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Cold Fusion breakthrough?

Travis

Misanthrope of the Mountains
Travis
Joined
Mar 31, 2007
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From:http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/2009032...ergynuclear;_ylt=As5DG2mYm7J_PP2is0ZygoQPLBIF

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Researchers at a US Navy laboratory have unveiled what they say is "significant" evidence of cold fusion, a potential energy source that has many skeptics in the scientific community.

The scientists on Monday described what they called the first clear visual evidence that low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR), or cold fusion devices can produce neutrons, subatomic particles that scientists say are indicative of nuclear reactions.

In the past cold fusion turned out to be woo. Anyone know the validity of the new claims?
 
Travis said:
In the past cold fusion turned out to be woo. Anyone know the validity of the new claims?
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Well, we go back to the "exceptional claims...". I do hope that it's true, and I'm sure a lot of people are jumping at it right now. I'll wait for an independent verification before getting too excited.


Holy crap, cold fusion:jaw-dropp Let it be true...let it be true... let it be true...:covereyes
 
Wow. From a credible laboratory.

Last time I was the only one in my circle of friends and acquaintances excited about the prospect of the most significant scientific discovery of 50 years or more. The disappointment was extreme, so I will also wait before popping the champagne.
 
The USNL have been working on cold fusion since the Pons/Fleischmann debacle. As far as I've ever been able to tell, P&F actually did get an effect of some kind. It was independently replicated a number of times, but then labs started tightening the controls and the effect disappeared. There was no real evidence that it was actually fusion going on (anyone remember the sonic bubbles?) but there was an effect of some kind.

It doesn't at all surprise me that the USNL have finally been able to announce something. It's taken them long enough.
 
Well I'll wait for the paper, if any, but it seems like the number of neutrons and therefore the rate of nuclear reactions (and therefore the power output) would be rather low.
 
arthwollipot said:
{snip} As far as I've ever been able to tell, P&F actually did get an effect of some kind. It was independently replicated a number of times, but then labs started tightening the controls and the effect disappeared. There was no real evidence that it was actually fusion going on (anyone remember the sonic bubbles?) but there was an effect of some kind. {snip}
Click to expand...
Perhaps; but I suspect it was just ordinary electrolysis that was over-interpreted. Gary Taubes wrote a book on the debacle: http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Science-S...=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237984981&sr=1-4

The fusion process should have produced helium-3, tritium, neutrons, gamma rays and excess heat. None of the other labs that reported promising results ever detected more than one of those. It is said that nobody can simultaneously muff five measurements.

Also, P&F interfered with attempts by local physicists to corroborate their results. In one case, a detector left running in their lab went off "during a power failure" and was not switched back on. In another case, a grad student called the physicist (one night) to say a nuclear reaction was in progress, and the guy made a detector (that always needs to be fresh). When he got to P&F's lab, it was abandoned and locked because P or F "told the student to go home rather than stay alone in the lab at night."

Those problems stemmed from the fact that the onset of the "nuclear" reaction was not automatic. They never knew when a cell would kick into action; so a person could not just walk in when they turned the cell 'on' and measure the results. Nobody managed to visit the lab during one of those events, although P or F told a guy in Texas that they had an active cell at the moment; whereas, lab records did not back-up that claim.

Finally, they spent $100,000 over several years to investigate this supposed reaction of heavy water (deuterium oxide) and never bothered to set up a control cell with regular water!!?? That is enough reason to think they were seeing nothing out of the ordinary.
 
I thought the debacle is over whether there is a net out put of energy exceeding the input? Not so much whether it is possible to force one atom to fuse. But then, I guess if it takes gigawatts to fuse one atom, said atom will not be at room temperature anymore either...
 
Military research labs often venture into woo.

And they often do not release enough details to replicate anything they claim to have done.

I'll wait until the USS Barack Obama is launched in 2023 with its cold fusion energy cells before I'll get excited by this sort of thing again.
 
Two points here. Firstly, so far this announcement seems to be about as valid as the first round, so I wouldn't be getting my hopes up just yet.

Secondly, cold fusion is not necessarily as great as it's made out to be, even assuming it works. What is important for generating power is how much energy you get out compared to how much you put in. If cold fusion can only produce a small amount of power, it may not be any use at all. Hot fusion has already proven that it can produce power, although whether it can be made practical to extract it and be commercially viable is still a tricky question. And obviously fission, fossil fuels and various renewables all do fairly well in this regard.

So far all cold fusion has shown is that there may be a few neutrons produced. No useful amount of energy has been seen, or even predicted theoretically. If fusion can be shown to be actually happening it would certainly be interesting. Unfortunately, interesting things can often turn out to be completely pointless.
 
I would also recommend this one.

H[SIZE=-1]UIZENGA[/SIZE], J. R. (1993) Cold Fusion: the Scientific Fiasco of the Century, revised edition. Oxford University Press

Rolfe.
 
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Cuddles said:
Hot fusion has already proven that it can produce power, although whether it can be made practical to extract it and be commercially viable is still a tricky question.
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Yeah, some way to capture all the energy in those neutrons blasting out of the reactor, and some way to remove all that (wanted) heat.

Some way to get fusion to blast the alphas in one direction and the betas in the other, yeah, that's the ticket. Err just a problem there or two.
 
What are the cosmological implications if cold fusion turned out to be possible?
 
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