroleum resources would be insignificant.
Transportation costs are largely dependent upon energy costs, thus building locomotives, ships, and even automobiles with these fusion devices would render most transportation costs to trivial levels except for the cost of vehicle construction and paying professional operators (like an airline pilot) or other crew related costs.
Food production is largely a logistical issue as well, where trivial transportation costs would significantly lower food prices as well.
As for space travel is concerned, fusion energy sources for spaceflight would ensure that you could travel to Mars in just a couple of weeks, and even trips to other stars might take just a few dozen years. Certainly interplanetary spaceflight would be a common to the point that even poor people of 3rd world nations could become "astronauts" and go anywhere in the solar system if they cared.
The big question is if such a future could ever happen? It is an interesting promise that has captivated the imagination since the idea of nuclear fusion reactors was even conceived as a remote possibility. Cold Fusion reactors may be a way to get one of those "Mr. Fusion" reactors built, but you would have to prove that they really work as promised. Unfortunately there is more reason to think Andreas Rossi is full of BS and is being intentionally deceptive.
And mass is energy, in the amount of mass times the speed of light squared. This is what all nuclear science is based upon and why fission plants, nuclear warheads, and fusion bombs work. The system energy is not being increased, because the mass defect in the nuclear reaction is converting mass to energy.
When I read the original E-Cat stuff is sounded like total bullshit. The process I saw NASA examine and the new Rossi reactor that has been independently verified by half a dozen scientists from across Europe is actually pretty sound science wise.
In this case, the experiment puts hydrogen atoms into a tight nickle lattice, with hydrogen in the interstitial positions, then radiates it with terrahertz radiation, which forces inverse beta decay of the hydrogen due to the lattice pressures and radiation, the neutrons are then forced into the nickle atoms, which then beta decay to become copper. The beauty of this is that you don't have to overcome the coulomb barrier, but still have a nuclear reaction taking place. In fact, the reverse beta decay of hydrogen is much lower energy than the beta decay of nickle.
A while back I, as a total noob, looked at fusion and said "well, how would I get around the coulomb barrier?" instead of trying to get through it. I calculated that radiation in a swath of Terahertz range that is difficult to produce would make it possible to induce reverse beta decay in hydrogen. If this guy got it to work, the only surprising development is that he was able to produce the right kind of radiation easily. There is literally no other surprise.