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The cold fusion horizon

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Re: The cold fusion horizon

#121

Post by JoeCoder_ »

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.…

[Rossi] "created" a system for turning toxic waste into oil, but this turned out to be just dumping the waste into the environment

Wow, he is literally the villian Captain Planet fought in every single episode.

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#122

Post by aetherson »

murbard2 wrote: post #119
aetherson wrote: post #116

I don't disbelieve in cold fusion, the EM drive, superluminal anything, solve-all-problems nanotech, or the singularity because of the reputation of scientists. I disbelieve them because pessimism. They're just such... "wouldn't it be great if" results. Wouldn't it be great if we had cheap, limitless, clean energy? Wouldn't it be great if we were not subject to the tyranny of the rocket equation? Wouldn't it be great…

Wouldn't it be great if we could produce fertilizer out of air? Wouldn't it be great if we could get energy by just digging in the ground? Wouldn't it be great if we could just prevent polio with a simple injection? Wouldn't it be great if we could travel by just flying over the ocean?

Sure. It's a heuristic, not a logical proof.

And, I mean, we can't get energy just by digging in the ground. We didn't just poof, start flying over the ocean. We don't produce fertilizer just poof out of the air.

Also: we knew before the Wright brothers that heavier-than-air flight was possible (birds). We didn't go from nothing to oil-fired modern powerplants in one step. If someone had claimed to generate electricity from something random in the ground -- even inefficiently -- without piggybacking on centuries of preexisting power generation technology, I'd probably have been skeptical. And my skepticism would probably have been justified.

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#123

Post by pdonis »

XorNot wrote: post #107
ZenoArrow wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "becoming a bit of a laughing stock when it turned out to be rubbish" The important thing here is to separate the idea from the implementation. Is cold fusion theoretically impossible? I'm no expert, but there seems to be at least some scientists indicating it's not impossible. If that's the case, why does the failure of the first experiment matter? It's sad that the scientific community is partly based on reputati…

Cold fusion IS theoretically impossible, that's the point. Nuclear theory very much says that cold fusion doesn't work. Which means the experiments have to work because no one has a workable theory which predicts cold fusion.

> Cold fusion IS theoretically impossible

I think that's a bit strong. Nuclear theory does not say the energy isn't there (as the subject article of this comment thread points out). It also does not say it is impossible for the potential barrier between the nuclei (which is what makes it necessary to have high temperatures for conventional fusion to work) to be lowered somehow; someone upthread posted a reference to a conversation with Edward Teller where he basically said that's how he would explain cold fusion if it turned out to be true--the nuclear analogue of a chemical catalyst, lowering the activation energy required. It only says we don't currently know of any mechanism for lowering the potential barrier.

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#124

Post by yongjik »

murbard2 wrote: post #119
aetherson wrote: post #116

I don't disbelieve in cold fusion, the EM drive, superluminal anything, solve-all-problems nanotech, or the singularity because of the reputation of scientists. I disbelieve them because pessimism. They're just such... "wouldn't it be great if" results. Wouldn't it be great if we had cheap, limitless, clean energy? Wouldn't it be great if we were not subject to the tyranny of the rocket equation? Wouldn't it be great…

Wouldn't it be great if we could produce fertilizer out of air? Wouldn't it be great if we could get energy by just digging in the ground? Wouldn't it be great if we could just prevent polio with a simple injection? Wouldn't it be great if we could travel by just flying over the ocean?

To take one example, nitrogen was discovered in 1772. Haber process (which converts nitrogen gas to ammonia) was discovered in 1909, and was successfully industrialized in 1913.[1]

In other words, when Haber process was discovered, the question was NOT "wouldn't it be great if we could produce fertilizer out of air?". The question was, "We know the air is full of substance that makes fertilizer. How can we make that happen?"

Or, alternatively, when nitrogen was discovered, nobody said "We paved road for making fertilizer out of air!" It was probably something like "How weird, air is full of this strange stuff that makes animals suffocate." And apparently its discoverer went on to call it "noxious air".

Honestly, I can't think of any important scientific discovery that was accompanied by "This is great! Think what it could do for civilization!"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Haber_process

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#125

Post by Cacti »

vinceguidry wrote: post #54
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.…

> It also doesn't help that Rossi has been convicted of fraud for purportedly inventing dubious devices in the past. In particular, he "created" a system for turning toxic waste into oil, but this turned out to be just dumping the waste into the environment. I feel like if someone has done this once, anyone taking them seriously again, deserves to lose their shirt. What, he suddenly reformed and is now doing real sci…

Wait, what? I thought this was about the science and the results, not about the person.

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#126

Post by Animats »

Snowdax wrote: post #15
Animats wrote: post #11

This cold fusion guy supposedly has a 1MW plant in test at an industrial site. That should be verifiable. Nobody seems to know if Theranos' technology actually works, even the investors. With a multi-billion valuation, that's a big problem. Nobody seems to be sure whether the D-Wave quantum computer really does anything "quantum", even though they've shipped products. How did we get to the point where we can't even v…

When "fake it until you make it" is a widely spread mantra, people get good at the "fake it" part.

I just saw the movie "The Big Short", about the guys who saw that the mortgage collapse was coming and figured out how to short it. They had to talk a bank into creating a new kind of derivative so they could short mortgages. There's an opportunity here. Someone needs to come up with a way to short startups. There are a lot of "unicorns" worth shorting.

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#127

Post by rdtsc »

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…

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

They'd need to have some results besides Rossi and then others would need to replicate it, and then replicate it again by yet another team for it to start being believable and taken seriously.

Not a physicist, just a regular computer programmer, but reading that paper I see some pretty serious claims -- matter transmutting to different elements (isotope formation), neutron emission and capture, at 2000'C environment, there are claims about having 1-10 kWh generators running for years with a few grams of fuel only.

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#128

Post by rdtsc »

rdlecler1 wrote: post #77

The article seems to be lost on a large number of commenters who are asserting (or almost asserting) that this is a scam because (1) Rossi seems to have a dubious history (I'm only going by the comments, not my own investigation) and (2) Rossi is secretive (3) Rossi is not a notable scientist from a top-tier University (4) Rossi comes across as overconfident. This is what the article is pointing out. The author is sa…

There is almost no reason to give him the benefit of the doubt. You could watch tv instead or go for a walk than listen to him and you'd spend your time better.

Who he is matters and his past matters as well. I (some no name from the Internet) can't walk in to a public University and say, I want to be a physics professor. Sure, there is a 0.000001% I maybe be qualified and be a great professor. But my background doesn't warrant them even listning to me talk about it. They'd have as good a chance finding a professor by picking randomly from a phone book. Same thing here with this guy.

> but major scientific advances only occur 0.01% ...so maybe humanity would benefit more if we loosened up a bit

Yeah sure. We can loosen up a bit and maybe give NASA or some college professors random grants to go study this in more detail. As far as Rossi, we'd probably have a better chance discovering cold fusion just by taking a walk and stumbling on it. So no, in his case, based on what I've seen, it is not worth loosing up.

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#129

Post by nickpsecurity »

Animats wrote: post #126
Snowdax wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When "fake it until you make it" is a widely spread mantra, people get good at the "fake it" part.

I just saw the movie "The Big Short", about the guys who saw that the mortgage collapse was coming and figured out how to short it. They had to talk a bank into creating a new kind of derivative so they could short mortgages. There's an opportunity here. Someone needs to come up with a way to short startups. There are a lot of "unicorns" worth shorting.

Haven't watched that yet. I love the idea, though. Silicon Valley creates so many BS valuations that there should be some negative incentive to it or at least a steady stream of people getting rich off calling their BS. Might lead to some changes in valuations as a side effect.

Re: The cold fusion horizon

#130

Post by rdtsc »

Animats wrote: post #11

This cold fusion guy supposedly has a 1MW plant in test at an industrial site. That should be verifiable. Nobody seems to know if Theranos' technology actually works, even the investors. With a multi-billion valuation, that's a big problem. Nobody seems to be sure whether the D-Wave quantum computer really does anything "quantum", even though they've shipped products. How did we get to the point where we can't even v…

Scam artists have been doing this for a long time. A lot of things are not verified simply because verifying then could show they are false.

One can equally ask a scam victim "Wait, you sent money to Nigeria? How could you do it?" or a cult member "Why didn't you get out sooner?". And the answer is that for the scam to work, the victim has to become a believe first, then they will resist revising their beliefs. They become a co-conspirator so to speak.

So the fusion guy convinced himself and his investors that 1MW works, neither one of them have any interest at this point in revealing that it doesn't. They would want to sell it, bring others on board, and then slowly fade away.

Investors often don't want to know the truth, because it would reveal that they've been played. If someone pays the money for D-Wave, they now have an inherent interest in not telling the world how it doesn't work, because the world will laugh at them for spending all that money on it to beging with.

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