Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The cold fusion horizon

aeon.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 198 posts

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#91

Post by RogtamBar »

Rossi is very fishy, and he has no clue why his 'invention' works. Scratch that.

However, these two Swedish professors Lidgren and Lundin were involved in testing Rossi's claims a few years back. Lundin is a plasma physicist at the Swedish institute for Space Physics, and has a long publication record. (https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22rickard+lundin%22&hl...)

Now they've published a paper:

"Nuclear Spallation and Neutron Capture Induced by Ponderomotive Wave Forcing"

Here: http://www.irf.se/Publications/?dbfile=IRF%20Scientific%20Re...

They're saying essentially that they can use heat and EM field to resonance to make solid-state materials expel a neutron. They call this "thermal neutron spallation".

Which is a pretty bold statement of an entirely novel concept.

They've said they're setting up an experiment to demonstrate this novel form of neutron spallation.

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#92

Post by eru »

api wrote: post #69
MCRed wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 scienc…

Western Europe has the scientific revolution (around the Baroque era), and---bam---a few short hundred years later they dominate the globe in the 19th century.

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#93

Post by scotty79 »

Rossi contraption is just that (or not, as long as it's not scientifically open no-one should care).

What I'm curious about is this:

http://animpossibleinvention.com/2015/10/15/swedish-scientis...

Guys basically claim they found a way to create free neutrons at lowest possible energy cost, published a paper and even ran some initial experiments.

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#94

Post by [deleted] »

RogtamBar wrote: post #91

Rossi is very fishy, and he has no clue why his 'invention' works. Scratch that. However, these two Swedish professors Lidgren and Lundin were involved in testing Rossi's claims a few years back. Lundin is a plasma physicist at the Swedish institute for Space Physics, and has a long publication record. ( https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22rickard+lundin%22&hl... ) Now they've published a paper: "Nuclear Spallati…

[deleted]

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#95

Post by ScottBurson »

jacquesm wrote: post #52

This article is funny. It tries to do an end-run around any criticism of the subject matter by constructing an elaborate piece of work to establish that if you don't agree with the basic premise of low energy nuclear reactions there must be something pathologically wrong with you. And you are not only suffering from a defect, no you are doubly wrong, because having LENR would be such a great thing for the world. For…

> This article is funny. It tries to do an end-run around any criticism of the subject matter by constructing an elaborate piece of work to establish that if you don't agree with the basic premise of low energy nuclear reactions there must be something pathologically wrong with you.

It's really quite the other way around: the opponents of LENR research have treated everyone working on it as if there were something pathologically wrong with them. The article is merely pointing out that this is not good science.

Skepticism is important, but it is not an infallible source of truth. A lot of self-styled skeptics, ironically, refuse to apply their skepticism to itself.

As for raising expectations, I think a somewhat fine line has to be drawn. There's nothing wrong with talking about possibilities as a way of attracting attention and funding; what's wrong is to cross the line into making promises not yet supported by results.

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#96

Post by themartorana »

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.…

This guy is a fraud and known pathological liar, but he got entry to the Unites States because what - he's European and has the label "entrepreneur?"

But whoa, refugees? No thanks.

Excuse the snark, but why is this guy here and why is anyone lending him any credibility at all?

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#97

Post by gnarbarian »

orthecreedence wrote: post #72
sebringj wrote: post #37

At first I was like please die, cold fusion from Adobe. Then I was like oh. Nevermind.

Yes, hopefully Adobe Coldfusion's "horizon" will be an event horizon.

I seem to be trapped in an orbit quite near the even horizon where time has slowed to a crawl. (5 years into a CF project)

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#98

Post by Gibbon1 »

ars wrote: post #87
marshray wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another possible explanation is: He is really not very good at measuring energy input and heat output. He built something and confused himself into thinking it was producing more energy than it consumes. He took some money from investors to develop the technology. He spent much of the research money, eventually to realize that his device does not, in fact, produce energy. His investors now want their money back and h…

> He is really not very good at measuring energy input and heat output. Calorimetry is actually extremely hard to do right. VERY hard. I stopped following this field a few years ago, but back then EVERY single positive result was due to faulty calorimetry.

Just temperature measurement is hard once you start talking accuracy better than a few tenths of a degree C. Add in heat flow, yeah whatever.

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#99

Post by ZenoArrow »

paganel wrote: post #44
mannykannot wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am wondering if we read the same article. The author uncritically cites already-discredited studies in favor of the E-Cat without noting the doubt that surrounds them, and only mentions fraud as being so improbable as to effectively dismiss it. He is apparently literally salivating over his expectation that he will be proved right. FWIW, I know cold fusion is not definitively ruled out by physics, I would be thrill…

I know almost nothing about cold fusion and theoretical physics in general, but as a guy who has read some Popper and Hume I'll chime in with an obviously subjective opinion, and say that after reading all the HN comments and parts of the article the first thought that came to my mind was this: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Interestingly enough that exact quote is present in TFA, but in a man…

> "Whatever this guy writes about and whatever he believes in, it is not about science."

You say that, but you're ignoring the thrust of his argument.

Let's say, for argument's sake, that the results from Rossi's experiment seem somewhat dubious. Easy to dismiss a single flawed experiment, right?

However, there have been at least four separate reproductions of the experiment results since then (article mentions reports of similar results from Sweden, Italy, Russia and China).

The main question raised by the article can be summarised as: If evidence of a reproducible experiment with unexplained results exists, which is usually a key indicator that the experiment warrants further investigation, why is there sometimes reluctance to investigate when this reproducibility comes along?

Science is not served well by dogma. Interesting results can come from unexpected places. The wilful ignorance of the reproducibility is the issue here.

Post reply on HN