Cold Fusion Gets a Boost From the US Navy

Tjeerd writes in to alert us to the publication in a highly respected, peer-reviewed journal of results indicative of table-top fusion. The US Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego, CA (called Spawar) has apparently been conducting research on "cold fusion" since the days of the discredited report of Pons and Fleischmann. They are reporting on the reproducible detection of highly energetic charged particles from a wire coated in palladium-deuterium and subjected to either an electric or a magnetic field. Their paper was published in February in the journal Naturwissenschaften (which has published work by Einstein, Heisenberg, and Lorenz). New Scientist also has a note about the fusion work but it is available only to subscribers.

Figures

[DrMrLordX (559371)]

You can bet the Navy is interested in any portable, high-power energy source that could exceed the efficiency of fission reactors. Those rail guns they're pimping probably take a lot of power to operate.

More power to em (literally and figuratively).

Re:Figures

[Da Fokka (94074)]

There's a huge difference between mere fusion reactions and an actual fusion reactor that will sustainably produce power. From what I've read, this is about the former, so I'm not keeping my fingers crossed just yet. However, it's still good to see that fusion research is being carried out along several different approaches.

Re:Key: Output Energy Exceeds Input Energy

[mdsolar (1045926)]

At this point, they are not aiming for net energy production. Their two main advances are to 1) use codeposition to get deutrium loading from the beginning and 2) using a detector that can fit within the experiment. The first advance means that the effects are seen just about every time, and the second means that the background has less of an effect on detection, particularly if charged particles are involved since these have trouble escaping the experimental setup owing to Compton losses. Getting more power out than in is not really the basic measure though. The power out so far is heat, so you want quite an excess before you can turn that back into something usable.
--
Energy out from the Sun: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html [blogspot.com]

Re:Figures

[ShooterNeo (555040)]

You might be interested to know that this isn't actually the case. A few hundred kilowatts of generating capacity is sufficient to fire rail guns. Why? Calculate the total energy content of 2 tons of explosives. That's how much kinetic energy a rail-gun shot might yield, and it isn't actually very much energy. (just released all at once : is why the rail-gun power supply would need to have massive accumulators of some type)

Re:

[evanbd (210358)]

The energy content of 2 tons of TNT is about 8 gigajoules. That's rather a lot of energy. A kinetic projectile at 10,000 m/s -- mach 30 -- has 50 megajoules per kilogram. You'd need a 160 kg of projectile to reach 8 GJ. Seems possible for a shipboard system, but I bet the first applications are much smaller. Anyway, for something that size you'd want much more than a few hundred kw of generator -- even at 1MW, that's over 2 hours between shots with no inefficiencies anywhere. My personal guess is that

Re:

[mvdwege (243851)]

Incidentally, guns on ships as an offensive weapon have been pretty much obsolete since Pearl Harbour, the occasional shore bombardment mission notwithstanding. The primary naval offensive platform is the aircraft carrier, seconded by the ballistic missile carrying submarine and the guided missile armed cruiser. The old battleship is a distant fourth, if in service at all, and even the use of guns as fleet defense is being phased out in favour of destroyers and frigates armed with guided missiles.

Mart

Re:

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

except that you don't have the stored chemical energy, you have to get the power for each shot from the ship generators.

Which they already have. Really, really big ones; it takes a crapload of energy to push a ship through the water quickly, too, and in order to do it, the Navy (and its contractors) have gotten good at extracting a lot of energy from either nuclear reactions or petrochemicals in short order.

A current-generation Aegis frigate has two GE LM2500 gas turbines, each producing 33,600 shaft HP, wh

Re:

[Yvanhoe (564877)]

Please note that if cold fusion really exists, it will probably not bear the same amount of energy. After all, the first occurrence of hot fusion was in the Hydrogen Bomb and the first occurrence of cold fusion was a bottle making bubbles.
Still interesting to power my laptop battery but maybe not enough for my jetpack.

That Depends

[mdsolar (1045926)]

The energy produced per fusion event pretty much has to be the same, but the rate at which the fusion occurs is controled differently. If this can be harnessed for energy production, it may end up as distributed power generation rather than centralized power generation envisioned for hot fusion. There does seem to be sufficient palladium available to make significant levels of power.
--
Hot fusion now with no installation cost: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html [blogspot.com]

Re:

[Anna Merikin (529843)]

the first occurrence of cold fusion was a bottle making bubbles.

Not so. The first occurence (the discovery itself) was caused by a fire in the lab where the experiment was housed; the starting point of the fire was the closet that contained the cooler with the heavy water.

Several years later, probably the first replication of the effect was marked by a fire in the Palo Alto Lab containing the experiment. (To this day, both Stanford and the City of Palo Alto deny there was such a fire, but the local ne

Re:Figures

[MancDiceman (776332)]

Talk about xenophobic racism.

Read the post. That journal is one of the best journals in the World - look at the previous contributors mentioned in the post and tell me it's not a decent journal. Just because it's German, it doesn't mean it's "sub-par". Your post should be modded down for trolling, but unfortunately I expect it'll bubble up as "Informative".

Also, most US/British journals would refuse to publish not because they doubted the ability of the scientists to produce good quality data, but because they have a knee-jerk reaction that cold fusion is junk science.

Well done to this journal for actually taking it on.

Re:Figures

[by Anonymous Coward]

With a ISI Impact factor of ~1.2, it really is not one of the best journals in the world. It is also featured principally as a "Biomedical and Life Sciences" journal, so it would seem strange that the authors would publish a physics related article in this journal.

Also, note that the list of previous famous contributors to the journal does not cite any *current* researcher. Maybe this used to be a great journal, but it's clearly no longer the case.

Re:Figures

[qrad (1098411)]

Perhaps the authors chose this journal for its historical significance. In 1938 Naturwissenshaften reported the work of Hahn and Meitner which was later referenced in establishing the existence of fission.

qrad
Ph.D. Student in Nuclear Science and Engineering
MIT

Re:Figures

[smitty_one_each (243267)]

xenophobic racism

xenophobia [reference.com]: an unreasonable fear or hatred of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange.
racism [reference.com]: a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.

You might also consider
hyperbole [reference.com]: obvious and intentional exaggeration.

Re:Figures

[fritsd (924429)]

Yeah, and Forbes used to be a respected business magazine.

I agree with gp, in that the journal can have a brilliant reputation, but it's probably been a while since Einstein and Heisenberg wrote articles for it.

The contents page of the issues of 2007 seems to deal more in zoology, biochemistry, ecology and palaeontology than materials science or quantum chemistry. Why was this article not published in "US military journal of applied physics" (surely there must be something like this)?

Also, I didn't read gp as being derogatory of a journal because it's in German; that would just be silly.

Re:

[maxwell demon (590494)]

How else could the sentence "Why was it published in a German journal?" interpreted? He didn't ask "Why was it published in a low-impact journal?" or "Why wasn't it published in a journal with better reputation?".

Of course, otherwise the question is valid. If you had proof of cold fusion, the first place you'd submit it to would normally be Physical Review Letters. Not because it's American, but because it's simply the most reputed magazine in physics.

Re:Figures

[shaitand (626655)]

Lets stop tiptoeing around it. This is a credible journal but not the first choice because the most obvious choices refused to publish an article on cold fusion no matter how credible the source.

Re:

[salec (791463)]

If cold fusion is demonstrated, then

* supernovae might not be the only natural mechanism for producing heavy elements, which would introduce major doubt about some basic theories of cosmology
* there might be an explanation for galactic organization, etc, does not require esoteric dark energy or dark matter
* currently there are only 4 recognized sources of natural energy in the global ecosystem:

Re:Figures

[smilindog2000 (907665)]

"Cold" fusion means cold relative to the temperature of the Sun (hot enough to fuse hydrogen). "Cold" fusion in theory could potentially boil water, and drive the turbines. However, a basic quantum physics result is that there is basically no way in heck that cold fusion will ever work, unless there is some new unknown physics taking place. While possible, it's unlikely, which is why most respected journals shy away from it, in addition to the large number of quacks the field has attracted. I put more hope in the Polywell stuff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[Ungrounded Lightning (62228)]

No, it's not.

Polywell operates by creating a converging potential well of tens of thousands of volts and dropping ions into it. At roughly 11,000 degrees kelvin per electron volt that's one HELL of a hot spot.

Tens of kilovolts, on the other hand, are easy to handle - in a near vacuum. The trick is to achieve sufficient DENSITY in that near vacuum and keep the particles at that temperature and pressure for enough TIME to end up with more fusion energy harvested than you put in to set uop the system.

Re:Figures

[pallmall1 (882819)]

Why choose this Journal?

From wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

In 1991, Eugene Mallove who was the chief science writer with the MIT News office, said that he believes the negative report issued by MIT's Plasma Fusion Center in 1989, which was highly influential in the controversy, was fraudulent because "data was shifted" without explanation, and as a consequence, this action obscured a possible positive excess heat result at MIT. In protest of MIT's failure to discuss and acknowledge the significance of this data shift, he resigned from his post of chief science writer at the MIT News office on June 7, 1991. He maintained that the data shift was biased to both support the conventional belief in the nonexistence of the cold fusion effect as well as to protect the financial interests of the plasma fusion center's research in hot fusion. Also in 1991, Nobel Laureate Julian Schwinger said that he had experienced "the pressure for conformity in editor's rejection of submitted papers, based on venomous criticism of anonymous reviewers. The replacement of impartial reviewing by censorship will be the death of science". He resigned as Member and Fellow of the American Physical Society, in protest of its peer review practice on cold fusion.

--bold added

Re:Figures

[gvc (167165)]

I read the paper. As you note, it is a short communication documenting some observations from an experiment. It does not purport to be a breakthrough, although it does claim that the observations must be due to a nuclear reaction. The discussion clearly states that they have no theory as to the physical mechanism that might account for the observations.

As an editor or a reviewer, I might well choose to publish a paper -- especially a short paper -- that documented some experimental results, even if the mechanism behind those results was unclear. Maybe there's a future paper forthcoming that either contradicts the results, or offers an explanation, nuclear or not. It makes sense to me to document the alleged evidence in the archival literature.

I want to repeat that the conclusions of the paper are very weak. The outrageous claims have been added later by the popular press. And the argument that "Einstein published there 100 years ago, so it must be true" is unworthy of repetition or rebuttal.

Re:

[gvc (167165)]

My library has a subscription.

Here's a freely available article [newenergytimes.com] that apparently explains the theory. It is cited in an erratum to the original paper. [doi.org]

curious

[User 956 (568564)]

The US Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego, CA (called Spawar) has apparently been conducting research on "cold fusion"

I wonder why they chose that over ASP .NET or J2EE.

Re:

[Bender_ (179208)]

Computer geek vs. science geek battle alert!

I will take the science side any time! Web technology fads come and go, science will stay.

Re:curious

[Jessta (666101)]

Because Myspace proved that you can make a solid, easy to use, and efficient website with it. :P

Far more exciting

[ab8ten (551673)]

is the work (also funded by the navy) undertaken by Dr. Bussard (of interstellar spaceship fame). His design for an electrostatic inertial confinement machine shows more promise than the heavy, expensive tokamak prefered by the internatinal ITER project, and has been built and tested in the lab, but not yet to an energy-return scale. The work was kept secret due to the source of funding, for the last 12 years, so it is only now that we're hearing aboutu it. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846 673788606 [google.com] - Lecture given by Bussard at google, giving an overview of the project. 1:30 long, so if you don't have time, read: http://www.askmar.com/ConferenceNotes/2006-9%20IAC %20Paper.pdf [askmar.com] - Summary paper, outlining the research and results so far. The real research paper is yet to be published, but that's what he's working on now.

Re:Far more exciting

[VoidCrow (836595)]

On the contrary, I'd suggest that the LENR work is far more exciting because we don't have a theoretical framework which describes it. New physics, anyone?

LERN

[Skrynkelberg (910137)]

"... low energy nuclear reaction (LERN)" Someone needs to LERN to abbreviate correctly. (-:

LENR-CANR

[mdsolar (1045926)]

Yup, Low Energy Nuclear Reactions or Chemically Assisted Nuclear Reaction. There is quite a lot that is published here: http://www.lenr-canr.org/ [lenr-canr.org]. The SPAWARS work is quite impressive, with more links to it at http://www.lenr-canr.org/News.htm [lenr-canr.org].
--
Get fusion now: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html [blogspot.com]

I hope this means ...

[WrongSizeGlass (838941)]

... that one day I'll be able to use the melted ice in my 'Cold Fusion' brand beer cooler to recharge my laptop and my iPod ... or even my TV remote.

Low Energy Nuclear Reactions

[Eukariote (881204)]

The "Cold Fusion" field has seen many more experimental successes: detection of neutrons, tritium, helium, transmutations of heavier elements, non-natural-abundance isotope ratios, detection of ionizing radiation. The best place to visit for an overview of the field is http://www.lenr-canr.org/ [lenr-canr.org].

Though the experiments are remarkable, no concensus on the theory has emerged yet. Nuclear reactions are clearly happening, but it is doubtful that it is conventional fusion, that is, nuclei moving fast enough to surmount their mutual Coulombic repulsion. Something seems to be screening or catalysing the reactions.

Re:Low Energy Nuclear Reactions

[ResidntGeek (772730)]

Shit... "nuclear catalyst" - there's a phrase to put fear into the heart of anyone who knows what a catalyst is.

Re:

[KitsuneSoftware (999119)]

"Nuclear catalyst" the most sensible phrase, given the theory (false or not) is that palladium can be used as a nuclear equivalent to a chemical catalyst (i.e. not used up in the reaction it assists). This "misue" of catalyst is also found in other approaches to fusion, such muon-catalyzed fusion [wikipedia.org] and antimatter catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion [wikipedia.org].

Re:

[zippthorne (748122)]

No, it's still quite scary. though probably not for the reason the gp intended..

For instance, in addition to the sub-critical nuclear terrorism angle, nuclear catalysts could cause a bit of a stir in isotopic dating.

If such a catalyst exists, geology should give us some clues: We should look for minerals composed of reaction products, but in concentrations that shouldn't exist.

Re:

[evilviper (135110)]

nuclear catalysts could cause a bit of a stir in isotopic dating.

Yes, that could be an issue... But that's absolutely, positively, NOT SCARY, in any way, shape, or form.

Video

[Eukariote (881204)]

For an video/documentary outlining the status of the "Cold Fusion" field, see the following over on Google video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6426393169 641611451&q=COLD+FUSION&hl=en [google.com]

I won't believe it for real until...

[Glowing Fish (155236)]

I won't believe the Navy has really discovered anything until they commission The Village People to write a song about it.

Cold Fusion

[NotFamousYet (937650)]

When I saw the title I thought it was about ColdFusion and started wondering why the hell would the Navy want to improve MySpace :)

Method

[mdsolar (1045926)]

The method of recording nuclear tracks is a solid is an old one but it has the advantage that the recording material can be placed very close to the reaction. This has lead to the discovery of very short lived particles that might be long sought axions in a recent accelerator experiment: http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0954-3899/34/1/009 [iop.org]. The plastic detectors used in the SPAWARS experiment can be placed close to the electrode so that background is a smaller part of the overall signal. Their method of electrode fabrication is also impressive. It seems to work just about every time.
--
Get solar power for what you pay your utility now: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html [blogspot.com]

Obligitory...

[bronzey214 (997574)]

...Yvan Eht Nioj

Article excerpts

[gvc (167165)]

New Scientist:

Could it really be true that nuclear fusion can be coaxed into action at room temperature, using only simple lab equipment? Most nuclear physicists don't think so, and dismiss Gordon's pitted piece of plastic as nothing more than the result of a badly conceived experiment.

Naturwissenschaften article, last sentence:

from a physicist's point of view, the theoretical arguments offered in this communication are pure speculation. It is hoped that future investigations will undoubtedly provide a clearer picture of the nuclear events taking place in the polarized Pd/D-D2O system.

Article Erratum

[gvc (167165)]

The Naturwissenschaften authors published an erratum in a later issue stating that the effect they had observed was explained by the following paper, of which they were unaware: Ultra low momentum neutron catalyzed nuclear reactions on metallic hydride surfaces [newenergytimes.com]

energy from a wire and magnetic field? Brilliant

[Locutus (9039)]

It's called Ampere's Law(http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/mag netic/magcur.html ).
Your tax dollars at work. ;-)

I didn't bother with the article due to the subject matter being of little interest other than to show how money and minds are being wasted. IMO.

LoB

Doubtful

[IvyKing (732111)]

About ten years ago, I met a couple of guys at NRAD (Navy Research And Development) in San Diego who were doubtful of the work being done on cold fusion. One of the them was making comments about dadiation being detected with some ancient technology (e.g. electroscopes) but not with more modern radiation detectors.

The most amusing comment was that they were able to recreate Fleischman and Pons 'excess energy' - but pointed out that the palladium electrodes became more resistive when absorbing hydrogen and that they were using constant current power supplies (hint: Fleischman and Pons weren't monitoring the power supply voltage).

Theory

[Darth Cider (320236)]

Pons and Fleischmann didn't begin with lab experiments but with a theory, that protons packed together under intense pressure would have a quantum probability of fusing, similar to the way that electrons tunnel. Palladium soaks up hydrogen (that's why it is used) and inside a palladium electrode, the hydrogen is forced by electric charge to be highly pressurized. Lab experiments have verified that funny things happen, resembling nuclear fusion, but to say there is no plausible theory as to why is just plain wrong.

Re:

[mochan_s (536939)]

This is completely useless and a waste of time. Everyone knows if they need it they have Naquadah Generators at their disposal!

Get with the times. ZPM [wikipedia.org] is the energy source of choice now. Naquadah is backup.

Either way its the Air Force that has them...

[Cyno01 (573917)]

Not the Navy.

Budget

[mdsolar (1045926)]

Actually, the budget that funded this paper was a few thousand dollars a year of discretionary funds http://newenergytimes.com/news/2006/NET19.htm#ee [newenergytimes.com]. One of the main contributions of Navy labs to this field is metalurgical skills. There has been actual funding from time to time but for the most part people work on this on their own time.
--
Go solar sooner: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html [blogspot.com]

Re:in case you were wondering the Navy's connectio

[BCW2 (168187)]

Have you ever served on a sub? I question your knowledge. The way you detect a nuclear sub is still by noise, normally the cooling pumps for the reactor. Cold fusion would eliminate those pumps and the noise that goes with it. A diesel electric has always been the quitest boat under the sea and anyone can sneak up on a surface task force. We used to joke about the skimmers pinging away like they could find something with active sonar, what a joke! We could hear them pinging over 50 miles away, with that kind of head start did they stand a chance of finding us? Hell NO!. Every exercise with a USN task force or RN ended with us inside the screen and execise shots passing under the flagship. Nobody ever tracked us thermally because it mixes with the surrounding water to fast. Now a P3 with a MAD unit (magnetic anomally detector) was a bitch to get away from! That was the only thing that could ever find us when we didn't want to be found. The Soviets were always 3 generations behind in quieting and sonar.
signed - a cold war sub sailor