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The cold fusion horizon

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Re: The cold fusion horizon

#61

Post by trhway »

jacquesm wrote: post #50
kryptiskt wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were chemists, not physicists. They were completely out of their depth when thinking about physics. From what I read in Frank Close's book they jumped the gun when they learned about Steve Jones (who wanted to explain Earth's He-3 with cold fusion), and they didn't want to risk losing credit for their major discovery. Obviously they were no saints and did lie and massage data when it all crumbled. But they behav…

Blinkered true believers and frauds differ only in one aspect: intent. I've met some 'true believers' and the common element was that they believed enough to risk other people's funds but not enough to risk their own. That makes it a very fine line between a true believer and a fraud, thin enough for me to bin them equally. It doesn't matter to me because I can't look into someone's head to figure out which of the tw…

> I've met some 'true believers' and the common element was that they believed enough to risk other people's funds but not enough to risk their own.

according to wikipedia Pons and Fleischmann self-funded the experiments for several years before the announcement to the tune of $100K.

Anyway, giving such a great palladium's absorption of hydrogen it would be interesting to see a grain of palladium deuteride as a target for NIF and/or Sandia Z. The density of the deuterium absorbed into palladium is about the density of the standard frozen DT grain used traditionally, yet with all these additional heavy palladium atoms spread around the stability of compression would definitely be different - whether better or worse the experiment would show. Also the electrons would be in typical in-metal cloud state instead of being attached to the deuterium atoms - again the difference which may play a role (at least in lithium deuteride used in H-bomb it doesn't make things worse :)

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#62

Post by raverbashing »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #34
mizzao wrote: post #4

I understand the argument about the sociological reputation trap, but a little more reading about Rossi's research turns up some very fishy evidence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer In particular, the copper supposedly generated by the fusion of hydrogen and nickel has an isotopic composition very similar to that of natural copper, rather than what one would expect from byproducts of nuclear reactions.…

And that is, what I think is Rossi's biggest problem. Very showy, very secretive. 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 pe…

True, to claim you are able to produce 1 megawatt of power you actually have to put it somewhere.

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#63

Post by sparkzilla »

alanh wrote: post #35
sparkzilla wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's somewhat ironic to say you want to avoid groupthink and then to cite Wikipedia as your source.

you’re not wrong there is potentially irony there, but … it’s not like Wikipedia doesn’t have sources you can follow. Linking to Wikipedia is linking to a consensus summary & portal to more links

I take no sides in the cold-fusion discussion. The irony comment was meant as an aside. More enlightened souls like you and I will check the sources. However, Wikipedia pages are not made by "consensus"; they are invariably shaped by the most powerful group of editors on the page.

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#64

Post by simonh »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #25
simonh wrote: post #14

He says that failing to recreate Fleischmann and Pons' findings isn't enough reason to doubt their claims because recreating results is tricky, and implies that therefore we have no actual reason to doubt that they achieved cold fusion. But we do. Not only did their apparatus, according to their own measurements, not produce any of the radiation that would be an unavoidable byproduct of fusion, but the core also didn…

But that would be interesting in itself. P&N made the PR mistake of calling their process "cold fusion." If they'd called it "unexpected heat we can't explain" they'd have encountered much less hostility. Then the question wouldn't have been "Where are the neutrons?" but "Can this be replicated?" followed by "Can this be used for energy generation?" Social taint my be true strong a description. But there's huge hosti…

It's been investigated for 26 years. I do understand your and the author's point, it's just that it doesn't really get us anywhere. A few months ago I was discussing this on another forum and someone said words to the effect that "what the cold fusion people should have done was build a device powerful enough to run an electric car or heat a house", as if F&P cold fusion was a real thing that worked and the trouble was that nobody ever bothered to try and develop it. In reality dozens of investigators have tried to recreate it and scale it up. They didn't fail because they didn't try, they failed because it doesn't work.

Yes it's theoretically possible that someone might figure out a way, but as with the magic thruster drive, even the people working on the devices dont have the vaguest idea how such a device might actualy work. That doesn't provide much to go on in the way of reasons to be optimistic about their chances of success.

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#65

Post by MCRed »

ScottBurson wrote: post #23

Great article. I'm not going to defend Rossi, but what happened in 1989 was a travesty. Yes, Pons and Fleischmann were premature in their annnouncement. But they didn't deserve to be made pariahs, and there were others whose careers were destroyed for so much as publicly entertaining the possibility that cold fusion might be made to work. Edward Teller, on the other hand, was old enough not to care: Around 1992, McKu…

I was around, and read the Pons & Flieshman paper before it was released (when the pre-prints were carefully guarded and numbered... do frauds carefully guard their papers to make sure they don't get out, or do they publish far and wide?) IIRC it was the university that jumped the gun at least as much as them.

I worked for a very well respected lab for physicists, the head of which should have gotten the nobel prize around that time (he missed out, but he was close). We replicated their experiment and then replicated it again with some changes that should have been innocuous. In both cases we were unable to observe the phenomena they observed.

We published a paper to this effect, and were branded "deniers" by Mondo2000 and other fringe science advocates who really wanted to believe in Cold Fusion.

We didn't disprove it, we didn't show evidence that P&F were wrong... and the fact that we spent lab time and money to replicate the experiment described in the pre-print shows we considered it possible enough to spend the time.

Remember, failure to replicate an experiment either means the paper doesn't describe how to reproduce the phenomena well enough, or the observations in the paper are in error (for any number of reasons.) But we were just a datapoint. To claim they were frauds is a much, much higher bar. But they certainly were minor leagues scientists from a lesser university, and it's not surprising they were ostracized they way they were-- and that was politics (these "little people playing our game, the nerve!") as much as anything else.

Big Science/Governent Science is very political and very corrupt. Genuine scientific outcomes are suppressed or ignored or rejected for publication because they violate the theories and beliefs of "peers" who "Review" them. I've been published and gone thru that gauntlet, and its very rarely about ensuring the integrity of the science, and much more about protecting grant receipts.

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#66

Post by ScottBurson »

Retric wrote: post #38
PeCaN wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evidence? As far as I can tell the only 'fraudulent' thing they did was jump to the conclusion of "WE MADE ENERGY WITH COLD FUSION" when they probably should've announced their result with "looks like we have some unexplained heat". They most probably were, however, understandably rather excited.

Producing even a little heat with fusion produces a lot of nasty radiation. As in kill everyone in the unsheilded room within a few seconds. 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…

> Producing even a little heat with fusion produces a lot of nasty radiation. As in kill everyone in the unsheilded room within a few seconds.

This is greatly exaggerated. The amount of excess heat they claimed to observe was really quite small, and D-D fusion produces a relatively weak neutron flux [0]. I'm not saying some shielding wouldn't have been a good idea, but instant death? No.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power#Deuterium

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#67

Post by MCRed »

api wrote: post #36
ScottBurson wrote: post #23

Great article. I'm not going to defend Rossi, but what happened in 1989 was a travesty. Yes, Pons and Fleischmann were premature in their annnouncement. But they didn't deserve to be made pariahs, and there were others whose careers were destroyed for so much as publicly entertaining the possibility that cold fusion might be made to work. Edward Teller, on the other hand, was old enough not to care: Around 1992, McKu…

Big science is made out of meat like everything else and suffers from all the same biases and cognitive blinds and fallacies. 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.

More specifically the scientific method, but the scientific method is out the window in society these days-- it's un popular. A politicians pronouncing something true (that is conveniently in his self interest) is given more weight than a thousand peer review publication (or even simple phenomena that can be measured in any college lab in the country.)

Science seems to be dead, and what passes for it now is extremely politicized.

At least outside of commercial institutions. I'm sure Intel and the people who make fab equipment are doing real science.

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#68

Post by chc4 »

joe_the_user wrote: post #42

One big argument against free energy at low temperatures is that if it was possible then the natural world would have already discovered it. The other argument is that if someone has a free energy device, they actually shouldn't need to convince anyone , they could just hook it to the grid, get paid for the power, use the money to build more devices, repeat until they had a serious power company. And then they start…

I'm not sure that argument against it holds up. For all we know some Deuterium and Palladium are hanging out in the cosmos undergoing fusion, and we would have no idea about it. There are real room temperature fusion methods[0] that can also happen in nature, but even if that method was break-even it doesn't mean Mother Nature would exploit it due to the difficulty of starting the reaction.

Getting paid for power and getting enough seed money to build more generators does involve convincing people, as well, and is pretty much what Rossi has been doing. He even started his own energy company, iirc, and has been selling self-contained "generators" to people.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#69

Post by api »

MCRed wrote: post #67
api wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big science is made out of meat like everything else and suffers from all the same biases and cognitive blinds and fallacies. 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.

More specifically the scientific method, but the scientific method is out the window in society these days-- it's un popular. A politicians pronouncing something true (that is conveniently in his self interest) is given more weight than a thousand peer review publication (or even simple phenomena that can be measured in any college lab in the country.) Science seems to be dead, and what passes for it now is extremely…

The scientific method is absolutely at odds with how human beings behave socially and politically. It's kind of strange that we ever came up with it. Our natural tendency is to use ideas to manipulate, to believe to belong rather than because anything is true, and to rely on a lot of sloppy heuristics in place of more cognitively expensive and time consuming modes of thought.

Ultimately I think the only reason science became politically favored at all is because it was good at making people rich and building weapons to make them powerful. Truth has no part in it. Few people care about that, and not because they are evil but because they are a product of a Darwinian process that barely rewards it and that rewards other shorter term things much more.

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#70

Post by MCRed »

steven2012 wrote: post #39

The same thing goes for those that would dare to dispute string theory or human-caused global warming. Trying to publish any papers that defy either of those canons will likely end your career.

In some circumstances yes, but I think actually that most of the papers out there disprove AGW, it's just that nobody reads them. I've read many papers given to me by AGW proponents that they claim support AGW, and in every case they don't and in most they actually support the opposite conclusion. (as do most of the scientists who have signed petitions.)

As a political movement, global warming doesn't need science, politicians and advocates just declare it "settled" and thus feel they don't have to defend their claims.

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