Cold Fusion, 23 Years Later

[exchemist]

 

1) I'm not "pushing" anything, except urge for scientific consistency.

 

 

2) Those are some of the "cranks" who are/was "pushing" CF/LENR:

 

-  one of the brightest physicists of modern era, Julian Schwinger:

After 1989 Schwinger took a keen interest in the non-mainstream research of cold fusion. He wrote eight theory papers about it. He resigned from the American Physical Society after their refusal to publish his papers. He felt that cold fusion research was being suppressed and academic freedom violated. He wrote: "The pressure for conformity is enormous. I have experienced it in editors’ rejection of submitted papers, based on venomous criticism of anonymous referees. The replacement of impartial reviewing by censorship will be the death of science."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Schwinger

more sources:

https://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0303/0303078.pdf

http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue1/colfusthe.html

 

-  prof. Peter L. Hagelstein, associate proffesor at MIT

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_L._Hagelstein

http://www.rle.mit.edu/people/directory/peter-hagelstein/

 

-  dr. Louis F. DeChiaro 

https://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/m/35303

 

- Ph.D. Pamela Mosier-Boss and her personell of the U.S. Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center

http://phys.org/news/2009-03-cold-fusion-rebirth-evidence-controversial.html

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/reports/SSC-Pacific-Refereed-Journal-Articles.pdf

 

-  dr Allan Widom

http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=162817

https://www.aip.org/gpb/pdf_files/147.pdf

- Lewis Larsen

http://www.kitco.com/ind/Albrecht/2014-02-25-Alchemy-2-0-Low-Energy-Nuclear-Reactor-Creates-Gold-and-Platinum.html

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lewislarsen

http://www.rexresearch.com/larsenau/larsenAu.htm

(Widom-Larsen theory:  http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/WL/WLTheory.shtml )

 

... and many other specialists on nuclear physics and electrochemistry recognised as experts on their fields, who certainly can't be called cranks. Except late Schwinger, al they are very alive, and still working, proposing theories and successfully reproducing and extending F-P experiment.

http://www.currentscience.ac.in/php/feat.php?feature=Special%20Section:%20Low%20Energy%20Nuclear%20Reactions&featid=10094

 

 

3)  Besides US, after F-P experiment, many foreign labs and teams continued research on CF/LENR. It is to long list to be named in this post, so this is link on informations gathered by The Defense Intelligence Agency ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Intelligence_Agency , http://www.dia.mil/ ):

Technology Forecast: Worldwide Research on Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions Increasing and Gaining Acceptance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2009DIA-08-0911-003.pdf

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/2009DIA-08-0911-003.pdf

- dated 13. November 2009.

 

Investigation of nano-nuclear reactions in condensed matter - final report, approved for public release; distribution is unlimited © 2016 P.A. Boss, L.P. Forsley, P.J. McDaniel

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MosierBossinvestigat.pdf

 

 

- doesn't look like "zomby science" supported by "the cranks", to me.

 

Well, if that is so, how do you account for the lack of progress?

 

Or are you going to allege a conspiracy theory?   

[OceanBreeze]

US Patent Office has had a good look into this and they were not impressed.

 

This claim has been around forever and it always seems like the “next big breakthrough” is just around the corner, just a few more million$$$ should do it!

 

How many more iterations will it go through before it is finally ignored, I wonder?

[CraigD]

This looks like zombie science - a failed idea that will not die because the cranks have got hold of it.

...

This claim has been around forever and it always seems like the “next big breakthrough” is just around the corner, just a few more million$$$ should do it!

 

How many more iterations will it go through before it is finally ignored, I wonder?

The cold fusion community is certainly rife with cranks, conspiracy theorists, petty charlatans, plus a few world class swindlers.

 

What puts cold fusion in a different category than true crank pseudo-science like, say, perpetual motion (which, similarly to how cold fusion has been rebranded “LENR”, was rebranded “over-unity”), is that it is enticing to smart, well-educate people like some of those Haram listed in this post. Julian Schwinger, who shared the 1965 Nobel prize in physics with Feynman for their work on QED, was dedicated to cold fusion. Peter Hagelstein, an eminently competent engineer and tenured associate professor at MIT, seems essentially addicted to it, paying a price in his scientific and academic career (as chronicled in this 2004 Boston Globe article). By varying estimates, a few hundred credible scientists have been laboring for decades to show that cold fusion is real, explain it theoretically, or at least agree on a hypothetical definition of what it is.

 

A powerful influencer underlying its appeal is that many good and intelligent people have and continue to want cold fusion to be real, and practically attainable, because if it was, it could provide us with clean energy practically forever. I remember my reaction in 1989 to Fleischmann and Pons’ announcement, where for weeks I gleefully predicted to anyone who would listen that society was on the brink of utopia, a state of giddy euphoria that morphed in disappointment, embarrassment, and cynicism.

 

For all its social baggage, and even though it may be a mirage, cold fusion is worth of scientific study, if only because the theoretical physics needed to show that it is impossible is good sicence. I wish Hagelstein and people like him good luck, and protection from cranks and cruel critics.

[OceanBreeze]

For all its social baggage, and even though it may be a mirage, cold fusion is worth of scientific study, if only because the theoretical physics needed to show that it is impossible is good sicence. I wish Hagelstein and people like him good luck, and protection from cranks and cruel critics.

 

I agree 100% that it is worthy of academic study and I have sympathy for scientists like Hagelstein who are pursuing this.

It is the crackpots and the swindlers, like Rossi, that I have no tolerance for. The reason why the crackpots and swindlers are able to persist is precisely because this is something worthy to pursue, plus human greed.

 

Rossi’s “fusion in a jar” is nothing more than a heat pump, and the science behind that has been around for a very long time. Nothing mysterious, and it might also be useful as an exotic water heater, but it most certainly is not cold fusion.

[exchemist]

...

The cold fusion community is certainly rife with cranks, conspiracy theorists, petty charlatans, plus a few world class swindlers.

 

What puts cold fusion in a different category than true crank pseudo-science like, say, perpetual motion (which, similarly to how cold fusion has been rebranded “LENR”, was rebranded “over-unity”), is that it is enticing to smart, well-educate people like some of those Haram listed in this post. Julian Schwinger, who shared the 1965 Nobel prize in physics with Feynman for their work on QED, was dedicated to cold fusion. Peter Hagelstein, an eminently competent engineer and tenured associate professor at MIT, seems essentially addicted to it, paying a price in his scientific and academic career (as chronicled in this 2004 Boston Globe article). By varying estimates, a few hundred credible scientists have been laboring for decades to show that cold fusion is real, explain it theoretically, or at least agree on a hypothetical definition of what it is.

 

A powerful influencer underlying its appeal is that many good and intelligent people have and continue to want cold fusion to be real, and practically attainable, because if it was, it could provide us with clean energy practically forever. I remember my reaction in 1989 to Fleischmann and Pons’ announcement, where for weeks I gleefully predicted to anyone who would listen that society was on the brink of utopia, a state of giddy euphoria that morphed in disappointment, embarrassment, and cynicism.

 

For all its social baggage, and even though it may be a mirage, cold fusion is worth of scientific study, if only because the theoretical physics needed to show that it is impossible is good sicence. I wish Hagelstein and people like him good luck, and protection from cranks and cruel critics.

Yes, that's fair enough.

 

I think the amount of attention it is getting these days is about right: very little indeed, but one or two dedicated people carry on, so that if, and it's a huge if, there is anything in it, one day it will come to light. But it is rife with cranks and people who may be crooks, like Rossi (who has, I think, criminal convictions in Italy).

 

Personally I have just about written it off, both for theoretical reasons and because so much time has elapsed without any reproducible replication of it. I am not sure what our poster here is trying to achieve, but I for one am not going to spend the time reading the references he has offered.

 

Wake me up when someone has some new and convincing results.  :)

Edited November 16, 2016 by exchemist

[tetrahedron]

I know this topic has lain dormant at least twice, so here goes my stirring the pot. As some of you know (from my posts on the Physics and Mathematics forum) I study atomic electronic and nuclear shell structures from a mathematical perspective. All the math points to the number 6 (carbon) being a spherical magic number (I'm not sure, however, that carbon IS spherical, it may be slightly prolate, from a nucleon cluster model view).

 

Anyway, it turns out that most heavy main sequence stars get their primary energy by carbon-catalyzed hydrogen fusion (the CNO cycle). Hydrogens sequentially get absorbed by carbon, transmuting it into nitrogen, then oxygen (and sometimes on to fluorine) before it emits a helium nucleus and reverts back to carbon, thus the catalysis.

 

It can do this because 8 is a harmonic oscillator spherical magic, and as I mentioned above, 6 SHOULD be a spin-orbit magic (though the shell energy gap is minimal compared to all other spin-orbit shells). The difference being just 2, for both protons and neutrons, helium conveniently fits between these magics as a 'waste' product.

 

Well I've been interested in LENR since 1989 myself (I was at Berkeley at the time, in the doctoral LINGUISTICS program (don't ask....)) when the news hit the TV.  

 

SO if we could simply bypass HH fusion and shoot for CNO directly, we might be able to use METHANE as a fuel. Its all right there, the carbon and the four hydrogens. If we wanna go for a brute-force method to overcome electromagnetic repulsion, it'll take a lot more temperature and pressure than the sun uses. OTOH perhaps there is a way to trick the system? Thoughts? Thanks!

 

Jess Tauber

[exchemist]

I know this topic has lain dormant at least twice, so here goes my stirring the pot. As some of you know (from my posts on the Physics and Mathematics forum) I study atomic electronic and nuclear shell structures from a mathematical perspective. All the math points to the number 6 (carbon) being a spherical magic number (I'm not sure, however, that carbon IS spherical, it may be slightly prolate, from a nucleon cluster model view).

 

Anyway, it turns out that most heavy main sequence stars get their primary energy by carbon-catalyzed hydrogen fusion (the CNO cycle). Hydrogens sequentially get absorbed by carbon, transmuting it into nitrogen, then oxygen (and sometimes on to fluorine) before it emits a helium nucleus and reverts back to carbon, thus the catalysis.

 

It can do this because 8 is a harmonic oscillator spherical magic, and as I mentioned above, 6 SHOULD be a spin-orbit magic (though the shell energy gap is minimal compared to all other spin-orbit shells). The difference being just 2, for both protons and neutrons, helium conveniently fits between these magics as a 'waste' product.

 

Well I've been interested in LENR since 1989 myself (I was at Berkeley at the time, in the doctoral LINGUISTICS program (don't ask....)) when the news hit the TV.  

 

SO if we could simply bypass HH fusion and shoot for CNO directly, we might be able to use METHANE as a fuel. Its all right there, the carbon and the four hydrogens. If we wanna go for a brute-force method to overcome electromagnetic repulsion, it'll take a lot more temperature and pressure than the sun uses. OTOH perhaps there is a way to trick the system? Thoughts? Thanks!

 

Jess Tauber

Yes but your comment about electrostatic repulsion is the killer of course. LENR doesn't work because there is no way to "trick the system" that we know about. Unless your theories come forward with such a trick, LENR will continue to be nothing more than  "zombie science".

[tetrahedron]

Chemical enzymes and other catalysts operate because they alter the local potential landscape. They are structured. And some quantum properties can be delocalized away from the original entity, so long that some connection remains and eventually are returned to their original holders. The question is whether CHARGE can be so shifted temporarily, just enough to sneak the nucleons in. 

 

Jess Tauber

[exchemist]

Chemical enzymes and other catalysts operate because they alter the local potential landscape. They are structured. And some quantum properties can be delocalized away from the original entity, so long that some connection remains and eventually are returned to their original holders. The question is whether CHARGE can be so shifted temporarily, just enough to sneak the nucleons in. 

 

Jess Tauber

Specifically, catalysts lower the Activation Energy for the reaction.

 

You will need to explain to me what you mean by quantum properties being delocalised away from their original entity. Offhand I can't think of any examples of this. Do you have some?

 

QM tunnelling, which is a different thing, has I gather been considered as a possible LENR mechanism but does not work, presumably because  the barrier is too high for any significant particle density to penetrate it.  

[OceanBreeze]

 

 perhaps there is a way to trick the system?

 

 

 

 sneak the nucleons in. 

 

 

No.

[exchemist]

It seems pascal has gone off the boil on this subject.

[Vmedvil]

Despite much research into cold fusion it was found to not have worked, the idea was around if something gets enough voltage it will fuse as the barriers get weaker, it seems that you are unable to generate enough charge to actually overcome the repelling charge force of the protons inside the atom from that system. This does seem to make the barrier to get weaker but not weak enough to allow protons to get close enough into the atom for the SNF to overcome the force of the nucleus charge.  I think honestly, they were doing this will too small a current, it, would probably take a charge equivalent to the strength of the SNF being 30x stronger than charge, so something like 30 negative elementary charges per nucleus to block that force of charge then get it enough potential to fuse one proton with one elementary charge against another proton with one elementary charge, that number could even be as high as 60 negative elementary charges per nucleus since it is two positive elementary charges. In either case, it was a good idea but failed not all good ideas are physically correct. So, between 2,894,173.2 Amps and 5,788,346.4 Amps to electrolysis fusion via simulating the strength of the SNF in a mole of deuterium with charge.

 

 

 

 

So, I am not saying this is impossible but I am saying they were probably using too low a current, a few amps may be enough for chemical bonds but atomic bonds require much more force being a million times to billion times stronger than chemical bonds. Between 2.8 Billion Amps and 5.7 Billion Amps per mole may be enough to literally suck the protons straight out of nuclei vastly overcoming the SNF's strength, most people don't like the idea of being deatomized via spontaneous nuclear fission. 

 

 

At this point, you would become neutronium for a short time then just neutrons as it falls apart then protons and electrons once the neutrons beta decay with a half-life of about 20 minutes, probably Free quarks at between 2.8 and 5.8 Trillion amps per mole since around a Tev blows up protons, this is why people don't stand in front of particle accelerators at a Tev.

 

 

Edited October 14, 2017 by Vmedvil

[NidhiSharma]

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