| Topic: |
Science > Physics |
| User: |
"divot" |
| Date: |
04 Sep 2004 12:20:52 AM |
| Object: |
Cold fusion back from dead |
IEEE Spectrum reports in its September issue 2004 that Cold Fusion is Back
from the Dead
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/sep04/0904nfus.html
THE FIRST HINT that the tide may be changing came in February 2002, when the
U.S. Navy revealed that its researchers had been studying cold fusion on the
quiet more or less continuously since the debacle began. Much of this work
was carried out at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego,
where the idea of generating energy from sea water-a good source of heavy
water-may have seemed more captivating than at other laboratories.
Many researchers at the center had worked with Fleischmann, a well-respected
electrochemist, and found it hard to believe that he was completely
mistaken. What's more, the Navy encouraged a culture of risk-taking in
research and made available small amounts of funding for researchers to
pursue their own interests.
At San Diego and other research centers, scientists built up an impressive
body of evidence that something strange happened when a current passed
through palladium electrodes placed in heavy water.
And by 2002, a number of Navy scientists believed it was time to throw down
the gauntlet. A two-volume report, entitled "Thermal and nuclear aspects of
the Pd/D2O system," contained a remarkable plea for proper funding from
Frank Gordon, the head of navigation and applied science at the Navy center.
"It is time that this phenomenon be investigated so that we can reap
whatever benefits accrue from scientific understanding. It is time for
government funding agencies to invest in this research," he wrote. The
report was noted by the DOE but appeared to have little impact.
Then, last August, in a small hotel near the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, in Cambridge, some 150 engineers and scientists met for the
Tenth International Conference on Cold Fusion. Conference observers were
struck by the careful way in which various early criticisms of the research
were being addressed. Over the years, a number of groups around the world
have reproduced the original Pons-Fleischmann excess heat effect, yielding
sometimes as much as 250 percent of the energy put in.
To be sure, excess energy by itself is not enough to establish that fusion
is taking place. In addition to energy, critics are quick to emphasize, the
fusion of deuterium nuclei should produce other byproducts, such as helium
and the hydrogen isotope tritium. Evidence of these byproducts has been
scant, though Antonella de Ninno and colleagues from the Italian National
Agency for New Technologies Energy and the Environment, in Rome, have found
strong evidence of helium generation when the palladium cells are producing
excess heat but not otherwise.
Other researchers are finally beginning to explain why the Pons-Fleischmann
effect has been difficult to reproduce. Mike McKubre from SRI International,
in Menlo Park, Calif., a respected researcher who is influential among those
pursuing cold fusion, says that the effect can be reliably seen only once
the palladium electrodes are packed with deuterium at ratios of 100
percent-one deuterium atom for every palladium atom. His work shows that if
the ratio drops by as little as 10 points, to 90 percent, only 2
experimental runs in 12 produce excess heat, while all runs at a ratio of
100 percent produce excess heat.
And scientists are beginning to get a better handle on exactly how the
effect occurs. Stanislaw Szpak and colleagues from the Space and Naval
Warfare Systems Command have taken infrared video images of palladium
electrodes as they produce excess energy. It turns out that the heat is not
produced continuously over the entire electrode but only in hot spots that
erupt and then die on the electrode surface. This team also has evidence of
curious mini-explosions on the surface.
Fleischmann, who is still involved in cold fusion as an advisor to a number
of groups, feels vindicated. He told the conference: "I believe that the
work carried out thus far amply illustrates that there is a new and richly
varied field of research waiting to be explored." (Pons is no longer
involved in the field, having dropped from view after a laboratory he joined
in southern France ceased operations.)
For Peter Hagelstein, an electrical engineer at MIT who works on the theory
behind cold fusion and who chaired the August 2003 conference, the quality
of the papers was hugely significant. "It's obvious that there are effects
going on," he says. He and two colleagues believed the results were so
strong that they were worth drawing to the attention of the DOE, and late
last year they secured a meeting with the department's Decker.
It was a meeting that paid off dramatically. The review will give cold
fusion researchers a chance-perhaps their last-to show their mettle. The
department has yet to decide just what will be done and by whom. There is no
guarantee of funding or of future support. But for a discipline whose name
has become a byword for junk science, the DOE's review is a big opportunity.
.
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| User: "Uncle Al" |
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| Title: Re: Cold fusion back from dead |
04 Sep 2004 11:41:50 AM |
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divot wrote:
IEEE Spectrum reports in its September issue 2004 that Cold Fusion is Back
from the Dead
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/sep04/0904nfus.html
THE FIRST HINT that the tide may be changing came in February 2002, when the
U.S. Navy revealed that its researchers had been studying cold fusion on the
quiet more or less continuously since the debacle began.
[snip]
Cold fusion is not only merely dead, it is really most sincerely
dead. It has as much chance of being real as religion. Pick any
religion you wish and apply.
--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz.pdf
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| User: "Morituri-Max" |
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| Title: Re: Cold fusion back from dead |
04 Sep 2004 01:31:31 PM |
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Uncle Al wrote:
divot wrote:
IEEE Spectrum reports in its September issue 2004 that Cold Fusion is Back
from the Dead
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/sep04/0904nfus.html
THE FIRST HINT that the tide may be changing came in February 2002, when the
U.S. Navy revealed that its researchers had been studying cold fusion on the
quiet more or less continuously since the debacle began.
[snip]
Cold fusion is not only merely dead, it is really most sincerely
dead. It has as much chance of being real as religion. Pick any
religion you wish and apply.
Hmmm, damnabit... how about luke-warm fusion? Come on Al throw me a bone so i
can have some fantasies! Oh, wait I think I hear the Easter Bunny mowing my
lawn..
8 ) kidding..
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