Posted on 01/25/2006 4:13:33 AM PST by saganite
Good luck to them.
This is really a continuation of the cold fusion debate although this experiment isn't similar to the original. Even if this phenomenon isn't fusion it's still very interesting.
Mr. Fusion.
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Now, if fusion really occurred, wouldn't there be an enormous crater, and maybe a smoking radius of obsidian, as evidence?
Or is this the 'user friendly' kind of fusion?
..trying to gen up funds.....
I don't think so. This guy Taleyharkin has been experimenting with this for years so the funds are already there. He's staked his reputation on these experiments but so far his critics have poked huge holes in his methods. This latest experiment is trying to eliminate some of the variables.
I hope it works. Nuke is our big hope to save us from oil woes.
OK, neutrons are a good sign, have they determined the energy level of the neutrons (and of course allowing for the fact that they will slow down after travelling through some mass).
Stil skeptical, but might believe it when presented with some numbers (keV, MeV level of detected particles) and reproduceable results.
cold fusion is baaack.
So much for the claim that science is uniformly, dispassionately based on fact, as oppposed to the "emotion-based" claims of religion. ;-)
Look for this quote on a crevo thread soon?
Full Disclosure: Can you say "polywater" ? Cheers!
Science is based on fact. Scepticism is very much a part of scientific inquiry and what this scientist is expressing is scepticism these results are accurate. Along with the calls by others in the article demanding the results be reproduced in other labs the scientific process is working perfectly here.
They are talking about a much more diluted brand of fusion than you are talking about. Instead of millions or billions of atoms changing from hydrogen to helium in a massive explosion, only a few do at a time, and the result is that not nearly as much energy is released at one time as there is, for example, in a hydrogen bomb.
It's a nice idea, if it works, but getting there is a serious problem. And it doesn't become "science" unless someone can replicate the results.
I suspect that he's not going to convince some people unless and until he can do something practical with it, namely produce usuable energy. If he could produce usable energy, on a net energy basis, it would be kind of hard to say that it was an illusion. Energy doesn't just appear out of nowhere.
I don't believe he needs to prove it can do anything useful although that would be great. As a scientist he's not necessarily interested in the end product. He's more interested in seeing if there's a new undiscovered nuclear process here. That alone would rewrite the science books and probably win him a Nobel.
If this is achieved(cold fusion), life as we know it will change dramatically......Kind of like when oil was discovered.
Well, that may be true, but I'm just saying that proving it with experiments that are so subtle that you've got to rely on statistical measurements is not going to convince a lot of scientists. If he produces large amounts of usable energy, that's kind of hard to argue against.
On the other hand, there are plenty of bizarro conclusions that scientists have drawn from statistical studies in other contexts. A good example is quantum entanglement. And that is largely accepted by the scientific community, so it might be possible for him to gain acceptance of the theory without producing usable energy if others can duplicate it.
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