Cold Fusion: not bollocks after all

[Dr Jon]

It seems that big names like Toyota, Mitsubishi, National Instruments, ST Microelectronics and the American Nuclear Society are taking Low Energy Nuclear Reactions seriously.

What is one to make of all this? The first major point is academia has utterly let the world down. Now that LENR obviously functions there are almost no experimental experts available or organized training underway. The world economy is completely out of the loop, so far. The second is governments worldwide have set up a patent barrier, which is still in place that keeps the potential dowsed down.

You have to admit that turning Tungsten into Platinum is a pretty neat trick - which may give some comfort to folks who bought Tungsten bars wrapped up as Gold.

Also see:
Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project

 

[Lemon Eddy]

From your link:

"Krivit reports Iwamura saying the Toyota researchers confirmed"

I would truly welcome any evidence that LENR has been achieved, preferably in some way that can be built upon, but I think I'd like to see something just a bit more substantial before I start popping champagne corks. And believe me, I like to pop champagne corks, so any decent substantive link would do. But I did a search on Yasuhiro Iwamura and Francesco Celani and it all seems to be a set of circular links between some similar sites.

 

[EastEnder]

When verifiable, reproducible results are published in a recognised, peer reviewed scientific journal, I'll take it seriously. Or alternatively, when the world is transformed by near limitless, ultra cheap energy & the discoverers become billionaires over night, then I will also take it seriously. Until such time it's little better than homoeopathy & crystal healing.

 

[Left]

What's the mechanism?

 

[Fez909]

From your link:

"Krivit reports Iwamura saying the Toyota researchers confirmed"

I would truly welcome any evidence that LENR has been achieved, preferably in some way that can be built upon, but I think I'd like to see something just a bit more substantial before I start popping champagne corks. And believe me, I like to pop champagne corks, so any decent substantive link would do. But I did a search on Yasuhiro Iwamura and Francesco Celani and it all seems to be a set of circular links between some similar sites.

I did the same and found the same. And if you look on the newenergy site for their initial report from the American Nuclear Society’s LENR session, there's no mention of this finding. If this is such an important discovery, why have they sat on it for a month without saying anything? Why has nobody else reported it? What has changed between now and November which means this can be mentioned?

 

[Dr Jon]

There are no established theories that can explain the experimental results without any assumptions, although some attractive models and theories have been proposed [4]-[5]. The observed transmutation processes must belong to a new category of nuclear reactions in condensed matter. We should continue to work in order to make clear the nature of this new phenomenon experimentally with theoretical approaches.

link (pdf)

“Low energy nuclear reactions” or LENR is the name now given to what was initially and poorly called “cold fusion”. Over twenty years of scientific research on LENR have resulted in some instances of energy gains exceeding 10, the same value as the goal of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, which could be achieved in about a decade. Some of the key experimental data from electrochemical loading of deuterons into Pd are summarized in this paper. In the past two years, engineered LENR systems reportedly have energy gains exceeding 100. The devices, which were said to exhibit such very high energy amplification values, used gas loading of protons onto and maybe into Ni. The character and stated results of the remarkable tests are summarized. Lower gain versions of such systems are now being mass manufactured for delivery to customers during 2011. Requirements for robust validation of the performance of such devices are discussed. A comparison of the history and prospects for both hot and “cold” fusion is presented. It is concluded that small and distributed LENR sources of energy might be in common use by the time hot fusion in large central facilities is finally ready for commercialization.

Low Energy Nuclear Reactions: Exciting New Science and Potential Clean Energy

Low Energy nuclear Reaction (LENR) Cells are a new way to use nano-structured electrodes in power cells to produce nuclear reactions at low temperature (relative to the temperature for hot fusion). While still in the research stage, this promises ultimate development of “green” nuclear powered “batteries”, offering remarkable energy densities well beyond present technology. The background for this technology and current research on LENR are discussed.

Small Power Cells Based on Low Energy Nuclear Reactor (LENR) - A New Type of "Green" Nuclear Energy

 

[Dr Jon]

The US Navy are into this as well:

 

[fogbat]

The US Army spent millions on training psychic soldiers.

 

[teqniq]

@ fogbat I knew you were going to say that.

 

[Lemon Eddy]

The US Navy are into this as well:

Thanks for that, it's an interesting watch and (to my poorly informed perspective) entirely plausible. The volume of replication alone is very convincing. It's disappointing that the navy closed this program down in 2011.

 

[Dr Jon]

What is even more disappointing is that research is now left to unfunded enthusiasts like MFMP.

 

[Dr Jon]

When verifiable, reproducible results are published in a recognised, peer reviewed scientific journal, I'll take it seriously. Or alternatively, when the world is transformed by near limitless, ultra cheap energy & the discoverers become billionaires over night, then I will also take it seriously. Until such time it's little better than homoeopathy & crystal healing.

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/reports/SSC-SD-Refereed-Journal-Articles.shtml

 

[EastEnder]

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/reports/SSC-SD-Refereed-Journal-Articles.shtml

Remarkable how many of those papers are published by the notoriously profit driven company Elsevier. Out of interest, how many of them have you actually read?

I wonder why over 13000 scientists are currently boycotting the publisher (http://thecostofknowledge.com/), could it be they put money before scientific integrity?

Interesting bit on wikipedia about the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry: The journal, which the New York Times describes as "a speciality publication not widely circulated," became more broadly known in 1989 when Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons published a description of their controversial cold fusion research in it, withdrawing their work from publication in Nature after questions were raised during peer review there.

Forgive me for a terrible old cynic, but if all your papers are published by an organisation that makes its money from publishing papers, with remarkably few appearing in less profit driven, more open publications, it does rather make question the validity of the aforementioned papers. After all, if the papers are genuinely good science, one would've thought the authors would want as many people as possible to read them. How hard is it to provide direct links to the papers themselves, where anyone, irrespective of funds, can access them?

 

[Dr Jon]

Publisher in business to make money - whatever next??!!!

That this research was funded by the US Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center for 20 years or so gives it sufficient credibility IMO.

Unfortunately there are scam artists with a higher profile in the media than real scientists.

 

[Fez909]

Publisher in business to make money - whatever next??!!!

That this research was funded by the US Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center for 20 years or so gives it sufficient credibility IMO.

Unfortunately there are scam artists with a higher profile in the media than real scientists.

Why is it no longer funded by US govt bodies? If they spent 20 years on it, you'd think they'd want a return on investment. Presumably they gave up because they saw it was bollocks?

 

[Idaho]

The credibility of anything with the name cold fusion was sullied so badly by the original debacle that some interesting results in low yield atomic reactions has been ignored. It'll come back again, in time.

 

[Dr Jon]

Why is it no longer funded by US govt bodies? If they spent 20 years on it, you'd think they'd want a return on investment. Presumably they gave up because they saw it was bollocks?

SPAWAR's active projects are still secret, I'd imagine.

 

[Frank Merton]

And I get shit thrown all over me when I state that I don't bother going to people's web sites when they post one to "prove" something. (Although false and exaggerating web sites are common enough -- how many of them have pictures of Noah's Ark? -- the real problem is usually, when you spend the hour or so needed to weed through it, it turns out the site doesn't say what the poster says it said, or its all just anecdote and proves nothing).

The whole thing turns into a huge waste of time, and by the time you get back to them they just ignore your response, or maybe say you didn't read it carefully enough.

So what to do if you want to "prove" something to someone here? Don't even try. You can vent and express views and even state things you think are facts and argue all day about the logic of something, but if someone has their own facts, they are a hopeless cause.

 

[teqniq]

What? You think that just because someone links to something that maybe a bit dodge that it a then means everything else is crap? Hilarious.

 

[Crispy]

And I get shit thrown all over me when I state that I don't bother going to people's web sites when they post one to "prove" something. (Although false and exaggerating web sites are common enough -- how many of them have pictures of Noah's Ark? -- the real problem is usually, when you spend the hour or so needed to weed through it, it turns out the site doesn't say what the poster says it said, or its all just anecdote and proves nothing).

The whole thing turns into a huge waste of time, and by the time you get back to them they just ignore your response, or maybe say you didn't read it carefully enough.

So what to do if you want to "prove" something to someone here? Don't even try. You can vent and express views and even state things you think are facts and argue all day about the logic of something, but if someone has their own facts, they are a hopeless cause.

Wow. Get over yourself! Minds can be changed here, you know, it's just very hard work and requires very strong, coherent arguments.

 

[Frank Merton]

Wow. Get over yourself! Minds can be changed here, you know, it's just very hard work and requires very strong, coherent arguments.

More ad hominem without addressing the points I make.

 

[Crispy]

More ad hominem without addressing the points I make.

Ad hom would be calling you a dickhead, or calling your personal qualities into question.

What you have to do to "prove" something to someone on here is bring high-quality proof and well-reasoned argument. It happens. I've seen it happen.
I'm not being glib, I'm being sincere - try hard, with facts and reason behind you, and you will convince. If your argument is not convincing, or your facts are questionable, then you will get nowhere.

 

[MikeMcc]

I'm still holding out for polywell fusion. The US Navy has continued to fund the research and has been very quiet about the research expect to say that it continues to show promising results.

 

[EastEnder]

Publisher in business to make money - whatever next??!!!

That this research was funded by the US Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center for 20 years or so gives it sufficient credibility IMO.

Why? Serious question, why do you believe that the source of funding lends credibility? US governmental agencies have a long history of funding a wide variety of research areas. Their motives are best known to themselves, and I wouldn't care to speculate, but I would question why you regard this as a qualitative assessment of the research being carried out. Bearing in mind, of course, that a desire for an outcome is rarely a reliable guide to the chances of success. The US spent an awful lot of money researching space based lasers because they wanted to zap nukes from orbit, and we all know how well that went.

Personally I would regard the US military establishment's involvement as anything but indicative of credibility. They have extremely deep pockets, and are politically motivated, making them prime candidates for exploitation. I'm not saying that this is definitively the case in this instance, merely pointing out that they represent an ideal source of funding for, potentially, less than wholly credible research. If you dangle the promise of a scientific holy grail in front of purse string holding representatives of a global super power, especially ones who would be most adverse to sharing the results with the wider scientific community, is it any surprise that funding is forthcoming? They'd probably allocate a few tens of millions merely on the off chance of viable results.

I would suggest contrasting the information publicly available concerning JET in Oxford, the NIF at Lawrence Livermore, & ITER in France with that available on cold fusion research. Good science is rarely obfuscated behind a facade of plausibility. I would be delighted to be proved wrong, but until presented with genuinely credible evidence, I'm afraid my scepticism will persist.

 

[Frank Merton]

It would be a crying pity if the world delays getting such a boon simply because the authorities, not seeing how it could possibly be, prevent, with their skepticism, such a thing from happening. As I understand it something like that happened with nitrous oxide in delaying the coming of anesthesia for almost a century.

Still, skepticism about such things is essential, and the authorities-that-be probably have it right. If there is money to be made hyping something, it will be hyped. It is just that we need to be careful to not deny possibilities only because we can't see any way it could be true -- we have to remember that our mental vision is as limited as is our physical vision.

 

[Santino]

Wow. Get over yourself! Minds can be changed here, you know, it's just very hard work and requires very strong, coherent arguments.

Like here: http://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/puzzle-i-have-two-children.251786/

 

[Santino]

What's all this about then?

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...ied-has-10000-times-the-energy-density-of-gas

Against all probability, a device that purports to use cold fusion to generate vast amounts of power has been verified by a panel of independent scientists. The research paper, which hasn’t yet undergone peer review, seems to confirm both the existence of cold fusion, and its potency: The cold fusion device being tested has roughly 10,000 times the energy density and 1,000 times the power density of gasoline. Even allowing for a massively conservative margin of error, the scientists say that the cold fusion device they tested is 10 times more powerful than gasoline — which is currently the best fuel readily available to mankind.

The device being tested, which is called the Energy Catalyzer (E-Cat for short), was created by Andrea Rossi. Rossi has been claiming for the past two years that he had finally cracked cold fusion, but much to the chagrin of the scientific community he hasn’t allowed anyone to independently analyze the device — until now. While it sounds like the scientists had a fairly free rein while testing the E-Cat, we should stress that they still don’t know exactly what’s going on inside the sealed steel cylinder reactor. Still, the seven scientists, all from good European universities, obviously felt confident enough with their findings to publish the research paper.

 

[Santino]

Hmm. It could be about this:

Andrea Rossi is a convicted white-collar criminal with a string of failed energy ventures.

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/RossiECat/Andrea-Rossi-Energy-Catalyzer-Investigation-Index.shtml

 

[Crispy]

Rossi is a serial fraudster and I won't believe a word of it until the sealed cylinder has been opened, replicated and peer reviewed.

 

[Pickman's model]

so in answer to Dr Jon in the op perhaps it is bollocks for the time being