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.
full text (Score:-1, Informative)
they made a movie about it too! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:If real? (Score:3, Informative)
Here's a good article... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/fusion_art.html [caltech.edu]
Re:So you could say the trail has grown cold? (Score:3, Informative)
Argonne National Laboratory Hydrogen Research [anl.gov]
Give us 0.1% of the money we spent on Iraq and we'll give you a hydrogen economy. The question is, do you really want a change, or will you ride your SUV into oblivion?
maybe not cold but... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:If they had really discovered cold fusion... (Score:2, Informative)
The light elements produced by fusion (usually He) are mostly stable. Two Deuterium atoms (heavy hydrogen), for example, combine to Helium-4, which is stable. Tritium + Deuterium makes for Helium-4 plus a neutron (which can be a problem, for it may induce decay in other elements of the surrounding material.
I think fusion in general is a very worthwhile field of research. Even if cold fusion may not work, hot fusion (which is technically possible, but still horribly complicated) has a much better energy-output-to-danger ratio than traditional nuclear energy.
Crackpot Index... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Who cares? (Score:1, Informative)
#1 is it safe?
It will probably (I say probably because the actually mechanism hasn't been invented yet) be safe mainly because the reaction that occurs must be forced, it won't occur in nature. Unlike modern fission, which relies merely on enough fissile material being in close proximity and can quickly become uncontrollable.
#2 will it pollute? Radiation is the 'obvious' one, but what about spent fuel? is it poisonous?
RTFA, the main output is helium 4, a non-radioactive isotope of helium. Helium is also the most inert material known to man, making it do anything other than just sit there is a feat of science in itself. As for other radioactivity, most secondary radioactive materials have a half-life measured in seconds, not really an issue.
#3 where will we get the fuel for this? It won't run on nothing.
Again, its in the article. Its deuterium, and its available in sea water, or any number of other sources.
The reason some of these people find cold fusion so cool, is that it really is a safe, possibly cheap, way to potentially generate ALOT of energy. With the only side effect being that a little extra Helium is released into our atmosphere. Cold fusion is physically unlikely, but I'm stoked someone is still working on it!
Re:Old Compuserve Science & Math forum (Score:1, Informative)
Re:If they had really discovered cold fusion... (Score:2, Informative)
Can be a problem? It is one of the major problems. Most (hot) fusion reactions produce a 14.1 MeV neutron as a primary or secondary reaction. The neutron flux (initial current + reflected and slowed neutrons) is sufficient enough so that, at the power levels a commercial fusion reactor would probably operate, every-single atom in the first wall of the reactor containment would be displaced from its lattice every few months!
Plus, there is no way to deflect or stop a neutron without letting it run into something, and whatever it hits will become radioactive itself as its atomic structure is blown apart from the bombardment. This means that a large, radioactive shield structure could have to be replaced every few months, making fusion not very much better than fission.
One of the few reactions that does not produce the neutron is the helium-3 helium-3 reaction. (He-3 + He-3 -> He-4 + 2 protons) Of course, helium 3 isn't that easy to find either. This is where the stories about "mining the moon for helium" come from; the moon is constantly blasted with miniscule trace amounts of helium-3 from the sun.
Reference: Roth, J. R. Introduction to Fusion Energy. Ibis Publishing, 1986. Pages 210, 295-296.
Re:Where are the neutrons? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Crackpot Index... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Simple rule of thumb: (Score:4, Informative)
The Scientist, the Madman, the Thief and Their Lightbulb: The Biggest Scandal in the History of Science [amazon.com]
The book is a good, fun read. Even if you don't believe everything in the book, there's great coverage of the science behind "cold fusion" (and other technologies). If you are sceptical and don't have "any cause to reconsider [your] position", read the book--You won't be dissapointed.
Full Disclosure: I have absolutely no association with the book, author, publisher, etc... -- Just a great book which I finished reading a month ago and have reccomended to a ton of my friends, all who have enjoyed it very much and made them ask questions they hadn't thought about asking before.
Re:Chain Reaction (Score:2, Informative)
He blew up the clock tower of the college as a demonstation, and held a classroom of students hostage. He insisted the materials were readily available and it was easy to build, and said something to the effect of "I think I know why SETI has failed...all civilizations that discover CF destroy themselves because any idiot can built a multi-megaton bomb."
He gave a bomb as another demonstration to the military to explode as proof. They didn't believe it actually worked, and a few dozen people were killed. Then they took him seriously.
He ended up getting shot, and the government tried to cover everything up by instituting a massive disinformation campaign saying that CF was impossible and every schoolkid had to learn about that.
The show ended with another physics student taking an exam on why CF was impossible, but instead proved it was...
Makes you think. Thats what I love about Outer Limits...are they still producing it? Seems to be just old reruns from mid-90's.
CF would solve all the world's energy problems, you could take your house off the grid, and maybe even have CF powered cars (or at least electric ones that you charged at home.)
But if indeed it can make a bomb as well...that's a very scary prospect.
Muon fusion catalysis (Score:5, Informative)
They hit the theoretical; they're within a factor of 15 of practical. This makes muon-catalyzed fusion the closest to viability of any fusion method so far. On the other hand, people have been throwing themselves at it for 20 years now trying to close that factor-of-15 gap and haven't gotten anywhere. Nowadays it's thought that there are some physical limitations on muon fusion which will prevent it from closing that factor-of-15 gap, and muon catalysis is no longer considered to be the most promising light on the horizon.
Muons are not 300,000 times the mass of an electron; they're 207 times the mass of an electron (or appreciably close to the mass of a proton).
Re:Cold fusion it's impossible (Score:4, Informative)
Sort of. That version of the 2nd law is true in classical thermodynamics. But when you throw relativity and nuclear reactions into the mix, it breaks down. Instead, you have talk about both mass and energy, which are equivalent in the good old ratio E=mc^2. This is why atomic fission (nuclear reactors and fission bombs) and "hot" fusion (hydrogen bombs) work. A small fraction of the mass is converted into energy. The classical versions of the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics are being violated, but if you take the equivalence of mass and energy into account then it all works again. (It's been ages since I studied this stuff, but I think I have that basically right.)
Not myons (Score:2, Informative)
Re:If they had really discovered cold fusion... (Score:1, Informative)
Hydrogen-2 + Hydrogen-2 = Helium-4 + Energy
That energy, at least in the Sun, causes the Helium-4 to do one of the following:
1. Become Helium-3 and spit off a neutron.
2. Become Hydrogen-3 and spit off a proton.
3. Stay as Helium-4 and spit off gamma radiation.
The third case is the one that most physicists use to debunk this whole fusion thing.
Tabletop Fusion Does Exist (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.fusor.net/
Decent basic description: http://members.tm.net/lapointe/IEC_Fusion.html
Basic operational premise: Solar fusion operates by heating up the atoms until they reach a velocity where their random interaction results in enough nuclei hitting each other hard enough to overcome the repulsive force and fuse together.
In a fusor, rather then using heat energy to strip the outer electrons and speed up the nuclei, an electrostatic charge measuring in the upper tens of thousands of volts, up to several million volts is used to accelerate the nuclei directly toward each other.
It isn't currently commercially useful for producing energy - still getting out loads less then the amount of energy put in, and in inconvenient forms (xray, gamma, high energy neutrons, and no easy way to draw off the heat produced)
The point is that there may be a number of catalyzing methods for fusion that we simply don't know about yet.
One of the unsettling details that came out in cold fusion research at various universities over the last several years (check the newsgroup if you're really interested in the details) is that while consistent results could be achieved by different electrodes within a batch, (no results, some results for a short while, or "where the hell is all this helium coming from?!" type results) various batches of palladium (nickel too) gave different results - despite having >identicalsomething, but the results have been largely inconsistent. Until all the parameters that influence the interstitial diffusion and storage of hydrogen are known, we probably won't see any serious advances in small-scale, 'cold' fusion.
Nightmare:
http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dl
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m
Some omitted. You connect the dots.
: ) Thank God most Fundamentalist Crazies are so stupid.
Not the University research, but independant. (Score:5, Informative)
Stanly Pons and Martin Fleischmann were both separately employeed by the University, but the research was not sponsored by the school. They were using some of the school's facilities with permission, basically because of the high cost of the equipment.
See http://www.chem.utah.edu/depthistory/ChemDept_Hist ory.pdf [utah.edu] for some of this:
Because the original press conference was conveniend at the University, and because both professors were affiliated with the U of U, and that further research was taken up by the University at the time of the press conference, many journalists jumped to the conclusion that it was the University's project.Other than the /. error, the article iteself is rather interesting, including this answer from a professor: "The question I get more than any other is, 'Are you still doing this?', " says Prof. Jones. "The answer is yes, and what we are seeing is very difficult to explain outside of cold fusion. The repeatability of these experiments now approaches 80 percent." [Insert comparison to Microsoft here.]
frob
Re:Simple rule of thumb: (Score:3, Informative)
"Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion [amazon.com]
". It's a difficult read, but it has footnotes and goes to some pains to explain the issues involved. (And the authors other title is also serious scientific journalism.)
Re:The difference between scientists and engineers (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What about aneutronic fission? (Score:3, Informative)
No. Hydrogen bombs are horribly misnamed; they're really just very, very large fission bombs. The initial fission core goes off; the heat and pressure creates a very brief fusion reaction; as a consequence of this fusion reaction a huge amount of very energetic neutrons are produced; and the neutrons from the fusion reaction are then used to induce a critical reaction in a thick jacket of U-238 which surrounds the nuclear core.
U-238 normally has no critical mass, so you can put as much of it around the core as you like. But when there's a fusion reaction going on inside the U-238 jacket, and it's bathed in a sea of energetic neutrons, U-238 goes nuclear.
The only purpose of the hydrogen step is to create the neutrons required for an extremely large fissile step. In the '60s we did some experiments (the Bassoon Tests) with true fusion H-bombs and the results were generally not as impressive as with fusion-boosted A-bombs.
Re:"Still gets the cold shoulder" (Score:4, Informative)
Not quite what's happening here. It's obvious that most people here haven't read anything about what's going on with those studying 'cold fusion'. Most of those who do study it agree that whatever is happening, it isn't fusion. It retains the name for historical reasons.
What IS happening doesn't seem to conform to what anyone understands about physics. People performing (as far as they can tell) the exact same expierment will get different results. Even the same person doing the same expierment multiple times gets different results.
Often there is a significant amount of heat generated, often not. Somtimes there are neutrons, sometimes not. Most of those who are looking into it will freely say that it isn't fusion, and that most likely it isn't going to be too useful. The fact that there are some anomolous results happening, that aren't easily accounted for, indicates that it's at least worth studying.
Re:The difference between scientists and engineers (Score:2, Informative)
In fact, they're laying 600m of it in New York: Superconductor lines could boost U.S. power grids [yahoo.com]
Re:"Still gets the cold shoulder" (Score:1, Informative)
You have no friends. I checked.
if the New Scientist runs a story about it and can't decide
They're just a publication house, despite the material they carry.
as some respected scientist actually do at this moment of time
You presume to know too much about the personal thoughts of scientists.
Whether it is something spectacular or not is to be seen but things like contradictory evidence pops up everywhere, even amongst "respected" scientists.
There is no contradictory evidence. Respected scientists have actually failed to reproduce an energy surplus every single time they've attempted a sanctioned, controlled experiment. Unsanctioned experiments introduce risks to the validity of the results like sample impurities leading to chemical reaction energy which can be mistaken for fusion energy, or even outright fraud by falsifying the results. As such, they cannot be accepted as evidence. Cold fusion is very well-known, so there is much money to be made from the gullible and fanciful. It should come as no surprise that there are so many independent "experiments" being done.
if scientists still are going for it ten years after the facts, risking their careers
They aren't risking anything. It's actually plenty profitable just feeding the hype. These scientists are still getting funds; moreso than with more legitimate theories due to cold fusion's fame. There will be no shortage of people willing to buy in until a property is discovered or understood well enough to explain very simply (as far as physics goes... This is key, as you're dealing with laypeople) why cold fusion does not work. This is the same thing that happened with theories such as polywater or the super-neutrino.
quite a lot of what are accepted facts nowadays where called totally outrageous and ungrounded at the time they were published
The difference here is that they were consistently repeatable in the scientific process when they finally got a break, and were then proven. Cold fusion got its break and was disproven.
That's the opposite of what happened to the previously-ludicrous truths of today, and it's why the truths are now recognized as the truth and cold fusion is recognized as fantasy.
History teaches us not to dismiss something at first sight
We didn't. We gave it even more chances than we did electromagnetism, and it still failed.
Stealing the best mistakes (Score:2, Informative)
While Pons was from the University of Utah, Fleischmann was professor of electrochemistry at the University of Southampton (in the UK). He did visit Utah, and apparently first mentioned his ideas about it to Pons there, but basically it was a Southampton collaboration. Even the scriptwriters of The Saint got that right!
Incidentally, in spite of the subject heading, it isn't clear to me that it necessarily was a mistake. I listened to a talk by Fleischmann a couple of years ago (I did a PhD at Southampton), and he talked at length about how quantum electrodynamics is necessary to truly understand the physics. He appeared to imply that hot fusion physicists were making unfounded theoretical assumptions in their rubbishing of CF. Since Julian Schwinger, one of the creators of QED, apparently agreed, the theory surely cannot be as clear-cut as some of the alleged experts in this forum, and others, claim. While Fleischmann and Pons's mode of announcement -- essentially not waiting for refereed publication -- was unwise, the Stalinist anti-CF attitude of mainstream journals seems even worse.
Re:"Still gets the cold shoulder" (Score:3, Informative)
Taking a very difficult measurement(one in which experimental error is common and which the observations are barely above the noise level of the apparatus) and occasionally getting a positive result, and then not running any controls (after the initial media frenzy, several labs found the same minute energy increase was also sometimes observed while using non-deuterated water!) does not qualify as reproducable as the word is commonly used in science. Some of the initial results were even worse than irreproducable- small energy increases were extrapolated for higher concentrations as large energy generation and then presented as if they were experimentally generated as data points. Those results were never produced in the first place, let alone being reproducable!
Koonin, Lewis, and another Caltech prof whose name I'm blanking on tried tens of these experiments, did not find any heat that wasn't accounted for from normal, non-cold-fusion sources- and they published their results in a scentific journal and presented them to scientists. The scientists who kept getting tens of millions to do further research on this still haven't come up with anything particularly interesting- the only reproducable results seem to result from a lattice effect of packing a lot of hydrogen in interstitial sites in metals, which is interesting but is not "cold fusion".
Re:What about aneutronic fission? (Score:3, Informative)
=====
The quest for the H-bomb was based in part on a false premise: that there is an inherent limitation on the size and power of a uranium fission bomb, namely the limitation imposed by critical mass considerations. When a sphere of uranium-235 any larger than a softball is assembled, a nuclear chain reaction will start prematurely. This must, of course, be avoided until the moment of detonation. If only one critical mass (one softball) is used, the size of the explosion is limited to a few tens of kilotons. This was the supposed limitation.
[After some discussion of ways to get around the limitation...] Another technique was to use uranium-238, which has no critical mass limitation and which, by the way, is dirt cheap. The bomb can have as much uranium-238 as the designer wants, in any shape, but the neutrons for fission must come from an outside source, namely fusion.
Despite the public hype about the hydrogen bomb contest, there was a serious problem with any weapon based mostly on fusion energy. It doesn't produce a very satisfactory explosion. In uranium fission, 90% of the energy is released as the kinetic energy of highly-charged, fully-ionized fission fragments. With a high electrostatic charge, these fission fragments convert their energy to heat quickly and within inches, producing an intense point source of heat. The resulting blast and fire is the whole point of a nuclear explosion.
In fusion, on the other hand, only 20% of the energy is released as the kinetic energy of charged fusion products, and their electrostatic charge is only a plus two. Because of the lower charge, the Bremsstrahlung Effect, which produces the heat, is much less powerful with fusion products than with fission products. More importantly, the bulk of the fusion energy (80%) is carried off by neutrally-charged neutrons which can travel hundreds of yards before colliding with something and giving up their energy. By themselves, neutrons are very inefficient producers of blast and fire. But an H-bomb which is designed so that every fusion-produced neutron results in a uranium fission event is very efficient. It not only converts relatively useless neutron energy into blast and fire energy, it also multiplies the total energy release by a factor of ten or more. The neutron, with an energy value of 14 MeV, produces a fission event worth 180 MeV.
In a weapon optimized for fission-fusion symbiosis, fission actually dominates the explosion, providing 90% of the total energy and virtually all of the energy that contributes to blast and fire.
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Read the entire article if you have time, BTW. It's absolutely excellent.