Cold Fusion: not bollocks after all

[Pickman's model]

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

and someone to be unusually weak-willed to alter their opinion

 

[Dr Jon]

What's all this about then?

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

Rossi Manipulates Academics to Create Illusion of Independent Test

Proper, non-fraudulent stuff here:
Index of LENR Experimental Methodologies

 

[EastEnder]

1-megawatt cold fusion power plant now available – yours for just $1.5 million

Before we get too excited about the commercialization of cold fusion — which would probably be the biggest technological advance since writing or agriculture — we should remember that Rossi is still being incredibly opaque about how his cold fusion tech actually works.

It's kind of a tad odd, imho. You see, if I'd invented bona fide cold fusion I'd get patented up to the max, licence the science to the world's most minted technology firms, be hailed a God like saviour of humanity for solving the global energy crisis and make about a trillion quid over night.

Unless of course I was a charlatan who wanted to dupe gullible types with deep pockets into buying my snake oil generators, in the hope that I'd make enough to retire to a non-extradition country before my disgruntled customers had the chance to properly analyse the hardware & conclude that it's nothing more than a regular chemical reaction, hidden behind fancy looking hardware & grandiose sounding pseudo-science.

 

[tendril]

1-megawatt cold fusion power plant now available – yours for just $1.5 million


It's kind of a tad odd, imho. You see, if I'd invented bona fide cold fusion I'd get patented up to the max, licence the science to the world's most minted technology firms, be hailed a God like saviour of humanity for solving the global energy crisis and make about a trillion quid over night.

Unless of course I was a charlatan who wanted to dupe gullible types with deep pockets into buying my snake oil generators, in the hope that I'd make enough to retire to a non-extradition country before my disgruntled customers had the chance to properly analyse the hardware & conclude that it's nothing more than a regular chemical reaction, hidden behind fancy looking hardware & grandiose sounding pseudo-science.

So I take it that for this pioneering and potentially world saving invention you wouldn't take the Jonas Salk approach then

 

[Quartz]

So I take it that for this pioneering and potentially world saving invention you wouldn't take the Jonas Salk approach then

How the fuck did Salk not get the Nobel prize?

 

[Bob_the_lost]

How the fuck did Salk not get the Nobel prize?

I'm far from an expert on this but Salk didn't carry out the basic research that enabled his vaccine, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Franklin_Enders who did win a Nobel prize (with two others) "for their discovery of the ability of poliomyelitis viruses to grow in cultures of various types of tissue".

 

[Crispy]

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...-million-times-the-energy-density-of-gasoline

Is this really verified?

Short Answer: No

Long Answer: The experiment is terrible; full of flaws and gaps:

• They measured the emitted energy not by heating a known mass of coolant (ie. how everyone else does it) but by pointing an infrared camera at it, which had been "calibrated" on an inert device that was heated to only half the temperature.
• The power supply is a peculiar 3 phase design of Rossi's, with a complicated power measuring setup. Which is weird, because only heating is required to start the "reaction" - plain old DC would do.
• Serial fraudster Andrea Rossi provided much of the equipment for the test and was present in the lab for the loading of fuel and unloading of the "ash"
• EDIT: Oh yeah, and the power output was level throughout the experiment, despite 99% of the fuel being "consumed" - if it's a nuclear reaction, then it should drop off as the fuel is transmuted.

If David Copperfield can convince a live audience that he made the statue of liberty disappear, then an experienced con man like Rossi can easily fool a bunch of friendly physicists.

EDIT: Rossi needs to describe the device, a third party to build it without any interaction with him, and test it with an independently designed experiment. This won't happen, because the device is a fraud and its designer is a fraudster.