A Cold Look at Cold Fusion Claims: Why E-Cat Looks Like a Hoax 426
In the past few days, several readers have submitted word of a paper published on Arxiv allegedly confirming the efficacy of Andrea Rossi's "E-Cat," a device Rossi says transmutes nickel into copper, producing cheap energy in the process. (Mentioned before on Slashdot.) Ethan Siegel of ScienceBlogs takes a skeptical look at the buzz surrounding this paper, and asks some seemingly obvious questions, pointing out various ways in which the cold-fusion / cheap-energy claims could be either confirmed or debunked. First time accepted submitter CdXiminez writes with a capsule of Siegel's points: "What would it take to convince a reasonable observer that you've got a controlled nuclear reaction going on here? Things not shown in the earlier report: Show that nuclear transmutation has in fact taken place; Start the device operating by whatever means you want, then disconnect all external power to it, and allow it to run; Place a gamma-ray detector around the device; Accurately monitor the power drawn from all sources to the device at all times, while also monitoring the energy output from the device at all times."
Re:Sad legitimate researchers (Score:5, Funny)
If cold fusion were invented tomorrow everything changes...
True. I for one would be worried about getting hit by one of those flying pigs.
An easy solution (Score:5, Funny)
Re:W.C Fields was an optimist (Score:4, Funny)
Still too low. 1 sucker born per second would result in only about 24% of people being suckers.
Re:W.C Fields was an optimist (Score:5, Funny)
Actually it's not PT Barnum either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_sucker_born_every_minute
Your URL makes it sound like the quote is "There's 27 suckers born every minute."
Must be due to inflation.
Re:W.C Fields was an optimist (Score:4, Funny)
Well, Barnum & Fields were the principals.
Not a hoax (Score:4, Funny)
My D-Wave tells me the E-Cat will work.
The name is all wrong. (Score:3, Funny)
just hold out your hand for food of the gods (Score:4, Funny)
assume for a minute you could head down to your local supermarket and pick up a portable flying pig ....
BAH!
All the real investment these days is in on-demand bacon home delivery by quadcopter drone. And quite rightly, too.
The future is looking quite utopian to those with true vision.
Re:Currency conversion (Score:3, Funny)
you can also tell by the date stamped on them :)