dagblog - Comments for "The Man Who Fell for Fusion"

Do the Math has an

Donal — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 03:41:43 +0000

In reply to The Man Who Fell for Fusion

Do the Math has an informative post on not very cold Nuclear Fusion.

I respect Tom Whipple's

Donal — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:28:20 +0000

In reply to My link can't get past the

I respect Tom Whipple's reporting, but AFAIK he hasn't examined or explained Rossi's PetrolDragon experience—his arrests, imprisonment, etc. Supporters present this as persecution, opponents smell a fraud.

Westenhaus' article notes that NASA has not mentioned Rossi or the E-Cat by name.

Sending something to Underwriters Labs is vastly different than UL being involved.

My link can't get past the

MidBosque — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 14:40:49 +0000

In reply to The Man Who Fell for Fusion

My link can't get past the spam filter. So, there is an article poast 1/18/2012 at oilprice.com by Bian Westenhaus that is germane to this subject. When the UL and DARPA and NASA are involved, perhaps more than cynicism is warranted? Just saying. You of course will judge. It's under the energy section. Title: "Is Rossi Looking at Mass Production of the E-CAT?"

Does this reporting cause

MidBosque — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 14:35:00 +0000

In reply to The Man Who Fell for Fusion

Does this reporting cause cognitive dissonance? Skepticism is always healthy. Cynicism, not so much. There's a reason why Tom Whipple is a veteran energy reporter.

http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Is-Rossi-Looking-at-Mass-Produ...

Cold fusion has been

Jed Rothwell — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 17:15:41 +0000

In reply to The Man Who Fell for Fusion

Cold fusion has been reproduced thousands of times in hundreds of major laboratories. These replications are described in mainstream, peer-reviewed journal papers. I have copied 1,200 of these papers from the library at Los Alamos. I suggest you review this literature before commenting on the research. See:

http://lenr-canr.org

It is wondrous strange that

acanuck — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 21:42:46 +0000

In reply to The Man Who Fell for Fusion

It is wondrous strange that someone who went to jail for one scientific scam can decades later find people (including some scientists) prepared to argue that "maybe he got it right this time." Thanks for linking to the excellent Starts With a Bang posts.

Yes, I found that this piece

Donal — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 19:10:00 +0000

In reply to In looking into this further,

Yes, I found that this piece was quickly picked up at eCat News, and a commenter there wrote, "In Pd-D, the main reaction is usually reported to be D+D->He4" - D being deuterium. That would explain why no one was wearing shielding against gamma rays.

I'm tempted to do a piece attacking zombies just to see who reposts it.

The Pons & Fleischmann (&

Verified Atheist — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:30:25 +0000

In reply to Cold Fusion has been the

The Pons & Fleischmann (& Hawkins) experiment very likely failed to properly calibrate their measuring devices. Later groups who thought they had recreated it (including one at my alma mater, Georgia Tech, where I was at the time this paper was published), later retracted their claims after realizing that they, too, had made experimental errors.

As I said above, one day we might figure out how to do cold fusion. I see no evidence that it's happened yet, though, and plenty of evidence to suggest that Rossi et al. are mistaken.

Ba-dump-bump.

Verified Atheist — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:23:24 +0000

In reply to So in other words your

Ba-dump-bump.

In looking into this further,

Verified Atheist — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:21:54 +0000

In reply to A few points: It's true

In looking into this further, I realized that the press release was perhaps oversimplifying things (this is unfortunately all too common). The palladium and nickel act more as catalysts than as reagents. Supposedly, these catalysts "compress" the deuterium (²H) so that it can more easily fuse with itself to form ⁴He. As Genghis points out below, there are good reasons to be skeptical of this.

However, muon catalyzed cold fusion has been demonstrated, with the drawback being that it requires more energy than it generates. (That doesn't make it useless, it just means it's not useful for generating energy.)