U.S. Dept. of Energy Takes A New Look At Cold Fusion

lhouk281 writes "Technology Review is reporting that the U.S. Department of Energy has decided that recent results justify a fresh look at cold fusion. According to Peter Hagelstein, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, experiments performed under properly controlled conditions reliably produce more heat than standard theory predicts, and nuclear products show up in about the right amounts to account for this excess heat. Maybe we'll get those atomic-powered automobiles after all ..."

OMFG, what if

[Anonymous Coward]

the same crackpots who brought you an Earth that orbits the Sun, an Earth that isn't flat, blackholes, gravity waves, etc turns out to be right about "cold" fusion - say it ain't so...

Why would you want Cold Fusion?

[alnapp]

Surely Heat might be more useful :-)

Not good enough

[JudgeFurious]

I want an atomic powered FLYING car. Until they get those babies off the ground I'm not interested.

Well..

[rijrunner]

But since it relies on dihydrogen monoxide, it'll never make it through congress

Bit late

[16K Ram Pack]

Haven't most people switched to PHP or ASP now?

Where did I put that thing?

[Total_Wimp]

Does this mean we have to give Ponz and Fleishman their dignity back?

WMDs and cold fusion

[britneys 9th husband]

You can't really criticize the government too much for doing this. We'll certainly have cold fusion before the Bush administration finds any WMDs.

Just say "no"

[Anne_Nonymous]

That extra heat is coming from an exogenous source: the bowl of the researcher's crack pipe.

Atomic Laptops:

[Upaut]

An atomic reaction small enough to be contained within a laptop, providing months of continual power. Really gives "BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH" a whole new meaning...

Macromedia At It Again

[deliciousmonster]

I thought Flash 8 was supposed to have Cold Fusion built in...

Re:Why would you want Cold Fusion?

[chegosaurus]

They use it for refrigeration you fool!

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a top-secret reply to your comment. My reply runs on water and never needs to be oiled, and it lasts 100 times longer than normal lightbulbs. Therefore, the lightbulb-making and oil-producing companies will not let me show my reply to the public!

But consider yourself replied to now.

From the article

[alnapp]

"Over the past 15 years, enthusiasts have generated some 3,000 manuscripts on cold fusion, but very few were ever published in scientific journals.

Really?

I can't think why

Bah... US Dept of Energy only needs 3 people!

[Le'BottomEh]

1. A naive female scientist who writes her formula on post-it notes
2. A Russian scientist who is forced to decipher the formula on said post-it notes
3. An international spy that uses names of saints as a disguise

Don't believe me? Here's proof! [imdb.com]

Re:Well..

[Anonymous Coward]

Read this [dhmo.org]

maybe...

[rogabean]

i'm either too geeky or not geeky enough...but it took me 4 times reading the article to figure out they were not talking about Cold Fusion development tools... /smack!

I kept trying to figure out what the dept of energy wanted with Cold Fusion Tools... /shrug

Re:Not good enough

[Esion Modnar]

I want an atomic powered FLYING car.

Yeah, it'll look great in your garage right next to your atomic powered flying pig.

What the fark???

[WwWonka]

...and nuclear products show up in about the right amounts

About? About?

Is that the kind of "precise" measurement that will lead to three eyed fish and babys with 12 toes in twenty years?

Man, I would give a volkswagon worth of dollars to have a more precise way of measuring nuclear by-products! ;-)

What will we make fun of now?

[CatGrep]

You mean we've been making fun of cold fusion for nothing all these years? What'll we make fun of now?

Other Alternatives

[perdelucena]

I think instead of Cold Fusion they should consider using Perl, PHP or J2EE. Why US governement still insists on using those proprietary formats?

----
>> SELECT SIG FROM USER WHERE ID='15607317'
NO ROWS RETURNED

In SovietRussia

[Lispy]

the Fusion cools you.

Omg, i can't believe I just did that...

Oil company nukes

[RogL]

Yeah, it's a shame we ever allowed the oil companies to develop nuclear weapons. They've kept the American auto industry away from building cheap fusion-powered flying cars, ever since they nuked Honda & Toyota back to the Stone Age. And what can we do, except stay away from Canada (those Canucks with their straw-to-ethanol enzymes; you know they're getting blasted into atoms any day now! What were they thinking?!)

Damn oil-company overlords... I'll never welcome them! Never!

Got to go - I hear the medication cart coming down the hall.

Obligatory Mr. Fusion™ Post

[Compulawyer]

I'll believe it when my Mr. Fusion(TM) is using beer cans and banana peels to power the Flux Capacitor(TM) on my DeLorean(TM).

Re:Atomic Laptops:

[s.d.]

Yeah, really what I want to come from a device that sits on my lap is radiation. That'll be great...

Re:From the article

[Kenja]

Its for the same reason they refuse to publish my theory that FDR was a time traveling robot from the year 2620. They're just afraid of the truth.

No, no, you have it all wrong!

[Anonymous Coward]

We did not invade Iraq for the oil, we invaded Iraq because Sadam was about to release his own cold-fusion technology to the wide world, and we had to stop that at all costs.

What do you think all that talk of "nuclear weapons" was about? Bombs? nah! cold fusion!!

So, what's wrong with that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that the kind of "precise" measurement that will lead to ... babies with 12 toes in twenty years?

Think of the great tap dancers we'll get to see!

Re:Where are the neutrons?

[OECD]

A handful of failed attempts to replicate the results are discouraging, yes, but the potential benefits should've justified a bit more tinkering back when it was announced.

I'd like to announce that I've produced a fusion reaction in my sock drawer. I await further funding. Surely the potential benefits justify a bit more tinkering?

Re:Poly water

[NearlyHeadless]

Anyone remember the discovery of polywater. It was massively redidistlled water that developed weird almost homeopathing memory and strange viscosity.

Although it was considered unexplainable, repeated tests showed that the one and only thing inside the glass beaker was infact water. So it had to be a new form of water. A kind of ice-9 but for real.

It was eventually found to be accumulated soluble silica products from the glassware. Which of course was the one chemical that could not be tested for inside a glass beaker. Got people exited like cold fusion for a while, since like cold fusion is was not utterly implausible.

I remember that; I was a grad student in a chemistry lab.
One day I was going to south to visit my gal.
But I had to stay and keep watch over the equipment.
My Sal she is a spunky gal,
But I was on polywater duty all day.

Re:Not good enough

[Adriax]

atomic powered flying pig

Mmmmm, pre-nuked bacon to go...

Thank god...

[Omestes]

Now I just hope I can cool my beer in my engine. Every evening after my commute I would let out a cry "Thank god for cold fusion", and crack a nice cold one.

Back in the 20th century

[Anonymous Coward]

We had these flying machines called Zeplins. They were big, full of hydrogen, and generally were most spiffy except once and a while they blew up.

Re:WMDs and cold fusion

[ThisIsFred]

Excellent! That means we'll have cold fusion before November 2nd.

Cold Fusion possibly already achieved!

[satchboogie]

Back in 1996 I took a Small Business Economics course (cash cow definitions and all that) and the lecturer explained the story behind cold fusion.

Two scientists (physicists I believe) had apparently found Cold Fusion.

Of course, shortly after their claims were made public, one disappeared, the other owns a small island, and 1/3 of their research was missing. With the missing 1/3 many scientists attempted to reconstruct the experiments and concluded that it was not possible and cold fusion did not exist.

But does it not seem coincidental that one of the two suddenly owns an island and the other vanished?

Society changes slowly. A discovery like that, back then when the automobile industry was struggling and slowly recovering, would crumble such a vast infrastructure. Think about it; a new fuel! Would that not put thousands if not tens of thousands out of work? Yes, all those gas stations, oil refineries, mines (for fossil fuels), etc..., all no longer needed. It would be an economical disaster.

Now that it is well known the environment has taken a lot of abuse from fossil fuel usage the possibility of cold fusion reappears. Of course, after all the investment into Hydrogen power and Fuel Cells, we won't see Cold Fusion for a long while.

Just my suspicious/consipiracy theory $0.02 worth!

Re:It's funny to watch people react here..

[shiftless]

so why not approach things with a neutral opinion until proven one way or the other? ...

If you want to critique this guy, then go show me how smart you are and pick apart his experiments or apparatus, or maybe propose a theory that could explain the results another way - and devise an experiment to test that theory.

You're new around here, aren't you?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:OMFG, what if

[Jonny Ringo]

I think they are trying for to much, they need to take baby steps and be realistic.

Start with luke-warm fusion.

Re:Where are the neutrons?

[Ralph Wiggam]

Alchemists accidentally stumbled into modern chemistry.

-B