1 MW Cold Fusion Plant Supposedly To Come Online 828
First time accepted submitter Jherico writes "Andrea Rossi (covered here a few times before) is scheduled to bring his 1MW plant online Oct. 28th. This will likely either be the point where 'unexpected technical difficulties' unmask this for the scam it is, or the presence of an actual 1MW plant with no chemical fuel source will silence a lot of skeptics. What would you do if it were real?"
Oblig xkcd (Score:3, Funny)
Oblig xkcd:
http://xkcd.com/955/
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Re:Oblig xkcd (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect this is feeding a troll, but I also suspect more than this one actually shares this view.
Believe it or not, the motorheads that actually look into this stuff WANT electric cars. Having full torque from rev one all the way up to the maximum potential of the engine would be a panacea. Neck snapping acceleration could be the NORM, not the exception. The simplification that the electric drivetrain would bring would also be wonderful. Assuming the packaging of the power plant is small enough, or can be flexibly packaged, you put the thing anywhere you want and put electric motors at the diff or on the wheels. You don't have to worry about where to store a cubic meter of engine/transmission in one place. The properly designed electric car brings HUGE design advantages. You can make truly beautiful and/or functional things with much less concern about "how can I shoehorn enough engine in here?".
The current problem with the electric car is energy storage. Batteries suck compared to petrol/diesel. Gas/go doesn't happen with batteries. Range is problematic, and even if you did get 300 miles out of a single charge, it's still 2-4 hours (in an ideal world, even) to do it again. Weight is problematic.
And finally, The US doesn't have the corner on petrol powered vehicles. Last time I looked, most of the most desirable cars came from Germany (Mercedes, BMW, Bugatti, Audi), England (Aston Martin, Rolls Royce), and Italy (Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Lamborghini). I don't recall ANY of them making electric cars either. As a matter of fact, the only "mass production" electric cars that I'm aware of have come from US companies: GM (EV1) and Tesla (Roadster). I could be wrong on the latter, tho.
But, yaknow... if all you want to prove is how witty you can (not) be by taking shots at people who love cars and happen to be from a certain country, that's fine too.
Re:Oblig xkcd (Score:4, Insightful)
Range is problematic, and even if you did get 300 miles out of a single charge, it's still 2-4 hours (in an ideal world, even) to do it again. Weight is problematic.
Not for me. I will buy an electric car that can reliably get 150 miles per charge when the temperature is -10F and the battery pack is 5 years old. THis easily will cover my needs for a 40 mile one way commute and associated driving that day. I will GLADLY plug in everynight and let it charge for 8 hours.
Problem is the Nissan Leaf in cold weather will get 1/2 the quoted range and it's battery is wearing faster than most people though. a Lot of owners lave lost 15% of their battery capacity after 1 year of ownership.
I would buy one now, but then I'm not the typical idiot that has to drive a v8 400hp 5800pound 8 foot wide SUV all alone to and from work every day... I currently drive a civic as it gets the best gas mileage/cost ratio out there.
Chevy Volt is a joke. it's so overpriced that I might as well buy the same size car (civic) and pay for gas because the price difference is the gas cost for 10 years of driving.
Most people will buy electric if the math ads up and there is savings. Almost nobody buys a car to be "green" I dont give a rats ass about being green, I'm a cheap bastard that barely makes enough to begin with. I need a cheap small car that controls my cost of commuting to work.
And for you idiots that say "move closer to work" I say, I would love to, tell work to pay me 2X my salary so I can afford the rent near them.
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The current problem with the electric car is energy storage. Batteries suck compared to petrol/diesel. Gas/go doesn't happen with batteries. Range is problematic, and even if you did get 300 miles out of a single charge, it's still 2-4 hours (in an ideal world, even) to do it again. Weight is problematic.
There seems to be this huge drive (ha, pun!) to use electric cars like one uses gasoline cars in that we ought to take a tube of something and shove it in a port and after a few minutes potential energy has filled the stores, be it electrical or chemical. I don't see why we couldn't have gas stations replaced with battery stations where you pull into a booth (like an automated car wash), push a button on your dash, and your existing battery releases it's locks so that a machine underneath can detach it the
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How about a vehicle with electric motors that run off a gas generator? That would do exactly what you ask for and still be much more efficient. Sort of like how diesel electric locomotives work. The electric motors are MUCH more efficient that ICE's, so you use a gas generator to power the electric motors.
Electric cars might get there, but it'll be a while.
I could turn this statement around and say, Oil/Gas might be ok for now, but they will run out. Let alo
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I don't like the added complexity and maintenance vs. the simple vehicles I currently own that are cheap to own, operate, and repair.
Electrics are significantly less complex and cheaper to operate than conventional vehicles. No transmission, no belts, no oil changes, no filters etc. Again your issue seems mostly to be the range of the 'tank' not the system itself. Your hybrid boat examples are about what the Volt is now. Electric capable but still gas propelled at some times. I assume there's still some sort of linkage from the engine to the prop yes? One step further and you decouple that link and just have a gas generator running
Re:Oblig xkcd (Score:5, Insightful)
From my study of cold fusion, it is at best an intellectual curiosity where it might rival the Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor as something to produce a neutron radiation source that can be turned on and off with a light switch. There certainly are some applications for a device like that, even if you don't have "net energy", and indeed with the Fusor such devices are sold commercially. It is a niche product that only a nuclear physics researcher or some applications in nuclear medicine would have a use for such a device.
One of the better run studies conducted a study of "cold fusion" where they were checking for radioactive products (as opposed to a calorimeter) and they were able to measure a significant statistical deviation from the "background radiation" of the environment of the laboratory where the experiment was being made. In other words, real fusion was taking place, but the amount was so low as to be something only for a research paper or to discuss at a fusion conference. The problem is that Pons & Fleischmann made such a circus out of the concept that anybody saying "slow down a minute.... it isn't really that big of a deal" were dismissed as crackpots and the entire concept was shot down.
Where Rossi and his "fellow researchers" are coming off as completely off their rockers isn't that they've discovered a repeatable way to create fusion through packing Palladium with Hydrogen (a known property of Palladium), but that they have basically said that Pons & Fleischmann are just pikers and didn't know how to generate manly amounts of energy from their device. The claims for the amount of fusion, that the reaction is aneutronic [wikipedia.org], and method of presenting their discovery via press conference (like Pons & Fleischmann) instead of through scientific journals is what makes those in the field look at Rossi as a crackpot or even a flagrant fraud.
Either the guy is a stinking genius and has discovered the cure to world peace (depending on how it works out), or the guy is a brilliant con artists that would make Frank Abagnale [wikipedia.org] look like a rank amateur. From what I've seen of the thing, I put it more like 80% likely he is a con artist, but I'm still giving that 20% wiggle room he might be telling the truth. He isn't violating thermodynamics or even basic principles of physics, but it does seem unlikely that he has discovered a genuine power source based upon current knowledge of materials and previous attempts to generate power.
On the other hand, because it seems like Rossi doesn't have a firm scientific theory on how his device works (he sounds more like a tinkerer along the lines of James Watt or Thomas Edison), if this device does work out it will unlock a whole new field of scientific exploration with real money. I expect it will be something more akin to room-temperature superconductors, where new classes of materials can be discovered to incorporate the basic principles and perhaps even get higher efficiencies than what Rossi has discovered. But that is a big "IF" the device actually produces energy in the manner that he claims it does right now. At some point this device is going to need to be dropped on the desk of some competent nuclear energy researcher at Los Alamos, and likely other major labs, where it will be tested, dissected, poked, rebuilt, and critically examined just to see if it works before it gains any real credibility.
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Clod fusion? What's that, where you rub a Hatfield against a McCoy and get heat?
What would I do? (Score:3)
I guess I'd have to start paying attention to self-published papers after they were rejected by peer review.
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That's a load of nonsense. If there's anything to the claims, and if the writer isn't completely incompetent explaining them, there's no reason a paper shouldn't pass peer review. Peer review isn't some kind of insurmountable obstacle to getting radical ideas published. It's more challenging than if something is more conventional (extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence), but, sheesh, we just had research published that makes the audacious claim that neutrinos might be traveling faster than t
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there's no reason a paper shouldn't pass peer review
Right.
""Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity"
CC.
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Well, I'm a researcher, one of my colleagues got a PhD grant solely on the merits of his self-published papers, and everyone here has had plenty of stuff rejected after peer-review. That's why any normal person only publishes 2 or 3 times per year after applying to a dozen places. Regardless, one should always be wary of extraordinary claims, such as future cities being built to accomodate the Segway :)
Why didn't you just wait 24 hour before publishing (Score:2)
Blah, I've followed a blogger who seemed to have a good grasp of how things works, and then he publishing something gushy about free energy I felt sad for him.. Now my standards for slashdot must be much lower, this doesn't surprise me I'm just disappointed. Ignore them. Please.
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Because there's still time to rip people off?
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If you're thinking of the zero-point energy, quantum mechanics actually makes it pretty clear that it's completely unavailable, even in principle. If you could extract the zero-point energy - hypothetically - you would cause a vacuum metastability event, which would destroy the observable universe.
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which would destroy the observable universe.
Equally unbelievable.
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To extract energy from the zero-point vacuum, we must assume that it is a "false vacuum", and a lower-energy vacuum could be created. If you convert a region of false vacuum into a lower-energy vacuum, you can extract the difference in energy. Unfortunately that region must necessarily obey different physical laws than our universe, and because it has a lower energy, that region will expand at the speed of light. By definition anything that is currently observable will be within range of that effect.
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Skepticism is good, but it should lead to investigation not prejudice.
After a while you figure out that life's too short to investigate every kook out there.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is a much better way to do it.
If his machine works then let him show it in action. A positive result is very easy to measure and as far as I know we don't have easily concealable 1-megawatt batteries yet.
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I think you have Sockatume's argument backwards. He's not arguing that it is possible for us to destroy the universe - he's arguing that if you have a theory that says that you can get free energy, but the math works out such that it would destroy the universe... you probably don't have a way to extract that energy. In other words, the free energy "proof" works out to 1=2.
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The problem was that government officials and Teller were trying to Cover their asses and that is why that was put into the official document that went to washington.
Oppenhimer himself said that Teller, "lacked the sense to shut up" about it.
Re:dear moron (Score:4, Funny)
"you would cause a vacuum metastability event, which would destroy the observable universe."
so do it with your eyes closed. the worst that will happen is that your eyelids will vaporize.
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"Free energy", when used in a scientific (not pseudo-scientific) context, refers to a thermodynamic quantity, basically an entropy-corrected energy. It doesn't mean "Energy for free".
"Zero energy" means just that, an energy value of zero (depending on the context, it doesn't need to mean the minimal energy, e.g. for bound systems the energy scale is usually taken so that the bound states have negative energy).
Maybe you meant "zero point energy", which is basically the energy of the vacuum. Since effects lik
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I'm pretty sure a couch potato playing Farmville is the lowest energy state possible.
Upsetting the market with cheap copper (Score:2)
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I guess... (Score:2)
I guess I'd use it to wirelessly power my flying electric car.
Re:I guess... (Score:4, Funny)
You mean your flying electric car currently has a power cable?
No wonder the range is limited.
Re:I guess... (Score:5, Funny)
currently has a power cable
I have the same problem with my Evangelion.
Re:I guess... (Score:4)
Why use a flying car? I would just catch a pig and use it a flying mount.
Better link (Score:5, Informative)
The discussion for events happening today has been moved onto its own thread:
http://www.e-catworld.com/2011/10/e-day-thread-rossis-1-mw-e-cat-plant-tested-by-first-customer/ [e-catworld.com]
PES Network is going to be tweeting about it:
https://twitter.com/#!/PESNetwork [twitter.com]
Prepare for some real-time cognative dissonance from Rossi et al.
Re:Better link (Score:5, Informative)
So, now the Twitter feed says they've been asked not to report until the test concludes. Which is midnight. Allegedly that's also when the video of the test will be released but I'm going to have to assume that we won't hear anything at all until they come up with an excuse and get their story straight.
With any luck the AP will write something informative about it, but maybe they'll be kicked out.
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Rossi has been turning the press away. Only an AP writer he personally trusts has been allowed in. No-one is allowed to publish photos or videos of the site, ostensibly to protect the organisation doing the testing. Allegedly self-sustaining now but we have no reason to believe it at all.
Surprise surprise, the big public test isn't public and probably isn't a test.
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Slashdot is posting blatant scams now? (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously? Next you'll be posting about water-powered cars, or over unity devices...
Can we stick to real life please?
Re:Slashdot is posting blatant scams now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Entertaining scams about pseudoscience are still "news for nerds", IMO. I realised more about the importance of being a good scientist from watching bad ones than anything else.
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Perhaps he stored some radioactive material to show an temperature increase for a while. There will not be 1 MW, so he can claim he needs to optimise his design (and get some more funding).
How the hell did he convince anyone to fund a cold fusion reactor anyways?
Re:Slashdot is posting blatant scams now? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are a lot of people with money who either have too much ego to defer to expertise, or too little intelligence to even think of doing so.
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How the hell did he convince anyone to fund a cold fusion reactor anyways?
Why do people buy Powerball tickets? Similar chance of success: both round to zero.
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How the hell did he convince anyone to fund a cold fusion reactor anyways? ...(and get some more funding)
He convinced himself. Its entirely self-funded. He ONLY makes money if his 1MW reactor works. Period. If he needs more funding, its coming out of his own pocket. If he's to make any money off this, he must get the 1MW reactor online. Otherwise, he's out of pocket the entire cost of the project. In fact, it was previously publicized that he's turned down funding from others to the public dismay of those would wanted to invest.
Your post is extremely uninformed and ignorant. That's not to say I've bought into
Re:Slashdot is posting blatant scams now? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:"news for nerds" (Score:4, Funny)
No, they'd clearly be stuff that dematters.
Re:Slashdot is posting blatant scams now? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Sometimes it's desirable to put these scams under a spotlight, don't you think?
Definitely not. Try your best to cover them up so you can keep the conspiracy nuts away from the real truth.
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That's exactly what they want!
Re:Slashdot is posting blatant scams now? (Score:5, Funny)
"Sometimes it's desirable to put these scams under a spotlight, don't you think?"
Yes, it worked wonders a couple of weeks ago, for the moron who claimed he had discovered quasi-crystals, when everybody knows no such thing exists.
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Mind you, hundreds of renowned physicists all over the world have reviewed the papers on this thing. . . they have acknowledged that the numbers and physics on the paper . . .is legit and a-ok.
Actually, it's exactly the opposite. Rossi's papers were rejected during peer review, so he started his own journal to publish them.
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open up the shorts (Score:5, Insightful)
take short positions in oil and gas?
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open up the shorts
Investors in this venture are going to take it in the shorts.
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It's a scam (Score:5, Insightful)
This will not work. There's absolutely no reason not to publish such stuff in respected journals -- if it really works, it will pass the muster. The guy is a scam artist with a long history, it's irresponsible to expect anything else from him without a lot of due diligence. Since he doesn't let anyone do their due diligence, I say it's still a scam.
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This will not work. There's absolutely no reason not to publish such stuff in respected journals -- if it really works, it will pass the muster. The guy is a scam artist with a long history, it's irresponsible to expect anything else from him without a lot of due diligence. Since he doesn't let anyone do their due diligence, I say it's still a scam.
He did let people do their due diligence (i.e. peer review), and his papers didn't pass muster. That's why he had to start his own journal, so he could get "published" anyway.
Re:It's a scam (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a computational linguistics invention ...and have had for around 15 years now.
I'm NOT ALLOWED to publish as I don't hold qualifications, nor do I have the wealth to patent it.
Believe me - getting ideas to the public is way more complicated than you may imagine if you don't have money.
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No its not. Create a website. Put an eBook on Amazon. There are any number of ways to get ideas to the public.
Getting ideas to the public while at the same time keeping them trade-secrets is hard... but if you're looking for peer review, making them public is a really, really good start. Advertise them. Someone will read it and, if there's anything there, will share it, and you'll find a publication willing to take it.
Or you can just whine loudly about how nobody will listen to that thing you're not act
Re:Rossi is not a scientist (Score:4)
I think "has managed to make it work" is the aspect that people have the most objection to. There is no evidence that this is the case.
Have a party (Score:3, Interesting)
If it works? Have a party of epic proportions. Or possibly just epic intensity with a few select friends.
Given the history of the man, I don't hold out MUCH hope. But the prize is so great that I can't help but hope a little.
If it works, the future for my daughter will be more likely to be safe and secure. We might even have a stab at world peace.
If it doesn't work... well, it's a shame. It gives the people who are really trying a bad name, and fewer chances at funding.
Re:Have a party (Score:5, Insightful)
"But the prize is so great that I can't help but hope a little."
And that is how a truly great scam works. "They more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie," as it says in Mein Kampf. And likewise how religion benefits from Pascal's Wager.
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That's also how science works. Every a lab lights up a CERN lights up the merry-go-round, they know the likelihood of finding the Higgs is incredibly small, but they hope... and they try.
So "the hope" isn't really a great way to peg a scam. Instead, you just have to wait for proof. Tonight's the night... so just wait and see.
Why Mr Bond, he would have to die! (Score:4, Interesting)
/me strokes evil white pussy.
And it's not quite true that 'he would have published if it was real'.
If you have sufficiently ridiculous claims, journals may not accept your paper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Shechtman [wikipedia.org] - as one example of work ridiculed at the time that went on to win a Nobel prize.
Unfortunately, for example, there are also people that write letters like this: http://www.snopes.com/humor/letters/smithsonian.asp [snopes.com]
If it is true, I would send the guy my heartfelt thanks, and not buy the expensive heatpump for this winter.
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Can you point at someone who actually writes letters like that? I ask since the Snopes page that you linked to says that it's a hoax.
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Shechtman got published. And people were able to replicate his research.
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And it's not quite true that 'he would have published if it was real'.
If you have sufficiently ridiculous claims, journals may not accept your paper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Shechtman [wikipedia.org] - as one example of work ridiculed at the time that went on to win a Nobel prize.
Except that 1, Shechtman was already an established scientist, unlike Rossi; 2, Shechtman was proposing something totally new, not something that has been the focus of several hoaxes over the last few decades; and 3, it only took two years for Shechtman to get his controversial paper published. Many non-controversial papers take longer to get published, just from minor editing and additional research requirements from the peer reviewers. Hell, he won a prize from the APS five years after he first wrote th
They laughed... (Score:5, Insightful)
They laughed at Galileo.
They laughed at Einstein.
They also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
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/me strokes evil white pussy.
Note to self: Always read the title of the thread first. Now I am off to clear this terrible mental image.
I predict.... (Score:3)
It will work for a short amount of time....
and then slowly drop in output and fail.
Because all the AA batteries that are hidden inside all the equipment will have been drained.
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You're describing a classic "salt" con - You buy an abandoned mine, salt it with uncut gemstones or precious metal ores, and let the investor "discover" that the old mine isn't played out after all. You can then sell him a worthless hole in the ground for millions.
A variation of the scheme is the "counterfeiter machine" - You sell the mark a machine that takes ordinary newspaper, and prints perfect counterfeit 100 bills! It even "distresses" them to make them look like real circulated money! It pops out a n
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That's exactly the case. If the test doesn't work today, he says his client has given him six months to fix the "problems". I am sure that after those six months, there will just be a few kinks left.
How nicely round numbers... (Score:2)
“Grams/Power for a 180 days charge
Hydrogen: 18000 g
Nickel: 10000 g”
According to my calculations this would compute to:
100 g of hydrogen, and about 56 g of nickel per day to run a 1 MW plant; OR
4.17 g of hydrogen, and 2.3 g of nickel per hour.
Fuel use would be 0.00417 g of hydrogen, and 0.0023 g of nickel per kWh.
How nice and neat that 1MWh power generation for 1 day = 100grams of Hydrogen used. nice clean round numbers that come out after all the losses have been accounted for.
even for laymen
What would you do if it were real? (Score:2)
While this one won't work, others do have a chance (Score:2)
So the question is legit: how would efficient fusion change our lives?
Personally I don't think it would be good, as a cheap, clean and seemingly endless source would trigger an exponential growth in energy consumption, and when fusion fuel runs out there will be no other source to satisfy those needs. With our current consumption we still have a chance to switch to renewable before fossile fuel runs out, using nuclear as an intermediate solution until we re ready to do it.
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If you have exponential growths in available energy, that leads to exponential growths in:
- Spaceflight potential (hell, it suddenly becomes a cinch to take a entire power station to the Moon or Mars and back - and while you're there look for fuel, etc.).
- Food, water, heat, light, etc. for humans, which leads to many more productive, educated, "worryless" humans (i.e. we have 7bn productive people learning science instead of most of them trying to scrape a living to earn enough to eat for most of their da
Re:While this one won't work, others do have a cha (Score:4, Insightful)
Quote (Score:2)
"Until some hour ago I felt a strong pressure, now, at the eve of the battle, as usual, I am recovering all my coldness and calm. We are ready."
If that doesn't describe the thought process of a sociopath, then I don't know what does.
Sadly its not real (Score:5, Interesting)
.
That being said, this one is obviously a scam. Why do I say so? Dig back through the previous stories and you will see a picture of a shipping container full of little black plastic buckets in racks, which is supposed to be a 1MW reactor. Excuse me? You but 1MW of thermal energy in a confined space like that and it will heat up so much that all the liquid would evaporate and the steam would kill anyone attempting to maintain it. The reaction produces heat energy, and plastic buckets aren't going to last very long. These CF reactions have been known to scorch the tables that the apparatus were sitting on. A plastic container is just plain stupid and this photo only demonstrates a man with a limited intelligence at work. Also, where is the generator? The reaction does not create electricity, it produces thermal heat. You need a generator my friend, and preferably a brain containing half a conscience would not hurt either..
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>> I work at a physics lab, and I can assure you that the cold fusion effect is very real, but nobody can explain yet why it works, ...sometimes
I doubt this. You don't even realize that 1 MW is not a measure of energy.
Re:Sadly its not real (Score:5, Informative)
Imagine a hundred-watt light bulb.
Now imagine ten thousand of them, crammed together. Toss a few more in for good measure, since a 100W bulb produces about 98W of heat (2W of light, which is why we're trying to phase them out).
Now consider what that would do to the plastic bucket. And stop nitpicking on Joules vs Joules/sec. Shorthanding watts into "energy production" makes sense, because having a measure of total energy produced is kind of meaningless (a 1MJ plant that took a thousand years to produce that MJ wouldn't be that interesting).
So yeah, seems unlikely.
Re:Sadly its not real (Score:5, Interesting)
A commonly held myth among apologists for the scientific establishment.
The reality is that CalTech, MIT and Harwell all attempted to replicate P&F's results nearly a year prior to P&F's experimental protocol being published, and P&F were restricted, by University of Utah legal counsel, from making any disclosures beyond their "preliminary notes" issued along with the press conference.
It is generally recognized, even by the pseudo-skeptic "authorities" such as the DoE's chair of its cold fusion panel, Huizenga, that for all practical purposes, the prestigious institutions' failure to produce "nuclear products" (even though P&F IN THE ORIGINAL PRESS CONFERENCE said that neutrons were a factor of a billion too small to be explained by conventional nuclear fusion) closed out the entire affair WITHIN FIVE WEEKS of the press conference.
The claim that these ridiculous "experiments" (using speculative protocols), conducted to ridiculous expectations (totally ignoring evidence of excess heat), somehow "falsified" P&F's experiments is triply corrupt:
There is simply no excuse for the scientific establishment's handling of this affair.
Some of Rossi's Results Reportedly Replicated (Score:4, Informative)
Great points and you might like this: http://ecatsite.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/dr-george-miley-replicates-patterson-names-rossi/ [wordpress.com]
http://energycatalyzer3.com/news/some-of-rossi%E2%80%99s-cold-fusion-results-reportedly-replicated [energycatalyzer3.com]
By me on why the results should be freely released, btw: http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation [peswiki.com]
Re:Sadly its real (Score:5, Funny)
If you want to know what's really going to happen, it's pretty simple. First tomorrow their will be a lot of heat but not near 1 MW. However, real Scientists will take a look at the device and figure out how it works sometime before Thanks Giving. One these scientists will get a little over ambitious and build large a more efficient device. It will fire up on December 12, 2012. However, the cold fusion will produce a lot more heat and huge magnetic field that will fuse the moisture(Hydrogen) and co2 (carbon) in the air this will spread out in about 2.5 seconds across the globe. The reaction will be so intensive that earth will covert into a star for around 10 minutes. The spiral of the star earths magnetic field which is such that it causes sub-atomic particles to vibrate in the electromagnetic plan (or dimension if you prefer). When this happens atoms exposed to this field will fuse because of a loss of magnetic repulsion causing the atoms to collide and fuse. This BTW is how cold fuse works because when the hydrogen is exposed to the electromagnetic forces it's proton vibrates on in the electromagnetic plan. But what people won't know is that when it fuses it create a never before seen spiral magnetic field that cause other atoms to be vibrate in the same dimensional plane. The Sun will follow suit burning a large amount of it's own fuel in about 16 minutes. The other plants will also follow suit. This will create a HUGE magnetic spiral that might chain react across the universe transforming it. Over trillions of years the subatomic particles no longer repelled by electromagnetism will continue to fuse and grow ever large masses this will lead to the next big bang. Anyway, that's what the Mayans were saying would happen.
Baloney (Score:3, Funny)
"What would you do if it were real?" (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd keep getting up in the morning, going to work, and paying my electric and heat bill. Perhaps when I'm an old man, my energy bills will be lower or about the same as they are now (instead of rising with inflation).
My essay on paradigm shifts in thermodynamics (Score:4, Interesting)
https://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/93edc128d5cd0054 [google.com]
Essentially, whenever a system does not seem to obey the second law of thermodynamics, we just invent new science.
And here is another essay by me sent to Andrea Rossi on why cold fusion information be made freely available because of a paradigm shift in economics from scarcity towards abundance: http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation [peswiki.com]
How about a 10KW plant for your house? (Score:4, Insightful)
If this technology works, why bother with a 1 megawatt plant? Why wouldn't you build the equivalent of Bloom boxes and sell them to homeowners? Get rid of the grid entirely.
Obligatory Dilbert (Score:3)
Re:So many nay-sayers here (Score:5, Insightful)
You know who did those things? Scientists.
You know who didn't do those things? Shamans mixing pastes in sheds according to arcane rules.
Rossi's work falls into the latter category.
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Then there is of course the definition of who is the "shithead". Those of us who simply say "prove it", or those who are willing to believe anything that seems only faintly credible by people who have a good long list of false claims?
BTW: Wanna buy a car that runs on water?
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Or the naysayers who claim it is impossible to go faster than the speed of light. This http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15471118 [bbc.co.uk] is what happens when scientists make an observation that appears to go against our current understanding of the laws of physics. This level of disclosure and scrutiny is not happening with the cold fusion claim.
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I'll eat my (tinfoil) hat.
Tinfoil Conspiracy (Score:4, Funny)
Any nerd claiming to wear a tinfoil head is either a wannabe or part of the tinfoil conspiracy!
It is so obvious that tinfoil hats might cover you from alleged hostile brain control waves from sattelites thousands of kilometeres awas, but otoh forms a nearly parabolic antenna to the whole communication wires and infrastructure below pedestrian lanes just a couple of meters away. And coincidentally only relevant people will be affected, since only they are likely to wear - wait a minute, there is someone knocking at my door, I will write more. later.
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What would be the way most befitting a nerd?
Excellent question. Death by bawls? Choking on a cheeto? Drowning in mom's basement?
Personally, if I were to go, I would want to be like those Korean Starcraft guys that died after a marathon session of their favorite video game. They literally played themselves to death. That's a nerd's suicide!
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I had to think about that. Here are my top 5:
5. Hypothermia from being underdressed near Vostok, Antarctica which holds the record for the coldest temperature on the planet. I'm not sure what it feels like to freeze to death, but I'm betting it is less painful and unpleasant than most methods. Have a friend bury you in a chipped out block of ice. Poor man's cryonic storage. Like those frozen bodies on Mount Everest that have been there for decades.
4. Fill a room with nitrogen. Supposedly it doesn't have so
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I'm pretty sure drowning would be rather unpleasant.
Not that I've ever drowned, but I have been under water long enough for my "must have air" drive to override my "must hold my breath" decision and "breath" some water. It was very unpleasant.
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Here's a 12-step plan to flash-freeze strawberries:
1) Obtain strawberries
2) Obtain a Styrofoam cooler
3) Obtain a small amount of dry ice
4) Put dry ice in cooler
5) Drive to liquid nitrogen supplier with cooler, dry ice, and strawberries
6) Arrange for the purchase of several liters of LN2
7) Place strawberries in cooler
8) Have LN2 supplier pour LN2 over strawberries.
9) Wait until they're hard as rocks
10) Pour out remaining LN2 or allow it to boil off
11) Close cooler
12) return home with flash-frozen strawberrie
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