Cold fusion gets cold shoulder from many scientists

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

[Physicist]

I actually heard his lecture on last Monday.

Uh, huh. And what did he do before Pons & Fleischmann?

[Diogenesis]

Not relevant to the conversation. You clearly are diverting for some reason.
Care to elaborate?

[DannyTN]

And then the money would be mine! Mine! ALL MINE!

Unless of course, you need money to continue your research, and then you are just a miserable poor broke pariah on the established scientific community. An outcast from the wrong side of science, chasing impossible dreams, an obvious fraud, a charlatran, a blight on more credentialed scientists. A subject for ridicule and jeer, ostracized by scientific journals and associations alike.

No the money won't be all yours. There won't be any money. Your children will know that you invented it, but others who are better funded will take your work and duplicate and expand on it. They will make your money. Your name if it's not a subject of ridicule forever, won't be vindicated for at least 50 years.

[punster]

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

Sorry, radiation shielding does not work that way. Example: Cobalt-60 is a metal, and the gamma rays do not shift into the infrared. It would be most foolhardy to stand next to an unshielded cobalt 60 source capsule for a medical teletherapy unit. The typical source size is on the order of ten to the fifteenth dps. The radiation field is about 100 rads per minute (at one meter) delivered to biological tissue. A lethal dose would be delivered in about 5 minutes.

By the way, I have run the equations for energy yield on the deuterium-deuterium reaction. I did calculate what the resulting neutron flux would be and what the resulting gamma field would be.

It would require a healthy amount of shielding to protect the researchers, if a fusion reaction did really occur.

[Physicist]

Read again the passage I quoted, more carefully this time. It talks about the research he did in the years before Pons and Fleischmann, as if it were relevant to the topic at hand. That research was purely muon-catalyzed fusion.

[longshadow]

"Festival of True Believers" placemarker

[Old Professer]

The anchor will displace the same amount of water, in or out of the boat as long as the boat is in the water.

[justlurking]

That was my first thought, too. But, then I wasn't so sure. My reasoning:

With the anchor in the boat, the boat will displace additional water (equal to the weight of the anchor).

Throw the anchor in the water, and the anchor will displace water equal to the volume of the anchor. The boat will rise, no longer displacing the additional water that could be attributed to the weight of the anchor.

The catch: the anchor is much denser than water. So, while in the boat, it will displace more water than when the anchor is in the water. So, the water level should lower.

[PatrickHenry]

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

Not quite. Galileo was compelled to confess heresy, which indicates that Aristotle wasn't central to the trial. In fact, it was scriptural passages that were used as evidence against Galileo. True, Aristotle also thought the earth was immovable, but the trial wasn't about him.
The Crime of Galileo: Indictment and Abjuration of 1633.

[The_Media_never_lie]

Cold fusion will attract attention when real usable results are produced.

Maybe usuable results could be produced if only c.f. could attract attention. I suspect that it would take a lot of money and might not yield much, so maybe there is reason for this neglect.

[Diogenesis]

You are confusing radiation shielding with bremsstrahlung.

BTW, the 100 rads per minute is a radiation dose rate.
And your calculation for lethality implies that the individual would have access to fairly impressive
medicine to survive that dose delivered.

You are incorrect as to the neutron flux at room temperature from fusion.

Although you are correct regarding the shielding required for a Co-60 source,
there is not required neutron shielding form cold fusion
and an understanding of the physics explains why.

[Diogenesis]

The author of the article in this thread discussed Jones recent work.

Take a look at the right lower side here

[edwin hubble]

Diogenesis,
I think you can be confident of this:
In the end... no phenomena can be suppressed.
No breakthrough can really be hidden.

Researchers are working on this all around the world.
Too much good would come of a positive result.

I have seen attempts to repeat the Pons and Fleischman experiments back in the 1980's. I am aware of the Patterson Patents. But you must admit that in the last 15 years low temperature nuclear phenomena hasn't reached the engineering application phase (as high temp superconductivity has).

Like excaliber... if it is there, it will come out for all to see.

So either it will be or will not be.

And nothing said here tonight will change that outcome.
(Whatever that outcome finally is.)

[PatrickHenry]

P L A C E M A R K E R

[<1/1,000,000th%]

So when are they building the prototype power plant?

[punster]

"there is not required neutron shielding form cold fusion
and an understanding of the physics explains why."

The preferred reaction yields helium 3 plus a neutron. The reason deals with conservation of momentum. There is about 17 MEV of energy released per reaction. Most of that energy will go to the neutron. A plus 10 MEV neutron is considered a fast neutron.

The usual arangement for shielding from fast neutrons is a lot of water or high hydrogen content material, such as paraffin, followed by a layer of lead or other high atomic number material. Why? When the fast neutron finally slows to thermal energy, it is absorbed by a hydrogen atom, yielding deuterium plus a gamma ray. This is all basic health physics.

[Diogenesis]

"The preferred reaction yields helium 3 plus a neutron. The reason deals with conservation
of momentum. There is about 17 MEV of energy released per reaction. Most of that energy will go to the neutron. A plus 10 MEV neutron is considered a fast
neutron. "

Indeed it is. And I have seen the bad impact of neutrons on humans.
Nonetheless, the reaction path which you mention is not generally observed for cold fusion,
although some researchers have been working with US laboratories to look for He3.

"The usual arangement for shielding from fast neutrons is a lot of water or high hydrogen
content material, such as paraffin, followed by a layer of lead or other high atomic number material.
Why? When the fast neutron finally slows to thermal energy, it is absorbed by a hydrogen atom, yielding deuterium plus a gamma ray.
This is all basic health physics."

Yes it is. But it is also not relevant to cold fusion.
Sorry, you are wrong, not about your comments per se regarding neutrons,
but about the relevance to cold fusion.
You may be one of the few people to know the difference between the photoelectric region, Compton region,
and pair-production regions of ionizing radiation,
but your neutron comments do not apply to cold fusion.

[punster]

"Nonetheless, the reaction path which you mention is not generally observed for cold fusion, although some researchers have been working with US laboratories to look for He3."

Maybe you can prove that the product is helium 4. However, energy of over 10 million electron volts will be released. It will not be as thermal energy, it will be emitted in the form of gamma radiation. It will not degrade into infrared or thermal energy. I will grant that if the shield is thick enough you can trap almost all of the energy, and that will heat the shield. You are still talking about on the order of a trillion reactions for each joule of energy released. That means there will be a considerable gamma flux generated.

My complaint about cold fusion is the advocates do not even consider radiation safety concerns in their advocacy.

[Diogenesis]

It does make helium-4 and in nearly the expected amount for the excess heat generated.
The lattice couples to the excited nuclear
state and the energy is drained through phonons to the lattice
as heat.

Your complaint is unfounded as the researchers have considered
and even more importantly MEASURED the emissions for many years.

[D Rider]

Not quite. Galileo was compelled to confess heresy, which indicates that Aristotle wasn't central to the trial...

Yes, But Aristotle was by, then woven into church doctrine, hence heresy. Much like those that are confronted when proposing idea's outside of accepted evolutionary theory, hence not scientific. ; ) By the way, scripture can also be used to defend Galileo.

In any case, you are probably aware that during the inquisition, defendants were not necesarilly told what the charges were, and were thus not able to mount a credible defence. In Galileo's case, he was given a choice: sign or burn. The whole thing was manipulated, and it was not instigated by the church.