Did everyone catch the recent article in New Scientist on Cold Fusion? The researchers are from the US navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego, California.
Full article would need a login to the site but a snippet is here.
The use of CR-39 as a detector goes back decades. In the cash-strapped Soviet Union, most physicists were unable to afford state-of-the-art nuclear instruments. Instead, they became expert at "reading" CR-39 detectors, identifying particles from the shape and depth of the tracks they left behind.
Cold-fusion researchers at the University of Illinois and the University of Minnesota have used CR-39 since the 1990s, laying the foundation for Mosier-Boss and Szpak's latest experiment. "You don't need complicated instrumentation," Gordon says. "It's an easy detection tool."
Spzak has also developed a technique called co-deposition that speeds up the process of packing deuterium atoms into a palladium lattice. Instead of using palladium for the negative electrode in his electrolysis experiment, he uses nickel or gold wire which is bathed in a solution of palladium chloride and lithium chloride dissolved in heavy water. When a current passes through the solution, equal
amounts of deuterium and palladium are deposited onto the wire (see Diagram). Within seconds, the palladium is packed with deuterium atoms and the reaction - whatever it is - begins.
Mosier-Boss and Szpak say their cells show telltale signs of nuclear reactions, including anomalous amounts of tritium and low-intensity X-rays, just minutes after co-deposition starts. They say the electrode can sometimes become a few degrees warmer than the surrounding solution.
In their latest experiment, Mosier-Boss and Spzak placed wafers of CR-39 against the electrode. When they examined them after running the experiment, they discovered that regions nearest the electrode were speckled with microscopic pits, while those further away were not. A control experiment without any palladium chloride in the solution produced only a few randomly scattered tracks that could be accounted for by background radiation. The researchers have also deliberately inflicted chemical damage on the CR-39: it "looks like fluffy, popcorn-shaped eruptions" on the plastic, Mosier-Boss says, not pits or holes. They are trying to identify which particles might have left the tracks.
Nuclear scientists associated with the project who are well versed in reading CR-39 detectors say the results appear convincing. The pits "exactly mimic typical nuclear tracks in their depth, size, distribution, shape and contrast", says Lawrence Forsley, a physicist who has worked in fusion research for 16 years and is president of JWK Technologies in Annandale, Virginia, one of the San Diego centre's research partners.
Gary Phillips, a nuclear physicist who has used CR-39 detectors for 20 years to capture nuclear signatures and also works for JMK Technologies, is no less enthusiastic. "I've never seen such a high density of tracks before," he says. "It would have to be from a very intense source - a nuclear source. You cannot get this from any kind of chemical reaction."
Image of the experiment from New Scientist
IMHO it would be difficult to argue that some kind of fusion reaction is not happening now.
Cheers
Pan
5th May 2007 - 05:12 AM
"Don't call it a comeback, it never went away!!"
I wonder if cold fusion is a victim of the overall degradation of science in our times.
Neil Farbstein
5th May 2007 - 06:24 AM
QUOTE (Pan+May 5 2007, 05:12 AM)
"Don't call it a comeback, it never went away!!"
I wonder if cold fusion is a victim of the overall degradation of science in our times.
Cold fusion appears to be a phenomenon without much practical impact. I have devised a z pinch machine that might produce nuclear fusion at lower energy inputs than the z machine at los alamos.
Good Elf
17th May 2007 - 07:32 AM
Hi Neil,
QUOTE (Neil Farbstein+)
Cold fusion appears to be a phenomenon without much practical impact. I have devised a z pinch machine that might produce nuclear fusion at lower energy inputs than the z machine at los alamos.
While Inertial Confinement and Toroidal Confinement Fusion may pay off in the end, don't you think that Cold Fusion (whatever it is) may just be so simple, if and when it takes off, to completely "clear the decks for a very long time when you consider just how complex these former technologies are compared with a "simple electrolytic cell". If there is any future in it at all, I think countries like China will be looking closely at these alternatives in the near future. Of all the countries, China needs it the most... If that is anything to go by that means it will probably be first.
On another note China's Heifei EAST Fusion Reactor has gone very quiet since the commissioning of its components in January. Anyone like to comment?
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-01/...ent_5638273.htmCheers
Neil Farbstein
17th May 2007 - 04:40 PM
China hyped their nuclear fusion reactor as being close to surpassing breakeven. It has not achieved break even or any other measure of progress over other fusion reactors. It was a lot a of hype.
Chromodynamix
18th May 2007 - 02:31 PM
This scientific fog about CF is very like anthropogenic global warming fog.
The fog is being generated in both cases, because vast sums of money are involved, and in this materialistic world everybody wants a slice of the pie.
Palladium foil hats anyone?
Neil Farbstein
18th May 2007 - 06:48 PM
QUOTE (Chromodynamix+May 18 2007, 02:31 PM)
This scientific fog about CF is very like anthropogenic global warming fog.
The fog is being generated in both cases, because vast sums of money are involved, and in this materialistic world everybody wants a slice of the pie.
Palladium foil hats anyone?
They're too expensive.
Good Elf
7th June 2008 - 02:53 AM
Hi All,
Update on Cold Fusion... It would seem that it is becoming partially "main stream".
Physicist Claims First Real Demonstration of Cold Fusion by Yoshiaki Arata of Osaka University. Others are apparently willing to back his claims. This is good news for the field and backs up research and endorsements made by the US Navy in their "recent" experiments. There are quite a few "smoking guns" now.
Cheers
Raphie Frank
7th June 2008 - 03:12 AM
I read about this. Here are a few interesting comments from a scientist who has taken, pardon the pun, quite a bit of heat on the issue of cold fusion:
========================================================
Pathological Disbelief
Written by Professor Brian D. Josephson
from the Meetings of Nobel Laureates in Lindau Website
"Cold fusion" appears to be the modern equivalent to continental drift, starting with the controversial claim, made by Pons and Fleischmann in 1989, to have generated in an electrochemical cell heat considerably in excess of anything explicable in conventional terms. This provoked hostile reaction: ignoring the possibility that an aggregate of ions in a condensed matter matrix may behave differently to a collection of freely moving ones, it was asserted that nuclear fusion could not be responsible for the claimed excess heat. Then came 'failure to replicate' by a number of groups, equated with the non-existence of the phenomenon, ignoring the fact that if different groups get different results there can be two explanations, one that the people who see some effects are bad experimenters, and the other that they were in fact better at creating the precise conditions needed for an effect to be seen. Usually in such cases time tells which side is right, but here the steadily mounting evidence that there was a real effect was suppressed through the publication policies of the major journals. Consequently, these apparently supportive results are not known to most scientists, who simply take it for granted that the Pons-Fleischmann claims have been disproved.
In an attempt to promote proper discussion of the issue, I tried in 2002 to upload a survey by Storms (7) to, the preprint server arxiv.org, the natural place for facilitating such discussion, but the moderators frustrated this intent by deleting the review, declaring it "inappropriate" (chemists, being a more robust species than physicists, were permitted to see it on their own server chemweb.com)
========================================================
I will be quite curious to see how this plays out down the line. If true, and if this can be built upon, I believe it to be a rather important development as I am certain many would agree.
Best,
Raphie
Good Elf
7th June 2008 - 07:22 AM
Hi Raphie Frank,
Raphie Frank quoted from this source...
QUOTE (Pathological Disbelief; Written by Professor Brian D. Josephson; from the Meetings of Nobel Laureates in Lindau Website+)
"Cold fusion" appears to be the modern equivalent to continental drift, starting with the controversial claim, made by Pons and Fleischmann in 1989, to have generated in an electrochemical cell heat considerably in excess of anything explicable in conventional terms. This provoked hostile reaction: ignoring the possibility that an aggregate of ions in a condensed matter matrix may behave differently to a collection of freely moving ones, it was asserted that nuclear fusion could not be responsible for the claimed excess heat. Then came 'failure to replicate' by a number of groups, equated with the non-existence of the phenomenon, ignoring the fact that if different groups get different results there can be two explanations, one that the people who see some effects are bad experimenters, and the other that they were in fact better at creating the precise conditions needed for an effect to be seen. Usually in such cases time tells which side is right, but here the steadily mounting evidence that there was a real effect was suppressed through the publication policies of the major journals. Consequently, these apparently supportive results are not known to most scientists, who simply take it for granted that the Pons-Fleischmann claims have been disproved.
In an attempt to promote proper discussion of the issue, I tried in 2002 to upload a survey by Storms (7) to, the preprint server arxiv.org, the natural place for facilitating such discussion, but the moderators frustrated this intent by deleting the review, declaring it "inappropriate" (chemists, being a more robust species than physicists, were permitted to see it on their own server chemweb.com)
That is an interesting story by Brian D. Josephson, he has been a constant advocate of investigation into Cold Fusion. It would seem that some information is not "required" for the pursuit of enterprise. I believe you can Google any number of DOD reports on the web based on the "threat" of new technologies. Everything is seen in terms of "threat" and as a "danger to assets", not in terms of the possible benefit such as being able to solve critical energy problems facing the Earth. Maybe this is a beginning of a new technology... a difficult birth against "all odds".
Cheers
Good Elf
10th June 2008 - 12:01 PM
Hi
beuis, Raphie Frank,
QUOTE (beuis+)
cold fusion is great but why bother when there is a no tech solution to the aparent energy crisis.
go here read learn - Ausra.com
no tech free energy solution for world.
Im in turkey today and I can fry an egg on a car! Imagine a large plastic magnifying glass boiling water or there mirror system.
power for whole of europe!!
+ everyone driving a tesla roadsta electric car.. why we not do this!!!!
why we not do this 50 years ago????
You are dead right. I think that the future requires a mix of technical and less technical solutions. Cold Fusion is for the future but it holds hope of clean, safe and plentiful energy in a very compact source (without heavy radiation shielding).
This will allow development for the future such as space travel and also small portable power units to be used in very remote regions such as isolated villages beyond the grid in poorer countries. No more diesel generators!
I saw a program on the Science Channel this evening using an adaption of the system shown in your reference in Seville, Spain... Very impressive. Here are several of the biggest for people to look at... Seville is there also.
Mega Solar: the World’s 13 Biggest Solar Thermal Energy ProjectsOne of the biggest problems regarding solar energy is the relatively low density of the power and the high cost of the infrastructure. Otherwise I am all for it. What I think we must all agree on is the "extreme" reduction of the use of fossil carbon fuels for the sake of the health of "Mother Earth". One major problem with solar power is the need for energy at night and on overcast days. It is not good to have the levels of power decline at peak demand. This unit in Seville appears to be addressing the problem by storing the heat of the solar concentrators in molten sodium for use when demand falls off at night. Still this off peak demand will be a problem for all solar energy way into the future. There is a need for 24 hour a day full and reliable energy that is scalable and does not use fossil fuels.
Being from Turkey I am sure you are a fan of Nikola Tesla as I am too. However the Tesla Roadster is beyond my means to purchase and I am not all that happy with the current battery technologies because I think it is environmentally "messy". Imagine all the cars on earth requiring all these 621 batteries to be recycled every 5 years?
Tesla Roadster: The Electric Car that Redefines "Power"Taken as a whole the construction of these "units" would be quite expensive and this is reflected in the current price. The other problem with battery driven cars is the time it takes to recharge. If you are traveling distance you really do not want to stop and "fill up" over several hours. Imagine the "charging stations' where one customer takes nearly 6 hours to "fill it up". There would be endless queues at the charging stations and profits would be diminished if you could not move them through rapidly. This would only add to the price of supplying the energy to the customer. Of course this would need a lot of solar generators to produce the energy and it would be needed significantly at night too.
Perhaps fuel cells which are very efficient and much lighter would be feasible and filling them up would be compatible with current bowser technology. The synthesis of green sources of carbon based Methanol (not fossil carbon sources) might be possible if one had sufficient baseload energy available. Perhaps we could use atmospheric carbon dioxide in a synthesis reaction to generate the fuel and clean the atmosphere at the same time? The cells would be constructed using nano-technology to be nearly 50% efficient in energy use. Other aspects of motor vehicle design used in the Tesla Car would be appropriate. This would solve what to do with all those gas stations and they would not look like a drive-in movie just to fill them up at battery recharge stations while everyone lays back and watches re-runs of "I love Lucy" (perhaps I would prefer to take up "self dentistry" for a hobby than to wile away my time "waiting" and watching TV).
Wikipedia: Fuel Cells (Methanol in particular)One of the other sources of energy that I find attractive is shallow buried Hot Dry Rocks (Geothermal Energy). This resource is virtually "endless" and widespread. Also the harnessing of this energy could be organized to have a small footprint. These sources of natural radioactive energy already buried naturally in the earth are plentiful and available. They are on the point of being harnessed currently. There is more than enough energy for all for thousands if not millions of years. Once again the problem is drilling into the earth and rugged hardware that can stand the corrosive fluids and the elevated temperatures.
Wikipedia: Hot dry rock geothermal energyThere are a couple of pilot plants in Australia run by a University based Company at the moment. The current government is pretty keen to look at it and possibly to fund it... I certainly hope so.
Room for all...
Cheers
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And It's brought some "big guns" with it.
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