Physicist Claims First Real Demonstration of Cold Fusion

www.physorg.com ^ | 05/27/2008 | Staff

[Red Badger]

On May 22, researchers at Osaka University presented the first demonstration of cold fusion since an unsuccessful attempt in 1989 that has clouded the field to this day.

To many people, cold fusion sounds too good to be true. The idea is that, by creating nuclear fusion at room temperature, researchers can generate a nearly unlimited source of power that uses water as fuel and produces almost zero waste. Essentially, cold fusion would make oil obsolete.

However, many experts debate whether money should be spent on cold fusion research or applied to more realistic alternative energy solutions. For decades, researchers around the world have been simply trying to show that cold fusion is indeed possible, but they´ve yet to take that important first step.

Now, esteemed Physics Professor Yoshiaki Arata of Osaka University in Japan claims to have made the first successful demonstration of cold fusion. Last Thursday, May 22, Arata and his colleague Yue-Chang Zhang of Shianghai Jiotong University presented the cold fusion demonstration to 60 onlookers, including other physicists, as well as reporters from six major newspapers and two TV studios. If Arata and Zhang´s demonstration is real, it could lead to a future of new, clean, and cheap energy generation.

In their experiment, the physicists forced deuterium gas into a cell containing a mixture of palladium and zirconium oxide, which absorbed the deuterium to produce a dense "pynco" deuterium. In this dense state, the deuterium nuclei from different atoms were so close together that they fused to produce helium nuclei.

Evidence for the occurrence of this fusion came from measuring the temperature inside the cell. When Arata first injected the deuterium gas, the temperature rose to about 70° C (158° F), which Arata explained was due to nuclear and chemical reactions. When he turned the gas off, the temperature inside the cell remained warmer than the cell wall for 50 hours, which Arata said was an effect of nuclear fusion.

While Arata´s demonstration looked promising to his audience, the real test is still to come: duplication. Many scientists and others are now recalling the infamous 1989 demonstration by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, who claimed to produce controlled nuclear fusion in a glass jar at room temperature. However, no one - including Fleischmann and Pons - could duplicate the experiment, leading many people to consider cold fusion a pseudoscience to this day.

But one witness at the recent demonstration, physicist Akito Takahashi of Osaka University, thought that the experiment should be able to be repeated.

"Arata and Zhang demonstrated very successfully the generation of continuous excess energy [heat] from ZrO2-nano-Pd sample powders under D2 gas charging and generation of helium-4," Takahashi told New Energy Times. "The demonstrated live data looked just like data they reported in their published papers [J. High Temp. Soc. Jpn, Feb. and March issues, 2008]. This demonstration showed that the method is highly reproducible."

In addition, researchers will have to repeat the experiment with larger amounts of the palladium and zirconium oxide mixture in order to generate larger quantities of energy.

via: Physics World and New Energy Times

[Straight Vermonter]

Sea water is approximately 0.15% deuterium.

Actually 0.015%

It's a needle in a haystack either way. Why use energy to produce ²H when you can produce energy AND get it?

[Wonder Warthog]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1829467/posts?page=7#7

Here’s the link to the FR thread about it. I didn’t save links back to the original on-line stuff. When I get home tonight, I’ll see if I can re-locate it.

I don’t think you can get spectral data from “track-etch” detectors. Fluence, possibly, but it’s been a LOOONNNGGG time since I studied up on the tech.

[DBrow]

I just looked at Cole-Parmer and they sell 100% D2O for about $250 for 100 ml, so it would be $2500 per liter, which will weigh a bit over 2.2 pounds, so let's guess at a kilobuck per pound for D2O.

I couldn't find prices on D2 gas without getting a quote, and I didn't feel like pestering a salesperson just to post it here. Most suppliers sell it “by the liter” to give you an idea.

[DBrow]

Thanks! As an aside, it’s not hard to detect neutrons. There are COTS detectors you can buy and plug in to your NIM rack and MCI setup.

Both gas and crystal detectors are out there.

The options for photon detectors are even broader these days with the proliferation of scintillators, driven by the homeland defense wish to tell the difference between a plutonium bomb and 600 pounds of bananas, in a truck passing your detector at 60 mph.

[RachelFaith]

You got that right. Even many of Tesla’s ideas have not been brought to fruition until later.

[DBrow]

Thanks!

And the T should start spitting beta too.

The P and N should be readily detected.

This may be a “new” reaction, D-D => He4 directly, which is unlikely but may explain why researchers in these labs stay healthy, or don’t fog film in the next lab. I’ve read speculations of a direct reaction due to tunneling to explain the lack of particles.

[OSHA]

That’s what we need the flux capacitor for!

55 posts before flux capacitor was mentioned. *SIGH* Things sure aren't like they were back in the good old days!

[theBuckwheat]

>>
Something is going on. There have simply been too many attempts that have had spurious results, ie: too much heat, to simply discount it entirely.
<<

And few experiments have been able to be duplicated. But IMO, there are too many attempts that have produced extra energy, even if only for short periods of time. AFIK, the question is only when will this nut be cracked, not if.

Now, suppose someone lays out a plausible experiment that produces a lot of extra energy and it is repeatable.

Just recently there was news that several firms are busy working on GM bacteria that consume organic waste and produce common hydrocarbon fuels. I noted how muted the MSM has been about his tremendous news. I will wager that as long as the MSM can ridicule cold fusion, it will. The instant that there is someone lays out a plausible path to a commercial-grade use of C/F to generate power, the MSM will also be muted. I speculate this way because the MSM is not interested in success in the production of energy. Just as they seek ideological success via cheering of a US defeat in Iraq, good news on alternative energy sources is bad news for the Left and the MSM with respect to the prosperity of the US.

[nicola_tesla]

Oil companies making a killing ? Sheesh, spending too much time on DU ?

Oil companies, if they don’t own the oil, are making about 9% margin, 6-7% if they are only refining it.

The ones making the killing are the owners of the easy-to-get oil - and many of those are state-owned companies like Pemex, Gazprom, Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia etc etc.

Go peddle the BS elsewhere.

[djf]

Drat!!

I shorted all my palladium futures yesterday!!

;-}

[nicola_tesla]

Did you forget to ping me when discussing my ideas ? ;)

[HardStarboard]

>>>I would suggest that research on cold fusion could have more beneficial effects than ....<<<

....spending billions attempting magnetic confinement of a fusion reaction in a "tokamak" device.

[RachelFaith]

ROFLOL !

Nice Nic...

[dpwiener]

There have simply been too many attempts that have had spurious results, ie: too much heat, to simply discount it entirely.

Fleischmann and Pons were highly respected chemists who were most unlikely to have fabricated their results. That's why everyone was so excited in 1989 when they announced cold fusion. That's also why people turned on them rather viciously when their experiments could not be reliably replicated.

I have always suspected that they had stumbled onto some kind of legitimate new phenomenon, but they didn't really understand the mechanism, and hence the procedures and materials they used did not always reproduce it. Most other scientists did not play around with it enough to fine-tune the recipe to get it to work. And even those who managed to get their experiments to sometimes produce excess heat still didn't know why.

But all it would take is one reliably reproducible formula which produces excess heat. Once there is a recipe which any scientist can follow to get similar results, and if it can be shown that the excess heat must be generated by nuclear rather than chemical reactions, then victory is at hand. An enormous number of scientists and engineers will turn their attention back to cold fusion, and its secret will be teased out in short order.

And if that happens, Fleischmann and Pons will finally be vindicated and receive their Nobel Prizes and the restoration of their reputations.

[Wonder Warthog]

http://www.lenr-canr.org/Collections/USNavy.htm

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1214733147725965006

http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MosierBossthermaland.pdf

Here are links to some of the original stuff. I’m very familiar with neutron detectors of various sorts. The problem with cold fusion is that it seems, in contravention of conventional physics, to not produce very many neutrons.

The physicists say this is impossible, but I don’t see much in the way of other explanations for the data presented here.

[El Gato]

Essentially, cold fusion would make oil obsolete.

Wouldn't that be nice, we could tell the Angry Ayatollahs, the Mad Mullahs and the sorry Saudis to go to take long run on a short pier.

We have plenty of oil and gas for all those other things other than burning that oil are used for. Lubrication, plastics, fertilizers, etc, etc.

[El Gato]

What benefit would cold fusion bring to the world if it did exist?

Lower ammounts of radioactive waste. And an easlier to obtain, but still not easy, fuel source.

Plus the scale might be such that "Mr. Fusion", that is a portable power source, might be possible. IOW, you might be able to power cars and trucks with it.

[ml/nj]

Quantum tunneling is not a mystery to physicists. Lots of semiconductor devices that have been around for decades.

There's a big difference between observing something and understanding it. My Atomic and Nuclear Physics professor supposedly worked with Einstein and my recollection is that she couldn't explain (c. 1967) why tunneling happened.

For those who don't know tunneling refers to a particle which moves to a lower energy state (which is as natural as water flowing downhill) but in order to do so it must first climb to a higher energy state; which isn't so natural. Think of a mountain lake. The sides of the lake are high enough to contain the water. The only way for it to empty out would be for it to tunnel out through the dirt. But in particle physics no one, as I recall, actually observes the particle in the "tunnel." They just see it at the bottom of the hill.

ML/NJ

[count-your-change]

Huh? Who’s making a killing?