Can NASA Warm Cold Fusion? 556
TomOfAmalfi writes "Andrea Rossi says he can provide domestic energy sources (about 10 kW) based on his E-Cat system (a Low Energy Nuclear Reaction or Cold Fusion energy source) for between 100 and 150 US$/kW and begin shipping this year. Many people are skeptical about Rossi's claims because he has not explained how his 'reactors' work (apparently the reactors contain ingenious security devices to prevent reverse engineering), there is no theoretical basis to support his process, and no one has supplied independent measurements to support the specs on his black boxes. However, buried at the bottom of a NASA web page there is a comment about progress in 'cold fusion' research and a link to the slides used in a September 2011 presentation (PDF) which talks about LENR research. NASA has also released a video describing the great benefits we will get from NASA LENR research. Could Rossi be on to something?"
Answer, in brief: (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
Less brief, more detailed answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Less brief, more detailed answer (Score:5, Funny)
tl;dr
Re:Answer, in brief: (Score:5, Funny)
Wait wait now, before we dismiss him out of hand, there is one very important question.
Does he have any contacts/spies inside North Korea?
I have it on very good assurance (no less than the former president of NK) that the country had Cold Fusion research in the bag.
So it is possible that this Rossi guy has himself reverse engineered hyper-advanced North Korean technology (which they themselves perhaps stole from santa or the tooth fairy).
Re:Answer, in brief: (Score:5, Informative)
$150/kW was the proposed cost to own the generation capacity, not the unit cost of the kW. Your thinking of cents/kW/hr.
$150/kW/Yr = .01/kW/Hr.
You'd have to postulate how long the device would last to get to a genuine kW/hr figure.
Granted, I won't believe it until I see it.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Jesus christ man. Watt is a unit of Power. Power is unit Energy per unit Time. To get energy, you take Watt and multiply it with time. You don't divide by time. That would give a unit called STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM SCIENCE.
If you have a device that gives you consistently 150 kW throughout one year, the net energy produced would be 150 000 W * (24 hours/day * 365 days/year * 1 year) = 1.314 MWh. I'm sorry if mega and kilo are "too confusing" for you. Goddamn this brownie is salty. Fuck!
Divide vs. Multiply (Score:3)
kW is a measure of power. Energy is power times time so it can be measured in kW*hr or kWh, which is what you pay for.
Joule (J) is the si unit for energy and a Watt (W) is a Joule per second. You're basically claiming that energy is measured in J/s^2 which is nonsense.
Re:Answer, in brief: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Answer, in brief: (Score:5, Informative)
Le'ts think that through a little bit more. Rossi just "announced" how his "1 MW" reactor is now going to be sold for the low, low price of $1.5 million (from the previous $2 M he has been supposedly selling them for). For the sake of argument here, let's say that this reactor technology can scale down to a home generator plant for 10kW at a proportional price, which would give you a $15,000 home unit instead of the $1500 one that you think you are going to get. BTW, this is the only thing that Rossi is actually selling at the moment, or at least claiming to sell and the rest if a pipe dream. Perhaps "economies of scale" can help reduce manufacturing costs, but that is the only hard data point I have at the moment. Rossi claims it could get as cheap as $50 per kilowatt, but that sounds more like a con man talking than something real. I will grant the upper price limit of about $20k for a 10kW unit, and if you want to put the lower price limit at $1500, I'll buy that as reasonable.
On top of that, there has been absolutely no discussion as to what "ongoing" expenses there might be to actually operate this device. Even from Rossi's own accounts and from people "in the know" that have successful devices running cold fusion, the longest I've heard of one of those devices working is about a week or so, perhaps a month on the outside. I'll give the benefit of the doubt that Rossi has made a substantial breakthrough and made a device that will work non-stop for about a year (considered a miracle even among the true believers in cold fusion), I still don't see how this is going to make it to ten years. Keep in mind even all of the "demonstrations" that Rossi has done only lasted 24 hours, perhaps two days at most. He has yet to set up a device running for several weeks at a time, if only on a web cam as a "demonstration" that could easily be faked as well. It is a stretch, but I would put ten years as the hard absolute limit of operation before the device needs to be refurbished even if it works exactly as Rossi claims (which I have my serious doubts).
Even with all of this, there seems to be some sort of power requirement necessary to keep the reactor sustained (at least if you even think this device works at all). The most common way to deliver that energy is through electricity, where you can leverage the power consumed by the device by some ratio of energy input to energy being produced. Keep in mind that the power rating that Rossi is claiming is heat being produced by the devices and not electricity, noting that there will be some energy conversion costs transforming that heat into electricity. Here is also where the fuzzy details of how the device really works make a real problem trying to nail down prices. With the demonstration last October with his 1 MW plant, he had a 100 kW diesel generator sitting beside his "power plant" that was running during the demonstration. There was a "self-sustaining" mode, but my point here is pointing out that there is only some leveraging going on of the electricity input, and that a continuous power supply is necessary to make the thing work.
Sure, your "home energy unit" might be producing 10 kW of heat, but it sure won't be producing 10kW of electricity. I really am not convinced that if you had two of these units both connected to hyper efficient turbines producing electricity with some thermocouples trying to pick up some of the last watts generated before the waste heat finally has to be vented that they will even be able to power each other. For the sake of argument here, let's just presume that there still is an energy gain of some sort (wishful thinking even if Rossi is correct) and that you also don't need an air conditioner to keep the reactor room cool enough to operate if it is in a warm climate (further reducing efficiency). The question comes up therefore what is the ratio of energy input into a unit vs. how much is actually produced. Another variable is the efficiency of the turbines available that can be scaled to a home energy uni
Re:Answer, in brief: (Score:5, Informative)
Please provide a cite. I know of not a single functioning cold fusion device. Not one.
Re:Answer, in brief: (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not a physicist, and I can't be sure what the poster meant by that, but there are plenty of "devices running cold fusion", they simply do not generate more power than they consume. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
On top of that, there has been absolutely no discussion as to what "ongoing" expenses there might be to actually operate this device.
I suspect the ongoing expenses will be large quantities of diesel fuel... purely as a lubricant of course.
Re: (Score:3)
I was trying to be generous to the guy here. I may have missed a "demonstration" or two but I have never heard of him actually running one of these devices for more than a week. I've also done a rather generous survey of a great many of the "LENR devices" just trying to see what anybody else is doing, and if you even accept the fact that LENR/Cold Fusion is a real realm of scientific inquiry (I understand the hardcore skeptics) one of the persistent problems that seems to be in the field is the ability to
Re:Answer, in brief: (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that you still aren't going to be saving that much petroleum with this device if the costs to operate it not to mention the materials used to make it need to have petroleum based fuels (or other fossil fuels like coal and natural gas) being used to extract the Nickle or other materials being used to build the device.
If you are living "off the grid" and far from a more traditional power source, there still is solar cells and perhaps even a Diesel or gasoline generator to work with that are competing in theory with this device. Perhaps the e-cat could be competitive in price, and I'll admit that the price per kWh with those "off grid" generation methods can be as much as $1/kWh. No, the cost wouldn't shock me at all.
From the way you have written your post, I presume you care about the environmental consequences of energy production, and that is one thing that the e-Cat promoter are completely glossing over. Even if all of the fantastic claims about this device work out for the best and we can create electricity at $0.00001/kWh, I fear that it will lead to genuine global warming in a way that would put to shame anything being done with petroleum based energy production. With energy this cheap, you will see swimming pools being operated year round even in cold climates, people installing devices to thaw sidewalks, driveways, and parking lots for big box stores that keep melting snow, and in general a heat bubble coming out of larger cities the likes of which we have never seen before if for no other reason than energy will be cheap. Home will stop being insulated, and the very notion of energy efficiency will go completely out the window.
I have my current doubts about "global warming" and in particular "anthroprogenic global warming" as a significant factor around the globe right now, but e-Cats would completely clinch the argument for me and convince me that mankind is destroying this planet for once and for all. Energy that cheap would allow some Siberian cities to keep their rivers thawed out year-round and even deliberately deploying them to melt part of the Arctic Ocean. Yeah, that does real wonders for global climate change.
Re: (Score:3)
I just put in an air-source heat pump, with two inside units cost me about $5000 CDN for 18000 BTU (5200W), so if it works, that is a pretty good price point.
Now, how much will it cost to run, or fuel, and does it require much hands on to operate? I set the heat-pump and forget it.
Re:Answer, in brief: (Score:5, Funny)
Apple called (Score:3)
they want their magic back. Magic is part of their design mark so no one can use it for anything else except for magic shows.
Re: (Score:3)
Your boned what? Your boned (Minecraft slang) plants will sprout? Your bone daemon will tell you when you're out of bones? Come on, don't keep us waiting!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No Water would not likely be the waste product. It'd be helium in most fusion reactors. Which means that we'll all have lots of latex balloons for parties.
Re: (Score:3)
No, nuclear-powered airships! The future will be here tomorrrow!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Ordinary combustion has water as a waste product. The ratio of water to the total of all the waste products of combustion depends on how much carbon is present, and how much the combustion is compressed. Camp fires produce carbon dioxide & water. Automobiles produce carbon monoxide, various nitreous compounds, and minimal water.
Re:Answer, in brief: (Score:5, Informative)
Erm, no, you used 1000W, for an hour.
You used 3600 x 1000 Joules, or 3.6MJ
You don't measure total energy in kW - Watts are always a unit of power, the rate at which energy is used.
Adding the h means "for an hour" ; it's a way of expressing energy in units that people understand - because their appliances are rated in terms of their power consumption, it's easier to think about what they consume if left on for an hour. "3.6 megaJoules" doesn't mean much to most people. "Leaving your hairdryer on for an hour" does.
Saying a battery is a "10kW" unit makes no mention of it's capacity - only it's possible power output (10,000 Joules per second). The battery can run, say, 10 hairdryers, or three modern kettles, but it might only be for a few seconds. or it could be a million years. A 10kWh battery tells you that it holds 36MJ of energy, enough to run those kettles for an hour, but it says nothing about whether that battery can release that energy fast enough to boil the water.
0.5c per kWh is indeed a bargain, even if it's just raw heat. But the whole "reverse engineering proof" thing really doesn't raise my opinion of Rossi or his alleged technology.
If this thing is real, it's a revolution. It has the possibility to produce world peace. People fight over perceived differences in wealth. Energy is the root of all modern wealth - one of the reason things are getting so fraught is that energy (specifically fossil fuel) is getting harder to come by. Reducing the cost of energy by an order of magnitude could usher in a new era of peace. The guy would probably win 2 Nobel prizes. Instead he comes out with petty crap like that, revealing that he's just in it for the money. Being a genius doesn't preclude you being a materialistic ass .. but most of the materialistic asses I'm aware of ain't geniuses.
Re:Answer, in brief: (Score:4, Interesting)
If this is legit - please note my (puts on sunglasses) POWERFUL skepticism as to its legitimacy - once it is out in the wild, it will be reverse-engineered and copied about as fast as humanly possible.
There's not a patent or copyright law in the world that will stand up to the economic pressure of a clean energy source at 1/3rd the price of current sources.
This is the sort of thing that governments nationalize. It would be HUGE.
That being the case, his only real chance to recoup his reward is to extract every red cent he can from it up front, before the secret is out. He'll need it for the patent infringement legal bills.
DG
Re: (Score:3)
Ok, this is where you are going wrong: for and per are not interchangeable terms.
Using the word for implies multiplication: 1 kilowatt for 1 hour is 1 kilowatt-hour (1 kW * 1 hr = 1 kWh).
Using the word per implies division as in 1000 joules per 3600 second period is 0.278 joules per second (1000 J / 3600 s = 0.278 J/s).
Do you see the difference?
Re: (Score:3)
Huh? You're confusing energy (kWh) with power (MW).
Re:Answer, in brief: (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with that approach is that after you have released all your plans for free, you get to go back to your job and try to stay ahead of inflation, cope with dumbass bosses and backstabbing co-workers, and probably have your job shipped to China anyway. OTOH, if you retain control of it, you get to sell it, retire, live in a nice house, use your time exactly how you see fit, and don't have to please anyone else that's not also a loved one.
Re: (Score:3)
Generally the kind of people who come up with these sorts of things are not working the kinds of jobs that get sent to China. Once their ideas are made public, they are certainly not.
Re:Answer, in brief: (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with that approach is that after you have released all your plans for free, you get to go back to your job and try to stay ahead of inflation, cope with dumbass bosses and backstabbing co-workers, and probably have your job shipped to China anyway.
Buds, if you discovered a viable method of cold fusion, I can guarantee you wouldn't go back to your cubicle to wallow in obscurity. The million-dollar Nobel Prize alone would keep you humming along trouble-free for a few years. You'd be getting honorary doctorates shoved at you from every side, along with requests for appearances, book deals, job offers, etc, et al. You couldn't go back to your old life if you wanted to.
Re: (Score:3)
It's best not to patent it and not to tell anybody how it's done but instead to keep it a trade secret and protect technologically and build the generators, but not sell them yet in the beginning, but instead rent them out to companies.
Biggest trucks that we have, locomotives, cranes, ships, diesel and coal electrical generators, heat generators, all of this can be replaced by one or more of these 'magic black boxes' that generate electrical power, and as long as they can be rented cheaper than it takes to
Re:Answer, in brief: (Score:5, Insightful)
It's best not to patent it and not to tell anybody how it's done but instead to keep it a trade secret and protect technologically and build the generators, but not sell them yet in the beginning, but instead rent them out to companies.
If your goal is world-domination, sure. In that case you'll need a moon-base and a giant freakin' laser to go with it.
On the other hand, if you're looking to help the human race improve it's condition, while at the same time making yourself ridiculously rich, it's best to patent it and just license the technology to whoever want to use it. There's only so much you as an individual can do at any one time. If you're keeping it a secret, it'll be decades before you manage to develop and market all the products which you've just described. Whereas if you license it, you'll be an overnight billionaire, you'll be seen as a hero to billions of people, and you'll have a revenue stream that makes Bill Gates look like a pauper in comparison. There's absolutely no advantage to keeping it a secret, unless you're a control freak and/or a sociopath.
Re:Answer, in brief: (Score:5, Funny)
Ayn Rand would disapprove - if you have some economic means to rape somebody and bleed them dry, it is not only your right but your moral obligation to do so. ~
Re: (Score:3)
Where does "rational self-interest", AKA (the virtue of) selfishness, draw the line? Who is to say what is exploitation? Rupert Murdoch? The bankers at AIG?
I read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead years ago, and after I recovered from the fiction and thought about it as philosophy I realized that Rand's Objectivism, or even just its practically applicable values, assign selfishness as the only virtue. It's inhuman in demonizing compassion and sharing where the only gain is one's feeling of helping ("altru
Re: (Score:3)
What tangible advantage do you see in going down the renting route? You've described how it can be "enormously lucrative and rewarding in more ways than just money" to rent it. Can you describe ways in which that is clearly better than the other route, both to yourself and to society at large?
I think with c6gunner is getting at is that you're talking about a marginal benefit to yourself that is invisible (100 billion dollars vs. 1 trillion dollars -- if that's personal wealth, then there really is no mean
Excellent points on why to be open (Score:4, Interesting)
And here are some more reasons I sent to Rossi: http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation [peswiki.com] ..."
"The key point here is that breakthrough clean energy technologies will change the very nature of our economic system. They will shift the balance between four different interwoven economies we have always had (subsistence, gift, planned, and exchange). Inventors who have struggled so hard in a system currently dominated by exchange may have to think about the socioecenomic implications of their invention in causing a permanent economic phase change. A clean energy breakthrough will probably create a different balance of those four economies like toward greater local subsistence and more gift giving (as James P. Hogan talks about in Voyage From Yesteryear). So, to focus on making money in the old socioeconomic paradigm (like by focusing on restrictive patents) may be very ironic, compared to freely sharing a great gift with the world that may change the overall dynamics of our economy to the point where money does not matter very much anymore.
Others calling to open source the eCat:
http://www.e-catworld.com/2011/11/open-source-the-e-cat/ [e-catworld.com]
By the way, the catalyst may be some variant on Potasium Carbonate:
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/GernertNnascenthyd.pdf [lenr-canr.org]
Mentioned here by "Sojourner Soo", with the abstract from 1994:
http://ecatnews.com/?p=1144 [ecatnews.com]
"Anomalous heat was measured from a reaction of atomic hydrogen in contact with potassium carbonate on a nickel surface. The nickel surface consisted of 500 feet of 0.0625 inch diameter tubing wrapped in a coil. The coil was inserted into a pressure vessel containing a light water solution of potassium carbonate. The tubing and solution were heated to a steady state temperature of 249 C using an FR heater. Hydrogen at 1100 psig was applied to the inside of the tubing. After the application of hydrogen, a 32 C increase in temperature of the cell was measured which corresponds to 25 watts of heat. Heat production under these conditions is predicted by the theory of Mills where a new species of hydrogen is produced that has a lower energy state then normal hydrogen."
In the 1950s (or maybe 1930s) a Princeton physicist was talking about some similar things (forget his name offhand).
Rossi could have ended almost all dispute by just running two eCats side-by-side, one with the catalyst and one without. Or even just one with the hydrogen and one without, where people picked the one getting the hydrogen. That would rule out many things. (Maybe not all, but a lot.) The fact that he has not done that, which would be relatively easy, makes me more suspicious that it really works (although people have invented explanations for why he has not done that).
What has been said by Steven Krivit is the suggestion that LENR (cold fusion) does work, but not as well as Rossi suggests it does (and he has been still trying to get it to work well).
Still, it is so hard to be an innovator in our society, that I could cut Rossi a lot of slack. Just maybe not a check yet. :-)
But sooner or later we will get cheap energy, one way or another, so many people are working towards it. Even just from solar:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/ [cleantechnica.com]
Or thorium, or hot fusion, or geothermal, or whatever...
But the eCat would be a great mobile power device.
Of course, if it does work, it is only one more reason we need to rethink our outlook on nature, technology, society, and economics:
htt [pdfernhout.net]
Maybe not... (Score:3)
The patent system has within it an underlying assumption; that your Better Mousetrap TM (pat pend) provides some degree of benefit that people are willing to pay for rather than steal.
Not counting the international counterfeiting issue (where international laws and the difficulty of enforcing one nation's laws within the borders of another compound the problem) the decision between "pay or steal" comes down to this:
1. How much does the patent holder intend to charge for use of the Better Mousetrap?
2. How mu
Re:Answer, in brief: (Score:5, Informative)
I agree. The most comprehensive document i found using the search lenr on the NASA webpage on the research there seems to be:
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/sensors/PhySen/docs/LENR_at_GRC_2011.pdf [nasa.gov]
It is an obviously very optimistic document on why NASA should fund cold fusion research. And let me - as somebody who was a scientist for 10 years - clearly state that you viewpoint should be an optimistic one, when presenting in terms of "why is that fundamentally interesting". However, you should have a realistic opinion on "what needs to be done to verify the effect" *before* promising fancy devices.
these are the references cited in the presentation above, which are not conference presentations, progress reports, or books, but real peer-reviewed papers:
Li, Xing Z.; Liu, Bin; Tian, Jian; Wei, Qing M.; Zhou, Rui and Yu, Zhi W.: âoeCorrelation between abnormal deuterium flux and heat flow in a D/PD system,â J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 36 3095-3097 (2003).
Widom, A., Larsen, L., âoeUltra Low Momentum Neutron Catalyzed Nuclear Reactions on Metallic Hydride Surfaces," Eur. Phys. J. C (2006)
Kim, Y. E., âoeTheory of Bose-Einstein Condensation for Deuteron-Induced Nuclear reactions in Micro/Nano-Scale Metal Grains and Particlesâ, Naturwissenschaften 96, 803(2009).
Let me say that very clearly: i am not an expert on the field. But if there would be anything which seems close to being implemented to people working in the field, then i know there would be several high-ranking papers.
what makes me *particularly* (i am an experimentalist) doubt about this research, and especially Rossi (who claims incredible rates of conversion of the material) is that it should be extremely easy to detect the helium or other products (in Rossis case) in the output. The order of magnitude of the effects cited would be *massive* and easily detectable by the signature of the reactions in the waste products. Instead of looking at the reactors, i claim it would be better to examine the material input and output.
Show me the peaks in am AMS, (if needed for efficiency, please use an acceleration mass spectrometer) for the fresh fuels and the spent fuel, and i believe in Cold fusion. Show me nice pictures and make a fence several meters around your device and don't publish in peer-reviewed journals and you will trigger my scepticism.
Re:Answer, in brief: (Score:5, Insightful)
So I was a bit disappointed when the whole thing became a polarized mess, rather than a good start into proper scientific research. Almost any scientist who investigated cold-fusion was considered a quack immediately.
Re: (Score:3)
Here is a talk given at SRI in October 2011 that suggests you should be less brief and more open.
The talk has been uploaded as eight videos and the link is to the first. They suggest there is more here than just smoke, in the opinion of many sophisticated people. Whether Rossi can actually commercialize any of this is the question, but it does appear that something interesting is going on, that Fleischmann and Pons found it, but that they had the misfortune to not realize what was required to replicate the
On the bright side ... (Score:3, Funny)
They'd probably achieve more than Adobe does.
now called “low-energy nuclear reactions&rdq (Score:5, Interesting)
Tests conducted at NASA Glenn Research Center in 1989 and elsewhere consistently show evidence of anomalous heat during gaseous loading and unloading of deuterium into and out of bulk palladium. At one time called “cold fusion,” now called “low-energy nuclear reactions” (LENR), such effects are now published in peer-reviewed journals and are gaining attention and mainstream respectability. The instrumentation expertise of NASA GRC is applied to improve the diagnostics for investigating the anomalous heat in LENR.
Re:now called “low-energy nuclear reactions& (Score:5, Insightful)
At one time called "cold fusion," now called "low-energy nuclear reactions" (LENR), such effects are now published in peer-reviewed journals and are gaining attention and mainstream respectability. The instrumentation expertise of NASA GRC is applied to improve the diagnostics for investigating the anomalous heat in LENR.
A herring by any other name would smell as fishy... in any event if LENR, as you put it, were a practicable possibility I'd expect to be hearing announcements from someone more reputable than this Rossi character. He claims to have invented not one but two cold fusion technologies*. Now this may be a terrible, terrible bit of prejudice against someone who may end up in the history books, but I tend towards a more cynical or pragmatic attitude when it comes to parting with my or the public's money.
*"The 1 MW plants have a totally different technology and engineering." [e-catworld.com]
Re:now called “low-energy nuclear reactions& (Score:5, Informative)
Tests conducted at NASA Glenn Research Center in 1989 and elsewhere consistently show evidence of anomalous heat
There are plenty of ways "anomalous" heat can be generated during chemical/mechanical processes without jumping right to the conclusion that it must be two nuclei fusing - the same way that seeing something unknown in the sky does not automatically mean it came from some other planet.
Re:now called “low-energy nuclear reactions& (Score:5, Interesting)
Tests conducted at NASA Glenn Research Center in 1989 and elsewhere consistently show evidence of anomalous heat
There are plenty of ways "anomalous" heat can be generated during chemical/mechanical processes without jumping right to the conclusion that it must be two nuclei fusing - the same way that seeing something unknown in the sky does not automatically mean it came from some other planet.
This is true, but cold fusion research never really stopped, and there are a half dozen large labs around the world that have spent 20 years doing research, trying to figure out what is going on, even if there's no good theory behind the science yet. Discounting their work out-of-hand without a theory is just ignorant. There is vastly more published evidence *for* those reactions happening than against them, no matter what the theories might say. (And the variables that impacted the rapid set of tests that couldn't reproduce the P&F experiments are much better understood now -- according to published papers, the reproduction rate is near 100% in the last ten years.)
So the real electrochemists working on the problem don't claim to know *what* is causing the excess heat, but from a power generation standpoint, it kind of doesn't matter. They also have proven they're getting at least some transubstantiation going on, which suggests at least *some* of that heat is coming from nuclear processes.
Its weird (and strangely ignorant) that on this one subject, so many researchers take the "we don't know any way that COULD be happening, so lets not research it" position instead of the "something we don't understand is happening, and that is exciting to research" position. Even if it was a purely chemical reaction, there's something exciting about figuring out THAT, too!
Re:now called “low-energy nuclear reactions& (Score:3)
They also have proven they're getting at least some transubstantiation going on...
I'm pretty sure that if they find blood in there, it's because someone cut their finger.
Re:now called “low-energy nuclear reactions& (Score:5, Insightful)
There is vastly more published evidence *for* those reactions happening than against them, no matter what the theories might say.
Nonsense. After 20 years of research, they still only have measurements that are barely statistically significant, occurring irregularly, primarily amongst "researchers" who already believe there's an effect. If you're going to call that evidence, then you have to conclude that "psychic powers" are real, also, because we've been getting the same kind of "evidence" from the "psi-researchers" for a couple decades now. It's nonsense. It's a perversion of the scientific method - sifting through noise until you find something that looks like a pattern, then using publication bias to reinforce your presuppositions, and sticking them in your conclusion. It's a waste of time and money, and it's a shame that so many people can't see that kind of "research" for the scam it is.
Re:now called “low-energy nuclear reactions& (Score:4, Interesting)
You are wrong. The anomalous heat detected in some experiments is statistically significant. Just one example: in a 1998 experiment, Focardi had set up a cell that ran continuously for 278 days and produced an excess power of about 900 megajoule: http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/FocardiSlargeexces.pdf [lenr-canr.org]
The problem is that this experiment, and many others, despite providing very interesting results, have been mostly ignored by the scientific community purely because of the stigma associated to Cold Fusion research. This is frustrating!
The submitter is also incorrect when saying that Rossi provided no details about how his reactors work. He explained that (a) he processes the nickel powder to create tubercles and enhance its contact surface with hydrogen, (b) he uses 2 nickel isotopes to enhance the reaction, (c) he splits molecular hydrogen (H2) into atomic hydrogen (H1), (d) he uses high pressure and temperature to initiates the reaction, etc.
I used to think that Rossi's E-Cat was a scam, but after researching deeply the subject, I am now convinced this guy might be onto something, see this post I wrote explaining many Cold Fusion experiments that seem to support Rossi and that have been ignored by the community at large: http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=61 [zorinaq.com]
Electric vehicles (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether this is a hoax or not, it's the right direction. Nuclear and hopeful thermonuclear for use in homes and in vehicles - heavy machinery and private cars, trains, boats, planes and spacecraft.
Re: (Score:2)
I can't help but think than an ideal battery ought to be good enough for cars and even some kinds of boats (efficient ones, mostly.) Or you know, something vaguely close. As it is you can accomplish quite a lot with the lousy ones we have now. Bring on the shipstones!
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Isn't the best idea always to go for the best tool for the job in a sane price range instead of just something that sounds cool in a comic?
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As I said: no refueling.
As in: no refueling.
Lifespan of a vehicle should be less than lifespan of a nuclear power plant installed into it including the fuel.
Re:Electric vehicles (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure if you are kidding or not, but safety aside small reactors are not very efficient or cheap. It makes much more sense to have large scale generation and pump it out to individual devices as we do now, just with better batteries in the case of cars, boats and aircraft.
Plus we already have a massive fusion reactor supplying enough energy to power the entire world, so might as well make use of that.
Re: (Score:3)
I dunno bout you, but I don't trust my neighbor to build a nuclear reactor in his back yard. YOUR neighbors might be PhDs in physics, but mine is a hillbilly. Duct tape is not nuclear-rated AFIK.
He does a helluva tuneup on my truck, thoug
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The usual: You need to go through a TSA checkpoint on the highway with such a vehicle, and they will deny it because you have a nail clipper in the glove box.
No. (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Rossi us a fraudster, this will be proven to be a scam too. Did you not notice him give a price before giving the science?
Re:No. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No. (Score:5, Informative)
No - he did not go to jail for fraud. He did go to jail because a real energy company he founded (creating oil from waste) was polluting the environment, and for alleged tax evasion, but apparently was subsequently acquitted of those charges.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Rossi_(entrepreneur) [wikipedia.org]
So, he's a for-real, engineer and entrepreneur with experience in the energy business.
Re: (Score:3)
Wait, is that the "Thermoselect" fraudster? That was marketed as the ultimate solution to waste processing but never did materialize.
Of course he could (Score:5, Insightful)
There's always the possibility a snake-oil salesman is on to something.
But without independent verification and independent PROOF that it works, everyone will continue to think it's just snake oil. There have been too many claims by "inventors" of cold fusion devices, perpetual motion machines, "free energy" theories, etc. for people to take anyone at their word.
I wouldn't give Rossi a DIME until there was independent verification.
Re: (Score:2)
everyone will continue to think it's just snake oil.
If that were only true. he will find some suckers that will 'invest' in his project. He will make a bunch of money and vanish. Remember there is a sucker born every minute. The only trick is finding them and parting them with their cash with the proper 'smoke and mirrors'.
Re: (Score:3)
Agreed. Independently verify it (with an aggression / truth level set to "Genghis Khan"), then purchase it, tear it apart, and find out what other scientists have been missing for the last 40 years.
Re:Of course he could (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think Pons and Fleischmann were fraudsters. In fact they don't deserve the derision they still suffer today. They saw and reported the results. Part of science is being wrong yet these guys were lynched for it.
LENR experiments seem to have a modicum of truth in that many times there is excess heat. It's just not easily reproduced or explained. Hell, if NASA is looking into it, no matter how down low they try to keep it, unless you feel NASA employees cranks and nuts, then there is evidently enough there to keep them poking and prodding it.
If you think about it, all this secrecy and mystery does make sense. Today, Energy is what gold was in the past. Anyone who can find a way to generate it cheaply (which $150 Kw is not), without the expense and mess of fossil fuels or the potential risk of fission, will become so fucking rich they would make the so-called 1% look like hamburger flippers. I wouldn't be real surprised if there were many well respected folks working on this, but just keeping it under their hats.
That all being said, wake me when I can buy it at Home Depot.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't think Pons and Fleischmann were fraudsters. In fact they don't deserve the derision they still suffer today. They saw and reported the results. Part of science is being wrong yet these guys were lynched for it.
I agree they were not knowingly trying to deceive people. OTOH this is not what they were criticised for (link [wikipedia.org]):
On May 1, 1989, the American Physical Society held a session on cold fusion in Baltimore, including many reports of experiments that failed to produce evidence of cold fusion. At the end of the session, eight of the nine leading speakers stated that they considered the initial Fleischmann and Pons claim dead with the ninth, Johann Rafelski, abstaining. Steven E. Koonin of Caltech called the Utah report a result of "the incompetence and delusion of Pons and Fleischmann" which was met with a standing ovation.
When you think about it, science is mainly a set of techniques and methods to avoid self-delusion about your own results. The human tendency towards self-dulusion is vast. A beautiful example of this is Albrecht Durer's attempt to use a geometrical construction [wordpress.com] to form an ellipse. His own bias bled through the mechanical straight-edge and compass construction so his end result was lopsided a
Re:Of course he could (Score:4, Interesting)
It's worth also mentioning that the PR campaign was not the idea of Pons and Fleischer, it was the university's PR department IIRC. I think P & F were planning to follow normal scientific publication protocols, but things got out of hand once the uni got involved.
Let me guess (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
But other than that last clause, doesn't this also describe the state of conventional nuclear fusion, as well? Hasn't fusion been 20 years away for the past 50 years, or so?
Re:Let me guess (Score:4, Interesting)
But other than that last clause, doesn't this also describe the state of conventional nuclear fusion, as well? Hasn't fusion been 20 years away for the past 50 years, or so?
That quote is a confusion of political posturing and engineering critical path project planning.
Here's the standard /. car analogy. For political reasons we will advertise that we will sell a car getting 10 MPG more than our current model. It takes a year or two to design, a year or two to develop and get the assembly line up and running (not a year or two of actual work, but a year or two of calendar time to shut down one line, get everyone ready for the new one, about two weeks of millright time to move the machines...) The newest announced car model is ALWAYS about 3 years away, because thats how long it takes from "say go" to "drive off the stealership lot". At some point, probably early, in the 3 year process, its cancelled.
Another good analogy is we're always 15 years away from men on mars, because every couple years its proposed, they figure it'll take 15 years to get there, they cancel, repeat.
Fusion has always been 20 years away because it takes 20 years from "say go" to "plant pushing power into the grid". As long as its politically useful to put on a big show about how we're starting a new initiative, and later cancel it, we'll continue to do so.
Re: (Score:3)
that's incredible! (Score:4, Funny)
There's still someone talking about the eCat.
Re:that's incredible! (Score:4, Funny)
must be professor eShrodinger :p
Not this again... (Score:4, Insightful)
There was no independent test of his device yet, so I consider it highly unlikely to work.
Rossi claims he's heating a factory in italy with one of his devices. I wonder how the authorities would react if they learn that an unauthorized nuclear device is being used there, considering that italy has laws that prohibit nuclear facilities.
Obligatory Reddit version (Score:5, Interesting)
A couple from that thread claim that NASA hasn't discovered cold fusion here, but 'merely' radio active beta decay, which is similar to an atomic battery: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_battery [wikipedia.org]
Re:Obligatory Reddit version (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Obligatory Reddit version (Score:4, Interesting)
So I've been trying (with minimal success) to find any quality information on this, but there are a few bits and pieces out there.
My understanding is that the most likely theory here is that there's a low energy mechanism for generating neutrons in condensed matter via 'heavy' electrons (high effective mass due to lattice phenomena), and that these neutrons can be used to trigger energy producing reactions (there's a lithium based cycle with no net consumption of lithium, for example). The reactions themselves aren't new, but producing neutrons cheaply enough to generate a net energy gain is. I don't have enough of an understanding of the theory to really judge how feasible it is, but the idea that electrons in lattices can behave in interesting ways (c.f. superconductivity) isn't crazy enough IMO to dismiss the idea outright.
I think this is relatively orthogonal to Rossi and Co., although I believe there was some interaction between him and NASA at some stage. He's definitely mishandled the public relations around his announcement, is likely out of his depth in terms of understanding what he's doing and may well be attempting fraud. That doesn't change the fact that there may be some worthwhile science to be done in the field.
Re: (Score:3)
Also the eCat claims to fuse a proton with Nickel to produce copper. A quick check of the relevant tables gives us a "proton chain" where eventually a stable copper isotope is produced. However there are few unstable copper intermediates in between. These all decay v
Re:Obligatory Reddit version (Score:5, Informative)
LENR is not cold fusion. LENR is a broad category and basically means 'stuff that is not high-energy fission / fusion.' It includes neutron capture (i.e. a neutron hits a nucleus, is absorbed, and no fission occurs) and radioactive decay. There are a lot of LENR generators. Some pacemakers contain betavoltaic generators that are powered by a small quantity of tritium. The Russians used to power lighthouses with radiothermal generators (RTFs) and there are three of them powering each of the Voyager spacecraft, with a rated lifespan of about 60 years each.
eCat sounds like they are claiming two low-energy reactions: a neutron capture followed by a decay. This is potentially feasible, but then good snake oil is always feasible...
Re:Obligatory Reddit version (Score:4, Informative)
RTGs are powered by the heat of radioactive decay, i.e., physics that would have seemed routine 100 years ago). That has nothing to do with LENR.
Off topic but... (Score:3)
Actually, he *is* on to something. (Score:4, Funny)
A way to scam more people out of their cash.
Re: (Score:2)
I read that as capacity, i.e., his 10kW device would cost 1000 to 1500 dollars. Does that include fuel? I have no idea, and I've never read anything about this device. I do know that a 10kW natural gas backup generator would run me about $10,000 installed with an automatic switch, because that's something I've been looking for.
Re:Actually, he *is* on to something. (Score:4, Interesting)
And one good way to tell is the use of wrong metrics: 100 and 150 US$/kW doesn't mean shit.
$/KW cost of installed capacity is the standard metric in the electric power industry. Its rarely the conceptually simple direct accounting measurement of total overall plant construction project cost divided by capacity, its all excruciating NPV calcs and frankly making stuff up is done to shoehorn non-applicable data into that model. You'll see lots of rolling estimated labor and theoretical financial costs into the capital $/KW figure. If you know what it actually cost, and can compare it to the reported imaginary accounting numbers, you can tell how corrupt they are, which is an interesting management metric for investment planning, which I am personally involved in from long term utility investment. You'd probably not be surprised to know that my management corruption metric has a weak negative correlation with returns and an extremely strong positive correlation with price fluctuations.
Anyway... for example, most modern nukes end up costing about $3000/KW to install, as in, if by some miracle, the cost were perfectly linear regardless of capacity, going from bare dirt to a brand new ready to heat up imaginary one kilowatt reactor in my back yard would cost three grand.
Because the numbers are abused to meet the pre-existing decision, you'll see crazy wild variations in estimates for the same project of at least a factor of two, sometimes three.
One thing is certain, if the guy is quoting plant costs of only $150/KW that literally won't pay for the buildings, turbine hall, or maybe even the switchgear. $150/KW is like, what, the employee parking lot? That does not prove fraud, but certainly smell a stink of it.
Fusion Confusion (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The problem is it takes more energy to make the Muon than you get out of the reaction in the end.
From
S. Atzeni and J. Meyer-ter-Vehn, The Physics of Inertial Fusion (Oxford University Press, 2004)
For energy production by mu-catalysed fusion, it is necessary that the Nf reactions catalysed on average by one muon release a larger amount of energy than that required to produce the muon itself. The muon is obtained by the decay of the pion, with an estimated cost of 5 GeV. Assuming that fusion energy is convert
Distraction from Polywell (Score:2, Interesting)
I hate the cold fusioners with a passion - every time they trump up another scam like this it makes people distrust real science more and more. So something as exciting and potentially awesome as the Polywell languishes, because no one believes that fusion will work from a device that isn't $10+ billion dollars and smaller than a football stadium.
Strap him to a rocket and shoot him into the sun, if he wants to bullshit about fusion so bad.
Re: (Score:3)
I wouldn't say the Polywell project is languishing. AFAIK they're quietly getting on with testing WB8 and getting data; their research is still being funded by the US Navy. [recovery.gov] Sure, it'd be nice if they were getting more funding than they are but at least they're doing something.
From what I've read they're concentrating on finding out if the device will scale to larger sizes, which was one of the more contentious points (Bussard claimed that power scaled as size^7) when the idea was first presented. I'd be abs
No way (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a sophisticated fraudster. It is unclear what he is doing to simulate success, but one credible suggestion was that he could have gotten his hands on a nuclear battery, e.g. from the former soviet union. Such a device could easily produce the amount of energy observed in the given volume.
Re:No way (Score:5, Insightful)
If he produced observable energy last October, when he was going to reveal the greatness to the world, we would have heard about it. Nobody has said shit; so, I doubt his faud can even be called sophisticated.
Re:No way (Score:5, Interesting)
It is actually simple how he is doing it, there is a big issue with his "tests"
No one is accurately measuring the actual volume of steam coming out, and some who have seen the test indicate there does not appear to be enough steam coming out for claimed amount...the basic claim is that xx amount of water went in and the same amount of steam came out...but consider xx water went in and 1/10*xx steam came out...that would also explain why he never runs the test for a really long time...the water is collecting in the device. All of the energy calcs are based on "knowing" that all of the water comes out as steam, and from reading the reports that is assume but never actually measured.
The simple reality is that he could easily prove this device (if it was real) by turning it on and leaving it on producing steam for days and weeks (which he claims is possible as he has claimed the device is heating a factory some place and has been running for years)...he has never shown that he always does the shorter test that have the above flaw...which makes me believe the flaw above is the trick being used, and the device does not actually work at all.
And if you look into Rossi's past he has pulled crap this this before...so he is either scamming someone for money, or he believes it is working.
Re: (Score:3)
How is anyone even taking this seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Science that works cannot be kept secret. Observe that over centuries, every single real invention has been independently discovered by multiple scientists in such close succession that it might as well be simultaneous. That is not a coincidence. New discoveries build upon existing discoveries and technologies, and when their time has come, they will appear.
If this invention were based on a theory that actually had some basis in reality, other physicists would have grasped it by now, at the very least by knowing what to look for. This scam is targeted at the gullibility of people who don't understand how scientific advances are made.
"No one else has figured it out, so there must be something to it" is the wrong argument. If it's a magic box, we should be treating it as a magician's sideshow: Not to be believed until proved fake, but to consider it fake until all its workings are fully and extensively public and shown to be sound by other scientists.
Five hundred years ago, self-styled alchemists and sorcerers parted investors with their money by claiming to have some secret apparatus to turn lead into gold. It's depressing to see that now, after the periodic table, the theory of relativity and the discovery of the atom, we're falling for the same trick. We shouldn't even be debating whether it's real, just like we don't debate whether the world will end this December. It should be dismissed out of hand until the inventor decides to either cough up how it is done or shuts up and goes away.
ingenious devices to prevent reverse engineering (Score:4, Insightful)
The most ingenious device used to prevent reverse engineering is that it doesn't fucking work.
Remember, Rossi was going to have a 1MW fusion plant working in October last year. My lack of surprise about that not happening is so overwhelming I can't even bother to
Here's what Brian Josephson thinks on it (Score:3)
A video lecture on the topic [cam.ac.uk] from the man who gave us the Josephson junction [berkeley.edu], who is certifiably smarter than any of us here and as good a physicist as we have on the planet. That doesn't mean he doesn't have some peculiar ideas. He most certainly does. Walks funny too. But some of his most peculiar ideas have paid off big time, and were contrary to "everyone's" intuitive sense of how things work in reality.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh come on! Everybody knows it's flying cars next
Re: (Score:2)
Or videophones.
I wouldn't completely discount Rossi, but on the other hand, he gives no proof. We're completely obliged to be skeptical until he does. Then we resurrect Sarkoff, and have him steal the patents.
Profit!
Re: (Score:3)
No let's keep this alive.
I for one am really interested how Mr.Rossi plans to escape once the jig is up and how this will work out in reality.
Re:Yesterday's frauds... (Score:5, Informative)
The difference between your examples and this Rossi character is that black hole and planetary discoveries were verifiable science that could be reviewed by others. Rossi's got a black box that no one really knows anything about. His evasion and roadblocks he puts in the way of trying to determine exactly what is going on is highly suspect.
Yeah right (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that Einstein and astronomers don't hide their stuff, they publish and answer questions and invite scrutiny of their claims.
That is the difference between conmen and real scientists, real scientist want you to look behind the screen, in fact, there is no screen.
Re: (Score:3)
20 years ago... Einstein thinks black holes should exist but most think he's nuts Last few years... A black hole exists in every known galaxy
There may be plenty of lolz when all the naysayers are warming their snarky asses by electricity generated from a Rossi invention.
-AI
There's one big difference here. Einstein wasn't trying to sell anything to anyone or get investors. And he actually put his work out there to be analyzed.
Re:They are making heat, not electricity (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I believe, Cold Fusion exists from looking at the research, which refuses to die. But there are very powerful ineterests in OIL and ridiculous HOT fusion approach which is nothing but a black sink hole of money, which hasn't produced any results in over 50 years.
It is great that you believe that, but no one cares. Think about this, you need to get your conspiracy theories lined up, you're way out of whack.
Coal companies are the ones that want to stop new electricity research. They are the big multinational cartel polycorps behind that. They assassinate people and stuff.
Oil companies are the ones who stop new car research. Get it right, you look dumb when you mix up their respective motivations. Coal companies, electricity. Oil companies, cars.
Sometimes they j