Cold Fusion: Real Or Nasa Approved Widom-Larsen Effect?

[MarcelloTruzzi]

Can anyone tell me has it been proven that cold fusion is fact and by that I simply mean fusion actually occurs. Such that deuterium(hydrogen) transmutes into helium 4. I am not asking if more energy is produced than is put into it but simply if fusion itself is occurring. Look at this implied approval of some of the theories from NASA mentioned Widom-Larsen effect? See youtube video from NASA. http://youtu.be/42hrCRx1JJY I am thinking of buying into some of the explanations posited here:

Thanks for any input or direction to good resources for information.

 

Marcello

[CraigD]

Welcome to hypography, Marcello! :) Please feel free to start a topic in the introductions forum to tell us something about yourself.

 

Can anyone tell me has it been proven that cold fusion is fact and by that I simply mean fusion actually occurs. Such that deuterium(hydrogen) transmutes into helium 4.

I know of no trustworthy researcher that has published a high-confidence claim that hydrogen has been transmuted to helium other than by “brute force” work on H nucleons exceeding the Coulomb barrier, such as by Teller-Ulam style fusion bombs, Tokomaks, and laser-driven fusion machines, with one class of exceptions: muon-catalyzed fusion, which I believe has been well theoretically explained and experimentally demonstrated by many researchers for 50+ years.

 

I don’t have a good understanding of “Widom-Larsen theory” (for many links to descriptions of various quality, see New Energy Time’s webpage Widom-Larsen Theory Portal), which Joe Zawodny mentions in the video you posted. From what I can gather (most clearly, from Widom and Larsen’s 2006 Eur Phys J. C paper Ultra low momentum neutron catalyzed nuclear reactions on metallic hydride surfaces), the predicted effect isn’t fusion, in the sense of H+H -> He, but fission, of unusually light elements, Be -> He+He.

 

Unfortunately for enthusiast readers like me, the literature on cold fusion/LENRs appears a mess, dominated by anti-science-establishment conspiracy claims and financial scams. This state not only makes it hard to read for the amateur, but appears to repel credible professionals, who fear being associated with it.

[MarcelloTruzzi]

Dear CraigD,

 

So what I am understanding from your responses is:

Cold Fusion

aka low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR)

Proved=

1. Production of tritium

2. Production of neutrons

3. Heat production

 

Unproved=

1. Fusion

2. Fission(element transmutation)

3. More heat as a product of the energy(output) than energy first placed in the system

 

Weird that so many are claiming fusion. It is 2012 you would think it would not be very difficult to detect fused elements He4 if they were indeed byproducts of this process, no?

 

For example: a battery can produce energy but it is all banked put into the system before production of the energy transfer.

[sbkrivit]

Hi Marcello,

 

You are correct, there is no reality to D+D cold fusion. And the phenomena is not explained by fission either. Weak interactions, coupled with neutron capture processes, explain the phenomena quite well and easily. Weak interactions, as you probably know, are one of the four fundamental forces in physics, but they are an uncommon one and therefore many people overlooked it. The authors of WLT understand that LENR is not fusion, so does NASA's Zawodny, so does NASA's Bushnell.

 

The people that refuse to understand that LENR is not fusion fall into two classes: a) amateurs who either don't understand fundamental physics and who are unwilling to learn and b)professional researchers who know better, but who have been fighting for vindication under the flag of "cold fusion," but are unwilling to yield to a partial concession.

 

In one case there is Nobel prize winner Brian Josephson who has taken up the flag of "cold fusion" as one of his passions along with his interest in paranormal research. In 2004 I wrote a book about "cold fusion" when I had a much more limited understanding of the subject. If you look on the inside cover of the book, you'll see my quote from Josephson. He seeks the day of reckoning in which mainstream science will have to face the consequences of its "act of gross self-deception" because it did not accept the idea of "cold fusion."

 

Thus, the confusion that affects sincere newcomers like yourself will continue to linger a bit longer. If you have any further questions or comments, please come to New Energy Times. I'm not a regular contributor to this forum.

 

Thanks,

 

Steven B. Krivit

Editor, New Energy Times

http://newenergytimes.com/

[MarcelloTruzzi]

Weak interactions, coupled with neutron capture processes, explain the phenomena quite well and easily.

 

As of this present date the only evidence of "net energy gain" is:

1. Statements of individuals with legitimate academic credentials

2. Statements of two or more individuals verifying each other's claims

3. Plausible theoretical explanations of "net energy gain"

4. "Working" apparatus that have not been verified by "neutral" 3rd parties

5. Patent application and no patents awarded?

 

How different is this than pre-atomic bomb state of nuclear science knowledge or pre-Einstein–Szilárd letter?

 

Have there been no replication of "net energy gain" of one group by another group?

Very interesting. Thanks for any of your thoughts.

[Pyroelectric accelerator]

Can anyone tell me has it been proven that cold fusion is fact and by that I simply mean fusion actually occurs. Such that deuterium(hydrogen) transmutes into helium 4. I am not asking if more energy is produced than is put into it but simply if fusion itself is occurring. Look at this implied approval of some of the theories from NASA mentioned Widom-Larsen effect? See youtube video from NASA. http://youtu.be/42hrCRx1JJY I am thinking of buying into some of the explanations posited here:

Thanks for any input or direction to good resources for information.

 

Marcello

 

Nuclear fusion (D + D --> 3He + n) under desktop conditions (ambient temperature, low pressure) has been proved in a article published in Nature :

[Naranjo, Grmzewski, Putterman, Observation of nuclear fusion driven by a pyroelectric crystal, Nature, 434, 1115 (2005)]

The same author has then published another article where he achieved the following nuclear fusion reaction : T + D --> 4He + n

[Naranjo, Putterman, Venhausb, Pyroelectric fusion using a tritiated target, Nucl. Instr. and Meth. in Phys. Res. A, 632, 43 (2011)]

 

"Cold Fusion" is clearly real, there is no more doubt on it.

 

The only remaining question is : Can "Cold Fusion" be used to give us an extraordinary source of energy, or not ?

[CraigD]

Nuclear fusion (D + D --> 3He + n) under desktop conditions (ambient temperature, low pressure) has been proved in a article published in Nature :

[Naranjo, Grmzewski, Putterman, Observation of nuclear fusion driven by a pyroelectric crystal, Nature, 434, 1115 (2005)]

The same author has then published another article where he achieved the following nuclear fusion reaction : T + D --> 4He + n

[Naranjo, Putterman, Venhausb, Pyroelectric fusion using a tritiated target, Nucl. Instr. and Meth. in Phys. Res. A, 632, 43 (2011)]

Welcome to hypography, Pyroelectric accelerator (bit ungainly name, that!), and thanks for these references. :thumbs_up

 

For folk who aren’t Nature subscribers but want to read them, they’re available on fire.pppl.gov, where I read them. Like most Nature articles, they’re meant for a either the specialist or non-specialist reader.

 

I found this summary of Naranjo et al’s work helpful, and also the wikipedia article pyroelectric fusion.

 

The Nature articles are from 2005.

 

"Cold Fusion" is clearly real, there is no more doubt on it.

I think the term “cold fusion” is troublesome, because it’s been used for the past few decades to refer to many very different ideas. “Warm fusion”, “low energy nuclear reaction”, etc. aren’t IMHO much better.

 

Naranjo et al’s devices are, essentially, very small, low-power (the ones described in the 2005 nature articles consumed about 2 W of electric power, and emitted on the order of 10^-15 W power in the form of high-speed neutrons) particle accelerators. Although the device doesn’t itself have high temperature, the accelerated particles, H2 and H3 nuclei, consisting of a proton and one or two neutrons, have, by the technical definition of temperature as the average kinetic energy of a material, in this case, the accelerated particles, a very high temperature, estimate at about 10⁹ K, about 100 times the temperature of the Sun’s core.

 

A better description– but not a catchy – is “small, low-power, very hot fusion”.

 

The only remaining question is : Can "Cold Fusion" be used to give us an extraordinary source of energy, or not ?

If not the only question, and regardless of whether you call it cold, warm, or SLPVH fusion, I agree this is the key one, from a civil power engineering perspective.

 

Naranjo et al’s devices are, from what I’ve read, valuable as less expensive, more durable, more portable experimental neutron sources. I see no mention by any knowledgably person familiar with them that they offer much promise as an energy source. They consume more usable energy than they emit, by many orders or magnitude.

[Rade]

The Windom-Larsen explanation of LENR (aka new label for what has been called cold fusion since 1989) that has been mentioned in this thread has serious problems, as explained here by Dr. Peter Thieberger, Senior Physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory:

 

http://www.scribd.com/doc/77531467/Thie-Berger

 

So, let us wait for future research that will be conduced on Windom-Larsen by CERN and NASA before getting too excited about it. Might be worth a trip to Stockholm to see Thieberger eat a hat if Windom & Larsen confirmed.

 

Also, it is very possible that even if found to be valid explanation, Windom-Larsen may only explain a select set of LENR (cold fusion) type reactions and not others.

[belovelife]

ecat seems to have potential, right?

 

 

i am optimistic

 

but i don't know enough about it to make an informed decision

 

we can always hope right?

 

also take a look at this earlier thread:rolleyes:

[CraigD]

ecat seems to have potential, right?

It seems to some people to have potential, while to others, it seems to be either a complicated scam to bilk foolish investors, or a case of sincere self-delusion on the part of Rossi.

 

A big problem with the E-Cat is that it’s main proponents don’t offer a scientifically credible explanation of how it can work, only assert that, for whatever reason, it does.

 

Another is that they won’t tell anyone, even under an agreement not to tell anyone else (“non-disclosure”) how to make one of the devices in order that the claim of the amount of energy it consumes and produces can be verified.

 

A recent (April 2012) addition to the E-Cat’s wikipedia page quotes Ugo Bardo, who believes Rossi is either a scammer or deluded, and links to a blog entry of his where he cites what he considers evidence that Rossi isn’t trustworthy.

 

If Bardo is wrong, and the E-Cat really does what Rossi and his supporters claim, and Rossi’s claim that a stylish, 12” x 12” x 4”, 20 lb. unit producing 10kW of heat power is currently undergoing safety testing by UL, and will be available in the US for under $1,000 this winter, or at latest, by July 2013, is true, it will be obvious by July 2013. According to Rossi, an automated factory to produce millions of these is being built in the US.

 

I believe Bardo is correct. I don’t believe Rossi has built the claimed 10kW device, a factory to build them, has submitted it for testing to Underwriters Labs, or will begin selling them in the US by 2013.

 

If I’m wrong, however, it will be obvious in about a year.

[tetrahedron]

There seems to be a mathematical patterning to the Miley mass number chart that he and Widom and Larson have missed, beyond what they believe. And this pattern has a relationship to the Golden Mean. I wrote to Miley about this, unfortunately he didn't really bother to read my message laying out in detail how the patterning worked, instead just dismissing the notion. As CraigD may attest from other posts to other threads, there are quite a few such hidden patternings in the atomic realm. Is it really wise to just cast them aside with a wave of the hand, from overconfidence in one's own knowledge base and ideological biases?

 

Jess Tauber