14 Years Later, Cold Fusion Still Gets The Cold Shoulder 561
segment writes "It has been 14 years since two little-known electrochemists announced what sounded like the biggest physics breakthrough since Enrico Fermi produced a nuclear chain reaction on a squash court in Chicago. Using a tabletop setup, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, of the University of Utah, said they had induced deuterium nuclei to fuse inside metal electrodes, producing measurable quantities of heat. That was the opening bell for one of the craziest periods in science. Cold fusion, if real, promised to solve the world's energy problems forever. Scientists around the world dropped what they were doing to try to replicate the astounding claim."
The linked AP story (carried on SFGate.com) is about the
Tenth International Conference on Cold Fusion, which took place in the last week of August.
If real? (Score:4, Funny)
What really happened (Score:5, Funny)
- "Yo, Mike!"
- "Yeah, Gabe?"
- "We got a problem down on Earth. In Utah."
- "I thought you fixed that last century!"
- "No, no, not that. Someone's found a security problem in the physics program. They're getting energy out of nowhere."
- "Blessit! Lemme look... Hey, it's there all right! OK, just a sec... There, that ought to patch it. Dist it out, wouldja?"
-- Cold Fusion, 1989
Re:they made a movie about it too! (Score:3, Funny)
But the scientist concerned wore a real lab coat, so it must work...
Re:If real? (Score:2, Funny)
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Cold fusion works! (Score:4, Funny)
Stop cold fusion research... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:cold fusion? (Score:3, Funny)
"6 versions later and ColdFusion still gets the cold shoulder (And crashes now and then for some reason)"
Sorry ... Now with correct formatting!! (Score:0, Funny)
Re:If real? (Score:5, Funny)
Cold Fusion? (Score:5, Funny)
Broadband access for $2/month (Score:4, Funny)
We all know the typical objection to unlimited data compression. One needs only to Google for "counting argument" to realize that further compression of essentially random (e.g., binary) data is impossible. Searches for better compression algorithms at best have minimal returns (1-2% reductions are considered remarkable) or at worst ineffective or outright hoaxes.
My new technology builds upon quantum duality -- influence at a distance. From first year quantum physics we know that observation of a particle can fix its state. Should a particle and anti-particle be released, we can *at a distance* fix the identity of the opposite particle merely by observation. What does this mean? Well, for one, by sending a stream of anti-particles to a remote observer then observing its opposite, we can then fix the identity of the remote particles *no matter how much distance*. This means we can instantaneously send as a stream of quantum particles. Schroedinger's and Heisenbergs body of work more than amply addresses the mechanics of this remote communication so I won't bore you with the technical details here.
How does my method overcome the inherent randomness of quantum identity? It doesn't. I rely upon a remote lookup table. The receiver will only need to be sent a key of several bits. The remote receiver can then index the key to a table of longer values. For example, a key code of 001 would correspond to a larger sequence such as 00100111. By performing a lookup on this table the receiver can then expand the key to arbitrarily large bit sequences. How are the keys transferred? Our new technology -- Extended Schroedinger Particle (ESP) -- bases itself upon the aforementioned work by Mr. Schroedinger. Of course, trade secrets and corporate lawyers prevent me from revealing the exact method.
Anyhow, please send me money so that I can continue my research. It has the potential to obviate and obsolete all current telecommunications networks.
KLL
Re:If real? (Score:5, Funny)
Your own sense of self-satisfaction?
and when we do achieve cold fusion... (Score:5, Funny)
(you have to know how a nukular power plant works to get this joke)
Cold Shoulder? (Score:3, Funny)
What the heck kind of shoulder did you expect cold fusion to get?
The primary beneficiary (Score:4, Funny)
Coincidentally, it's been 14 years since my Introductory Physics professor blew off pretty much the entire second semester to try to replicate the Pons & Fleischman findings. It worked out well -- he got a cover article in Nature and I got an A+ after he reused all the previous years' exams verbatim.
(You'd think everyone else would have gotten old exams from their friends, but I, though hardly an Alpha Beta, was apparently one of the few students who _had_ friends. For that matter, I could never understand how people could be given a word problem with the force and mass, told to find the acceleration, and given the relevant equations, couldn't locate f=ma and plug the values in.)
The same guy, when he talked about the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse pronounced it "Tacomanaros". It was years before I learned that it wasn't in Uruguay or Bolivia...
History teacher ? (Score:2, Funny)
More SCO news..... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What really happened (Score:1, Funny)
Amidst the cheers and hurrahs, one of the cardinals asked, "Father, this is of course a joyous day. But do tell---what could the bad news possibly be?"
"He was calling from Salt Lake City."
Re:Crackpot Index... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What really happened (Score:2, Funny)
God blessed lazy devs!
Re:"Still gets the cold shoulder" (Score:1, Funny)
Re:What really happened (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, to be honest, we DID patch it, about 60 million years ago, but our lead felt it was so hilarious, he put it back in as an easter-egg in the evolution module's garbage collection heap, where he figured noone would see it.
We had to cancel memory deallocation when people showed up and started LIVING there, before the memory corruption spread too far. We managed to stabilize the region, of course, but not before they started thinking "G'day mate" was a proper way to talk.
Stonecutters, again... (Score:2, Funny)
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do! We do!
Whow leaves Atlantis off the maps?
Whot keeps the Martians under wraps?
We do! We do!
Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star?
We do! We do!
Who robs the cave fish of their sight?
Who rigs every Oscar night?
We do! We do!
Duke (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Funny)
Obviously some crackpot mixing chemicals in his crucible isn't going to achieve the same
Oddly enough, if he mixes the right sort of earth with quicksilver and then applies fire 'to drive away the excess water', he will in fact find gold has been left behind. Of course he'll also get a terrible case of mercury poisoning.
What are you talking about? (Score:5, Funny)
At least morgan freeman was in it as well (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Simple rule of thumb: (Score:1, Funny)
It probably isn't true, or it probably isn't too good to be true?
What annoys me about the Cold Fusion conference (Score:3, Funny)
From Cold Fusion to Crystal Power (Score:1, Funny)
Free Energy? (Score:3, Funny)
From what I hear, George W Bush strongly advocates further research into free energy and antigravity [byzantinec...ations.com].
Cold Fusion Work at Bell Labs Back Then (Score:5, Funny)
One of my jobs was sysadmin for a departmental computer lab that was in a big glass-fishbowl room (remember when computers were big?) I was heading off for a week to see a customer on another project, but I took a few minutes to print out a line-printer banner about "Cold Fusion Research Laboratory" and cobble together some random parts and wires and 5-gallon jars of liquid and set them up in the window before I left. They were gone by the time I got back :-)