In from the cold (cold fusion heating up again)

The Guardian ^ | Thursday March 24, 2005

[ckilmer]

I heard the feds turned cold fusion down last september.

This is the first I've heard that they renenged in December.

Looks like the pace of events is quickening in this field of research.

This is one of those scientific experimental areas you have to keep a weather eye on. Because if they crack the cold fusion nut...it just changes everything... Big Time.

[KoRn]

[spyone]

I wonder what happened to the two first scientists who claimed discovery?

[ckilmer]

they're not into cold fusion research anymore

[Captain Beyond]

bump for later read

[ckilmer]

you probably also want to post the viking kitten pics music

[staytrue]

More than likely, this is a chemical reaction with palladium or platinum serving as a catalyst to burn contamination in the liquid.

[ckilmer]

Certainly palladium and platinum have served as catalyst in hydrogen production. I've seen a bunch of articles on them. What they do is lower the temperature and pressure needed to split the hydrogen off from whatever it is bound too.

But I don't know what that would have to do with cold fusion.

[atomic_dog]

Further reading Confusion about Fusion
In .pdf so you have to grab off that page.

[Talking_Mouse]

This is one of those scientific experimental areas you have to keep a weather eye on. Because if they crack the cold fusion nut...it just changes everything... Big Time.

Absolutely

[ckilmer]

confusion about fusion looks to be about acoustic fusion and not cold fusion.

acoustic fusion has only been around for about four years. The first results were positive. The second results were not so positive. But recently the results have been positive. The science with acoustic fusion doesn't seem quite as mysterious as it does with cold fusion.

[shimbo]

The renewed interest in cold fusion has been building for the past year. The "cold fusion" meme looks like it bottomed out in late 2003.

The graph -
http://www.realmeme.com/miner/other/coldfusionDejanews.png

The methodology -
http://www.realmeme.com/miner/

[djf]

Seems to me you either end up with some helium or you don't. A good high school chemistry/physics student should be able to prove that quite nicely, all it is is a simple spectrogram.

[aruanan]

One speaker is George Miley, a cold fusion believer at the University of Illinois.

It's the anti-cold fusion folks who are the believers.

[aruanan]

I heard the feds turned cold fusion down last september.
This is the first I've heard that they renenged in December.

No, I knew last fall from talking with a representative from the current incarnation of the Office of Technology Assessment (closed in 1995), the acronym of which escapes me at the moment, that they were going to recommend funding. The way this office works is that Congress, for instance, wants to know whether or not to fund a particular project and turns to this agency to assemble a group of experts to analyze the field and the data and to come up with a recommendation. They gave the go-ahead on the study of so-called cold fusion.

[redgolum]

If cold fusion works, can I finally have my flying car?

[mdmathis6]

It's called OPEC!

[staytrue]

Platinum is a catalyst for carbon monoxide burning to carbon dioxide in a car's catalytic converter and it also gets very hot in the process.

I'm guessing that the platinum may be causing impurities in the water to "burn" for a short time producing heat.

In any event, if cold fusion requires platinium, there would only be enough platinum to replace 2 or 3 power plants. The total platinum in the world would not fill an average sized living room.

[Final Authority]

Spend some time and research the topic before you offer opinions that are not accurate relating to this topic.

I've studied this topic since late '88 and although there is controversy there is a steady stream of non conflicting experimental results reported that indicate that at least sometimes fusion does take place. The experiments report that tritium and neutrons are detectable in the course of energy production. The only way such products exist in this type of experiment is when hydrogen atoms fuse. The hydrogen is in the form of deuterium or heavy water. The palladium is a hydrogen sink or like a sponge and it is theorized that the atoms get packed in so tightly because of the electrochemical conditions that some fuse.

MIT in Technology Review of 1992 did a whole issue on this topic and discussed the pros and cons. The professor mentioned in this article, Hagelstein, wrote the part that gave some credibility to the topics and experiments. He apparently has since studied it further and come to the conclusion that there is really something there.

Dr. Eugene Mallove of Concord, NH (deceased) a former prof at MIT and publisher of "Cold Times" and an alternative energy magazine and the sponsor of the Cold Fusion meetings often held in Cambridge MA, was a major proponent of the topic. He was ridiculed for years and was murdered at his mother's home in CT last year.

One of the reasons some have thought that Mallove was murdered is to quiet the fact that cold fusion produced tritium, and necessary fusion isotope for making fusion weapons. Nuclear weapons using fusion technology, often called H bombs, can be made smaller and more efficient that conventional fission weapons.