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Suppression of cold fusion research?
Dylan Greene wrote to us with
a story talking about the possible suppresion of cold fusion research from those whom you would expect to. It might be inflamatory, but it's also interesting.
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As a practicing high-energy physicist, I feel compelled to point out that this article is patently ridiculous.
All nuclear reaction chains release some combination of so-called exotic particles: gamma-rays, neutrons, neutrinos, high-energy protons, positrons, and the like. Any reaction that does not emit such particles is NOT a nuclear reaction.
In particular, the fusion chain that produces helium--the very reaction Pons & Fleischmann claimed to observe--releases neutrons. Neutrons are very easy to see with the right kind of detector, and any observation of neutrons would dramatically confirm the existence of fusion at the nuclear level.
No cold fusion experiment has ever seen any neutrons. None. Ever.
No cold fusion experiment has ever seen any gamma rays, which would also be released by the fusion reaction chain. Pons & Fleischmann at one time claimed to observe gamma rays, but it turned out that these rays were in fact produced by the radioactive source they were using to calibrate their gamma ray detector.
In fact, the severe radiation--produced by any real fusion process producing as much heat as has been claimed to observe--would kill anyone working in the unshielded lab within a few days, or less.
But there has never been any evidence of radiation by any of the labs studying cold fusion: not Utah, not Texas A&M, not MIT, not Caltech, not Portland State, not anyone.
What has been observed is so-called "unaccounted heat". The problem with "unaccounted heat" is that it is extremely difficult to account for all the heat in the cold fusion experimental setup. One dips a palladium electrode in a solution of heavy water, and pumps a high voltage through the electrode. This vaporizes some of the water, producing bubbles (water vapor, hydrogen gas, and
oxygen) and light and heat, and one can measure how much heat is produced. The problem is that it is difficult to measure accurately just how much electricity was pumped into the electrode to begin with!! So you don't know how much energy you started with, and because you don't know how much energy you started it is impossible to determine accurately whether there is any energy missing.
Thus the surefire, absolute, undeniable way to prove that fusion is actually there is to observe neutrons and/or gamma rays. But no one has ever observed neutrons or gamma rays from a cold fusion apparatus.
This is why cold fusion is not taken seriously by the scientific community.
On a side note, I must object to the use of Einstein as a symbol for this discussion. Einstein would never have allowed himself to be associated with the poor quality of research exhibited by Pons, Fleischmann, and others.
Cheers,
Anton Eppich
Wilson Synchrotron Lab, Cornell University
eppich@NoSpam.lns.cornell.edu
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The opinions expressed are mine and mine alone.
imp wrote:
The problem is that you cannot easily measure the amount of current flowing into the experiment with an anmeter. There will be slight losses associated with this measurement.
They are saying that they get more energy out than they put into it. It seems to me that all the sources of error on measuring how much energy goes into the system are losses on the way to the electrode. Wouldn't this mean that they are getting at least as much energy as they are claiming?
Regardless of whether it's fusion or some obscure electrochemical process, I think we should be investigating potential energy sources. If the scientific community is detecting energy there, and trying to hide it, that's unforgivable.
Also, your reply didn't address the fundamental question of where are the nuclear by products. If it is a nuclear reaction, like Pons and Fleischmann originally claimed, then there should be by-products. Nobody to date has measured them.
According to the article, they have detected excess helium (they didn't say whether it's helium-3 or helium-4). I'd say that's a likely fusion byproduct. I'd say that's somebody. It's not conclusive unless it can be reproduced, so why aren't people trying to reproduce the results?
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Open mind, insert foot.
Funding for this sort of thing is based on potential returns. I have a friend who is a physics Postdoc at McGill University (Montreal, CA) and is very bright. He has no stake in this research, and has told me that the amount of money required for this research does not even come close to making sense in terms of reward, considering that even if they were getting results, it would take on the order of at least 100 to 120 years to make it feasable for general use. There is more promising and rewarding energy research going on (although he didn't say what). I will be sure to ask.
Maybe we should just have "Cold fusion reactor" added to the list for the next University of Chicago scavanger hunt...
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However, in the university where they work, nobody would be able to do Cold Fusion research there, even if they paid for it themselves. There is such a bad stigma attached, that it would be just impossible.
Sad huh...
My step-dad is a chemistry professor. I remember when some cold fusion experiments hit the news and asked him about it. He said they got together in the lab in an attempt to recreate it. He would only say they had some "unexplained" energy and a meltdown of the platinum plates. Never heard anything more on that.
Interesting that a meltdown created by blowing bubbles on platinum plates would not create more attention than Beavis and Butthead would have toward "fire! fire! fire!"
Sure, there was a campaign to suppress the little gadget that turned water into gasoline, we heard all about that 20 years ago.
We can't suppress real things, like atomic bombs. Although there is a lot of applied science to do, the basics are understandable by every high-school science student.
I think slashdot editors need to switch from reading Popular Science Magazine to something a bit more sophisticated.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
The late Dr. Carl Sagan, in his Cosmos series, talked about this same kind of thing happening when Immanuel Velikovsky published the first compilation of his astronomical views in Worlds in Collision in 1950. He came up with some wonderful ideas about Venus being a rogue planet that was captured by the Sun's gravitation, the Moon being ejected from Jupiter, an explanation for the sun standing still in Biblical times, and much more.
Sure, the man was completely wrong about many things. He was also right in his theories that in the past, mankind has witnessed global catastrophes of cosmic origin. But rather than prove him wrong, Worlds in Collision was instead banned from numerous academic institutions, and his works suppressed. He is still to this day looked on as a kook more than a scientist who was wrong.
"Do not destroy that which you do not understand."
Look up "Lawson Criterion" in your physics text.
Fusion reactions of any kind would still produce gamma rays, as this is one of the ways that nuclei shed excess energy after fusion. These should be easily detected, as the original poster stated.
Did anyone responding here actually read the article? The whole point of it is that the results HAVE been reproduced. Supposedly, adding a carbon catalyst of some kind has increased the reliability. One researcher claims to have lowered the failure rate to 10-20% Interesting enough results to beg additional research if you ask me.
Thad
The Bolachek Journals
This is hardly the first time a researcher from SRI has generated an "irreproducible result". Anyone remember the Targ and Puthoff tests of Uri Geller's alleged psychic powers?
When the scientific community listens politely to someone's theory and then fails to dissolve in a chorus of hosannas, it's unsound to assume that they're in a conspiracy of silence. If they really wanted to suppress McKubre, why let him give his presentation at a prestigious physics conference? Did Plotkin even try to find out what criticisms exist of McKubre's work? I see no evidence of that in his article. The man positively drips indignation and credulousness; I wouldn't be surprised if McKubre is embarrassed by his partisanship.
If McKubre is on to something, he'll have some noteworthy results to report after a while. Let the media feeding frenzy begin then. Until that time, let's not lose our heads.
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Some keywords for the NSA in the Lord of the Rings universe: One Ring bind find Sauron quest Nazgul freedom
Thanks for contributing to the discussion, Anton.
When F&P did their experiment in the late 1980's, I and my senior class went through their results. They did find (or claim) a 1200% return on the energy they were pumping into the experiment. I don't have my papers with me...but I recall that some other chemist pointed out that palladium acts as a catalyst between free hydrogen and oxygen, releasing heat. The excess heat produced could be explained by a chemical reaction between the palladium, hydrogen liberated in the water, and oxygen at the surface of the bath.
The Fleischmann and Pons results were worthless, pure and simple. I think that some minimal funds should be put into cold fusion research, because it is an interesting field. But people, don't get your hopes up.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
There seems to be some confusion about what the physicists claim is going on in this cold fusion thing. It isn't exactly the same concept as hot fusion.
Basic hydrogen fusion occurs when two atoms of hydrogen get squeezed together very tightly. If the nuclei get close enough, they decide that hanging out together might not be such a bad idea, and it becomes deuterium - an isotope of hydrogen. Eventually another couple hydrogen come along, get squished into the mess and the whole thing becomes helium. No big surprises here, but that isn't usually what happens in the sun.
Solar fusion actually uses carbon for a leg up. Basically, a hydrogen gets pressed too close to a carbon and the carbon becomes an isotope (13). It then steps up to become nitrogen, an isotope of nitrogen, and then a carbon and a helium. Same energy release, but the reaction energy is smaller. This isn't what they are claiming is happening in Cold fusion, either.
Do you remember the old electrolysis experiments in high school? Drop two ends of a hot wire in a jar of water and watch oxygen bubble up one side and hydrogen up the other? Same thing, except on the hydrogen side we make the wire (or cube, or plate) out of palladium or platinum in which hydrogen happens to be soluble. (yes, a gas can dissolve into a solid). They use heavy water, so all of the hydrogen in the metal is deuterium. The theory goes that if you squish two deuterium together, they decide that they don't mind being a helium. No spare electrons to go flying off, no spare neutrons to go killing researchers.
Unfortunately, the concept of adding carbon making the thing work better sounds like hokum to me because cold fusion isn't supposed to be using that chain reaction.
This issue is complicated because the pro-cf contingent sounds a lot like snake-oil salesmen trying to sell us a panacea for our energy problems, and the anti-cf group just wants to protect their profits. You have to boil it down to hard evidence.
What I'm hearing is that there is an unexplained increase in temperature in this process. I'm not too terribly sure where the idea came from that we can't measure the energy going into the thing. Any report that didn't account for experimental inaccuracy of that kind of measurement would be laughed out of publication.
I won't state a hard view that Cold Fusion exists and works. The bottom line is that SOMETHING unexplained is happening here. Until someone can explain it, it is something that should be researched. Even if it doesn't provide us with a clean, safe form of limitless energy, it will still help us understand the world we live in, and possibly provide us with clues to make the hot fusion concept a little easier.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.