How I Made Money from Cold Fusion

Exclusive Article for Free Republic | 1/23/10 | Kevmo

[Kevmo]

Freeper gets a fascinating contract listed on Intrade, bets that the experiment will be replicated, and cashes in.

[Kevmo]

for your various ping lists

[Tijeras_Slim]

Seems like a lot of work compared to waiting for “Obama Money”.

[mnehring]

I got a fascinating tip on a horse at Louisiana Downs that it would win. Got fifty bucks off that one. :->

[Gator113]

Very interesting and very cool.

Now, if you want to save on taxes, skip the middle man and send me the free money direct. ;>)

Thank for posting this.

[Kevmo]

In your instance, did society gain anything from your efforts?

How many times did you find yourself saying to other bettors that if they’re so confident the horse wouldn’t win, why not put the money down?

[mnehring]

did society gain anything from your efforts?

Absolutely, people enjoyed a good race and I tipped the $50 to a cute waitress at Superior Bar and Grill later. :->

[DesertRhino]

Ok, the point of fusion is to generate power unless you just want a physics parlor trick. So if you can do fusion and not create heat, whats the point?

Whats next, non-combustible gasoline?

[smokingfrog]

Uh. I thought you were talking about software.

[fireman15]

“So if you can do fusion and not create heat, whats the point?”

Cold Fusion creates heat. That is the point. Hot fusion takes place at incredibly high temperatures and pressures such as in an H-bomb.

[DesertRhino]

What temperature range is considered “cold fusion”?

[dfwgator]

LOL, me too.

[fireman15]

From the original article, this took place at approximately 70°C. I believe the difficulty here is proving the excess heat didn’t come completely from a chemical reactions.

From a practical standpoint the question is... can a configuration be found where the process will produce enough heat to make it worthwhile as an energy source?

“The process consisted of Arata and his co-researcher Yue-Chang Zhang, forcing deuterium gas under pressure into an evacuated cell. The cell contains palladium dispersed in zirconium oxide. Arata claims the deuterium is absorbed by the Palladium sample to produce dense or “pynco” deuterium. The deuterium nuclei are then close enough to fuse releasing heat and helium. After the injection of deuterium gas, the temperature rose to about 70 °C, which according to Arata was due to both chemical and nuclear reactions. With the gas turned off the temperature in the centre of the cell remained significantly warmer than the cell wall for 50 hours.”

[DesertRhino]

So then the goal is not really to do it with no heat at all,, it’s more to be able to throttle it down to something far less than that of an H-bomb, but still hot enough to use for say ,,steam generation, like a nuke plant?

But not really totally room temperature being the final goal?

[fireman15]

Theoretically any reaction that produces a temperature differential could be harnessed as a useful form of energy. It doesn’t really matter what the temperature of the reaction takes place at or even if you are creating cold or heat. Processes could be engineered to harness any energy that was cheap enough and plentiful enough. At this point in time however there just is nothing cheaper and more convenient than burning hydrocarbons for most applications. Other than nuclear and hydroelectric there really are very few other alternative energy sources that even come close.

[ml/nj]

self ping

[fireman15]

I don't feel like I really answered your question very well. The way that cold fusion most likely would be harnessed would most likely be nothing like a traditional nuclear power plant.

Scientists have been working for decades on hot fusion experiments because theoretically the fuel which is most commonly some form of hydrogen would be both plentiful and cheap. Unfortunately it is very difficult to create a sustainable hot fusion reaction. If perfected this might be similar in appearance to traditional nuclear power.

The hope for cold fusion is that a reaction could be designed that could be maintained in a very small reactor that would produce a useful amount of energy. We are talking about something that might range from a traditional power plant down to something that might be similar to a laptop battery that would produce power for years instead of store power for a few hours. Unfortunately, after a some false starts no one has come close to achieving this goal so far.

[fireman15]

Thank you for posting this interesting information. I remember when Fleischmann–Pons created the big stir in 1989. It is unfortunate that so many charlatans, Hollywood writers, evirowackos and conspiracy theorists have latched onto cold fusion to promote their agendas. Lets hope something will eventually come from it.

[jwparkerjr]

re: such as in an H-bomb

You make that sound like a bad thing.

[Kevmo]

Where do you get the idea that heat was not created?

Beaudette, C.G., “Excess Heat: Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed.” 2002: Oak Grove Press

The full text of this book is now available in the LENR-CANR Library:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BeaudetteCexcessheat.pdf