The cold fusion horizon

We are like a thirsty town, desperate for a new water supply.

Our human inclination is to talk ourselves into believing the mirage. Add in the inevitable snake oil salesmen... As scientists, the more we desperately, wish for a thing to be true, the more we must demand of the evidence.

The explanation I've heard is that he has something which works (for some definition of works) but doesn't know how it works or why. And because of that he is walking around afraid that if too many details get out about how it works then someone smarter then him will jump in and patent/publish the why and then be forever known as the person who "invented" this technology.

I don't know if that is true, but listening to Rossi talk and what he has written it seems like it could be true.

But elephant in the room is that if you can produce a MW of usable energy out of this thing then why not run it 24/7 and generate your quarter million a year in revenue (pretty much any market will buy baseload power at $30/MWhr. Use your first quarter million to build another one in year two, then use the half million from year two to build two more for year 3 and use the million dollars you get in year 3 to build four more, and the two million dollars from year 3 to build 8 more. Etc. Easy to sell shares in a company that is doubling in revenue each year and will continue to do so until it reaches 25% of baseload power (1TW or about a billion a year in revenue).

Either way, the way in which Rossi's e-cat story is playing out it screams hoax not breakthrough. That has nothing to do with the "reputation" of cold fusion and everything to do with the difference between seeing breakthroughs get promoted and hoaxes get promoted.

Scientists are genetically 99.9% identical to new age woo woo peddlers and quacks. Science is more rational because it cultivates more rational methods, but not because it runs on better hardware.

Based on the amount of unexplained heat they produced fusion would have been extremely radioactive, however they did not treat there setup as an extreme radiation hazard. Which suggest they did not think there would be any fusion.

PS: Here are some pictures for a device expected to produce less than 1W of fusion. http://www.cmgww.com/historic/farnsworth/inventions/fusion/f... Note the deep and cheap to produce pit.

Edit: The posited arrangement is diagrammed and described here, along with other reasons to doubt:

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2013/05/21/the-e-cat...