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Cold Fusion

  
  

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Lionheart
09:30 / 29.08.01
I'm starting this thread because in the past 5 minutes I've read 2 articles that deny that cold fusion exists. They deny this by saying that in 1989 a group of scientists said that they've discovered cold fusion but their experiments could not be replicated. i'm reading this and going...bullshit. Their experiments were replicated in 1992. It turned out that the original group of scientists failed to specify that they used a specific form of a certain chemical.

I've got the information from an April '92 issue of Popular Science. Now, a year back i posted the same information but somebody replied that Popular Science isn't reliable because it is a mainstream science publication. I've no idea how that lessens the credibility of the article that gives you the plans for the cold fusion device.
 
 
Enamon
09:30 / 29.08.01
My problem with Cold Fusion is that there are better ways out there to obtain so called "Free Energy". Cold Fusion research should be conducted, however the goal in mind should not be the creation of a new, limitless power source but instead the study and gradual understanding and replication of low-energy nuclear processes.
 
 
Lex
09:30 / 29.08.01
Sorry BUT how wants free or at least cheap energy?

Go find some of the Tesla sites.
Free energy...HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHHAHAAHHAHA

[ 29-08-2001: Message edited by: Tom Coates ]
 
 
Tom Coates
10:26 / 29.08.01
OK. My feelings on this:

1) If Cold Fusion works then SOMEONE is using it. 'Free' energy is too good an idea for someone not to be utilising an approach that actually functions properly.

2) while I believe that it would be in the interests of a large number of people to hide successful attempts at cold fusion, I'm not sure that it could easily be done. The people concerned have published lots of their results - if enough people believed it possible, then someone else would have done it by now based on the other guys initial research. Again - worth a fortune to the person who invented it, world-changing stuff.

3) Therefore, EITHER it doesn't work, or it's been disinformationised. I think the latter is possible, but unlikely. THere's too much scope for paranoia in that kind of thinking.

4) And we want free energy because i) it stops us having to cut down forests, dig for oil, burn things etc for power, and is hence considerable less environmentally damaging. ii) cheap energy means cheap construction, cheap products, higher energy output devices. Which in turn means incredible advances in high-energy requiring sciences, more plausible long-term space-travel, cheaper costs of living, increased living standards for impoverished countries, etc. etc. etc. Seems like a good thing to me...
 
 
the Fool
11:11 / 29.08.01
it seems like a good thing but what about the oil companies, mining companies and what is a good thing to them.

if such an invention could exist it is a direct threat to their profits and their investors profits.

it would be in their interests to control such an invention. with the considerable resources available to multinational corporations this would not be a difficult thing.

only when there is no more profit derived from what they are doing now would they want to see the appearance of an invention that replaces them.
 
 
Lex
19:54 / 29.08.01
What did you do Tom???better Fool you know:may point exactly just getting tiered to point it out.

Even if the us it why should they tell us.

Just remember the man with the white suit.
And know that we have this faiber.
 
 
Lionheart
13:39 / 06.09.01
***!!!UPDATE!!!***

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991234

quote:Researchers at SRI International, a private laboratory in California, carried out a cold fusion experiment - passing a current through heavy water using palladium electrodes - and claimed to see more heat produced than could be explained by the electric power used. They then sent their electrodes to Clarke for analysis. He discovered that they contained more than 1015 atoms of tritium, a heavy radioactive isotope of hydrogen.

"There's no question of the tritium being real," Clarke told New Scientist.
 
 
netbanshee
17:50 / 06.09.01
...not exactly on the cold fusion tip, but more about "free" energy...anyone ever think about wrapping power lines with a copper coil leading to a device? You could theoretically take the magnetic flow of the electricity being supplied through the line to flow to the conductor to produce your own...and since you're not tapping into the electricity per se, its free. Don't see the bullshit you'll have to deal with (the electric company) making it worthwhile though.
 
 
Lionheart
18:29 / 06.09.01
Why not use the same principles which crystal radios use? Turn the electro-magnetic waves in the atmosphere into...electricity.

Or/and why not use induction coils to get free electricity from all the electromagnetic stuff in the atmosphere. I believe that the so-called "ez pass" used on New York and New Jersey's highways get their energy from the atmosphere.
 
 
Tom Coates
18:38 / 09.09.01
Sorry Lex - the only thing I edited in your post was to insert some line breaks in between the HA's - they were too long and were deforming the page.

I understand that it's not in the best interests of the energy companies to discover free to use and easy to mass produce energy - except, yuo know, ISN'T IT? I mean, scientists may work for these companies, but an awful lot of other scientists don't. And scientists, like hackers, are not very good at keeping their mouths shut when they've discovered something amazing, and all would want to be the person who could stand up and say 'I solved teh world's energy problems'. Plus if a COMPANY invented it and patented it (energy company or whatever), then they would almost certainly make considerably more money out of it than they are likely to do out of exploiting natural resources that they KNOW will run out sooner or later. I understand that its prime conspiracy stuff, but the only people who could have developed this and kept it secret would be the military or government, and they would most likely only be restraining it because of the impact it would have on the world's economy...
 
 
Lionheart
19:23 / 09.09.01
Yeah, remember the article about the oxygen powered car about a year back? The inventor got 6 death threats. And now there's been no news about him, has there?
 
 
autopilot disengaged
20:15 / 09.09.01
has anyone seen this?
http://www.sandia.gov/media/z290.htm
 
 
autopilot disengaged
20:43 / 09.09.01
actually, this is even better: http://www.observer.co.uk/life/story/0,6903,416412,00.html

ah: just realised: this is 'hot' fusion, isn't it? day-amn. still: this article in particular is amazing and well worth reading.

(and with that he scampered quickly offstage).
 
 
Mister Snee
16:28 / 17.09.01
quote:Originally posted by nEtbanshEE:
...not exactly on the cold fusion tip, but more about "free" energy...anyone ever think about wrapping power lines with a copper coil leading to a device?

In India, families who can't afford power use hooks on poles to scrape the insulation off of the power lines, then just throw a conductive line over the bare patch. Seriously. As for getting power from the EMF, it's possible (since the current is AC it's producing and collapsing a magnetic field repeatedly -- the stuff that transformers are made of), but you wouldn't get a whole wack of power and the power you did get would probably not be the same V/I ratio as the current in the line... it would be transformed (stepped up, specifically) to a much higher voltage and much lower amperage, and need to be transformed back down to be useful...

Or so I think, anyway... I may be making all this up. I'll check my sources.


quote:Originally posted by Lionheart:
Or/and why not use induction coils to get free electricity from all the electromagnetic stuff in the atmosphere. I believe that the so-called "ez pass" used on New York and New Jersey's highways get their energy from the atmosphere.

I've seen discussion of this on another, more strictly technical BBS. The conversation got rather involved but what it came down to was:
- Light is a good source of power, and is used all the time (solar panels)
- Power can be efficiently transmitted over line-of-sight with microwaves... this has been done experimentally and I think in the military, but again, I'm not altogether too sure ... ambient microwave energy, on the other hand, could be converted to energy but not a whole wack of it.
- AM, FM, shortwave and the like, just aren't powerful enough to induce into any kind of significant electrical current, although I seem to recall Tesla having toyed with this exact thing at one point. I'm sure most hams have.

Anyway, while we're at it, why don't we go all the way: quartz crystals, when physically molested in various fashions, produce electricity -- so why don't we line freeways with the equivalent of millions of quartz microphones, each one converting the noise from thousands of engines into electrical current? We could put them on roads, in stadiums, in concert halls...
and hey, why not tile the floors of our homes with solar panels, to reclaim some of the power from our room lighting?
Why don't we use garbage incinerators and cremation chambers to boil water to turn turbines? Why aren't scientific efforts focused to growing bigger, more acidic lemons, in controlled environments where they would be used as batteries, in a self-perpetuating, current-generating controlled ecology?

Why indeed!
 
 
Blank Faced Avatar
10:37 / 18.09.01
They seem to have progressed in leaps & bounds when it comes to developing new car exteriors. Soft tops that look like hard tops folding away automatically, are not cheap to design & produce.

But they just don't seem to be trying to improve the old " this machine pumps out poison gas the entire time it's switched on" problem with the same vigour.

I'm afraid we could all be driving clean cars very easily by now, but that would put a few people ( the 500 who have half of the world's money - such as the Bush family, noted billionaire oil tycoons & presidents ) off the gravy train.

It can be as simple as that. Billions of dollars stand against change, with an old & corrupt 'military/industrial' system to wield against us. It seems to be working so far.

That's why the world needs barbelith.
 
 
Lionheart
17:09 / 25.09.01
Mister Snee: You missed a tiny bit of my point. You're thinking that I want to get energy from a single shortwave, am and fm frequencies. I'm not. I'm saying, let's do like Tesla wanted (but couldn't get any funding). Let's get the energy from the ENTIRE electromagnetic spectrum. That means infared, uv, visible spectrum and microwaves, shortwaves, everything! From what I understand thiscould be done through a properly made Tesla coil. One that is perfectly insulated to prevent energy leakage (i.e. to prevent the spark effect.) This was difficult in Tesla's time but in modern times such insulation exists and, from what I understand, is readily available.
 
 
Enamon
19:30 / 25.09.01
HAMSTER WHEELS, YOU FOOLS! THE ANSWER LIES IN HAMSTER WHEELS!!!
 
 
Volt
18:28 / 06.10.01
Sorry, there was no fusion in those fishtanks. you know why I know this? because all the poeple involved didn't die. If there had been fusion going on they'd have all been killed by neutrons.

[ 06-10-2001: Message edited by: Volt ]
 
 
Mister Snee
03:46 / 16.10.01
quote:Originally posted by Lionheart:
Mister Snee: You missed a tiny bit of my point. You're thinking that I want to get energy from a single shortwave, am and fm frequencies. I'm not. I'm saying, let's do like Tesla wanted (but couldn't get any funding). Let's get the energy from the ENTIRE electromagnetic spectrum. That means infared, uv, visible spectrum and microwaves, shortwaves, everything! From what I understand thiscould be done through a properly made Tesla coil. One that is perfectly insulated to prevent energy leakage (i.e. to prevent the spark effect.) This was difficult in Tesla's time but in modern times such insulation exists and, from what I understand, is readily available.


Oops. That's what I meant. My point about "AM, FM, shortwave and the like" was that there's just not efficient ways of turning the remainder of the EM spectrum (outside of microwaves and light, and no doubt a few exceptions I know nothing about) into a decent amount of electricity.

As for tesla coils... they're just big step-up transformers. As AC feed sweeps back through 0v the field from the primary coil collapses around the secondary coil, inducing into several thousand times the voltage and much lower amperage. When you've got that much voltage, insulators be damned -- the air's going to be a semiconductor whether it likes it or not. Atoms ionize, plasma forms, electricity leaks to ground and (-snap-), you've got a spark.

Unless I'm missing something really important that Tesla meant for them to do. Can't say I've read into it as much as I should have...
 
 
Enamon
16:51 / 16.10.01
Fusion not fission.

quote:Originally posted by Volt:
Sorry, there was no fusion in those fishtanks. you know why I know this? because all the poeple involved didn't die. If there had been fusion going on they'd have all been killed by neutrons.

[ 06-10-2001: Message edited by: Volt ]
 
 
Chuckling Duck
20:03 / 16.10.01
There are three known forms of D&D fusion. (That’s Deuterium + Deuterium, geek boys.) One does indeed yield a neutron, plus helium-3 and heat. Another yields hydrogen, tritium and heat. The third yields gamma rays and helium-4, plus heat.

One of the oddities of cold fusion research is that those who have claimed success differ on whether resulting tritium, neutrons, gamma rays and/or helium isotopes are detected.

12 years after Pons and Fleischmann, cold fusion researchers are still unable to reliably replicate their results. I personally hope that their continued research into palladium compounds will one day give us cheap, clean power. But I’m not rushing to buy stock in palladium mines(*), because the evidence just isn’t there yet.

(*) I’m investing in fuel cell developers. Cheap, non-polluting energy storage via electrolysis run by solar plants or what have you, and there’s no question that it works; it’s just a matter of making it economical.
 
 
Volt
01:55 / 29.10.01
yes, Fusion, that produces neutrons too, enough to kill a guy. specificly;
D + T -> He4 + n
D + D -> He3 + n

and one involving Li7 but I don't remember if anyone ever claimed to do that one in a fishtank.

quote:Originally posted by Enamon:
Fusion not fission.



[ 29-10-2001: Message edited by: Volt ]

[ 29-10-2001: Message edited by: Volt ]
 
 
Lionheart
09:23 / 30.10.01
quote:Originally posted by Chuckling Duck:
12 years after Pons and Fleischmann, cold fusion researchers are still unable to reliably replicate their results.

Actually, as I pointed out before, the results were duplicated many times. In fact Popular Science had an article about why it was so hard to replicate the original experiment. It was discovered that the original report didn't state if one chemical was of the pourous or the non-porous type. (the article went into specifics but I don't have the article with me.) And then Popular Science printed a diagram on how to "do it yourself.

This was in 1992.

Neutrons can kill you?
 
 
odd jest on horn
01:57 / 02.02.05
*bump*

Yes, neutrons can kill you. They fuse with nuclei until the nuclei become unstable and split.. ie overload of neutrons can lead to fission. Dirty atom bombs are called "dirty" because they create a huge excess of neutrons.

In other news, I want to show you an exchange [pdf] between the editor in chief of Scientific American and a cold fusion proponent. The close mindedness exhibited by the editor is frankly incredible. I've always been a believer in the method of science, and still am, but the horrible personal politics and prejudice running amok in the scientific circles disgusts me, and really makes the whole exercise of science more a popularity contest than actual use of the method of science.

The main gist, is that the original find has been verified several times, even by nuclear physicists - that's the hot fusion guys, cold fusions' most bitter enemies - in Japan, and there are new and better, and most importantly cheaper ways to get overunity being discovered every year. (platinum, palladium and heavy water are not really cheap, you know and they're not getting cheaper.. no threat to oil yet)

Cold fusion hasn't taken off due to the extreme prejudism in the US and UK, the price of materials, and the difficulties inherent in using the high entropy energy of heat, when the apparatus that's needed to produce it is still so large and unwieldy compared to energy given off.

An aside: an engineer, James Griggs has created a 1.3 overunity engine based on (probably) sonoluminence*. Several institutions have used said engine to save on heating bills according to alternative science.:-) People haven't seen any other practical uses of it, as turbines are so inefficient that making a real perpetual motion machine is impossible.

I believe it's only a matter of a few years until someone hooks one of those up to a tesla turbine (around 60% efficient turbines as opposed to less than 40%, some claim up to 90%).. et voila! ;-)

*Funnily enough he claims he's not part of the whole cold fusion/free energy thang. I haven't looked much into sololuminence, but if I remember correctly, the most prominent theory was that it's actually miniscule hot fusion explosions enabled by extreme pressure caused by shockwave feedback. His company makes no mention of over unity effects. Presumably because they're a respectable company, and those companies have nothing what so ever to do with cold fusion or free energy in the USA.
 
 
odd jest on horn
07:43 / 02.02.05
Just to clarify, what I mean by a dirty atom bomb, is usually called - logically enough - a neutron bomb. It has nothing to do with a conventional dirty bomb, which is just a conventional bomb with radioactive materials in it.
 
 
odd jest on horn
08:20 / 02.02.05
A fascinating explanation of how cold fusion most likely works. Requires basic knowledge of nuclear physics and some knowledge of quantum mechanics, though.
 
 
odd jest on horn
08:33 / 02.02.05
Better explanation of quantum mechanics. The link in the post above is more of a quantum sandbox one can play with once the concepts are understood. Most relevant to understanding cold fusion is probably quantum tunneling. The whole idea of deuterium atoms being spread all over the place in the palladium crystal and intermingling in that way with other deuterium atoms is closely connected to the quantum tunneling concept.
 
 
Spaniel
14:13 / 07.02.05
Horn, thanks for the PDF it made interesting reading, although I found the editor to be far more reasonable, coherent, and, dare I say, mature than Mr Rothwell.
 
 
odd jest on horn
22:32 / 07.02.05
Hmmm not sure about the maturity level, nor coherency. The editor uses the words "fresh vitriol" early, which I feel is completely out of line. I would like to suggest that the whole exchange is immature, though in my head the attractor towards immaturity seems to reside rather on the editor's side.

However, I think the main point should be this: There are very serious scientists, some with heavy credidentials, who are publishing in apparently respected journals about transmutation of elements in palladium deuterium systems, which points to at least some kind of nuclear reaction. And what does SciAm do? "Ah, those wacky Japanese! They are nothing but creationists in disguise." How much evidence do they need before they at least give it a small column in the small news section? They are a newspaper of science, and if 2000 papers have been published with experimental data that might point to cold fusion, that is newsworthy for such a publication.

For crying out loud, these are the same people who published several articles on the "many worlds" paradigm of quantum physics, which amounts to nothing but a metaphysical speculation, one which fits the available data, sure, but there are zillions of possible metaphysical theories that could "explain" the collapse of the wave function.
 
 
tom-karika nukes it from orbit
13:09 / 08.02.05
I imagine that the SciAm editor is thinking about his paper's reputation.

People are happy to accept that Quantum physics is screwy, they are happy to swallow a 'many worlds' hypothesis, 11-dimensions and superstrings. That's what quantum physics is about.

But perpetual motion machines, and weird nuclear physics - that's inextricably liked with complete nutcases, pranksters and hoaxers.

If SciAm published an article about Cold Fusion or similar, their readership would possibly think less of the paper because of it - and it's not the paper's fault. I blame the guys who decide to make a perpetual motion machine as a magic-trick, to see how many people they can fool.
 
 
odd jest on horn
00:09 / 09.02.05
I'm sure that's the way they see it. It's still stupid, though.
 
 
tom-karika nukes it from orbit
10:03 / 09.02.05
I myself cannot come to terms with the physics of cold fusion. The real obstacle is fundamentally conservation of energy.

Nuclear material is pushed apart with a certain amount of energy. You need to put in a certain amount to bring it together - that's why any fusion reactor has to reach extremely high temperatures. Once the the temperature (T) is high enough, the energy scale (kT) at that temperature is enough to start the nucleus binding. Any lower, and no nuclear reaction can take place.

The energy quantities here are well understood. Repulsive potential between nuclei is much, much higher than the energy scale at room temperature. I know that the chemistry and electrical current involved in these systems has an effect. But we are talking about so many orders of magnitude, that if the effects of solution and electricity are so huge on the energy scale, normal everyday chemicals would be extremely volatile.

So if Cold Fusion is real, I imagine some major physics needs a rethink.
 
 
odd jest on horn
11:50 / 09.02.05
You are looking at the problem like a hot fusion physicist. Hot fusion is more or less a classical process. You can model the plasma with ideal gas laws, more or less. You consider the nuclei as hard ping pong balls that need to be broken to fuse. I suspect this is the view of fusion that the majority of physicists have.

However it's utterly, utterly wrong to apply these models to cold fusion. Cold fusion works on the same principles as hydrogen laser trap fusion. The hydrogen laser trap, unlike what people might think - understandably since lasers are "hot" - does not agitate the nuclei to get them to fuse. They slow them down so much that they fuse by coincidence. The whole laser trap fusion thing is pretty doomed though, as you can only work with a tiny amount of matter at time and you have to prepare each fusion in the most meticulate way.

The cold fusion process works in much the same way (This is all explained, rather more confusingly, but prolly more accurately in the explanatory article I linked above.):

You have a palladium metal lattice, some deuterium nuclei get trapped inside in the pockets of little energy, through quantum tunneling. The lattice constrains the momentum of the nuclei so much that its location becomes very undetermined (Uncertainty princible), ie it's probability wave expands in space. It can reach over into the other pockets. That means that it might spontaneously tunnel into
another energy pocket and fuse with the deuterium nucleus there. The repulsion actually gets smeared over space with the nucleus, so it's not as much of an issue.

The thing is that you have to be a solid state physicist to begin to understand the sublety of quantum effects in metal crystals. Most such physicists are interested in making cheaper and smaller and faster computer chips. They are mainly interested that things tunnel when they should and not otherwise.

The hot nuclear physicists have spent years building up the tools that they use to understand the more or less classical process of hot fusion, mainly the maths of how to contain the bloody thing, and they have been indoctrinated by their own study, not to think of fusion as something that can be eased by quantum mechanical processes.

The effect was first discovered by electrochemists. The work has been solidified by solid state physicists. These are not your average nuclear guys, in the usual sense. You cannot use nuclear physics sensibilities to brush this away.
 
 
tom-karika nukes it from orbit
19:51 / 09.02.05
That really does make sense. Its like conduction electrons in metals all over again - quantum factors kicking in because of crystal lattices. I've now taken the time to read a few of the explanations (some of the papers in the websites that odd jest on a horn linked to are very readable.)

Why is this not widely accepted? Why are the explanations hosted on AOL Hometown webspace? I know this doesn't work well with classical theory, but then neither does electrical conduction in metals, or electromagnetic radiation. It makes perfectly reasonable sense.

I suppose that either the maths doesn't add up, or all the experiments are fake. I don't beleive either of these can be true.
 
 
Lurid Archive
21:14 / 09.02.05
I'm really curious about this. Physicists I've talked to in the past have said that "cold fusion" is no such thing and that there must be some interesting chemistry going on instead. I have no idea and I'm not hanging out with physicists at the moment. Anyone care to suggest a good board where we can ask someone who can give us some expert comment? Or are you guys the experts I should be looking to here?
 
  

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