Cold Fusion Gets a Little More Real

FORBES ^ | 10/20/2012 @ 10:25PM | Mark Gibbs, Contributor

[BenLurkin]

Cold fusion, otherwise called Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR), is, theoretically, the fusing together (rather than a chemical reaction) of elements at “normal” temperatures such that they release more energy than is required to fuse them.

This is an idea that is incredibly appealing because if it could be achieved it would provide mankind with, again in theory, incredibly cheap energy. In practice, there could be drawbacks such as pollution and radiation but until cold fusion is actually demonstrated and developed, no one knows.

Hot fusion, on the other hand, is the process by which elements would be fused together at temperatures and pressures only found naturally in stars.

While hot fusion, yet again theoretically, would create more energy than it would to induce fusion the conditions required are so extreme that rather than a simple test tube it requires machines the size of houses and enormous supporting facilities that bring the whole project up to factory scale (see the National Ignition Facility). Hot fusion is also guaranteed to have radioactive waste products.

Unfortunately it turned out that the Fleischmann and Pons experiment was not reliably reproducible. In the academic fracas that followed, both men’s reputations were ruined and the field was quickly relegated to the domain of “fringe” science along with perpetual motion, telekinesis, and anti-gravity.

While mainstream science was apparently quite happy with this situation and went about spending billions of dollars on “hot” fusion (there are many who claim that cold fusion was systematically marginalized and deprecated by establishment scientists), a few “rogue” researchers continued with cold fusion research and, over the last few years, evidence has piled up that cold fusion may, in fact, be real.

I wrote “may … be real” because until recently the evidence looked promising but hardly conclusive.

[BRL]

Someone had some space to fill and a deadline.

[Steely Tom]

So I guess that when MIT lead a full-court press among academic physics departments all over the world to marginalize, denigrate and discredit cold fusion back in 1989 by means of an unprecedented phone, FAX and e-mail campaign... I guess that was 100%... absolute, unadulterated... BS. As in nonsense. As in untruth. As in big fat lie.

[Da Coyote]

There is Obamaloon level physics, and there is the standard model.

I’ll take the standard model for $500, John.

[Standing Wolf]

...announced that they had achieved this phenomena in a test tube in their lab.

"Phenomena" is the plural of "phenomenon." Forbes can't afford to hire a copy editor?

[mikrofon]

<>

[muawiyah]

Forbes is one of the few embers of a dying technology ~ the printing press.

They'll say anything to sell paper.

[Bogie]

Try and keep an open mind, there is some strange stuff at the sub atomic level.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRcpDlFnAQ0

[Bogie]

Try and keep an open mind, there is some strange stuff at the sub atomic level.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRcpDlFnAQ0

[hadaclueonce]

In 1969 I was told cold fusion was just 30 years away

In 1979 I was told cold fusion was just 10 years away

In 1989 I was told cold fusion was just 20 years away

In 1999 I was told cold fusion was just 10 years away

In 2009 I was told cold fusion was just 10 years away

Folks, I am running out of time here. Put up or shut up. I know your grant is a sweet thing, but at least make a spark.

[RetiredTexasVet]

Wasn’t there some poster on this site that used to pimp some Italian who was going to imminently offer mega-watt cold fusion units. Something about him not being able to pass an independent test without pixie dust, if I remember correctly!

[BenLurkin]

All I know is that Cold Fusion generates the same kind of harangues that the Crevo-Evo threads once did. Figured I'd give folks something to post about on a Sunday night.

[Jack Hydrazine]

The U.S. Navy has been studying it for some time and think that there is something to it.

[Citizen Tom Paine]

In my book, cold fusion was/is electrochemistry. A characteristic of electrical expreiments are that they are hard to duplicate because they are critically dependent on the apparatus used. So, cold fusion requires the proper setup to get it going. Apparently, many researchers didn’t/don’t have the experience or the skilled glass blowers to make the apparatus. I will give you an 85% probability it will will work with the proper equipment.

[muawiyah]

My bet's on iron hydride battery anodes ~ many of the experiments that've shown a surplus of energy output have had them somewhere in the series.

By constructing these devices in thin layers divided with graphene you can get phenomenal improvements in simple battery performance ~ try: http://www.torquenews.com/1080/battery-thomas-edison-invented-finding-new-life-cars for starters! (that's a pun)

Rossi's industrial size battery case ordinarily contained some quite ordinary iron hydride anodes ~ but he'd modified pieces of the circuitry ~ by themselves a full load of batteries could hold and discharge an appreciable amount of energy for about 5.5 hours (the time period he held his experiment to).

If he was getting more charge out of the units than he put into them I'd look at something besides his jumba juice and nickel powder ~ maybe some part chock a bloc full of nanoparticles of some kind ~ maybe even produced by accident, but otherwise reliably produced in some quite understandable but ignored process.

Folks have been working with these super high capacity units for in-line emergency power sources for a couple of decades ~ and the newer graphene sheet augmented units do the same job and more ~ graphene appears to have almost magical power (according to some of the guys working with it) and has been proposed for inclusion in hot fusion operations as well ~ for what purpose?

Now's the time to pick up the battery cases (about 1/4 the size of an international transportation container) and anodes ~ they've quit subsidizing the windmills which were one of the major users of the newst sorts of storage batteries. They were smoothing the power output with them.

[muawiyah]

In 1953 I was told hot fusion power was but 25 years away. In 2012 I was told that it is now 30 years away.

That's after the world has poured hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars down a rathole.

[dangerdoc]

Are you talking about hot fusion.

1950, only 30 years away

1980, only 30 years away

2012, only 30 years away.

P&F cold fusion was a child of the 80’s

[hinckley buzzard]

When I was in high school, I won an essay contest sponsored by our local utility, and a trip to the "National Youth Conference on the Atom." The symposia we attended, as "promising young scientists" were series of talks by leading university professors at the time. One of them was titled "Fusion: Energy forever?" by scientists from University of Illinois and Argonne National Laboratories. It was made apparent to us then that fusion was just a few years around the corner. The year of the conference was 1962.

[Olog-hai]

The digital media can’t last in stand-alone form.

Technology does not always go forward; remember the Concorde?

[hinckley buzzard]

The U.S. Navy has been studying it for some time and think that there is something to it.

The CIA studied "remote viewing" for some time and thought there was something to it. There wasn't. Just because some lame-brain happens to work for the government doesn't mean he/she/they know shit from ice cream.