Posted on 03/27/2005 10:47:13 PM PST by ckilmer
Cold fusion is ignored because it is bogus science. We need to look elsewhere for our energy.
If we had unlimited energy, there would be some other scarce resource to fight about. We'd be desperate for certain chemicals instead, and people would fret that there needs to be a large government effort to supply us all with product-X for free.
To carry that further, once products X, Y, and Z are handed out in ample supply, families would naturally grow larger and consume that much more as a result (not having to work for them). X, Y, and Z become scarce again, along with A, B, and C that we thought were OK.
Nobody wants 10 kids unless all of their needs are met. Refuse to meet those needs in the form of handouts (welfare), and people will rightly keep their families to whatever size they can manage without sucking off of taxpayers.
Even if someone succeeds with cold fusion, oil will still be in great demand for at least 30 years because it is an excellent transportation fuel that holds a great deal of energy per liter of volume. Our transportation infrastructure is also designed around oil and it will take decades to convert this infrastructure over to an electricity-based infrastructure starting at the time that electricity could become extremely cheap. Nigeria doesn't have anything to worry about as far as selling it's oil at a good price during the next 30 years.
What happens when 6 billion persons on the planet can produce as much heat as they want without any economic check on consumption? You think we might have a global warming problem now?
To have an unlimited energy source, all we need to do is put methane collectors in the ceilings of every taqueria in the country.
"The snag is that fusion at room temperature is deemed impossible by every accepted scientific theory."
All you need to do is to lock the deuterium atoms into a very precise locations so that the collective wave function solutions have an interference pattern that produces fusion.
Of course, producing those precise locations would be very difficult.
OH you got it. :D hehe
Article from Nigeria... is it asking me to open a bank account?
I'm not saying that we're close to being able to control fusion but, we know it's possible....someone, or some group of people are probably going to figure it out someday.
It's hardly a pie-in-the-sky theory.
cold fusion isn't pie in the sky?
Plastic.
(No need to cry now, Nigeria)
From what I've read about cold fusion, it produces barely detectable temperature increases in whatever cooling fluid is used. To make electric power, we need high enough temperatures to make water into steam to turn a steam turbine generator. That's how nuclear power plants do it. If there's an actual fusion reaction going on in cold fusion, then why doesn't it produce gigantic amounts of heat as a by-product?
Science fiction authors have always talked about the use of limitless power obtained with very little effort. The "aether" was once assumed to be flowing with unlimited power, so all that was needed would be a way to "tap in" to it. In reality, There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch (TANSTAAFL).
It may be that cold fusion will end up producing electricity with the heat merely being a "by product" of the truly valuable process.. the direct production of electricity through cold fusion.
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