Scientific American Column: 'It's Not Cold Fusion...But It's Something' (scientificamerican.com) 188
An anonymous reader writes: Scientific American magazine has published a guest column on low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR) [putting] into context the history of what was mistakenly referred to as cold fusion and what happened. The bottom line is that there is compelling cumulative evidence for nuclear reactions taking place, including shifts in the abundance of isotopes, element transmutations, and localized melting of metals. Furthermore, those reactions do not have the characteristics of either nuclear fission or nuclear fusion. Despite sharp criticism from much of the scientific community after the 1989 announcement by Fleischmann and Pons, the Department of the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center and other reputable organizations continued the research and published many papers.
The article reports that "to the surprise of many people, a new field of nuclear research has emerged," adding that even in the early 20th century, atomic scientists were already reporting "inexplicable experimental evidence of elemental transmutations."
Justice. (Score:5, Insightful)
Back in the 80's when my physics chops were far better I was sure they were on to something.
Just goes to show, that even in the scientific community, bias can play a part in what gets to the public. Just because they are scientists, doesn't mean they aren't human.
I hope those two guys get their due. They deserve it, and they took a ration of grief which damaged their careers. Fleischmann is dead- but someone should wrote Pons a check since he's still kicking around..
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I was sure they were on to something.
That's basically the articles I've been reading for the last couple decades (including here on Slashdot, from time to time): that they are on to something, but no one knows what. The frustrating thing is that the state of the situation hasn't changed much over decades.......
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Naughty!! (Score:2)
Good point well made...
Re: Justice. (Score:2, Funny)
We know it's you Pons. Stop doing this.
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Re:Justice. (Score:5, Insightful)
My thoughts too.
This in particular got me:
Huh? Now how is that supposed to happen?
Looking up the theory I found this article [arxiv.org], where they describe the theory: intense electromagnetic fields at the surface dress electrons with extra mass, which allows electron capture to form a cold neutron and a neutrino. Cold neutrons are pretty much immediately captured causing a transmutation reaction. That's all pretty basic physics, if you accept the premise that you're getting heavy electrons from intense electromagnetic field effects (which they argue for). But what about the gamma? No explanation there.
I see this page [wikiversity.org] tries to offer a plain-english description of the theory for the gamma:
If that's accurate, that's very weak indeed...
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submitter? (Score:1)
Actually I realized the submitter is ... also the author of the column. So I guess that explains it.
Is this just your hunch, or is it backed up by something?
I ask, because if it is confirmed as a self-submitted slashvertisement, that will negatively influence my opinion of the piece and its authors.
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An anonymous reader writes:
So, you wrote it?
Initial Energy Problem Too. (Score:4, Informative)
But what about the gamma? No explanation there.
This isn't the only dodgy thing about this theory the whole electron-mass argument seems dubious looked at from a simple energy standpoint. They are claiming that the electrons in the metal hydride have a mass of well over an MeV for this to work. This is a HUGE amount of energy, about 6 orders of magnitude higher than any chemical energy. Basic energy conservation requires this mass to come from somewhere so where does it come from? Energies that large (by the time you have multiplied it by the number of electrons) are usually pretty obvious - it should be about 5-6 orders of magnitude higher than the energy stored in a battery of the same size.
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I wouldn't be willing to categorically rule that out because you don't have to have such an effect uniform across the entire electrode; it could be concentrated at field peaks, such as the tips of dendrites, and thus only affect, for example, a fraction of a millionth of the mass.
But I agree, it does not sound likely. And that gamma explanation sounds extremely dodgy, if that's what they're arguing.
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Re: Initial Energy Problem Too. (Score:2, Insightful)
Back to Feynman, if the results are reproducible and current theory cannot explain it, there must be laws we don't know about. Further, if this behaviour is not reasonable within the existing theory then the existing theory is wrong.
Have we as scientists become is precious about our theories that we will protect then in the face of experimental evidence.
Scientific theories should be viewed as "useful models", not truth. Even if quantum theory isn't entirely true it is a good enough model to give us fission
Are the result reproducible? (Score:2)
Back to Feynman, if the results are reproducible and current theory cannot explain it, there must be laws we don't know about.
What you say is true but there are two very important caveats: the results have to be reproducible and unexplainable by current theory. So far 'cold fusion' type experiments fail on one of these criteria: there is considerable doubt about the reproducibility since not everyone seems to be able to produce the same effects. Perhaps the new results are reproducible, I don't know, but at this point the situation is the same as the fable of the boy who cried wolf. There have been many such claims of results in
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Huh? Now how is that supposed to happen?
I've learned that if there is no understanding, you HAVE TO rely on the experimental data.
Verify, confirm, and reproduce them, but DO NOT dismiss them as 'impossible', or say something like:
"There is no theoretical framework explaining 'your claim'.".
If the data shows nuclear effects, 'boiling' of titanium, then something clearly has happened.
And if there is no understanding then that is the more reason to allocate funding to it.
Not to destroy the messengers...
Ignacio Semmelweis is a sad example of wh
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As a general rule, the experiments can't be "verified, confirmed and reproduced". That's a large part of the reason why this ended up as fringe science.
The most logical explanation is that measuring precise energy/heat flows over long periods of time and measuring miniscule quantities of isotopes without them being overwhelmed by contamination is difficult to do without error.
Re:Justice. (Score:5, Interesting)
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After about 25 years, I just let my subscription lapse...
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Wow you held out for a long time. I let mine lapse about 10 years ago for the same reason. I was by that point already calling the publication "Scientific Omnimerican", because it had essentially already morphed into Omni magazine. Pseudoscience and science fiction from cover to cover, meh.
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Re:Justice. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's also worth pointing out that even fusion in stars isn't anywhere near as concentrated an energy source as regular chemical reactions. The energy production by fusion in the center of the sun is estimated to only be about 275 Watts/m^3 [wikipedia.org]. Less than human metabolism (average human body is less than 0.1 m^3 and gives off about 100 Watts), and about the same as a compost heap. So when you're talking about low energy nuclear reactions, you're talking about really, really low energy levels. Possibly so low as to be of no practical use other than explaining some minor discrepancies in energy measured by certain very sensitive experiments.
Re:Justice. (Score:4, Insightful)
Stellar fusion is a whole different subject than artificial fusion. You're right that fusion output per volume or weight is quite low in stars, but that is because the fusion being done is essentially four bare protons to helium4 which must evidently (I'm too lazy to look it up) include at least one reaction in the chain with an extremely low cross section. Actually it states in the article you linked that the slow reaction in the sun's Proton-proton reaction is the first one (proton + proton -> deuteron [H1 + H1 -> H2]). No artificial fusion schemes (low or high energy, serious or crackpot) ever consider using H1 as a fuel. They all start with isotopes much, much easier to fuse (usually deuterium, tritium, or helium3). And we do have an example of a high yield artificial fusion technique -- the thermonuclear weapons, which obviously are many orders of magnitude more powerful per kilogram than stars (I know most of their yield is usually fission, but they do produce a significant positive yield from fusion).
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That depends on the tamper material. Using lead tamper the projected yield would be about halved, but it would come mostly (90% or more) from fusion. Using uranium tamper is what makes thermonuclear bombs dirty.
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It's also worth pointing out that even fusion in stars isn't anywhere near as concentrated an energy source as regular chemical reactions. The energy production by fusion in the center of the sun is estimated to only be about 275 Watts/m^3 [wikipedia.org]. Less than human metabolism (average human body is less than 0.1 m^3 and gives off about 100 Watts), and about the same as a compost heap. So when you're talking about low energy nuclear reactions, you're talking about really, really low energy levels. Possibly so low as to be of no practical use other than explaining some minor discrepancies in energy measured by certain very sensitive experiments.
Stars have a low power density because they stabilize at a dynamic equilibrium where the pressure of the star's core is exactly balanced with the gravitational force of the gas around. Increasing power density increases the temperature, which increases the pressure. The core then expands because of the overpressure, which lowers the power density. That's why sun-sized stars burn their hydrogen so constantly over billions of years. The bigger the star, the higher the pressure, i.e. the power density is highe
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if I wanted the density of the center of the sun, I could just check with your mom.
Not how science works (Score:2)
Whenever the main stream media wips up a shit storm to discredit some science and witch hunt those behind it, you know something else is afoot. Science doesn't work that way. If Fleischmann and Pons were right or wrong then other scientists are going to verify it, one way or the other, and that's that. At worst, it comes out that they did sloppy work and it looks bad on their CVs. But thats it and life goes on. That's how real science works -- in fact the vast majority or hypotheses and experiments prove to
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Yeah, about that "their due" thing.....I suspect history would have been a little more kind to them if they hadn't tried to screw over Steven Jones in the process by breaking their agreement to publish simultaneously.
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FINALLY - someone is willing to actually LOOK at the evidence, and THEN formulate a theory to explain the energy production.
Same thing goes for the Reactionless Drive - https://duckduckgo.com/?q=reac... [duckduckgo.com]
NASA is currently scratching their heads (and asses) as to how this thing works, but they are convinced that SOMETHING is going on.
Hell, TRY IT OUT, and IF it produces results, then get your head out of your educated, doctorial (god-like) ass and look at the reality of the real world processes.
Science is NOT
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No cognitive dissonance here...
In the meantime I'm eagerly awaiting the results of the next experiment.
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I don't know if I'd call it justice.
One of the distinguishing features of science among all academic pursuits is that science is uniquely resistant to seductive ideas. Not utterly resistant, mind you, some idea stick around for a long time because nobody can figure out a way to prove or disprove them. But if an idea doesn't stand up to even a year of empirical scrutiny, then anyone who makes strong claims for those ideas is going to have egg on their face. It's harsh, but it's more just than wishful thin
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Well, as a personal side project by guys working for NASA anyway. Not *quite* the same thing. As much as I want to believe it works, and think that enough evidence has been accumulated to test it properly in orbit, let's not pretend it's been tested with the resources of NASA behind it.
Really? (Score:2)
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no the evidence not quite solid yet, even NASA's team that did the experiments say it might just be thermal expansion making the results. Soon there will be test in space and then evidence will be solid or not
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nope, that is the essence of NASA's report, sorry if you believed the popular hype summaries of it
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I remember seeing a lot of people on those particular subjects that were mentioned yelling and screaming it's fake simply because they didn't have a theory that these people would accept. That's not good science. That's not even in the realm of science.
I seem to recall that a couple places did replicate the LENR results, one of the first was eithe
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Party time! (Score:2)
Wohoo! Alchemy is a thing after all!
Alchemy! (Score:2)
It's alchemy! Alchemy I tell you!
FTA: similar results as early as 1910/1920 (Score:5, Interesting)
"Perhaps most surprising is that, in the formative years of atomic science in the early 20th century, some scientists reported inexplicable experimental evidence of elemental transmutations. In the 1910s and 1920s, this research was reported in popular newspapers and magazines, and papers were published in the top scientific journals of the day, including Physical Review, Science and Nature."
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Does that mean? (Score:2)
Alchemy is ... real? I'm not talking about turning stuff into gold but turning some elements into others using certain ... what-looks-to-be chemical reactions?
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Elemental transmutation is standard nuclear physics - particularly neutron capture. The issue is that you go through a lot of of nuclear reactions and a lot of energy for a very small amount of transmutation. So what might possibly be economical for energy production is totally uneconomical for producing, say, gold. Not to mention that you have to isolate the targeted substance afterward.
The only transmutation of commercial value is for production of specific isotopes, such as for medical, industrial, or
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Alchemy is ... real? I'm not talking about turning stuff into gold but turning some elements into others using certain ... what-looks-to-be chemical reactions?
By definition you can't change one element into another using chemistry. Nuclear reactions on the other hand always produce different elements or different isotopes. Making gold is not economical and I read somewhere that it's actually easier to turn gold into lead than vice-versa, but in theory one could turn a profit by transmuting iridium (around $30 per kg) into rhenium (~$6,000 per kg) and optionally then turn the rhenium into osmium (~$10,000 per kg). That is if one happened to have a slow neutron sou
Re: Does that mean? (Score:2)
Except it would no longer cost $10k/kg if someone was producing significant quantities.
Ross's e-cat? (Score:3)
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Re: Ross's e-cat? (Score:2)
No, it's about ethics and accuracy in physics reporting!
Too many scams with LENR (Score:5, Insightful)
LENR is great for scammers. It's like free energy but with better sounding "science" behind it.
Scammers with the necessary scientific background and a good sense of misdirection can easily fool scientists. Scientists are good at finding natural causes for surprising results. However, if the result comes from deliberate trickery and that the trickster did enough research to avoid breaking all the laws of physics, scientists can be fooled like kids at a magic show.
So I thing that many of the results for LENR are poisoned by such scams and any attempt at meta-analysis is doomed.
I took the pragmatic view at the time. (Score:2)
I took the pragmatic view at the time.
If it worked, engineers pretty much shouldn't care *how* it worked, or *why* it worked, to be able to make it useful.
The UCF studies were, to me, the most interesting ones. However, there was so much criticism heaped on them, and they were electrochemists, not physicists, and they announced it "the wrong way" (which is how most things are announced these days), and ... it was not worth tracking any more.
My favorite joke was base on Utah funding the research for "Pons a
As usual (Score:1)
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I would be happy with a car that is powered by water.
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Get a Tesla (or golf buggy or milk float ; whatever), a hydroelectric power plant and a dam to feed it with water ... there you are : water powered car.
Except, of course, that the power is actually solar power, not water power. The water is just a storage and concentration medium.
Re:As usual (Score:4, Informative)
I think the poster boy for this is Ignaz Semmelweis [wikipedia.org]. The scientific community dismissed his results out of pride, and thousands died as a result.
Re:As usual (Score:5, Insightful)
Through the last 200+ years, scientists have had the cycle of someone saying they're wrong, they resist it, then it's proven right, and they look like stubborn and very unscientific idiots then repeat the cycle. I think the poster boy for this is Ignaz Semmelweis [wikipedia.org]. The scientific community dismissed his results out of pride, and thousands died as a result.
This is just a variant of the Galileo Gambit [wikipedia.org]. Yes, over the last 200 years there have been several instances where "science" (as in the majority of scientists) has been sceptical to accept paradigm-changing new claims. Semmelweis is one example, as is Alfred Wegener [wikipedia.org] with his idea of continental drift [wikipedia.org]. But for every genius causing a major shift in scientific opinion, there have been legions of bozos proposing perpetuum mobiles, morphic fields, magnetic water cures, electric universes, and other crap. And on the other hand, many earth-shattering new theories like relativity (both versions) and evolution have been rather quickly accepted, because they were presented with convincing arguments and testable hypotheses. As Sagan said: they also laughed at Bozo the Clown...
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You are wrongly equating empirical data with 'crap' in the same way as the (medical) 'scientists' in his time did, as a better look at it could have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of women.
Is someone comes with falsifiable data, and his claim is interesting enough, then a scientist tries to reproduce the data and may express his doubts if he can't, but most certainly has to shut his mouth as long as he hasn't engaged in any such experimental
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The point though is that, prior to establishing a convincing body of evidence, which generally requires lots of independent experimentation and verification (i.e. broad acceptance at least to the point of being willing to dedicate resources to actually testing your claims) there is no reliable way to distinguish between those making correct and incorrect claims. After all, both are clearly incorrect as judged within the context of the established scientific models.
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generally requires lots of
Not really.
What is required, is that people who didn't put any effort in trying to verify or falsify the given claim shut their mouth.
Then if nobody is trying to repeat the experiment, then science will just be delayed until someone finally does, not destroyed as in the case of Pons & Fleischman.
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What was destroyed? Are we not now accepting, after only a few decades delay, that yes there is in fact an anomalous process occurring?
F&P screwed up big time in irresponsibly presenting their findings in a grossly over-hyped manner before they had achieved reliable repeatability, and by so doing they cost themselves and their discovery a dramatic amount of credibility. That's on them. Had they instead reported their results responsibly, in academic journals rather than in a heavily publicized press
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By being completely irresponsible with their announcement they gambled with their careers and lost. Had their results been easily replicable they would have become scientific superstars, able to write their own ticket for the rest of their life.
As for the chilling effect on further research, that WAS unfortunate, but was just a delay. Further research continued being done y many around the world, which is why it's starting to be taken serious by "the establishment" again. It's not even completely clear t
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They didn't need to have a good theory, or easily replicable results (though making sure their results are replicable is *absolutely* a priority for researchers - a paper published without enough information to replicate the experiment is a paper that can only damage your career). All they needed to do was publish their anomalous findings quietly, in a venue suited for such early results, and they would have been fine.
Their problem was not their discovery, but that they "shouted it from the rooftops" You
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Yes, there are occasionally false negatives. There are also many orders of magnitude more true negatives. Giving them all the benefit of the doubt would do far more damage to scientific advancement than occasionally delaying the advancement of a particular discovery by a few decades.
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Very well. And I'll concede that it would have been nice it the backlash had been less intense and more rationally mediated. I was sorely disappointed by the demonization of the subject in the face of the researchers who were getting positive results.
I just don't think it realistically could have gone any other way given human (and especially geek) nature. "Proper human behavior" is a nice ideal, but it's generally delusional to expect it from actual humans.
And given the long history of cranks making grandi
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No, you can't. Not unless there's some really compelling evidence backing them up. Anything that runs counter to the accepted laws of physics (like, say, triggering fusion at energies orders of magnitude below the accepted cross-section, without generating any of the predicted byproducts) is going to be ridiculed by the majority, which is why researchers who make such world-shifting claims typically quietly seek out widely respected allies before making grandiose claims in a broadly public venue - their r
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Its not a fallacy to make such an association as its directly relavant to the subject matter of how academia handles theories that question estabilished beliefs. Further Ignaz Seemelweis DID have evidence to back up his claim; Additionaly Darwin did not have as easy a time of it as you seem to be suggesting.
You seem to be the one guilty of such a fallacy by associating those who make correct claims with those who make incorrect claims when both have been rejected by academia. Look under the heading of "Guilt by association as an ad hominem fallacy" from the article you refered to. As it is a fallacy to treat the two sets as equivalent it is wrong to excuse missing important correct theories because other people make wild theories.
Well, the case of Semmelweis is not that simple. For one, his observations were correct - hand-washing of hospital staff with a solution of calcium hypochlorite did reduce incidence of puerperal fever -, but his theory that this was due to "cadaverous matter" was wrong, and he got lucky that his cleansing agent was antibacterial. It took until Pasteur and Koch came up with the modern germ theory of disease [wikipedia.org] that the mechanism was reasonably understood. Also, Semmelweis became embroiled in the political fallo
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A showcase of how criminally stupid (medical) scientists 'en masse' can be.
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The lack of an explanation for the observed results certainly didn't help, but there were an awful lot of doctors that had the opinion that they were gentlemen, and it was thus insulting to imply that they were somehow unclean and had to wash their hands.
And as usual (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone takes a blog article with no cited evidence as gospel truth, then crows about how it validates their personal beliefs. Particularly ironic in this case, as said personal beliefs are about scientists always jumping to biased conclusions. You don't say.
A) when scientists turn out to be wrong, who is it that proves them wrong - is it blog authors or slashdot posters? No, it's other scientists with stronger evidence.
B) there may be interesting accumulated evidence in the LENR field, but this guest blog does not cite any, so does not prove or disprove anything.
C) Many labs tried to replicate Pons and Fleischmann's work, and couldn't. The public backlash was heightened by them having gone to the press before peer review, but the real fault lay with the media over-blowing the hype prematurely - and people accepting unquestioningly everything the media said.
C) If there are, as alleged, some interesting results worthy of further study, then hopefully some labs will follow them up further. LENR falls in the extraordinary-claims basket, so the proper response for most labs is to ignore it until more speculative researchers get around to producing evidence strong enough to merit a closer look. Has that happened yet? TFA thinks so, but does not make a case a reputable lab would find compelling.
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Through the last 200+ years, scientists have had the cycle of someone saying they're wrong, they resist it, then it's proven right, and they look like stubborn and very unscientific idiots then repeat the cycle
They've also far more often been through the cycle of someone saying they're wrong, resisting it, turning out to be completely correct and still having a bunch of dimwits cherry pick a tiny number of times when that didn't happen an hold those up add some sort of proof that scientists should always
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Who modded this up? Come on mods! Really? --> "This time around it's even funnier considering we have next to no idea how radioactive decay really works or even seemingly random subatomic particle type changes." Anyone ever heard of Quantum Field Theory, Quantum Electrodynamics, and Quantum Chromodynamics? The theories of particle decays and reactions with none ever observed violations and which the LHC has spent billions of Euros to find flaws or way to improve without success so far.
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with none ever observed violations
This is incorrect. The experimentally observed neutrino oscillations imply that neutrinos do have a mass which directly contradicts the Standard Model which assumes neutrinos to be massless particles.
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I'll defer to anyone who knows better, but my understanding is that non-zero neutrino rest masses do not contradict the Quantum Electrodynamics or Quantum Chromodynamics upon which the Standard Model is based. The elementary particle masses (electron, muon, neutrinos, quarks, etc) are not predicted by any of those or the Standard Model, but are free parameters determined by experiment for now. Thus the Model is incomplete, but accurate up to it's level of completeness. But my point is that at the level it
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with none ever observed violations
This is incorrect. The experimentally observed neutrino oscillations imply that neutrinos do have a mass which directly contradicts the Standard Model which assumes neutrinos to be massless particles.
The Standard Model is not QM. QM says nothing about the mass of the neutrino.
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"then it's proven right"
By scientists.
If there are two competing theories, at least one of them is wrong. That does not represent a moral failing of the scientists that proposed that theory.
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"If there are two competing theories, at least one of them is wrong."
Actually, I have a counter example to my own claim: wave-particle duality, where two contradictory theories were both proven correct. J. J. Thomson won a Nobel Prize for discovering the particle nature of the electron and his son George shared the Nobel Prize for discovering the wave nature of the electron.
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That's an awesome bit of science trivia - very cool.
BTW, examples like that is why science should never be said to "prove" anything - proof is the stuff of math, not science. Also, per current theory, electrons are waves, full stop, as is everything else, really. The waves are quantized, sure, but using particle as a metaphor will constantly lead one astray, and should really be abandoned.
Where's the beef? (Score:2)
I seen a few reports of something weird going on. I am not going to make assumptions that they are wrong or right. But it is discouraging to see such an utter lack of clear incremental improvements in measuring the anomalous effect.
"Guest Blog" (Score:5, Informative)
Notice how in this article he name-drops Chandrasekhar [wikipedia.org] to bolster the reputation of Lewis Larsen and thus the so-called "Widom-Larsen theory" without explicitly endorsing it or claiming it explains the purported experimental evidence.
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Finally some sense!
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This. Plus, it's 2016 not 1976 - and Scientific American is not quite the reputable source it once was.
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You didn't study the published papers (on Widom-Larson theory). The proposed Low energy nuclear reactions are a phenomenon of the weak nuclear force whereas fusion is a phenomenon of the strong nuclear force. These two forces are entirely different beasts.
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Wrong Chandrasekhar. The guy you're looking for is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
Yes, you're right. No idea how that happened - I think I pasted the link directly. Must have clicked in the wrong place somewhere. I was referring to Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar [wikipedia.org] of 1.4 solar masses...
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This is in Scientific American? (Score:2)
Color me skeptical. I know there are Slashdotters who happily buy into conspiracy theories on a wide range of topics, but - come on, Scientific American?
Lots of wishful thinking (Score:1)
Uh Oh!..... (Score:1)
"inexplicable experimental evidence of elemental transmutations."
Isn't this what happens before X-Men and Godzilla appear.....
How do you get slow neutrons? (Score:1)
I read the linked article, and he refers to "ultra-low-momentum neutrons with a huge capture cross-section". Has anyone dug deeper into this? How do you create these neutrons? Or is it just pseudo-science?
Seems like if you could actually do this, there are a lot of crazy things you could do. Such as creating unstable isotopes that decay into something else. Either the decay by-product could be valuable, or the energy released...
Alchemy, anyone?
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You get slow neutrons by moderating them, mostly in water but sometimes in graphite.
Can an AC get a "+1 thermal" around here?
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These specific neutrons are supposedly created during a process of weak interaction called "electron capture" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
This is not pseudo-science - it is a well-known process - see the Wikipedia article.
When this happens in heavier elements/nuclei the neutron is not emitted but becomes/stays part of the original nucleus.
In TFA case the sole proton of a hydrogen atom is converted. Thereby the formerly bound proton becomes a free neutron, but with a very low kinetic energy (in fact, be
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Proton rest mass: 938.28 MeV .511 MeV
Electron rest mass
Neutron rest mass 939.57 MeV
So, when the electron and proton combine, where does the extra energy 780KeV come from to make a neutron. This is ignoring how slow the reaction would be even if it were energetically allowed.
People talk about "heavy" electrons in metals but interactions with atomic fields are likely to be at most in the 100eV range, not 100s of KeV.
Its nonsense.
No, there is not (Score:1)
There's a name for this: Alchemy (Score:1)
I will donate to any Kickstarter/GoFundMe to bribe ANSI or NIST or someone to officially refer to it as Alchemy.
It's not fusion but it is. (Score:2)
People are splitting hairs. Proton reactions are not occurring but neutron capture is...
The point is F&P discovered something new that was worthy of more scrutiny and were politically tared and feathered.
not time yet (Score:2)
I got to do a rotation through the Navy lab that was working on LENR shortly before it was shut down. The folks running it were exactly the kind of scientist you want working on this: careful, self-critical, experienced, and most importantly, not part of a pro-LENR institute (they answered to skeptical Navy brass, not LENR true-believer donors and investors). Unfortunately, LENR is controversial, difficult to get funding for, and easy to tie up in regulatory red tape. They were caught in a strange Catch-
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If it's a secret, how do you know about it? Let me guess. You're a plasma universe person aren't you?