Cold fusion gets cold shoulder from many scientists

S.F. Chronicle/WSJ ^ | 9/5/2003 | Sharon Begley

[Diogenesis]

If you worked out the equations you would see that the gamma radiation
shifts to the infrared where it is locked into the metal.

The biggest criticism of cold fusion was ... made up by those
who did not even bother to work out the numbers.

[tx_eggman]

Down ...

[MrNeutron1962]

"So, if you and an anchor are in a row boat in a swiming pool, and you throw the anchor overboard. Does the water level go up or down?

Down, unless the anchor floats, in which case it is not much of an anchor.

[Dead Dog]

Which is correct, however there are quite few people who will assume inuitively the opposite, and then formulate the numbers to prove it..usually using the same desnity for the anchor as for water.

I'll admit, I bit on it the first time. Intuition and unrecognized assumptions are the breeding ground for bad science and engineering.

[adam_az]

"Galileo was imprisoned by the catholic church for equivalent heresy against 'common knowledge'."

Not really imprisoned... it was house arrest of sorts, but he was an old and infirm man by then anyway and so didn't get out much as it was. Also, most of his friends were clergy, and he lived as the guest of a high ranking clergy friend of his.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Measured on the side of the pool, down.

[adam_az]

"No sooner had cold fusion surfaced than it was written off, and the idea of extracting virtually limitless free energy from water became taboo. So how come a small band of experienced researchers working for the US Navy just can't let it drop?"

Oh, this would be the same Navy that wants to use Microsoft Windows to run warships, even though the last few times they've tried, they had to have the ships hauled back to port. "Where do you want to go today?" "Drydock!"

[adam_az]

The biggest criticism of cold fusion was ... made up by those who did not even bother to work out the numbers.

Did you hear about the constipated physicist?

He worked it out with a sliderule.

[Doctor Stochastic]

It's the lack of neutrons that's the problem. That, and the change in the graphs of P&D after they were criticized.

Perhaps the researches can demonstrate a working model. If I like it, I'll buy it.

[onedoug]

I, for one, would love to hear smart physicists explain why the excess heat from the deuterium-filled palladium reflects not nuclear fusion but the release of mechanical energy -- sort of like letting go of a stretched spring.

I always wondered whether their wasn't some type of resonance phenomona occuring in some these experimental setups. That might even explain so many inconsistencies in results.

[MalcolmS]

>>>Columbus was ridiculed and ostracized for espusing the belief that the world was round. <<<

Commonly believed, but not actually, true. Everyone but the most backward believed that the world was round. This had been known since the times of Pythagoras in 500 BC. Around 200 BC, Eratosthenes correctly calculated the diameter of the globe.

Columbus's controversy was over the diameter of the globe. In order for his voyage to be feasible, he had to assume that the globe was much smaller than previously believed, otherwise he would not be able to carry enough supplies to cross the ocean. As it was Columbus was wrong, and only lived to tell the tale because North America lay where he thought China would be.

There is a great novelization of this story, tied into a time-travel story in Orson Scott Cards' "Pastwatch--the Redemption of Christopher Columbus".

Interesting Link for more on this topic.

http://www.bede.org.uk/flatearth.htm

[r9etb]

He worked it out with a sliderule.

And now we know why log-arithms are so very important....

[Physicist]

Some of the most intriguing research is by physicist Steven Jones of Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. Several years before Prof. Pons and Prof. Fleischmann, he reported low-temperature nuclear fusion, but virtually no excess heat. That made his cold fusion a big fizzle as an energy source, but much more acceptable to science.

"The question I get more than any other is, 'Are you still doing this?', " says Prof. Jones. "The answer is yes, and what we are seeing is very difficult to explain outside of cold fusion. The repeatability of these experiments now approaches 80 percent." Although he still detects no excess heat, the telltale signs of nuclear fusion "make us conclude that we are seeing new physics."

This is pathological reporting. The writer deliberately makes it sound as if Prof. Jones is working on the same thing as the Pons/Fleischmann cell-mates. He isn't. He's working on muon-catalyzed fusion, a method that was proposed by Andrei Sakharov back in the 1940's. There is almost no connection between the two approaches; the success of one approach carries no implication about the prospects for the other.

But the real pathology is the breakdown of the normal channels of scientific communication, with no scientists outside the tight-knit cold-fusion tribe bothering to scrutinize its claims.

Horse hockey. Cold fusion was scrutinized, thoroughly, back when it was announced. Scientists gave the claims of Pons and Fleischmann a fair and exhaustive hearing, and discovered that the claims were without merit. Physicists are under NO obligation to give the subject any more consideration than that, until the cold fusion tribalists come up with compelling new evidence. But it had better be damned compelling. So far it isn't.

[Rodney King]

Cold fusion is real.

Evidently Physicist diagrees with you (see post #33). But I'm sure you know more about physics than he does.

[Diogenesis]

He did not report on muon fusion. You should be less disingenuous.
... if it will not break your momentum.

[Physicist]

You tell me what he's famous for.

[Diogenesis]

Actually, the neutron emission state is more than 1 MeV above the helium first excited nuclear state.
Do you really believe that there is enough energy at room temperature to achieve that?
At hot fusion temperatures, no problem. Not at room temperature.

[Diogenesis]

I actually heard his lecture on last Monday.
I spoke with him afterwards. Please check your facts, FReeper.

[D Rider]

Galileo was imprisoned by the catholic church

To be fair, this was the result of the scientific community's petitioning of the Church, due to Galileo's theorizing and proving Aristotle wrong.

[New Energy Foundation]

Sharon Begley's "Science Journal" column in today's Wall Street Journal (Friday, Sept 5, 2003, p.B1) is a commentary, not a news account, about the Tenth International Conference on Cold Fusion (ICCF10), which was held in Cambridge, MA Aug 24-29, 2003. Ms. Begley attended ICCF10 for the first two days of the conference proper -- 9/25-26.

Her piece is bannered: "Cold Fusion Isn't Dead, It's Just Withering from Scientific Neglect."

Don’t look for detailed understanding of what went on at ICCF10. It is not there, so in some sense this column, though we very much appreciate its appearance at all, in effect does for cold fusion what the columnist is lamenting! Ms. Begley writes: "What these claims need is critical scrutiny by skeptics. That is how science normally functions. But in Cold Fusion, it isn't. And that's the worst pathology of all." At another point she writes, "But the real pathology is the breakdown of the normal channels of scientific communication, with no scientists outside the tight-knit cold fusion tribe bothering to scrutinize its claims."

Indeed it is a terrible pathology that scientific papers on cold fusion/low-energy nuclear reactions are rejected outright -- WITHOUT REVIEW -- at publications such as Science, Nature and Physical Review. But science journalists must also be faulted -- not just the obstructing scientists. Science journalists should be holding the establishment's feet to the fire -- requiring Establishment mouthpieces to provide *detailed scientific responses* -- not just bigoted blather-- to the on-going, highly successful cold fusion/LENR experiments.

What happened to the "good old days" at the Wall Street Journal when Jerry Bishop (now retired) felt it the duty of science journalism to report the FACTS -- what was reported at a particular conference and "to hell" with what the critics were saying, though these were appropriately given their space in Bishop's exemplary reporting. I hope that The Wall Street Journal wakes up -- but don't hold your breath. Bishop had told me before he retired that the Journal editors were holding him back from more extensive coverage.

Still, we are grateful that an intelligent reporter, Sharon Begley, attended some of the conference and put her finger on the central problem facing the CF/LENR field. For this, we thank her.

For those who might be surprised by the dearth of information on the conference in the Wall Street Journal coverage -- they perhaps expected a more extensive news account—- below I offer my editorial for Infinite Energy #51 (Sept.-Oct. 2003), which providing some highlights.

Dr. Eugene F. Mallove
New Energy Foundation, Inc.
Infinite Energy Magazine
P.O. Box 2816
Concord, NH 03302-2816

Ph: 603-485-4700
Fx: 603-485-4710
www.infinite-energy.com


*****

ICCF10: A Message from the Front
by Dr. Eugene Mallove
Editor in Chief, Infinite Energy Magazine www.infinite-energy.com

As we send this issue of Infinite Energy to our printing company in Manchester, New Hampshire in early September, we have just returned from the exhilarating Tenth International Conference on Cold Fusion (ICCF10) in Cambridge, Massachusetts — very near and also at MIT. Yes, there was an historic set of excess-heat-producing cold fusion demonstrations at Prof. Peter L. Hagelstein’s offices at MIT in the Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science! There is a staggering amount of news about cold fusion and low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR) to report from the conference —a lot to digest even for a veteran attendee of ICCF’s. Time and space do not allow a lengthy report in this Infinite Energy, but it is likely that by the time you receive this issue I will have posted a special review of ICCF10 on our web site www.infinite-energy.com. Of course, there will be a full hard-copy report in the next issue of the magazine (out in November), and readers should also consult the material being posted on www.lenr-canr.org. Infinite Energy’s non-profit New Energy Foundation, Inc. plans to offer soon one or more DVD’s that will highlight important conference lectures — and possibly a set of DVD’s covering the entire conference.

For now and to whet your appetite for more information, here are some of the high points to be taken from ICCF10:

• During ICCF10, Dr. Mitchell Swartz’s Fleischmann/Pons-type electrolytic palladium Phusor/low electrolyte conductance heavy water/platinum cell performed flawlessly in Prof. Hagelstein’s lab at MIT. Its excess power ranged from 167% to 267% as Dr. Swartz altered the experimental conditions. This excess heat, as measured by his precision calorimeter, persisted from Sunday August 24 to August 30, longer than ICCF10 itself. The excess heat was interrupted on the last day only to bring the equipment back to Wellesley, MA— otherwise it would have continued much longer.

•Prof. John Dash of the physics department at Portland State University in Oregon and his summer high school student interns also put on historic demonstrations of excess heat at Prof. Hagelstein’s lab. They used simple but effective calorimetric apparatus, which allowed observers to check the level of excess heat for themselves. This proves that even high-school students can be more effective on the frontiers of science than the US Department of Energy and the 1,000-plus MIT professors who did not attend ICCF10. Only two MIT professors attended — Prof. Hagelstein and ex-Prof. Keith Johnson, both of whom have been involved in the field since its early days. (This, despite the 150 to 200 ICCF10 posters that I had earlier placed around MIT and a prominent ad in the Boston Globe which Prof. Hagelstein paid for from his personal funds.) Only a few MIT students showed up —outnumbered by the high-school students in Prof. Dash’s group from Portland State University in Oregon. (It should be noted that both the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald chose to boycott the conference, despite having been repeatedly alerted about its significance.)

•What is now being called the Letts-Cravens Effect— excess heat stimulated by laser light irradiation of cold fusion electrolytic cell cathodes—has now been independently observed by three outside groups: Dr. Michael McKubre of SRI International, Dr. Edmund Storms in New Mexico, and Dr. Mitchell Swartz in Wellesley, Massachusetts. This phenomenon, you may recall, was the subject of the “Fire from Water” cover story in the last issue of IE. Low-level laser light power is input and a huge excess power excess emerges, for example: 30 milliwatts input, 1 watt output (a 30-fold multiplication of input power). This is evidently a highly repeatable effect—one that has the potential of breaking though into numerous other labs around the world.

• Dr. James Patterson and his colleagues from Sarasota, Florida revealed a stunningly simple, robust and ingenious gas-phase cold fusion reactor that has produced excess heat for months on end. Full details will be provided to the public in the near term; he is not seeking patent protection at this point.

•Helium-4 correlated with excess heat has been observed now in a solid-state LENR device by a laboratory effort sponsored by the Italian government.

•The astonishing nuclear transmutation experiment carried out by the Iwamura group at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Advanced Technology Division, which was reported in Infinite Energy (No.47, pp.14-18) and later published in the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics has now been reproduced by the A. Takahashi group at Osaka University. In this experiment, deuterium (heavy hydrogen) gas is made to flow through a palladium membrane onto which another element, such as cesium or strontium, has been deposited. With no energy input (other than the pressure of the gas) the deposited element transmutes to another element. For example, cesium declines and the rare earth element praesodymium appears and grows. Or, strontium declines and molybdenum grows. The term “grow” is appropriate, since to make the new elements, it is necessary for the starting nuclei to “absorb” four deuterium nuclei! Obviously, this flies completely in the face of every cannon of basic chemistry, but the evidence for the result is now overwhelming. It is nothing short of modern alchemy.

•Finally, we are delighted to report that a company in Israel, Energetics Technologies Limited, which began its multi-million dollar cold fusion effort only two years ago, has already achieved excess heat in a variety of processes. Funded by investors in the United States, the fifteen-member staff of Energetics Technologies Limited is aiming directly at the commercialization of the technology. The leader of the effort Dr. Arik El-Boher made a stunning presentation at ICCF10, which caused many jaws to drop.

There is much more, but I need to end these highlights. Though the “cold fusion war” has not yet been won— and it could still be lost, the field seems to have picked itself up with the remarkable turning point of ICCF10. ICCF11 will be in Marseilles, France in October 2004.