Putterman, the physicist mentioned in the Article as challenging Taleyarkan's results' has produced a working "tabletop fusion" device he says will be useful for things like security scans etc. but did not achieve excess energy. I suspect there's an ongoing battle among these guys to come up with some sort of explanation for this phenomenon and it's getting nasty. I'm reserving judgement on it since I don't even come close to having the knowledge to evaluate any of these claims but I'll stick to the old adage that where's there is smoke there is fire. Something is happening in these experiments and I wish the physics community could come to some conclusion, whether it's a source of excess energy or not.
Neither the scientific community, nor I (a physics major long long ago) care as much for a "paper" as a successfully met challenge. Papers don't refute. Experiments that cah be reproduced refute. Read on please.
> Something is happening in these experiments and I wish the physics community could come to some conclusion, whether it's a source of excess energy or not.
Look, claims and assertions progress from speculation, to conjecture, to hypothesis, to theory only one way -- by making accurate predictions and surviving hard challenges.
The more accurate predictions made, and the more hard challenges met, the better a claim looks. This is fundamental to all science.
The most rigorous testing of all -- decades or centuries of accurate predictions and challenges met -- allows a theory to be considered a Law of Physics. There aren't many of them, for a damn good reason. It's tough.
A couple of experiments like the ones described here are fine and worthy endeavors, and the experimenters should be encouraged.
But don't start talking about changing something like Thermodynamics or Conservation of Energy because of it. Get real. The huge weight of evidence and experience is on the side of the law, not the neat new hard-to-reproduce experiment.
When this has been reproduced in hundreds of labs under rigorous scrutiny, you can talk about the "physics community" giving a rat's ass about it. The history of science is filled with such neat things, all untrue. If this one is real, it'll pan out -- after decades of scrutiny, not before.