| From: CHRIS Z | 29/06/00
23:33:12 |
| Subject: Cold Fusion? | post id:
91872 |
| Does anyone know the status of
cold fusion research? | |
| From: B.C. ® | 30/06/00
8:09:55 |
| Subject: re: Cold Fusion? | post id:
91929 |
| There are experiments still being
conducted in cold fusion but not with much success at present.It is still
looked on with disdain by the bulk of the scientific community.But then
again the scientific community, like the rest of us has been wrong
before. | |
| From: David Brennan | 30/06/00
10:50:38 |
| Subject: re: Cold Fusion? | post id:
91957 |
| BC, do you think this attitude is
because of the previous claims about CF, which turned out to be false and
the scienctific community doesn't want to be made to look foolish again,
or is it just they think that the research is a waste of time generally. I
freely admit I don't really understand the cold fusion research, but I
find the idea fascinating. It seems strnage to me that the broader
scientific community would dissmiss it out of hand for the failings of the
few in the past. David | |
| From: James Richmond (Avatar) | 30/06/00
15:53:23 |
| Subject: re: Cold Fusion? | post id:
92220 |
| In order to seriously investigate
cold fusion we first need some idea of how it could possibly work. We can
then investigate whether the idea is correct or not. At this stage, I
don't think anybody has any good ideas on cold fusion. The original cold fusion claims came from an experiment which was not specifically looking for cold fusion. The claim was that the experiment produced more energy than was put into it, and it was hypothesised that this was due to a hitherto unknown process which the authors called cold fusion. Their claims turned out to be false, and as far as I know their experiment didn't produce any useful leads as to how cold fusion might be made to work. It is always possible that cold fusion will crop up unexpectedly, but few people will go looking for it without at least some plan of attack. JR | |
| From: John Devers ® | 2/07/00
2:04:07 |
| Subject: re: Cold Fusion? | post id:
92933 |
| The story I heard was that one
way that was put foward was that hydrogen was forced through a block of
paladium which supposedly has holes in the crystal structure that are the
right radius to fuse two hydrogen atoms passing through at the same
time. | |
| From: Dr. Ed G (Avatar) | 2/07/00
3:47:41 |
| Subject: re: Cold Fusion? | post id:
92944 |
| That unfortunately wouldn't
explain it. The thing is that the difference between the available
chemical energy in any system and the amount of energy required to
surmount the barrier that stops two hydrogen nucleii from fusing is
MASSIVE ... and I mean REALLY, STUPENDOUSLY, BLOODY
MASSIVE!!!. And nothing that has been done explains or indicates how
this barrier might be overcome. If it were indeed true it would be
entirely inexplicable... and indeed even the few true believers admit
this. One of the reasons that so many scientists are so vitriolic with respect to cold fusion claims is that the media circus generated by, and original claims and behaviour of Pons and Fleischman was little short of complete and utter fraud. They behaved absolutely abominably. When in good faith other labs tried to test their claims they refused to let any of the vital experimental details be known. The original paper (which they'd submitted to beat a colleague with whom they'd previously agreed to publish simultaneously) was riddled with errors and scant on details. When the details were eventually brought to light the experimental set-up was shown to be woefully innapropriate, incorrectly used, and wildly inaccurate (the neutron counter was shown to be extremely sensitive to temperature changes induced by the ohmic heating of the apparatus, and a calorimetry was shown to have error bars that easily included the possibility that no excess heat was generated). And throughout Pons and Fleischman seemed to ardently refuse to accept that these facts might just possibly have some impact on the veracity of their results. Another is that when asked to explain such phenomena as the complete and utter lack of any significant neutron flux (if they were getting excess energy reading as the result of fusion, not only should they have seen many more neutrons than they claimed, they should in fact be dead), they seemed to simply make up ad hoc excuses at the spur of the moment and claim, "it doesn't matter, we've got fusion". It seems to me that the greatest hinderance to any chance of acceptance of the possibility of cold fusion by the wider scientific community were Pons and Fleischman, yet everything I've read by those who believe seems to hold them up as gods. Now, many of the remaining true believers claim bigger and better cells with more and more energy. This may indeed be the case, and indeed is worth serious investigation. However, I am still yet to see anything to convince me that there is anything even remotely similar to a nuclear process going on, and no reason to my mind that it couldn't be some as yet unknown obscure chemical phenomenon. Soupie twist, Ed G. | |
| From: John Devers ® | 2/07/00
4:12:21 |
| Subject: re: Cold Fusion? | post id:
92946 |
| It's something like 200 trillion
degree f or c for hot fusion isn't it? Then by my reasoning the process
would have to absorb this energy before it could be clssed as cold is that
right? did they claim to use any magnetic field to stop the paladium from
tearing apart? | |
| From: Dr. Ed G (Avatar) | 2/07/00
5:25:32 |
| Subject: re: Cold Fusion? | post id:
92950 |
| To be fair, you don't necessarily
need this sort of energy, per se, to get some hydrogen nucleii to
fuse. For example, if you could aim two hydrogen nucleii dead smack
perfect on each other each with about 10 keV of energy, you'd have a
pretty good chance that they'd fuse. The thing is that only a few of the
nucleii in the system need to fuse in order to start getting useful energy
out. Hot fusion works by the rather inefficient process of heating many many kazillions of hydrogen atoms up evenly, so that a few in the tail of the thermal distribution will have enough energy to fuse. Also, magnetic confinement isn't the only way to do this. A more probably useful means of getting this to happen is inertial confinement where a very small pellet of solid (bonded as a deuterated polymer, I believe) and gaseous deuterium are hit with a wacking great laser from all sides. So you don't need sort of thermonuclear temperatures in order to get the process to happen, and you won't neccessarily get thermonuclear bomb type temperatures out, but its much much much more difficult if you don't. That's why a sustainable fusion reactor is such a tricky thing to make. Soupie twist, Ed G. | |
| From: Dr. Ed G (Avatar) | 2/07/00
5:43:34 |
| Subject: re: Cold Fusion? | post id:
92951 |
| I guess I should also point out
the reason why it's so difficult to get hydrogen nucleii to fuse. The
reason is simple electrostatics. Hydrogen nucleii are just positively
charged protons, and positively charged particles repel unless they're
held together by some other force - in the case of a helium atom, the
nuclear force. Now, the nuclear force is an extremely short range force and doesn't start kicking in until two particles like protons and neutrons are really really really close together. You therefore have to overcome the electrostatic repulsion by some means to get this nuclear force to kick in... this is really really difficult. The traditional means of getting them close enough, as described in my previous post, is to simply whack them together really hard (i.e. with kinetic energy). The idea behind cold fusion as attempted by Pons and Fleischman was to use the coulombic shielding effects associated with the peculiar chemical bonding of either palladium or platinum which allows hydrogen atoms to come closer together than they normally would in say a gas. Platinum and palladium are well known to adsorb and concentrate hydrogen extremely well (and are featured in many designs for molecular hydrogen storage). However, no calculation has ever suggested that it would be close enough for hydrogen atoms to fuse, and the possible chemical energy in such a system is simply vanishingly too small for this ever to be likely. Of course, stranger things have happened in our time... but there are still many many question marks over current cold fusion research for it to be said categorically that this is actually happening indeed, IMHO. Soupie twist, Ed G. | |
| From: Bill Sherwood ® | 2/07/00
10:06:21 |
| Subject: re: Cold Fusion? | post id:
92969 |
| Sorry Dr Ed, but it is
happening - I have a number of magazine here that have a fair few number
of experiments that clearly show excess energy going on. Whether or not
it's some sort of fusion that's going is is still not clear, but there
have been many repeatable experiments that show that at least some fusion
has gone on. Yes, there are ones that run at near room temperature that show neutron production. Yes, there are one that show helium production. Yes, there are ones that show 'residue' os elements that were most definitely not there before. There is most defintitely some nuclear process going on that whilst unclear, is producing positive results. Again, I mention that there are kits that you can buy right now that show reliable and repeatable excess energy. True, the ratio of excess over unity is not high in most, only about 30% or so, but it is none the less there. I've got a good 20 or so magazines at home here if anyone would like to borrow them. Cheers, Bill Sherwood (Aviator) | |
| From: Bill Sherwood ® | 2/07/00
13:31:26 |
| Subject: re: Cold Fusion? | post id:
92999 |
| It may be, but I was
talking about 'Infinte Energy", which seems to be the official magazine
for the Cold Fusion effort. There's a lot I don't like in the magazine, but once you cut through the dross there's some really interesting stuff there. Cheers, Bill Sherwood (Aviator) | |
| From: Dr. Ed G (Avatar) | 3/07/00
0:32:34 |
| Subject: re: Cold Fusion? | post id:
93277 |
| Is that a true excess, or an
excess once various potential theoretical sources for extraneous energy
loss have been taken into account? Are we talking dangerous levels of neutrons or in a similar region as the background. If the experimenters didn't die of radiation sickness then the apparent excess energy cannot be by any known fusion process. If it is fusion it must be by an entirely new, inextricable, and previously unknown process. For my money if one has to invoke an unknown nuclear process, why not just invoke an unknown chemical process? Light elements are extremely difficult and dodgy things to detect. It seems to me that someone who desperately wants to believe could easily deceive themselves (and anyone else who cared to listen) that these things are present. Too many times in my relatively short career in science have I seen this sort of thing happen... and not just on an individual scale but on a discipline-wide scale. Sure, it could be the status-quo that are guilty of this, but the evidence I've seen I still find pretty underwhelming given the claim that there is a nuclear reaction going on. Soupie twist, Ed G. p.s. how much do these kits cost? | |
| From: Bill Sherwood ® | 5/07/00
8:32:08 |
| Subject: re: Cold Fusion? | post id:
94250 |
| (In LA right now - not much time
for a complete answer and I don't have the magazine with the experimental
results in front of me) Dr Ed - The way I read it, it's a true excess. The neutron level is somewhere in between background and dangerous levels. Certainly measurably above background. "but the evidence I've seen I still find pretty underwhelming given the claim that there is a nuclear reaction going on." Tsk, tsk - from what you've been writing, you haven't done very much research at all! :) In any case, how do you explain the helium production? Regards, Bill Sherwood (Aviator) | |
| From: Bill Sherwood ® | 7/07/00
5:11:28 |
| Subject: re: Cold Fusion? | post id:
95435 |
| Dr Ed - I should've been a bit
more wordy to explain the apparent excess energy - By '30% excess, what they mean is something like this; with the experiment in a ready-to-state, the temperature is very carefully monitored. They usually go on for some length as to the calibration & testing of thermometers & califorometers (?) to make very sure that they're not getting false readings at any point. The experiment then starts, and once stabilised (for lack of a better term) the temperature reached is usually a good 30% or so more than what could be explained by purely chemical reaction means. There is of course a chance that it could be some unexplained chemical reaction, but the excess energy tends to go on for quite some time, eg months. This is hard to explain by chemical means, and there is also the 'residue' of elements that were definitely not present (eg helium, etc) when the experiment started. This infers some sort of nuclear process, hence the term 'cold fusion'. It's obviously not fusion in the conventional sense, due to the lack of heat & neutrons, but there is none the less some sort of nuclear process going on that transforms light elements. Again, the experimenters are extremely careful with their measurements, as they are well aware that the results can be greatly affected by minor errors. CJW - Try emailing the magazine editor directly and see what he says about the last ten years being a fabrication - info@infinite-energy.com Regards, Bill Sherwood (Aviator) mailto:info@infinite-energy.com | |