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

Google revives controversial cold-fusion experiments

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 162 posts

Re: Google revives controversial cold-fusion experiments

#111

Post by _red »

drewg123 wrote: post #77
usaphp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you are joking, but unlike Google, Tesla at least tries to finish whatever they start and actually deliver stuff, while google quickly jumps the ship if the thing does not work out and abandoned all their customers

As a Tesla owner, I have to say that I'm really looking forward to them delivering the Full Self Driving option that I paid for 18 months ago when I bought my car.

A hypothetical:

You are driving your car and see that the pickup truck in front of you has an empty cardboard box in it (you can tell its empty by the way its floating around in bed of truck). Suddenly a gust of win picks up the box and it lands directly in front of your car. Its not very big, about 12 inches tall. Do you: (a) Slam on breaks? (b) Roll over it?

Now what will the "AI" in your car do?

Self-driving cars are not coming anytime soon. They are a whole slew of problems that you can intuit solutions to fairly easily, that are still beyond the ability of current tech.

Re: Google revives controversial cold-fusion experiments

#112

Post by ggggtez »

Maybe it's a dead end, but the it sounds like they found some promising avenues for improved battery tech along the way. Something about hydrogen storage...

Like anyone else, I'd love to see fusion harnessed for electricity. One step closer to post-scarcity, but I can settle for more compact phones.

Re: Google revives controversial cold-fusion experiments

#113

Post by mejari »

drewg123 wrote: post #77
usaphp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you are joking, but unlike Google, Tesla at least tries to finish whatever they start and actually deliver stuff, while google quickly jumps the ship if the thing does not work out and abandoned all their customers

As a Tesla owner, I have to say that I'm really looking forward to them delivering the Full Self Driving option that I paid for 18 months ago when I bought my car.

I'm pretty sure I remember a pretty large "this technology does not currently exist, may not be feasible, and may not be available based on local regulations" disclaimer on their sales pages, right? I thought they were explicitly selling the sensors that would be required if the self-driving feature was implemented.

Re: Google revives controversial cold-fusion experiments

#114

Post by magduf »

jayalpha wrote: post #79
UnFleshedOne wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an enormous difference between ease of use of a contact lens sensor that you presumably wear most of your awake time and that gives you constant stream of measurements with 1h lag and urine test kit that you carry with you and with luck remember to use every few hours.

Yeah. As a non lens wearer sounds pretty comfortable to me. But if you have money I can offer you a non-invasive glucose measurement start-up with peer reviewed publications.

I wear contact lenses. If I could instead wear lenses that continuously monitored my glucose level and it didn't cost me anything extra, and they still gave me the visual acuity of my normal lenses, why wouldn't I use that? I already wear them every day so for me, it requires zero effort.

Having to get urine samples regularly, or worse, blood samples, is a LOT more work on my part (not to mention painful for the blood samples), so it's not something I'm as likely to want to bother with.

Re: Google revives controversial cold-fusion experiments

#115

Post by jandrese »

xamuel wrote: post #6
darkpuma wrote: post #2

> "The Google team explored three experimental set-ups that have been proposed to generate cold fusion — two involving palladium and hydrogen, and one involving metallic powders and hydrogen. None found evidence of fusion. The results have been published across 12 papers over the past 2 years: 9 in peer-reviewed journals and 3 on the arXiv preprint server." It seems obvious to me that you can't achieve fusion using a…

>Surely 'having an open mind' about cold fusion is itself a "strong opinion" about cold fusion. A cynical reading might be: "30 researchers whose opinions on cold fusion were not strong enough for them to speak up at the job interview and thus forfeit the job".

I think it's probably people who weren't expecting to achieve the impossible, but were willing to experiment in areas of science that aren't well understood to possibly learn something new. Maybe there is some previously unknown effect that was mistaken for fusion in the previous experiments? It could be an exciting find.

But at the same time they have to know that the most likely scenario is a big null result and no new science discovered. Unfortunate, but if you knew where the next discovery was going to be you wouldn't have to hunt for it.

Re: Google revives controversial cold-fusion experiments

#116

Post by ehsankia »

olooney wrote: post #58
peterlk wrote: post #46

The cynicism in this threads hurts. > “This is not just a chase for cold fusion,” says Matthew Trevithick, a research programme manager at Google in Mountain View, California. “If it were, I don’t think we would have maintained an interest of this calibre of team for so long.” Here's what I see: fusion power would be a step function in human civilization. Such step functions are pathologically hard to achieve, becaus…

The skepticism is not about fusion power, it's about cold fusion specifically, as well role of proprietary IP and patents in scientific research. Tokamak[1] (and other magnetic confinement) reactors seem much more promising and have seen slow but non-zero improvements for decades[2]. Some reactors like JT-60 have come close to being energy positive[3] but are not yet self sustaining. Large ongoing projects like like…

> If Google were serious about fusion, they would invest in this kind of mainstream research.

They do.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/29/18201220/nuclear-fusion-e...

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/news/a27...

Just because they also look into other alternatives doesn't mean they are ignoring the more mainstream research. They are approaching it from every angle, because as pointed out, any discovery here can help in other places too.

> Frankly, behavior which is only one step removed from straight-up patent trolling

Google, for as big as it is and as many patents as it owns, has never once used its patent portfolio offensively, so assuming that they want to patent-troll is extremely unfair.

Re: Google revives controversial cold-fusion experiments

#117

Post by microtherion »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #95
drewg123 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Tesla owner, I have to say that I'm really looking forward to them delivering the Full Self Driving option that I paid for 18 months ago when I bought my car.

The worst part is, it doesn't seem like they'll be able to. I'm curious what happens if they ultimate need additional / different sensors to make it happen. Do they replace those parts for free?

I also wonder whether the choice of sensor technology they already (pre-)SOLD informs Tesla's opinion of what sensor technology is NEEDED for Full Self Driving (Their view that LIDAR is not necessary seems to be an outlier in the industry; are we sure that view is not influenced by the sizable outlay they'd face for upgrading their previously sold FSD option cars if they changed their mind?)

Re: Google revives controversial cold-fusion experiments

#118

Post by gliboc »

_red wrote: post #111
drewg123 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Tesla owner, I have to say that I'm really looking forward to them delivering the Full Self Driving option that I paid for 18 months ago when I bought my car.

A hypothetical: You are driving your car and see that the pickup truck in front of you has an empty cardboard box in it (you can tell its empty by the way its floating around in bed of truck). Suddenly a gust of win picks up the box and it lands directly in front of your car. Its not very big, about 12 inches tall. Do you: (a) Slam on breaks? (b) Roll over it? Now what will the "AI" in your car do? Self-driving cars…

I'm returning your argument. Imagine your are driving your car on the highway, but you suddenly have a heart attack and become unable to remain conscious. Do you: (a) Die? (b) Die?

Manned vehicles are not coming anytime soon. They are a whole slew of problems etc. -- you got my point.

I think focusing too much on pesky details is very much a fallacy in this case - you do not want an "AI" to react like a human in all situations, you only want it to drive in a way that is conservative enough not to endanger people too much. And we clearly aren't that far from this goal right now.

Re: Google revives controversial cold-fusion experiments

#119

Post by sudoaza »

This makes perfect sense: - 10 millon usd to Google is close to nothing. - payout if success would be huge and there is place for unexpected derivative technology. - there is still lots of wiggle place in physics, think for example superconductors or meta-materials.

Re: Google revives controversial cold-fusion experiments

#120

Post by jschwartzi »

Asooka wrote: post #107
dfilppi wrote: post #42

Next on the docket: turning lead into gold at room temperature.

Bah, that's trivial with modern science. You just bombard the lead atom's core with a precise beam of electrons until you knock out two neutrons and a proton. I have the schematics for a very elegant apparatus to do that, but this text box is too small to contain them.

I have been wondering what to do with the bucket of free electrons I've been keeping from my other experiments.
Post reply on HN