Merged Cold Fusion Claims

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BenBurch said:
This makes heat, and takes an electrical input. To be self-sustaining such a thing needs a boiler and a turbine and a generator. That it does not have those when demonstrated does not in itself prove they have nothing.
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They could have used a Peltier element, but the efficiency is poor. They would have lost most of the gigantic output, making it kind of... less spectacular.
 
Chronopolitan said:
Most of these "contraptions" including cold fusion could be built by able DIY people in no time. That's not what I call "commercializing".
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How would a small home made item power a car factory or a steel works or the railway system?
 
Chronopolitan said:
I don't want to remind you about how ridiculous a self-powerd flying machine was around 1900...
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Self powered flight already existed in 1900 : birds (and even million of years before :P). And you can even count a few of the "gliding" planes. What did not exist was human sustained powered flight, and that was an engineering problem not a science problem. Namely the source of the sustained power. If the internal combustion engine had not be JUST invented (a lot of application started mid to end 1800), the Wright brother would not even be a footnote in the history book. I give them credit, but as one see the number of people attempting to fly even before the ICE motor became widespread, this was bound to happen.
 
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Aepervius said:
Self powered flight already existed in 1900 : birds (and even million of years before :P). And you can even count a few of the "gliding" planes. What did not exist was human sustained powered flight, and that was an engineering problem not a science problem. Namely the source of the sustained power. If the internal combustion engine had not be JUST invented (a lot of application started mid to end 1800), the Wright brother would not even be a footnote in the history book. I give them credit, but as one see the number of people attempting to fly even before the ICE motor became widespread, this was bound to happen.
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Woos love the "eminent science declares flight impossible" canard conveniently dismissing all the work that went before the Wright brothers.

Otto Lilienthal: 1883
Known as the German "Glider King", Otto was the first person to make repeated gliding flights successfully. He made over 2000 flights in total!


http://history.nuvvo.com/lesson/7456-early-gliders-in-aviation

As you say the main obstacle to powered flight was the lack of a compact energy source not any opposition from entrenched scientists.

Of course the Wrights didn't just argue about whether their Flyer worked, they built one and flew it.
 
Chronopolitan said:
I don't want to remind you about how ridiculous a self-powerd flying machine was around 1900...

HHO = knallgas, just burning the hydrogen. This would definitely not get more energy out than the energy put in for electrolysis.
But Giuseppe Levi measured the hydrogen used up in the process and calculated that it can't be responsible for the output.
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As has been pointed out, flying was not ridiculous. Even Da Vinci thought it possible. What is more important, initial flying didn't violate physics.

glenn

FYI: hydrogen and oxygen are diatomic...there is no such thing as HHO from a chemical formula standpoint.
 
Chronopolitan said:
They could have used a Peltier element, but the efficiency is poor. They would have lost most of the gigantic output, making it kind of... less spectacular.
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The efficiency is poor in the following way: you connect one side of your Peltier junction to a 10kW heat source; you connect the other side to (say) a tank of water. The junction pumps out 500W of electrical power (looks inefficient, right?) and it sinks 9500W of heat into the water.

So, instead of the "demo" they claim to have done (a device with one end plugged into the wall, and the other end venting steam) they would have a closed cycle demo---a device sitting on the table, venting steam, with no external connection at all.
 
tsig said:
Of course the Wrights didn't just argue about whether their Flyer worked, they built one and flew it.
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You missed the point, then made it. To my advantage :)

Rossi didn't care and just built the reactor and it produces heat. Voilà.
 
ben m said:
So, instead of the "demo" they claim to have done (a device with one end plugged into the wall, and the other end venting steam) they would have a closed cycle demo---a device sitting on the table, venting steam, with no external connection at all.
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You obviously haven't read the articles...

The problem is you have to put power in for some time to reach critical condition where the reaction starts to kick in. Then you can reduce the power and excess heat is produced.
If closed, where would the initial power come from?
 
Aepervius said:
Self powered flight already existed in 1900 : birds (and even million of years before :P). And you can even count a few of the "gliding" planes. What did not exist was human sustained powered flight, and that was an engineering problem not a science problem. Namely the source of the sustained power. If the internal combustion engine had not be JUST invented (a lot of application started mid to end 1800), the Wright brother would not even be a footnote in the history book. I give them credit, but as one see the number of people attempting to fly even before the ICE motor became widespread, this was bound to happen.
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Well, let's take good ol Lord Kelvin again:

"Like many scientists, he did make some mistakes in predicting the future of technology.

Circa 1896, Lord Kelvin was initially skeptical of X-rays, and regarded their announcement as a hoax.[49] However, this was before he saw Röntgen's evidence, after which he accepted the idea, and even had his own hand X-rayed in May 1896.[50]

His forecast for practical aviation was negative. In 1896 he refused an invitation to join the Aeronautical Society, writing that "I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning or of expectation of good results from any of the trials we hear of." [51] And in a 1902 newspaper interview he predicted that "No balloon and no aeroplane will ever be practically successful."[52]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thomson,_1st_Baron_Kelvin


Reminds me of constant whining about what's "physically impossible".
 
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Arthur C Clarke's three laws:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws

Clarke's Three Laws are three "laws" of prediction formulated by the British writer and scientist Arthur C. Clarke. They are:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; when he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong.

2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
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This has all the hallmarks of fraud. Long ago (late '70s) a fellow in my home town claimed to have developed an atomic engine that fused hydrogen and lithium. Even got some scientist to say it was plausible. Had an atomic car in the window of a disused car show room and drove it around the city. Took investor money. Fled town. This smells like that.
 
BenBurch said:
This has all the hallmarks of fraud. Long ago (late '70s) a fellow in my home town claimed to have developed an atomic engine that fused hydrogen and lithium. Even got some scientist to say it was plausible. Had an atomic car in the window of a disused car show room and drove it around the city. Took investor money. Fled town. This smells like that.
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Could be. But remember those guys:
"The ability of palladium to absorb hydrogen was recognized as early as the nineteenth century by Thomas Graham.[16] In the late 1920s, two Austrian born scientists, Friedrich Paneth and Kurt Peters, originally reported the transformation of hydrogen into helium by spontaneous nuclear catalysis when hydrogen was absorbed by finely divided palladium at room temperature. However, the authors later retracted that report, acknowledging that the helium they measured was due to background from the air.[16][17]

In 1927, Swedish scientist J. Tandberg stated that he had fused hydrogen into helium in an electrolytic cell with palladium electrodes.[16] On the basis of his work, he applied for a Swedish patent for "a method to produce helium and useful reaction energy". After deuterium was discovered in 1932, Tandberg continued his experiments with heavy water. Due to Paneth and Peters' retraction, Tandberg's patent application was eventually denied.[16]"

Maybe they were on to something and stopped too early.
 
Chronopolitan said:
Could be. But remember those guys:
"The ability of palladium to absorb hydrogen was recognized as early as the nineteenth century by Thomas Graham.[16] In the late 1920s, two Austrian born scientists, Friedrich Paneth and Kurt Peters, originally reported the transformation of hydrogen into helium by spontaneous nuclear catalysis when hydrogen was absorbed by finely divided palladium at room temperature. However, the authors later retracted that report, acknowledging that the helium they measured was due to background from the air.[16][17]

In 1927, Swedish scientist J. Tandberg stated that he had fused hydrogen into helium in an electrolytic cell with palladium electrodes.[16] On the basis of his work, he applied for a Swedish patent for "a method to produce helium and useful reaction energy". After deuterium was discovered in 1932, Tandberg continued his experiments with heavy water. Due to Paneth and Peters' retraction, Tandberg's patent application was eventually denied.[16]"

Maybe they were on to something and stopped too early.
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See, the problem with a lot of these sorts of claims is, they never seem to pan out when you go looking for the original sources.

I went looking for patents by J. Tandberg, and I found a French one from the same time period:

FR646856A 1928-11-16 Improvements brought to the processes and means for the production of electrical energy*

which discusses using hydrogen, amongst other elements, and palladium electrodes to produce electricity. However, the processes he describes seem to be entirely chemical in nature. This patent also makes reference to earlier Swedish applications for the same subject matter.

Now, what is more likely, that he applied for a patent on a very similar subject matter, and just forgot to mention any nuclear reactions, or that someone much later on either didn't understand it, didn't have access to the whole document and just assumed it said what they hoped it would say, or that they deliberately misrepresented the patent?

Here's a hint: any time anyone discusses a patent, or patent application, and they can't or won't cite the document number as above, they're most likely lying or mistaken about what it says, and they might even be wrong about it even existing in the first place.



* I can't find a copy in any publicly available databases, as they usually don't go back that far, but I've downloaded the pdf of the original document, and a machine translation into English from a pay site I have access to. I could probably post excerpts if anyone is really keen to see them.
 
Chronopolitan said:
You missed the point, then made it. To my advantage :)

Rossi didn't care and just built the reactor and it produces heat. Voilà.
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But the KEY difference is that nobody really argued that bird did not fly on their own, whereas there is ton of evidence the proposed fusion do not work.

And that is what I meant when I say both are not comparable.
 
Chronopolitan said:
Well, let's take good ol Lord Kelvin again:

"Like many scientists, he did make some mistakes in predicting the future of technology.

Circa 1896, Lord Kelvin was initially skeptical of X-rays, and regarded their announcement as a hoax.[49] However, this was before he saw Röntgen's evidence, after which he accepted the idea, and even had his own hand X-rayed in May 1896.[50]

His forecast for practical aviation was negative. In 1896 he refused an invitation to join the Aeronautical Society, writing that "I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning or of expectation of good results from any of the trials we hear of." [51] And in a 1902 newspaper interview he predicted that "No balloon and no aeroplane will ever be practically successful."[52]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thomson,_1st_Baron_Kelvin


Reminds me of constant whining about what's "physically impossible".
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There is a huge difference between being unable to speculate whether EXISTING technology based on EXISTING science will take off and offer new wonderful development (where Kelvin failed) which is a lack of IMAGINATION ,and saying that no information can theoretically go over the speed of light c, a hard limit on the physical possible, a proposal which has never been shown false.
 
Chronopolitan said:
This seems too elaborate to be a hoax...
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Just as an aside, this does not follow. It's by no means unknown for hoax companies to produce fairly major engineering works to support the scam. My favourite example is the Holman Horror, http://www.aqpl43.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/holman/holman.htm, a completely pointless design claimed to increase the speed of a steam locomotive in order to attract investment from the gullible. Two locomotives were built ten years apart to the Holman company's designs, a major investment in time and money. The whole thing had no engineering merit whatsoever.

I'm not suggesting that Rossi is necessarily a charlatan, just that the "too elaborate to be a hoax" argument is a specious one; if it's a well-planned hoax, it would be designed to give exactly that impression.

Dave
 
I don't count the Holman as a hoax. There are a whole load of steam loco designs from that eare that are even more weird than the Holman. I think it was a rapidly developing technology and there were a lot of people with 'bright ideas' It was the same in the aviatiomn industry between the wars.
I think that areas like 'Cold Fusion' are in the same position as Railways and Aviation were in their day.
 
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Still, after having read the Caltech's Goodstein piece posted earlier in this thread, I think there is a chance that low energy fusion could occur under the right circumstances.
He states that the palladium would have to be H-loaded by a factor of .85 to get any excess heat.
I have also read somewhere else that stimulation of the palladium with certain EM or sound frequencies will assist the effect.
However, this has nothing to do with nickel.
 
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