Cold Fusion

Thread Starter

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,408
Italian scientists claim to have demonstrated cold fusion (w/ Video)

I'm not holding my breath on this one, but if they really have something we'll hear more soon. The only major obstacle to proving any discovery is whether it can be reproduced, which is what killed Pons and Fleishmann so called discovery.

I have heard reports from sources I basically trust is they keep getting intermittent results from various cold fusion experiments. Repeatability has been the big bugaboo to date.

This is going to make the HHO crowd nuts, you watch. I can already hear the techno pseudo science babble (with very little understanding).
 

beenthere

Joined Apr 20, 2004
15,819
The interesting part of this is that the fusion is supposed to be taking place in a portion of the periodic table that takes extraordinary energies. The Bethe cycle fusion reactions stop at iron, less massive than nickle or copper. It is accepted that energies that can fuse the heavier elements are only to be found in supernovae. hardly a tabletop occurrence.

I would not buy stock in the company just yet.

The HHO people may get all fluttered, but this has nothing to do with electrolysis - a point they probably can't understand.
 

thatoneguy

Joined Feb 19, 2009
6,359
Copper from nickel to boot!

The line:
"Commercial products will be limited to 8 units output energy for each unit in" smacks of something smelly.

How do you "limit" a nuclear reaction for safety? With fission, it is a matter of control rods to moderate the neutron speed. With fusion, what is added to slow it down? The answer to that would be the answer on if this is actually real, or a do-over of the 80's.
 

Thread Starter

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,408
If the experiments works consistently for everyone that is hard evidence. You don't need to understand or explain everything if it works, that will come later. They are still working on high temperature superconductors with a lot of tail chasing.
 

Black-Bird

Joined Jan 26, 2011
23
If the experiments works consistently for everyone that is hard evidence. You don't need to understand or explain everything if it works, that will come later. They are still working on high temperature superconductors with a lot of tail chasing.
true but the problem is that when they try to re-do the experiment , the results always different from the original one, so it's not mathematically understood
 

magnet18

Joined Dec 22, 2010
1,227
This reminds me of carbon nano-tubes
they supposedly built a transistor with them a few years back, but they're still not on the market, apparently some company's been trying for about a decade to make ram with them...
Its one of those things where you really want it to happen because it will change everything, but at the same time you have to be cautious

Don't get me wrong, I don't think the nano-tube stories are lies, they're just unproductive
 
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