20 Years After Cold Fusion Debut, Another Team Claims Success 373
New Scientist is reporting that twenty years to the day since the initial announcement of a cold fusion discovery another Utah-based team is trying again. This announcement is being taken a little more seriously than the original, although some might say it is just more available wishful thinking. "Some researchers in the cold fusion field agree. 'In my view [it's] a cold fusion effect,' says Peter Hagelstein, also at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Others, though, are not convinced. Steven Krivit, editor of the New Energy Times, has been following the cold fusion debate for many years and also spoke at the ACS conference. 'Their hypothesis as to a fusion mechanism I think is on thin ice ... you get into physics fantasies rather quickly and this is an unfortunate distraction from their excellent empirical work,' he told New Scientist. Krivit thinks cold fusion remains science fiction. Like many in the field, he prefers to categorize the work as evidence of 'low-energy nuclear reactions,' and says it can be explained without relying on nuclear fusion."
Odd (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder why they used, from what I can understand of the article, an unusual detection device. Did they try numerous other ones, until they came up with one that "worked"? I'd think that if an actual fusion reaction was occurring, it would produce enough radiation for noramal detection devices to pick it up.
I suspect that this will play out like the original mess.
Re:Nice way to get tenure (Score:5, Interesting)
I was under the impression that announcing cold fusion was more likely to destroy your career than launch it to new heights. Besides, tenure comes with a much improved budget and more money means better equipment and more thorough experiments. It makes sense that results that were marginal before are shown to be incorrect when more time and effort is invested into them.
In my opinion, it comes down to the fact that something is happening during these experiments, we just don't know what. There have been anomalous neutrons detected many times by many different researchers using this basic setup, in this case they even appear to be high energy. If you wanted to fake the results of your research, why would you pick a topic that is guaranteed to be either laughed out of the room or scrutinized like no other topic would?
Stupid Crazies (Score:4, Interesting)
I expect nothing less this time around if there's even a glimmer of a spark of something like that happening here again.
Re:Agreed, TANSTAAFL (Score:1, Interesting)
Here's a google search to a whole lot of sources for a paper I read several years ago in one of the journals(Science?/Nature?/...) at the local library. It referenced Palladium electrode(cathode?) and unexpected Helium and excess heat produced during electrolysis. It suggested that Hydrogen Nuclei were combing - Fusion by definition - within the lattice of palladium but concluded that the effect may warrant further research.
Re:Some objectivity needed (Score:3, Interesting)
Welcome to the world of real science where the burden of proof lies upon the shoulders of those who's claims fly in the face of established theory.
Science relies on skepticism and strong proof. Indiscriminate acceptance of proof works against science. Current theory says "cold fusion" is impossible and the "very prominent scientists" would be remiss if they were not very vocally declaring it so.
Re:Can somebody explain this to me? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fool me once (Score:5, Interesting)
I've seen a documentary on these guys. In the documentary they had several, highly sceptical, well respected physicists review their work - as in a couple of days, not weeks and weeks of peer review. All of them walked away saying stuff like, "I don't know what is going on but they are observing something. It may be a new phenomenon or an existing, well understood reaction created in an unconventional manner. I've not seen enough to say it is cold fusion - but more study is clearly indicated."
The people who have performed critical peer reviews have been equally stymied. Given the stigma associated with cold-fusion no one wants to stamp it accordingly. Just the same, just about everyone who critically reviews the available data and experiments walk away unable to explain the experiment. Furthermore, the more vocal saying its impossible and assuring everyone they have not created cold fusion have never even seen the data or talked with the group.
So to summarize:
o Everyone is seeing an effect which can easily be characterized as "cold fusion"-like.
o No one is willing to call it "cold fusion" because of the stigma. Saying it is cold fusion can be a career ending position - even if they are right - because of the stigma.
o All of the data thus far validates this is not fraud and clearly indicates something worthwhile is being observed in recreatable experiments.
o The people saying its impossible look like idiots because they refuse to consider the possibility, participate in a peer review, or even attempt to better understand and/or learn more about the experiment.
It may not be cold fusion but thus far, it smells and tastes like it. Regardless of what you call it, more research is clearly indicated.
Cold fusion (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Agreed, TANSTAAFL (Score:3, Interesting)
Solar power? Bio-fuels? Petroleum? We have energy from fusion to thank for the vast majority of the energy we use. It has been sustainably making life possible for millions of years.
You're quite right... (Score:1, Interesting)
Somethingis going on, but no one has an adequate grasp of what it is. It is a mystery, but a well-documented one.
I wish /. readers would spend some time researching their prejudices before attempting to spread them around.
I have followed this story since the original Utah experiment (I was a radio journalist at the time) and I live near Stanford U, in Palo Alto, CA, where, several years after the first announcement, a team of researchers set up a similar experiment, which, after a time, set off a fire in the lab to which the Palo Alto Fire Department was one of the responders.
Pons and Fleishman's discovery was intitiated by an unexplained fire in their lab. It was the cold fusion experiment, stored, forgotten, in a closet.
Strangely, reports of the event in the official PA city logs were found to be missing.
Not many serious researchers doubt there is a reaction happening which releases neutrons. There are "theories" to explain the effect away, but there is no refutation, any more, of the results.
Let it so be noted, /.ers.
Re:Nice way to get tenure (Score:5, Interesting)
In my opinion, it comes down to the fact that something is happening during these experiments, we just don't know what.
Which is precisely why the Department of Energy unanimously recommended further study [archive.org] on an individual-case basis for well-designed experiments (Charge Element 3). Which this one would definitely seem to qualify as.
One thing that occurred to me a while back was wondering whether there could be any influence from phonons [wikipedia.org] on the fusion process. Phonons are the virtual particles associated with crystal lattice vibrations that arise due to the wave-particle duality. It doesn't seem that far fetched to me; after all, other particles such as muons can outright catalyze fusion reactions, and phonon effects might play a significant role even there [google.com] (in the solid state). Yet most of the basic "disproofs" of fusion in the cell act as though there's no lattice at all and only focus on the Dt density (which on its own is way too low for fusion at a relevant rate). I just thought to google for it, and what do you know... others have been considering that very idea [google.com] and think that it has merit.
I'm also particularly interested in the possibility of surface reactions due to localized quantum effects. Palladium electrodes can form dendtritic palladium hydride spines on their surfaces in some circumstances, and most of the direct evidence of cold-fusion reactions, such as hot spots with associated pitting, occur at microscopic features on the surface of the electrodes. If it were such a surface effect, that could also go a long way toward explaining the inconsistency of results.
The State of Cold Fusion Research (Score:3, Interesting)
I've seen a whole bunch of ignorance here with /. readers about what Cold Fusion actually can bring.
Yeah, I suppose if the fundamental mechanism is discovered and perfected, it could used for some semi-useful devices. I guess the best example to compare this to is super-conduction that happens in materials at very cold temperatures. Even "high temperature super-conductors" are pretty damn cold for most practical application like a superconducting CPU in a home PC. Don't expect to see one soon.
This is an interesting physical science phenomena and certainly deserves scientific research. Something is happening with cold fusion, and it certainly is producing some of the by-products (including neutron emission) of nuclear fusion.
The oil companies have nothing to fear either, as just with the example of super-conductors (especially when they were first discovered), this doesn't produce quantities of energy large enough to be useful for practical energy production. If you want a "Mr. Fusion" device, it is likely to be more along the lines of an Internal Electrostatic Confinement (IEC... aka the "Farnsworth-Hurch Fusor" [wikipedia.org]) or the Polywell [wikipedia.org] approaches.
The only practical application that I've heard that would be useful to operate a cold fusion reactor for is to have a neutron source that you can turn on and off with a standard household light switch. There certainly are some people interested in something like that, but the market is pretty small and already filled by commercial IEC devices anyway. This will very likely never amount to anything other than a whole bunch of scientific papers and an interesting Wikipedia article. That is even assuming it is "proven" to be a scientifically valid phenomena.
Re:Some objectivity needed (Score:3, Interesting)
I know one of the guys who helped debunk the thing way back when, and there's so much disgust for the original guys that it seems to be a foregone conclusion that cold fusion can never work.
Historically, sometimes people in the field tend to have bias towards terminology especially if was related to pseudo science.
On the topic of nuclear transmustation [wikipedia.org].
Alchemists always talked about transmuting lead into gold you see and people of the day always wanted to distance themselves from the quacks of old. Maybe these new guys should call it "room temperature non-fission nuclear reaction" ;)