Has anybody seen this item from IEEE Septrum on line ?
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY.../0904nfus.html

It seems to suggest that cold fusion is more than just poorly designed experiments

has anything else been published or is this just more wishful thinking?

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The meek will inherit the earth ... the rest of us will go to the stars.

At the moment, wishful thinking IMO. The article is about the DoE review of recent work on CF. This is somewhat old news as the review began back in April. The panel hasn't said much yet. I think they're keeping any progress under wraps and will simply come out with a final report.

As to the quote. Claims of excess heat alone don't impress me. I need neutrons before I'll believe any fusion has occurred. Also, one needs repeatable experiments from multiple teams. Has any other team produced the results cited in the quote when the re-create the set up? In fact, have any two teams even seen the same results? I expect the review will provide answers to some of these questions. My guess is the answer will be NO in each case.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

No, we should not be impressed with just excessive heat - the hydrogen packing in heavy metal is not a well understood phenomena. On the other hand, I have always maintained the physics community’s castigation of F&P was/is out-of-order. What we do not understand, we should learn how to explain, choosing only new physics when all viable explanations have been exhausted.

FWIW, I have a colleague who was a post doc at the U of U, and worked on the original F&P team. He swears all they had to do to get the neutron production count way-up was increase the temperature - which was very dangerous. This is of course anecdotal…but intriguing.

My definition of good science is somewhat broader than Bob Parks: Any experiment, however bazaar (and that is not inhumane), but is well enough constrained to disprove or significantly challenge an axiomic scientific principle is good science. Screaming that they should have waited for peer review before going public is like telling the Wright Brothers your experiment has not been duplicated by an established avionics firm and is therefore invalid.

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jwj

If you always believe what you already know, you can't learn anything - Liz

That's all fine Jerry, but P&F deserved every bit of vitriol that was sent their way. They were evasive, deceptive, and in the end wrong. They waffled when pressed for details of the experimental set up and never produced the results of the control experiments they claimed to have done after others asked them to. (Two come to mind, do you see excess heat with normal water?, is there helium in the electrodes?)

If it was so easy for them to produce neutrons all they had to do was arrange for proper shielding, place the cell into a neutron detection array, and run it hot. The claim that it was "too dangerous" is a red herring. There was no need to place anyone at danger to do the experiment. That they did not perform this sort of test makes me believe that they could not produce neutrons, your friend's story notwithstanding.

Several other experiments did place cells into such a detection array (Moshe Gai's at Yale being the most sensitive). They saw no evidence for any neutron emission from the cell (and no excess heat either). Any new experiment not only has to show heat & neutrons, it needs to explain why experiments such as Gai's were flawed. Hopefully the DoE review is exploring just this sort track.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

P&F were castigated for their academic fraud (among other things), not the field they chose to study. The scientific community's initial response (dropping everything to verify P&F's results) is the only thing I consider out-of-order. The community shouldn't have responded to P&F at all until P&F submitted a real paper in a real journal. That's ironic, actually - if P&F had discovered cold fusion, the fact that they went outside the accepted process could have altered the accepted way of "doing science." Their failure only served to validate it. Now, you may consider that a coincidence, but I don't. P&F failed because they didn't follow the accepted process. And I don't mean their experiment, I mean their personal disgrace: had they followed the process, the scientific community would not have allowed them to so publicly disrgrace themselves. Pick the appropriate cliche' - they flew higher than they should, which only made them fall further.

Here are some cold fusion links from mamma.com

http://www.mamma.com/Mamma?qtype=0&a...it=Go+Mamma%21



from Barb Townsend

I think he has that exactly correct. The peer review process is intended to catch mistakes before they are presented to the whole world. Had CF been in fact true, they would have lost little by doing it the normal way. There are many ways to protect their primacy of discovery, which was the only risk in delay. In the end, they still would have become rich and famous. Now they are merely infamous.

Energy policy being a primary motivator in national and international affairs (that's almost an understatement), what makes you think the DoE would let out any information that supports the contention that there is something to Cold Fusion?

In fact, had Cold Fusion been real, isn't there a chance that THE MAN would have swooped down, and just by the skin of his teeth nipped this thing in the bud?!

Wouldn't a true Cold Fusion discovery turn geopolitics on its head? Cause the collapse of the Middle Eastern economy? (Among many other economies?)

Granted, in the long run, cheap power is a good thing for human productivity. But the short term economic and political upheaval of something like CF is almost unimaginable. I think there would be a lot of pressure to keep it under wraps. Am I wrong?

boris


PS
and if P+F had any good reason to bypass the "accepted process," this one would have been it - to bypass THE MAN. If they really believed they were onto something, they also would have understood the global / political pressures. They would have known that more than mere science was at stake.

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"science is where culture rubs against nature" - Stanislaw Lem, His Master's Voice

You are right that the implications would be huge, but I don't think something this big could be suppressed, especially given the openness of communication within the scientific community.

There are acceptable ways of distributing results prior to their acceptance in a peer-reviewed journal. Talks at conferences, publications in conference proceedings (some are peer-reviewed, most aren't), and most significantly, the Los Alamos preprint archive. Calling a press conference is not considered acceptable.

Obviously, when this did happen, "THE MAN" didn't swoop down and nip it in the bud, or we wouldn't be having this conversation about it.

Yeah, I guess you're right, I just enjoy a little paranoia occasionally...

Wait a minute... Maybe this whole thing, including Infinite Energy magazine, is just a charade meant to keep the skeptics distracted while they build a huge studio in the Mojave desert where they will film the Manned Mars Mission!

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"science is where culture rubs against nature" - Stanislaw Lem, His Master's Voice

If you haven't taken time to look what has happened in CF research, you might want to take a look - the Wired article above - 1998 - is a good place to start. In this article, E. Teller is quoted as saying ~"I don't believe it, but if it is true, I have a theory that explains it." Sheesh!

I would be hard pressed call every CF event scientific quackery. It is also clear this process refuses to be tamed, and may never produce a useful watt of energy.

But you and Russ are missing my point. Good scientific practice falls into two categories: Using the scientific method and known physical laws to set up experiments that increase the body of knowledge, and experimental results, however conceived, that change the rules.

The first class - expanding the knowledge base generally requires the peer review process. The peer holds the test up against the body of scientific knowledge and says yes, it fits here.

P&F were doing something that shouldn't work - they were out of there element - they made stunning observations that could not survive a peer review - they broke the laws, and now new ones are needed - something is needed to explain what is happening.

The abhorance with which the physics community treats these events is very puzzling to me. If they were two clowns in a circus, I would still demand a reasonable scientific explanation, not "So what if they are levitating? They are just clowns."

Incidently, the academic fraud they were accused of (in court) was a misplaced decimal - been there, done that.

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jwj

If you always believe what you already know, you can't learn anything - Liz

So how does the fraud thing play into that? (hint: it comes in at the "...that could not survive peer review" part) The physics community doesn't like frauds. Why is that puzzling?? There was considerably more to it than that. One meeting went something like this:

Physics Community: Have you done a control test?
P&F: Of course!
Physics Community: Can we see it?
P&F: Uh, no....

Another went something like this:

Physics Community: May we have schematics of your experiment so we can duplicate it?
P&F: No.

No, I agree that there are some reputable scientists attempting work in this field, and that there may yet be something requiring explanation here. Part of the problem is that the true science got lost in all the hoopla.

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say here. If you mean that experimental results sometimes drive theory rather than the reverse, I'd agree absolutely. I'd say it's about 50-50 in terms of which drives which. (This reality is very different than the sterile version of the scientific method often taught in schools, the "hypothesis, test, reject/accept" oversimplification.)

My own work has examples of both. In one paper, we used our experimental system to physically realize a theoretical model and verify that the scenario the theory proposed could actually be seen. But in another paper of mine, we published results on an experimental finding that cannot be fit into the current theory at all; theorists in this area are trying to figure out how to fit our results in.

No, peer review does nothing of the sort. As I said above, I've published papers that don't fit nicely. Peer review on experimental work usually asks things like, "Did they check obvious alternative explanations?", "Did they understand and explain the limitations of their experimental system?", "Are their observations self-consistent?", etc. The fundamental question in all peer review is "Is this correct?". It doesn't need to fit nicely with past work to pass that test, and it is indeed more exciting when it doesn't.

No! 'Stunning observations' that cannot survive peer review are not stunning anythings (except perhaps stunning mistakes) and do not require new theories or explanations. Again, peer review is fundamentally about correctness. I will concede that observations that seem to contradict known physics will be more heavily challenged, but that is as it should be. ("Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.")

In that analogy, the problem was that they never levitated in front of anyone else and that their directions for "how to levitate" didn't work for anyone else. (In your Wright Brothers analogy above, it would be like they claimed to have a flying machine but refused to demonstrate it in front of witnesses.)

As I recall (and I was only an undergraduate then), everyone in physics was really excited until the evidence started coming in that it didn't work. The "abhorance", such as it is, came from the huge disappointments and embarassing revelations that followed.

I followed this very closely at the time. I don't have a degree in physics, but I know a bit about conventional fusion. I was quite skeptical - but very hopeful. It wasn't too many years after "high temperature" superconductors had been demonstrated, and we hadn't expected them nor did we know how they worked. By the known rules, fusion is very hard, but I was hoping they had found a "trick." Obviously, if you could build a Mr. Fusion device, the sky is NOT the limit. I REALLY wanted it to be real.

But P&F made a fundamental mistake: They spread a story about "cold fusion" based on badly defined experiments.

There are actually two directions the experiments could go: (1) demonstrate neutrons or fusion products regardless of energy production or (2) demonstrate excess heat substantially beyond what would be possible with a chemical process. All they needed was to have a clearly repeatable experiment that would properly demonstrate one of these things, then clearly describe it for others to duplicate. Peer review would come about eventually, but would be secondary to a good experiment.

Instead, there were a lot of people all over the world trying to duplicate things based on the limited information that had been provided - meanwhile P&F went into hiding. And the duplicated experimental results weren't good, though there were a few that looked interesting but couldn't be repeated. Yes, there was publically stated resistance by some of the people in the field, but worldwide interest was huge.

At this point, I don't think cold fusion is real, but the potential is great enough that I wouldn't mind seeing some official experimental review. They would need some VERY carefully done experiments to be convincing at this point, though.

Why should there be excess neutrons? I'd want Helium.

If you take two Deuterium (2H) then each has 1 Proton and 1 Neutron.

Fusing them in a Helium produces 4He made up of 2 Protons and 2 Neutrons.

Last I heard 1 + 1 = 2 even with protons and neutrons, why should the reaction produce extra ones from thin air (or water as the case might be.)

Evidence of Cold Fusion would be Heat and Helium. If Helium is being produced you -MUST- have fusion, there is NO other way to make it from Deuterium (or anything else.)


As to the science community's reaction towards those that still study this field, it is -WAY- out of line. Sure P&F do deserve to be treated with a lot of caution (the vitriol they are treated with is just childish people) but there are many others who are treating the subject with complete scientific process and trying to see if they really can get results, yet they are being treated as pariahs as well. This is a very closed minded attitude and as highly unscientific as the community claims that P&F originally were. Even if you don't believe it is real, or ever possible, that doesn't give you the right to vilify those that think it could be.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

No. Within 24 hours there were physcists holding interviews from Dartmouth to MTI, with bulging veins in their necks, telling us it was completely impossible.

I'm saying the courage to step outside of your major field and run with something, and then stand up and say, "We don't understand this, but neither do you". They weren't even calling it cold fusion.

[quote="chiaroscuro25"]
'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'.
[/qoute]

The days of extraordinary evidence are over - The Hubble ultra deep field? Extraordinary! Galaxies near the 'edge of time' that look just like they do today. But not earth shaking enough to dislodge a theory cast in stone. Most of the evidence that the Big Bang has failed is found in the subtle trends, the rise times in supernova, the Butcher Oemler effect, the Baldwin effect, the pieces of the puzzle that almost fit, but not quite.

[quote="chiaroscuro25"]
(In your Wright Brothers analogy above, it would be like they claimed to have a flying machine but refused to demonstrate it in front of witnesses.)
[/qoute]

Again, the university was calling the shots and put the sock in their mouths. But even if they were complete clowns, we still need a good explanation. If two clowns are levitating, we wouldn't expect them to explain it, but a good physcist should. All I ever hear is P&F were bad physicists. So was Madam Curie, but she was a damn good chemist.

Utah was rained with enough fallout during the fifties to mutate a good Democratic state into a self-righteous Repulican one- maybe their is something in the soil. Maybe if you have to line up deuterium and wait for a cosmic ray. Maybe if we stuck an Fleshman jar in the path of a CERN ion all hell would break loose. But we will never know if we don't try.

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jwj

If you always believe what you already know, you can't learn anything - Liz

Well, that was probably inappropriate then. I'm definitely not claiming that all other physicists behaved well! I'm just saying the P&F behaved badly.

Perhaps, but courage isn't the most relevant virtue in science; humility is more important. With more humility they would've quietly called up colleagues and said "We don't understand this, do you? Can you think of what we might me doing wrong that we should check?" That's how we dealt with our inexplicable behaviour; we then used the feedback to check our experiment and rule out alternative causes. Only then did we publish our anomalous results. (Of course our work doesn't have any earth-shaking ramifications like CF did! )

This is an off-topic red herring that has nothing to do with CF. I'll simply say that BB theory is certainly being shaken, but it remains because there are few, if any, good, quantitative alternatives being presented.

You're missing my point. We don't have to explain clown levitation until we have good evidence that clowns did actually levitate! We don't congratulate the Wright Brothers until somebody else actually sees their plane fly!