Google Revives Controversial Cold-Fusion Experiments (nature.com) 239
According to a peer-reviewed paper revealed this week, Google is continuing its experiments into the controversial science of cold fusion -- the theory that nuclear fusion, the process that powers the Sun, can produce energy in a table-top experiment at room temperature. While Google's recent project found no evidence that cold fusion is possible, it did make some advances in measurement and materials-science techniques that the researchers say could benefit energy research. "The team also hopes that its work will inspire others to revisit cold-fusion experiments, even if the phenomenon still fails to materialize," reports Nature. From the report: The Google team explored three experimental set-ups that have been proposed to generate cold fusion -- two involving palladium and hydrogen, and one involving metallic powders and hydrogen. None foundï evidence of fusion. The results have been published across 12 papers over the past 2 years: 9 in peer-reviewed journals and 3ï on the arXiv preprint server.
In March 1989, two U.S.-based chemists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announced that they had seen excess heat and fusion-reaction products -- signs of nuclear fusion -- when they ran a current across two palladium plates in water laden with deuterium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen. Others quickly pointed out errors in their experimental procedure. Since then, two U.S. Department of Energy reviews have found no evidence of the phenomenon . But cold fusion -- now commonly referred to as low-energy nuclear reactions -- has retained a persistent following that continues to claim evidence of success. Google's $10-million project aimed to test the cold-fusion claims rigorously in a field that lacked credible scientific data, says Matthew Trevithick, a research program manager at Google. Another goal was also to push methods in challenging experimental conditions. But, he adds: "The fact that the pay-out could be huge is definitely a component of our interest.
In March 1989, two U.S.-based chemists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announced that they had seen excess heat and fusion-reaction products -- signs of nuclear fusion -- when they ran a current across two palladium plates in water laden with deuterium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen. Others quickly pointed out errors in their experimental procedure. Since then, two U.S. Department of Energy reviews have found no evidence of the phenomenon . But cold fusion -- now commonly referred to as low-energy nuclear reactions -- has retained a persistent following that continues to claim evidence of success. Google's $10-million project aimed to test the cold-fusion claims rigorously in a field that lacked credible scientific data, says Matthew Trevithick, a research program manager at Google. Another goal was also to push methods in challenging experimental conditions. But, he adds: "The fact that the pay-out could be huge is definitely a component of our interest.
Adobe Licensing (Score:2, Funny)
Why would Microsoft bother licensing ColdFusion from Adobe when they've spent so much energy developing ASP.NET?
Pons and Fleischmann were hacks... (Score:4, Funny)
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Hey, don't forget Emma Russell [imdb.com]. I saw it in a movie... [youtube.com]
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EVERYONE KNOWS that Andrea Rossi and his E-Cat is like TOTALLY legit and the real source of cold fusion breakthroughs! Any day now...
Keep checking home depots website. I'm sure they'll be in stock any day now.
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EVERYONE KNOWS that Andrea Rossi and his E-Cat is like TOTALLY legit and the real source of cold fusion breakthroughs! Any day now...
Yup...I've been casually watching the Andrea Rossi E-Cat drama for years and he's always claiming that it's next week or next month or "real soon now". He's strung out the faithful for so long it's kind of like performance art.
And yet he never really shows anyone anything except a lot of graphs accompanied by claims and reports of progress. No independent tests or trials, just excuses as to why he can't actually demonstrate anything. At some point you think his followers would demand some kind of results,
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Yup...I've been casually watching the Andrea Rossi E-Cat drama for years and he's always claiming that it's next week or next month or "real soon now". He's strung out the faithful for so long it's kind of like performance art.
What's odd is that no one here seems to think cold fusion is credible and yet a significant chunk of people here were falling over themselves in support of the EM drive. It's the same process, just set back about 20 years.
Re: Pons and Fleischmann were hacks... (Score:2)
If you're stupid enough to think that something has to work in order to get a patent, I guess nobody should be surprised that you think EM drives and cold fusion are real too.
pick a sci-fi long-shot ... I mean dud (Score:3, Interesting)
Given the choice of cold-fusion working or the em-drive, which would you choose? (Regardless of success probability.)
I'm leaning toward em-drive. The idea of visiting semi-earth-like extrasolar planets seems more interesting than cheap power, even if less practical. The 9-year-old in me says, "go Trekkin'!" while the adult says, "cheap power will more likely help humanity". Tell the adult to STFU, and engage!
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Well, there's also the question of where you're going to get the massive amounts of energy required to flip your em-drive powered spacecraft across the couple of dozen trillion kilometres between the stars and back, so it might just have to be both
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Probably not - the energy for interstellar journeys is not actually the problem - the problem is having to accelerate all the reaction mass used for further acceleration, and for deceleration at the far end. Eliminate the need for accelerating giant tanks full of inert reaction mass, and the energy requirements fall by several orders of magnitude. You'd still probably want a large nuclear reactor to power the thing, but so long as the acceleration is a few orders of magnitude more powerful than a photon
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EM-drive of course. If you had one, energy would be no problem. Just go harvest the moon for silicates and build giant solar panels. Or harvest whatever you want directly from the sun.
Also, there's nothing about cold fusion that really breaks the known laws of physics. It's unlikely, but not impossible. The EM drive working would necessitate a revolution in physics. And as a scientist, what I really want is to see it all burn (because what replaces it would be interesting).
Plus, yeah, star trekkin.
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Also, there's nothing about cold fusion that really breaks the known laws of physics.
While that's true, there's also nothing in physics to support the idea that it might even be possible.
Our existing natural example of fusion requires so much energy input that only an obscene amount of matter gravitationally compressing itself can pull the trick off.
Physics do tell us that it requires obscene energy to fuse. Sure the payoff is great, but there's little reason to think we'll ever achieve it at "room" temperature.
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It's not really that much energy. You can initiate a fusion reaction on your kitchen counter if you want to. The problem is really efficiently delivering that energy and preventing the resulting energy from leaking away too much.
The barrier to fusion is electrostatic repulsion between the protons. In a star, that repulsion is overcome by gravity. In a nuke it's overcome by momentum. In any other kind of fusion we know of, it's overcome by the electric force and momentum. Hot fusion basically heats everythi
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The fact that you can wield massive amounts of energy on your kitchen counter for astonishingly brief amounts of time doesn't change that fact. Each single atom takes a large amount of energy. That's why sustained fusion isn't a thing at any point approaching break-even.
The idea behind cold fusion is that you can avoid the giant magnets and the heating stuff up and hoping some nuclei collide by directly using electric fields (through electrochemistry) and electrostatic confinement (a matter matrix). It's not an unreasonable idea, it just doesn't quite work.
No, that is *not* the idea behind cold fusion. Electromagnetic confinement and electric acceleration are *not* forms of cold fusion. Those are fusors, which are
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I'm not going to argue relative semantics with you. Here's the number: it's about 0.1 keV. You can think that's a massive amount of energy if you want to.
Um, yeah, that's what I said. You know
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I'm not going to argue relative semantics with you. Here's the number: it's about 0.1 keV. You can think that's a massive amount of energy if you want to.
I'm unsure how you can possibly think it isn't. /eyeroll
That is for a *single* fusion reaction between 2 atoms.
Since we're talking about a collection of atoms here, it's correct to use the Kelvin (via Boltzmann) to give an equivalent temperature or energy for the fusion mass:
1.16MK for your reaction mass.
You're right, that ain't shit.
Um, yeah, that's what I said. You know you can't just change the words I used and say I'm wrong right? Cold fusion usually uses electrochemistry, which packs protons close together using an electric field generated at the negative electrode. The porous electrode helps hold the protons close together. That's electrostatic confinement.
No, fusors operate using electrostatic confinement. Cold fusion relied on the ability of a palladium lattice to absorb obscene amounts of Hydrogen to an equivalent electros
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Capture energy. Assuming you want to use it on the Earth's surface (why, when you have an EM drive?) you could beam it down. Or make hydrogen, synthetic gasoline, or anything else you want and drop it, if for some reason you don't like rectennas.
Personally, I'd live in space, or maybe the high atmosphere, (the view is killer) and commute down to the surface when I wanted to.
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Can't get very far away from the sun or some other star with solar power, though. Energy spreads over the surface of a sphere, which expands based on the square of the distance from the center.
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I was thinking about providing the world's energy demands.
If you want to go travelling to other stars you could just use a fission reactor.
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Both could get you there, and cold fusion probably faster. We already have a pretty good idea how to build an electric motor for a rocket with the ion drives that already power sattelites. The problem is more that if you want to do really cool stuff you'll need to find a power source that can deliver continuous and high level power output. Now if you combine the two, you got you a starship.
Alas the problem is, at this point the odds of the EM drive being true are pretty dismal, and the odds of cold fusion,
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Cold fusion is really only useful for planets - it promises clean, distributed energy generation, but doesn't promise any better energy density than hot fusion, which is only moderately more energy dense than fission. In space, the radiation and environmental contamination from nuclear waste from traditional reactors are pretty much non-issues.
Ion drives meanwhile do indeed promise to unlock the solar system when coupled with high-power nuclear reactors. Unfortunately they're just barely viable for travel
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Given the choice of cold-fusion working or the em-drive, which would you choose? (Regardless of success probability.) I'm leaning toward em-drive.
Definitely the EM drive. If works, it's basically isomorphic to a perpetual motion machine so it would make cold fusion obsolete.
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Technically true, but unless it delivered a truly outrageous thrust-to-power ratio, an EM drive based "waterwheel" would likely have to spin at relativistic speeds to create break-even power, making a perpetual motion machine functionally impossible to build due to material limitations. And even that assumes that the EM drive continues to provide the same thrust in an accelerating reference frame, while at least a few of the similar-device inventors claimed that thrust diminished rapidly with acceleration.
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Cold fusion.
EM drive has a far lower chance of success - it violates fundamental laws of conservation of momentum.
Cold fusion doesn't violate any fundamental laws - fusion does happen cold, just at an unimaginably low rate - not sure it beats proton decay. (to be clear I think cold fusion is extremely unlikely and consider effort there a waste of time. )
EM drive is of modest benefit if it works, Cold fusion would be incredibly valuable.
long shot (Score:3)
"The fact that the pay-out could be huge is definitely a component of our interest." The pay-out if astrology were real would be huge too.
All seriousness aside, I can think of many things that are more likely and would also have a huge payout. Routine interplanetary travel is one, although the investment is likely to be much larger. You can make your own list.
Controversial? (Score:3)
Could someone explain why cold fusion is "controversial?" It seems to me there isn't any controversy. It doesn't work.
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Not disagreeing with you, but -
It’s corporate money, not government grants right? So, really, who cares? If it really bothers people for some reason, they can choose not to do business with Google.
Re:Controversial? (Score:4, Informative)
t seems to me there isn't any controversy. It doesn't work. ... it is just not energy positive (yet) and it is widely assumed that the Pons & Fleischman experiment was somehow a measurement error.
It works, we do it since the early 1800ds
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Evidence please, idiot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Wrong cold fusion. Maybe read more tan the first sentence of the article?
Play (Score:3)
Both sides made a claim. One side said "it doesn't work", the other said "it works".
It's all forum-play joking.
The top poster was arguing that by now Fleischman and Pons [wikipedia.org] have been thoroughly disproved (it's very likely with a large confidence, that it was measurement errors and that no fusion ever hapened), and there's nothing "controversial left" behind their type of cold fusion.
The next poster intentionally misinterprets "cold fusion" and "works", and points out that tabletop room-temperature Fusors, such as Farnsworth's, [wikipedia.org] are a thing (though that example is from mid 20th century, not 19t
Re:Play (Score:4, Informative)
I don't see any reference to Farnsworth fusors in this thread - but it's worth mentioning that they are traditional hot (high-speed) fusion reactors - in particle physics temperature and speed are interchangeable, and Fusors work by radially accelerating fuel to normal fusion speeds/temperatures at the center of the reaction chamber. They fail to break even because the fast-moving particles collide with the inner electrode of the particle accelerator frequently enough that the resulting energy loss exceeds the gains from the fusion reactions, though as I recall they have achieved power outputs in the high-90% range, which sustatined interest for many years before they were eventually (mostly) abandoned - though many projects such as Polywell are continuing to attempt to find ways to avoid the collision losses, without which they would provide elegantly simple net-power reactors. (And not incidentally, would also provide extremely simple near 100% conversion of reaction energy to electricity, without any wasteful heat engines, if they could sustain p-B fusion)
In contrast, muon-catalyzed fusion is legitimately cold (low speed) fusion, achieved by dramatically shrinking the size of the hydrogen fuel atoms by replacing the electrons with muons, and thus dramatically reducing the particle speeds necessary to achieve a direct nuclei collision. Unfortunately the muons are extremely energy-intensive to produce, and only average a few hundred catalyzed reactions before they end up bonding with the fusion products and being eliminated. The reactors are also typically very similar to a hot reactor, particles colliding in near-vacuum, just operating at much lower temperatures/speeds.
Typical cold-fusion reactors in contrast generally claim to be achieving fusion with normal hydrogen concentrated within a solid lattice (palladium electrodes for Fleishman and Pons, nickel dust for Rossi, etc.) We have no established theory for how such a reaction would happen - which doesn't technically mean it couldn't, but does mean researchers are largely working blind. We don't even have much theory about how exactly gasses behave within solids, much less at the high densities typical of cold fusion experiments. But there are a large number of laboratories all over the world that are claiming to have developed various methods to improve the consistency of the anomalous power output, so maybe they're on to something.
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We have no established theory for how such a reaction would happen
My theory, especially in palladium and nickel latices is: it is based on the same principles as supra conduction, kind of cooper pairs that tackle the Pauli principle.
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I'm referring to 'low energy nuclear reactions' done mostly by Italians, Germans and Japanese between 1870 and 1910 ... and if you had any clue about the topic you would not be to impolite to refer to me as "the other user"
A Fusor is not a "cold fusion device" ... silly boy.
The top poster was arguing that by now Fleischman and Pons have been thoroughly disproved ... perhaps you want to read up on it.
No they haven't. You have problems with the scientific method
Re:Controversial? (Score:4, Informative)
Because it does work.
It is controversial because there was a double-fuckup in both the reporting, and in the response from science professionals. Because of the double-fuckup, the truth is so embarrassing that if you have letters next to your name and speak of the truth, you get blackballed from all STEM fields.
Basically, what happened was, there was a successful experiment. But it hadn't been repeated yet. And the media went apeshit, and famous people said all sorts of wild things about flying cars and the future from the Jetsons.
And then others tried to replicate it, and they failed. And the whole world, all the idiots who originally were talking crazy, plus all the ones who had been sagely insisting to wait and see, they all then came out at once with the bigger fuckup than the first one: Everybody started calling it a hoax, and blaming the original scientists.
And then in the period after that, for a couple decades, even talking about the research in a serious tone of voice got real professors fired. That's how bad it was, that is how bad it still is. Talking about it seriously is forbidden. By "scientists."
But it wasn't a hoax. It quite realistically might not have been a mistake, either. Because while most who tried to replicate it failed, a few, maybe 1 in 40, were successful. Once. But then not the next time. And so it turns out, it sometimes seems to work. Or if not, the actual experimental mistake has not been discovered. But it really appears to sometimes work. Of course, 1 out of 40 tries means it is a huge net loser of energy, not a power source. But there very well might be some important physical law or fact or whatever that is deeper and simply not understood; some inner clockwork that remains totally hidden to us that determines if it is ready to work or not. Discovering why the experiment usually fails would be absolutely huge, the biggest discovery across 3 generations of physics. But nobody in academia is allowed to talk about it, because falsely accusing scientists of perpetuating a hoax is a major anti-social transgression. And many, many people have engaged in it, and have already helped to blackball people over it, so they're all invested in the "conspiracy." But of course there is no intentional conspiracy, it simply works out in a similar way when so many people have the same malicious interests in play at the same time.
So anyways, if some company does the research instead of discovers something, it will probably have huge engineering implications. Whatever it turns out to be. Doubtful it would actually be a useful power source, of course.
Re:Controversial? (Score:5, Informative)
What was then EPRI, the Electric Power Research Institute, and its sister organization in Japan funded attempts to reproduce that successful experiment for ~10 years with no success. It may not have been in the mainstream, but it had real nuclear engineers working on it and had they succeeded it would have been published.
Re:Controversial? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have letters next to my name. You know what we call an experiment that seems to show something once in forty runs? Expected statistical variation.
Unless you're in medicine. Then you call it a discovery.
Leonard "Bones" McCoy (Score:2)
Expected statistical variation.
Unless you're in medicine. Then you call it a discovery.
I am a Doctor, Jim ! Not a statistician!
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Only if the error is small. In cold fusion research the occasional anomalies are generally so large that they can't be readily explained as a measurement error.
If I were building an "impossible" antigrav device, and 39 times out of forty nothing happened, and the 40th time I saw a 2% reduction in mass, then yes, it's quite likely expected statistical variation. But if on the 40th time it floats around the room for several minutes before falling inert, that's not statistical variation, that's an undeniable
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True, but I've never heard of any of these large anomalies, at least not from any kind of credible source. If one experiment in forty exploded violently and killed everyone in the area from neutron exposure, sure, might be something there. Instead you pump kilowatts into a beaker of water and it heats up. Sometimes it seems to heat up a bit more than you think it should have.
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Sure. You might choose to pursue an apparent intermittent signal, in hopes of improving the experiment. But 1 experiment in 40 showing an apparent result isn't evidence of anything other than measurement noise.
Re: Controversial? (Score:2)
Because while most who tried to replicate it failed, a few, maybe 1 in 40, were successful. Once. But then not the next time. And so it turns out, it sometimes seems to work. Or if not, the actual experimental mistake has not been discovered. But it really appears to sometimes work.
I'm just gonna leave this here:
https://xkcd.com/882/ [xkcd.com]
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And then in the period after that, for a couple decades, even talking about the research in a serious tone of voice got real professors fired. That's how bad it was, that is how bad it still is. Talking about it seriously is forbidden. By "scientists."
This is what has me bothered. It's one thing to have your professors wasting department funds trying to replicate Pons and Fleischman. But there are too many people out there with an emotional attachment* to any sort of cold fusion not working. Spend public funds on this? Nope. But why not Google? It's their money (the shareholders, actually) and short of an investor revolt, I say go for it.
*There is one school of thought touched upon in another post. That discovering a path to catalyzing a low rate fusion
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This cold fusion crap didn't work in the 1920's, it didn't work in the 1980's, and Google with it's engineers and money can't make it work now. It doesn't take a lot to understand that, but tha
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A lot of people back in the day thought that Pons and Fleischmann saw some real phenomenon which generated more heat than expected, but research into precisely what was going on was held back by the fact that after the fiasco any research into it was seen as a career killer.
To my mind, that's the only remaining controversy: Did they observe something real or not? To this day, we don't have a definitive answer to that question, and I think we'd all like to have one. We can be pretty certain that if anything
Re: Controversial? (Score:2)
To my mind, that's the only remaining controversy: Did they observe something real or not? To this day, we don't have a definitive answer to that question, and I think we'd all like to have one.
Right, just like we still don't have a definitive answer whether Jim Bob really saw Bigfoot, or whether Scotty McScottface really observed the Loch Ness Monster. And as long as you're looking at it that way, you never will.
not new (Score:3)
In the late 1920s, two Austrian born scientists, Friedrich Paneth and Kurt Peters, originally reported the transformation of hydrogen into helium by nuclear catalysis when hydrogen was absorbed by finely divided palladium at room temperature. However, the authors later retracted that report, saying that the helium they measured was due to background from the air.
Goes back farther than 1989.
Next $10million project.. (Score:3)
For that sum, I'd be happy to do a research project on Homeopathy for them.
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Too late. They're already funding a promising lead on predicting the stock market with a Ouija board.
Really? (Score:2)
So what's the controversial part? That some people say it could work and some people say it can't?
Seriously?
If Google wants to plow a ton of money into it, fine. They'll likely come up with some data showing that one side of this "controversy" is probably correct and the other side isn't. So what?
I don't see what the shit is all about. Maybe they'll be able to conclusively show that it just isn't possible, and then we've learned something. Either way I think that Google spending their own money on it is fin
Editor's can't even copy/paste the summary??? (Score:3)
The article has this paragraph:
Yet the summary has this: (bold emphasis added.)
You can't even copy/paste the fucking summary???
Editors, you had ONE job. ONE fucking job! /s
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Looks like Unicode issues with forced line breaks. Not so much the editor's fault (although his purpose really is to read through the text and edit it!) and more to do with Slashdot still being stuck in 1998.
Playing the Lottery (Score:2)
Trying to create "cold fusion" is a VERY VERY low-probability game, like playing the lottery.
But every now and then, somebody DOES win the lottery. It _might_ happen. The probability is astronomically small, but if it DOES work, the rewards will be astronomical!
Cold fusion is proven to work if catalyzed (Score:5, Informative)
Muon Catalyzed (cold-ish) fusion [wikipedia.org].
Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann thought they had found a new way to catalyze fusion using palladium. They were wrong.
Controversial! (Score:2)
it can mean 'bullshit but we like it', 'excellent but we don't like it' or just 'I'm clueless but I heard things'
Needs two miracles (Score:2)
Cold fusion needs 2 miracles:
First, some mechanism to overcome the Coulomb barrier.There isn't a lot to work with given nuclei and electrons. A lot of the Coulomb barrier comes from close to the nucleus where the the nuclear electric field dominates the electron density so its difficult to imagine external chemistry dropping the barrier from the ~10s of KeV to the ~1eV needed for cold fusion. Quantum mumble doesn't help much - the probability of tunneling through drops fast with the particle energy relat
Alchemy & astrology are junk too, but... (Score:2)
Astrology is junk, yet it begat astronomy.
Who's to say that Google won't discover something interesting during this research?
Meh... (Score:2)
I'd rather just use Java.
This era's alchemy?? (Score:2)
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Wrong.
Quoted from this Wikipedia article on Nuclear Transmutation. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation]
Emphasis mine.
It transpired that, under true nuclear transmutation, it is far easier to turn gold into lead than the reverse reaction, which was the one the alchemists had ardently pursued. Nuclear experiments have successfully transmuted lead into gold, but the expense far exceeds any gain.[10] It would be easier to convert lead into gold via neutron capture and beta decay by leaving lead in a nuclear reactor for a long period of time.
There's a massive difference between "can't be done" and "simply not practical". Get your shit together.
More like a a candle than a bomb (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems cold fusion is more likely to produce a slow, different energy. Think more candle, or wood fire, than bomb.
Decades of research by the world's top experts, with incredibly expensive equipment, alao suggests this isn't something you're ever going to be able to do at home.
Of course we can't be 100% certain what any research might eventually lead to. Heck, it's possible that Tesla Motors research will eventually lead to a good idea, which the global car companies will then implement.
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Spoken as someone who has not the slightest clue what a nuclear reaction is,
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Post the nuclear reaction for cold fusion or shut up.
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I like your signature quote. That's funny.
I like to understand how people think, what their mental models are. If you think all nuclear reactions are explosions, how do you picture a nuclear power station works?
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the "nuclear reaction" for "cold fusion" would be the same nuclear reaction for regular fusion. H + H -> He
Wrong reaction, it doesn't balance.
Re:More like a a candle than a bomb (Score:5, Informative)
Decades of research by the world's top experts, with incredibly expensive equipment, alao suggests this isn't something you're ever going to be able to do at home.
There are several well known small-scale technologies that actually do induce some fusion. The Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor, and Muon Catalyzed Fusion to name two. There may be others that I'm not aware of. People can, and have, built Farnsworth Fusors in their garage/basement. They can be a bit dangerous, but aren't especially complicated. see https://makezine.com/projects/... [makezine.com]
The problem is that none of the technologies that have been investigated seem likely to ever generate enough energy to be self sustaining, but that's pragmatic "doesn't quite scale" limitation, not a violates the laws of thermodynamics kind of limitation.
Lack of previous success doesn't mean that some clever variant or some other idea can't somehow work.
I personally wouldn't put money into cold fusion. But there are lots of things I wouldn't put money into. Even some like fully autonomous vehicles that I think will eventually happen. (I think AVs are probably doable, but not easily. My guess is that they will lose most "investors" a load of money along the way).
Maybe Google knows something I don't..
Cool link (Score:2)
Thanks for that cool link. Very cool.
I see it's a million times less efficient than an LED, not quite producing "bomb" energy, actually less than "candle" levels of energy, with 10,000 volts as input.
> but that's pragmatic "doesn't quite scale" limitation, not a violates the laws of thermodynamics kind of limitation.
Similar to building an aircraft carrier or ICBM - but much, much more difficult. I'm not too concerned that my neighbor will build any of these things.
Thanks again for the cool link.
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In fairness, a Farnsworth fusor generates traditional hot (high speed particle) fusion, it just does so at a small scale using simple apparatus. The Bussard Polywell is a more modern attempt to sale it up considerably while mitigating the losses due to collision with the interior electrode. Sounds like they were seeing promising results and were expecting net power generation in the next prototype before they went silent.
Muon-catalyzed fusion is legitimately low-temperature fusion, since replacing a hydro
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In fairness, a Farnsworth fusor generates traditional hot (high speed particle) fusion, it just does so at a small scale using simple apparatus. The Bussard Polywell is a more modern attempt to sale it up considerably while mitigating the losses due to collision with the interior electrode. Sounds like they were seeing promising results and were expecting net power generation in the next prototype before they went silent.
Muon-catalyzed fusion is legitimately low-temperature fusion, since replacing a hydrogen atom's electron with a muon shrinks the size of the atom by about 200x, and it thus requires much lower speeds (=temperatures) to cause the nuclei to collide.
Yes, tabletop fusors cost in the $10k to $20k range and can produce detectable fusion results. For the cost of paying a few grad students $100k and $20k per prototype I think it would be worthwhile effort and provide for some real world experience for grad students and maybe get some improvements in the design of devices that might be worthwhile.
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Heck, you can build a fusor for from a few hundred bucks worth of spare-hand parts - my undergrad engineering team considered doing so before deciding the dangers, and rehashing of well-explored terrain, made other options a smarter choice. I mean sure "we built a fusion reactor in college" sounds good to the uninformed, but fusors saw a massive amount of research in the early days of fusion when they were the obvious path forward, until all the experts gave up on ever being able to achieve break-even resul
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It seems cold fusion is more likely to produce a slow, different energy. Think more candle, or wood fire, than bomb.
It's already here, but the Energy/Auto Industry/Au Pair cabal is crushing the research.
Meanwhile, those in the know are heating their whole house with 2 tea candles and terra cotta pots.
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That was the perfect degree of ridiculous.
I've been too long in the kook section of YouTube...8^)
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It seems cold fusion is more likely to produce a slow, different energy. Think more candle, or wood fire, than bomb.
Decades of research by the world's top experts, with incredibly expensive equipment, alao suggests this isn't something you're ever going to be able to do at home.
Imagine someone from the 1800's saying the same thing about harnessing the power of lightning.
Our future dies when we stop dreaming.
You may be able to generate electrical power at home via various means, but it's doubtful you're hitting the gigawatt level that you get in lightning.
Electric bombs? Pretty sure electric candles exist (Score:2)
>> Think more candle, or wood fire, than bomb.
> Imagine someone from the 1800's saying the same thing about harnessing the power of lightning.
I'm pretty sure electric candles and electric stoves exist. I'm pretty sure electric bombs don't. So somebody saying that about electricity would be right.
Electricity, horses, and solar electric are workable ways to get alow, steady energy. Nitroglycerin is a good way to get a sudden release of energy. Actually most sources of energy are slow and steady -
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I would say that a lightning bolt comes pretty close to an "Electric Bomb". It can do a lot of damage instantly and can be heard for miles.
Trillions is a LOT more than millions (Score:5, Insightful)
Google tossed $10 million into research.
If it pans out, energy is trillions of dollars each and every year.
Someone at Google probably figured the odds of this working on one in ten thousand. A 1 in 10,000 chance of making your money multiply by a million X is a good bet.
Yeah their quantum computing research may be a bit similar. Spend a few million to potentially make a forty billion. If Google tries 1,000 long-shot projects at $10 million each, and only one succeeds to the extent that it makes a twenty billion, they've doubled their money.
It's a bit like you and spending a few minutes applying for a job making twice as much money. We probably won't get it, but it's worth the five minutes because if we do that 50 times we might we'll double our salary (and spend 250 minutes applying for jobs). Google can afford to try out $10 million here, $10 million there, see what ends up working.
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OK, you invest in it, and quit trying to foist irreproducible research off on others.
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But that is exactly what Google is doing. They are using money they have earned on research they find interesting.
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More or less putting the lie to the smart people refrain, but then we knew that.
Okay, I will (Score:2)
> OK, you invest in it
Google brought in $140000000000 last year and invested $10000000 into cold fusion research, or 0.00071429% of their money. I'll do the same.
Here's my $1.05, which is 0.00071429% of my income. Who has some cool cold fusion research I can invest a dollar in?
You missed the percent sign (Score:2)
0.00071429% is 0.0000071429
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Google is investing in the quantum computing vaporware right now, so why not add cold fusion to it? They are on the same level of feasibility.
No they are not, far from it. Cold fusion has exactly zero theory or experimental evidence to back it up, while Quantum Computing has plenty.
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Doesn't really matter. It is their money to spend. And as the article pointed out, they're seeing benefits from spin-off research.
I don't particularly care if they find massive cheap energy, or generate spinoff tech, or don't accomplish anything other than keeping researchers employed. That's money invested in research, and I'm all for that. Even if they close off the research and conclusively prove the entire field is bunk, that's still science, and it employs scientists.
Even if the bet doesn't pay o
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It is their money to spend.
They are a public company. The money they are spending belongs to the shareholders. The biggest shareholders are middle class pension funds.
Disclaimer: Personally, I don't mind a small bit of my 401k being invested in high-risk high-reward scientific research.
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Your 401(k) holds market common stock, and that's at the sentiment of the market. You didn't give money to Google when you bought it, and Google won't give you money when you sell it.
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Google is only sort of a public company [wsj.com].
The founders have special stock that gets 10 votes per share, and they have enough of it that they can basically ignore the public shareholders and make Google/Alphabet do anything they want., without having to own 50%+.
A few other modern tech companies have similar structures that ensure control by the founders, most notably Facebook.
If you don't like this, don't buy any.
Buy Alphabet for its returns, not for a say in how it runs.
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As long as science gets done (and if they make a neat gun) for the people who are still alive, its all good. ;-)
Most people won't get this.
(Spoiler alert - the cake is a lie)
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"Cold fusion has exactly zero theory or experimental evidence to back it up ..."
Wrong.
There are some very plausible theories and there are also a huge number of people and governments working on if. Research didn't stop back in the 80's, they just stopped telling CNN when they had results they couldn't explain. And there have been weird results reported. Part of the thing is that fusion/fission use the strong nuclear force and that is where all the research focus was put because it was the easiest to work with and commercialize. Now people are looking at the weak nuclear force and
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Crank detected.
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The experimental evidence for quantum mechanics being beyond your comprehension does not mean much.
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Do you know what is meant by the phrase "dogs watching television?
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LOL. No it doesn't. In fact, the apparent deficit of neutrinos from the sun motivated the discovery of neutrino oscillation.
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The electric universe trolls are a grand Slashdot tradition. If this guy is one, he didn't provide the link though, so at best a pretender.
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Nah, it's big coal.
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