What happened to cold fusion?

Thread Starter

spinnaker

Joined Oct 29, 2009
7,830
Was listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time last night. Once in a while he would have actual science. His guest was Eugene Mallove a huge proponent of cold fusion. The show was from February 2004. He was talking months that we would have commercial cold fusion reactors.

I have heard similar claims a number of times since then. I got curious and decided to look the good doctor up thinking I could send him an email to get the current state of the technology. Well turns out he was murdered shortly after he appeared on the showhttp://pesn.com/2010/04/02/9501633_Two_Arrested_Six_Years_After_Mallove_Murder/.

Maybe this was disused before. Still seems awfully strange.

Found this article that says cold fusion can be as much as 10 years out now.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-h-bailey/post_10010_b_8052326.html

So WTF?
 

Papabravo

Joined Feb 24, 2006
21,159

hp1729

Joined Nov 23, 2015
2,304
Was listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time last night. Once in a while he would have actual science. His guest was Eugene Mallove a huge proponent of cold fusion. The show was from February 2004. He was talking months that we would have commercial cold fusion reactors.

I have heard similar claims a number of times since then. I got curious and decided to look the good doctor up thinking I could send him an email to get the current state of the technology. Well turns out he was murdered shortly after he appeared on the showhttp://pesn.com/2010/04/02/9501633_Two_Arrested_Six_Years_After_Mallove_Murder/.

Maybe this was disused before. Still seems awfully strange.

Found this article that says cold fusion can be as much as 10 years out now.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-h-bailey/post_10010_b_8052326.html

So WTF?
As new budget time draws near there is often a press release claiming a "great discovery is just around the corner". Cold fusion is "30 years off". 30 years ago it was "30 years off". 30 years from now it will still be "30 years off". The problem is not the temperature required for fusion but the pressure.
 

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
I think the problem is in the predicting itself. Fact is, there have been some significant advances, but in the auxiliary stuff like lasers and whatnot. When the major breakthrough comes (if it comes) it will be a bolt from the blue, and likely in a form no one can predict, because it is something no one has thought of yet.

The prize is worth the research. Research, unfortunately, is a little like plants, it requires some manure to thrive.
 

wayneh

Joined Sep 9, 2010
17,496
I spent several hours looking into cold fusion recently. They prefer to call it LENR these days, for lattice enhanced or low energy nuclear reactions. My takeaway lesson was that it is most likely bunk. There are no widely respected articles in respected journals. No physicists are piling in to reproduce critical findings. On and on, all the signs of good science are missing and all the signs of bad science are abundant. The proponents all claim that the good work can't be published because the journals won't accept the papers. If only we had more funding...
 

KL7AJ

Joined Nov 4, 2008
2,229
Was listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time last night. Once in a while he would have actual science. His guest was Eugene Mallove a huge proponent of cold fusion. The show was from February 2004. He was talking months that we would have commercial cold fusion reactors.

I have heard similar claims a number of times since then. I got curious and decided to look the good doctor up thinking I could send him an email to get the current state of the technology. Well turns out he was murdered shortly after he appeared on the showhttp://pesn.com/2010/04/02/9501633_Two_Arrested_Six_Years_After_Mallove_Murder/.

Maybe this was disused before. Still seems awfully strange.

Found this article that says cold fusion can be as much as 10 years out now.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-h-bailey/post_10010_b_8052326.html

So WTF?
It suffered the death knell it so richly deserved.
 

KL7AJ

Joined Nov 4, 2008
2,229
Was listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time last night. Once in a while he would have actual science. His guest was Eugene Mallove a huge proponent of cold fusion. The show was from February 2004. He was talking months that we would have commercial cold fusion reactors.

I have heard similar claims a number of times since then. I got curious and decided to look the good doctor up thinking I could send him an email to get the current state of the technology. Well turns out he was murdered shortly after he appeared on the showhttp://pesn.com/2010/04/02/9501633_Two_Arrested_Six_Years_After_Mallove_Murder/.

Maybe this was disused before. Still seems awfully strange.

Found this article that says cold fusion can be as much as 10 years out now.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-h-bailey/post_10010_b_8052326.html

So WTF?
Art Bell has more than a few bats in his Belfry.
 

Glenn Holland

Joined Dec 26, 2014
703
I assume you have some evidence for that opinion, but maybe not.

BTW - Herr Doktor, from which institution of higher learning did you get your PhD in Physics?:D
Probably got his PhD through a mail order ad in the classified section of Playboy or Hustler magazine along with other ads offering drugs to increase the size of the mail appendage. :p
 

Glenn Holland

Joined Dec 26, 2014
703
A competent college student should know that cold fusion was a fraud from the gitgo.

Nuclear fusion produces gamma radiation which (except for cosmic rays) is the most hazardous radiation known. Considering the danger, you wouldn't be messing around with the apparatus (a jar with electrodes and a power supply) for very long. :eek:
 

wayneh

Joined Sep 9, 2010
17,496
You're overestimating what a college student learns. I'd bet even a BS degree in physics from any major university would not give you the tools you need to critically analyze these experiments. But you should learn how to discern science from ... something else.

There were phD physicists around the world trying to replicate Pons and Fleischman. They didn't reject a potential new phenomenon on a theoretical basis. They rejected it when it couldn't be reliably reproduced.
 

Glenn Holland

Joined Dec 26, 2014
703
You're overestimating what a college student learns. I'd bet even a BS degree in physics from any major university would not give you the tools you need to critically analyze these experiments. But you should learn how to discern science from ... something else.

There were phD physicists around the world trying to replicate Pons and Fleischman. They didn't reject a potential new phenomenon on a theoretical basis. They rejected it when it couldn't be reliably reproduced.
One of the reasons they rejected it was because they survived the experiments without death or injury. If it was really fusion (and gamma radiation was being emitted), they wouldn't be alive to talk about it.
 
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