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More Than Junk Science

April 24, 2009 5:05 PM

When first presented in 1989 cold fusion was quickly dismissed as junk science. But, as Scott Pelley reports, there's renewed buzz among scientists that cold fusion could lead to monumental breakthroughs in energy production.

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by skepticalJM October 28, 2009 12:58 PM EDT
Why is it so hard to measure how much energy is going in and how much energy is coming out of the experiment? Maybe because its so small an amount? Like that one gentleman said "Why don't they make an experiment on the scale of heating enough water to make tea? If it really works, it would seem that this would be eminently feasible. No one seems to mention how much the increase in energy out, is over energy in. If its insignificant then it is worthless. Or maybe, no one really wants an alternative found, there's too much money to be made in oil yet. It seems there is something wrong since nothing has happened in this area in a long time.
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by solaisenberg September 2, 2009 2:05 PM EDT
It is said that science progresses funeral by funeral - after supposed experts die off.
You can prove that there are no fish in the ocean by fishing each day and then by complaining that a day without catching fish proves that there are no fish.
This is not classical fusion involving two body process as in plasmas. When fusion of two hydrogen atoms occurs in a dense metal lattice it is no longer a two body process resulting in a single body with a need for the release of a new particle to satisfy the two equations for conservation of energy and conservation of mass. The lattice will satisfy the need for conservation of momentum without needing release of neutrons.
The problem is the need to standardize the conditions of the experiment and of the measurements.
My education and experience in plasma physics, and in solid state physics AT MIT convinces me that there is actually a method to produce and capture excess energy - but the problem is building on what we know - without objections by people without knowledge, or with reasons to stop the progress.
I suggest that a good way to do future research at lower cost is to do as was done in connection with cold fusion - assemble a panel of supposed experts and have them VOTE on the validity of the proposed research (as was done for the rejection of cold fusion) Smile, hope you do not take this suggestion seriously.
High density fusion (Cold fusion) will eventually be proven and used as a source of unlimited and safe energy, hopefully in time to help civilization.

Sol Aisenberg, PhD
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by davea05112 June 20, 2009 7:35 PM EDT
Gee whiz. These scientists are merely describing what they saw ... excess energy. They said it *might* be fusion, not that it IS fusion. Don't get your panties in a bunch, debunk-mongers. Does the excess energy mean anything? All it means is until we understand where the excess energy comes from it warrants more research. That's all. Stop freaking out.

It really torques me off when people shut down research because of what it *might* prove. Personally I don't care if it's fusion. I just want proof of *where* the energy is coming from. Only a willingly ignorant fool would insist they already know where the energy comes from when they've not investigated it themselves.

I agree with the first researcher - it's probably some arrangement with the foil ... but chances are the heat produced changes the arrangement in a way that an over unity case is unsustainable. So lets find out, dangit.

And why do crackpots always show up whenever this stuff crops up? Blacklightpower.com? People, use your heads. If it was that easy ... well you do the math. I feel ridiculous even having to tell you this.
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by Dave_in_Plano_TX May 20, 2009 12:30 PM EDT
Engineers have wrestled for many years with a nasty problem associated with handling hydrogen in metal containers called "hydrogen embrittlement" failure. When hydrogen (or duterium) diffuses into the crystal lattice of a metal it distorts the crystal slightly and this often leads to micro fractures that rapidly propagate much deeper into the metal and cause failure.

It is well known that when metal fractures there is a signifcant amount of stored energy which is released in the form of heat. Everything that is done in order to induce cold fusion involves enhancing the amount of duterium that diffuses into the metal catalyst. Is it possible that some (or all) of the excess heat that is observed in cold fusion experiments is a result of the release of this stored energy as the paladium catalyst begins to develop many propagating micro fractures? I wonder if there have been any attempts to measure this energy.

One way that this fracture energy might be measured is to make two identical catalyst electrodes - only one of which is used in a cold fusion experiment. If the unused catalyst were disolved in acid, all the stored energy within the crystal will be released in the form of heat. If the the catalyst used in a fusion experiment were disolved in acid, there would be less heat released. The difference in heat would equal the amount of fracture energy released in the cold fusion experiment.

Carrying this hydrogen embrittlement concept one step further, let us suppose that cold fusion does occur. If all the fusion energy is released locally in the form of kinetic heat energy within the catalyst, I would expect there to be even more violent and rapid deterioration of the catalyst crystal structure. (The picture that comes to mind is the detonation of minature H-bombs within the catalyst.) How frequently would the catalyst material need to be re-conditioned? How much would this cost in both money and energy?
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by jjread7 May 7, 2009 6:07 PM EDT
Please do adequate research! This was explained by Nobel Laureate Luis Alvarez in 1957. Read Physical Review 105, 1127. Prof alvarez was given the Nobel Prize in 1968 for his invention of the instrument that was used in the 1957 very cold fusion experiment. What happens is that a cosmic ray mu-minus meson is stopped in the palladium and catalyzes the fusion reaction. The effect is not uniformly produced every time because it depends upon the capture of a particular type of cosmic ray.

If you've ever taken an elementary course in quantum mechanics, you know that the force holding two deuterium atoms together is linear in the mass of the lepton producing the binding force. The mu-minus meson is just like an electron except it has 200 times the mass. Two deuterons held together by a mu-minus meson will undergo a fusion reaction. The energy released is 100,000,000 of so times that of any chemical reaction.

Please publish a retraction so the public is not mislead.

Thank you, Jacques Read, PhD
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by WGUGLINSKI May 4, 2009 11:17 PM EDT
GUGLINSKI'S THEORY WILL BE TESTED IN US NAVY

Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 10:29:47 -0700
From: pam.boss@navy.mil
To: wladimirguglinski@hotmail.com

Dear Wladimir,
Like many, we have very few funds and resources. But we will consider your suggestions and see what we can do as time and money permits.
Regards,
Pam





From: Wladimir Guglinski (wladimirguglinski@hotmail.com)
Sent: Monday, April 13, 2009 10:35:59 PM
To: PAMELA MOSIER-BOSS (pam.boss@navy.mil)

Hi, Pamela
Be careful, and take care.
If all the deuteriuns of the Pd lattice alligned in the same direction get resonance and have fusion at the same time, perhaps it can occur a small explosion in your electrolytic cell.
Also, I recomend you to put a loadstone externally in the cell (like in the Letts-Cravens experiment), in order to help to keep a lot of deuteriuns alligned toward the same direction (that of the external magnetic field applied)
Good luck
WLAD
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by WGUGLINSKI May 4, 2009 11:15 PM EDT
Based on the new nuclear model of Quantum Ring Theory, a new theory is proposed to explain the results obtained by Pamela Mosier-Boss cold fusion experiment, published in last March.

See the article in Peswiki:
How zitterbewegung contributes for cold fusion in Pamela Mosier-Boss experiment:
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Article:_How_zitterbewegung_contributes_for_cold_fusion_in_Pamela_Mosier-Boss_experiment
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by Carrolcurren May 3, 2009 11:27 AM EDT
I understand that scientists need to put in more research into this energy in order to prove it actually works without any problems. However, there needs to be scome form of compassion towards these scientists who lost their careers over this project. Science is harsh. The only thing that these two scientists wahted was to show the world what their experiement was and in the end their social lives were gone. I think that people are people and need to be respected for what they are capable of doing. They took years itno making something that they thought was right.
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by friesachers May 1, 2009 11:13 PM EDT
http://www.skepdic.com/skeptimedia/skeptimedia42.html

It is unfortunate that 60 Minutes produced such a piece of junk science without doing proper investigation, far below the previous standard set by the show. I look forward to an update from 60 Minutes setting the facts straight on the myth of cold fusion.
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by DIYtechGuy April 29, 2009 1:23 PM EDT
Anything is possible.It just takes time and determination to make new discoveries which in turn can be worked upon to make things like mass production of usable cold fusion a reality.
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by windulum2 April 26, 2009 2:38 PM EDT
As we should all know, thanks to Steve Krivit at newenergytimes.com, the American Physical Society objected to being portrayed as potentially endorsing cold fusion simply because Rob Duncan was a member. CBS removed that reference and this is the edited second version. I must admit, I am tempted to post the original (which I captured) on YouTube just for posterity, although I'm sure it wouldn't last long, being a copyright infringement. Any encouragements?
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by fred_burks April 26, 2009 2:48 AM EDT
Thank you CBS for reposting this video at this new URL after having taken it down several days ago. For those who want to read numerous major media articles showing amazing new energy sources which can transform our world, check out http://www.wanttoknow.info/newenergyinventionsnewsarticles
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by marx4prez April 25, 2009 10:54 PM EDT
Well, I have seen hydrogen fuel cells that use electricity to "push out" or release the hydrogen-oxygen bond, and have seen salt water catch fire when bombarded with a specific radio frequency. This doesn't surprise me, what does surprise me is the lack of scientific interest in making cold fusion into an everyday usable process to benefit humanity, looks like some people got checks mailed to them after they debunked the cold fusion theory, i'm sure the signer on those checks was something like "Sheik _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ of Saudi Arabia." LoL
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by 13bloodlines April 25, 2009 3:54 PM EDT
what about:

http://blacklightpower.com/

there located in NJ and have 2 commercial deals for upto 250MW each.

duh
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by windulum2 April 24, 2009 7:51 PM EDT
To recap, since the thread is gone after moving the video from http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4955212n#addcomm:

Terry sounds right, but I can't seem to get many experienced proponents to step up here, and I think I know why. They are sick of being falsely debunked no matter how many papers they publish. They can't get a detractor to answer Terry's observation #1. They know, as I have observed here, that the hound dogs won't read the results or simply won't believe them. They have better things to do. The field is exploding and they are doing the work to be the household names in the near-future of physics. With the SPAWAR neutron production,
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090323110450.htm
the DARPA proof, SRI, ENEA and so many others, the tide is turning. How ironic that the government, so often a force of suppression itself, has to be the ones to bring the truth because the establishment brainwashing has been so effective.

I resent that I, a lay person, must crack the books that you scientists should be reading to stand up for what looks like good science to hundreds of your very credible peers. But I'll try.

So for balok015 who said:
What Garwin should have said, but didn't, was that "Cold Fusion" as shown in McKubre's animation is physically impossible. D+D fusion does *not* produce significant amounts of 4He -- even at room temperature -- but rather a 50/50 mixture of T and 3He, with only a tiny fraction of it going to 4He. And even if by some miracle, the eV-level interactions in the lattice could affect the lifetime of the 24 MeV 4He* excited state, there are no intermediate states through which it could decay in a way to give up its energy as heat rather than as a gamma ray.

I refer to:
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/coldFusionCondensedMatter.php?printing=yes
Who agrees as follows:

One major factor contributing to the initial scepticism against nuclear reactions was that the excess energy released was not due to the established thermonuclear fusion reactions, which result in a tritium plus a hydrogen, or a helium plus a neutron. These reactions and the energies of the products are as follows:
2D1 + 2D1 ? 3T1 (1.01 MeV) + 1H1 (3.02MeV)
2D1 + 2D1 ? 3He2 (0.81 MeV) + n (2.45MeV)

But gamma rays are produced in cold fusion:
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/KarabutABnuclearpro.pdf
"Charged particles with energies up to 18 MeV and an average energy of 2-4 MeV were seen. Beams of gamma-rays with energies of about 200 keV and a characteristic X-ray radiation were registered. The
summed energy of the registered products is three orders short of the values needed to
explain the calorimetric results."

And from the first source above, apparently there's nothing to stop the tritium from reacting with more D to make 4He with a huge kick!

The deuterium-tritium fusion reaction produces helium and a neutron, together with 17.6 MeV (megaelectron volts) of energy.
2H1 + 3H1 ? 4He1 (3.5MeV) + n (14.1MeV)

They go on to say:
"The excess heat generated tended to go up exponentially with the current. There was a steady rate that appeared to increase slowly with time, with bursts of very high rates superimposed on the slowly increasing steady state. The bursts occurred at unpredictable times and were of unpredictable duration. Following such bursts, the excess heat production returned to a baseline, which could be higher than that prior to the initiation of the burst.
The heat produced was so great that the electrolytic cells were frequently driven to boiling point, when the rate of heat production just became extremely large. It was not possible to make a quantitative estimate of the heat as the cells and instrumentation were unsuitable for making estimates under those conditions. Also, Fleishman and Pons adopted a policy of discontinuing the experiments (or at least reducing the current density) whenever the water started to boil. At such times, the palladium electrode also started to dissolve, which generated still more heat. They decided to avoid such conditions for fear of uncontrollable energy releases. These bursts of rapid increases of temperature were accompanied by marked increases in the rate of tritium production, suggesting that the nuclear reaction(s) occurring were different from those in the steady state.
Indeed, tritium production has been observed by many other labs since, and is considered by some to be one of the strongest pieces of evidence for condensed matter nuclear science, as it suggests an entirely new mechanism whereby nuclear reactions could occur at low temperatures."

And the other side of Garwin's face did visit SRI in 1993 and reported to the Pentagon about McKubre's work: "...such an excess could not possibly be of chemical origin."

Please, you highly qualified stubborn crackpot debunkers, read the work! Your extinction is near.
http://newenergytimes.com/v2/reports/SelectedPapers.shtml
http://www.lenr-canr.org/LibFrame1.html
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by ddtebo April 24, 2009 7:09 PM EDT
Hello - More Than Junk Science Video is posted in the right-hand pane along with other "past" videos.
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