Hey, i've heard about Cold Fusion and it sounds pretty revolutionary. If we can do it, if it's even possible. we could solve the worlds problems. but i dont know much about the science behind it, anyone here know anything?

As of this date all claims to have demonstrated cold fusion have been shown to be false. There doesn't seem to be any scientific theory which leads to it.

Yeah, it doesn't really make since, considering the amount of energy required to overcome the Coulomb repulsion of a nucleus, that you could do something like that at room temperature. I would say it's the modern-day equivalent of the perpetual motion machine.

Three months ago (from July '04), the US Department of Energy quietly agreed to examine what cold fusion supporters say is increasing evidence -- culminating at a conference at MIT last summer -- that the reaction exists and is reproducible. If the agency agrees, it will likely mean an injection of both funding and legitimization for the forgotten research.

The Department of Energy review is focusing attention on a small band of scientists, including Hagelstein, who continue to work on cold fusion long after its public demise. There are an estimated 100 to 200 of these researchers in the world, many suffering from stagnated careers or damaged reputations because of their refusal to give up on a concept the vast majority of scientists say doesn't exist.

"It's not that we have kept quiet as much as no one has looked at what we were doing," said Hagelstein, a reserved but passionate man given to nervous laughter. "We are getting good and powerful results -- we want our name cleared."

Cold fusion defies known physics. Even its supporters remain at a loss to fully explain it. Still, if it exists and is reproducible, it could revolutionize the world, decentralizing energy production so that each home could have its own inexpensive power source without damaging the environment.
Ref:Boston Globe (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science/articles/2004/07/27/heating_up_a_cold_theory/)

Cold Fusion has been around since the early 90's (going by memory here). I've always felt that it should be funded to some small degree, say a few million $/year since the benefits are astronomical in importance. Understanding of course that the probability of payoff is slight.

I personally feel sonofusion should also be funded, probably to a significantly higher level though since the probability for payoff is higher. At least sonofusion has a well understood theory behind it (ie: sonofusion is a type of inertia confinement technique).

There is a thread at this forum devoted to cold fusion. It primarily provides URL's to sites providing articles.

There is little, if any merit to the cold fusion concept.

There are researchers working with what is called muon catalyzed Fusion (not sure of this designation). This process uses muons instead of electrons to form hydrogen atoms. Muons are much heavier than electrons, which somehow aids the fusion process. The researchers in this field know what they are doing, and avoid the term cold fusion, which they consider to be nonsense. Unlike the cold fusion believers, they do not expect their research to be practical as an energy source.

Where there is smoke there is likely to be some fire. The original Pons/Fleichman experiments claim to be generating heat due to some unexplained mechanism. It is possible that this is a valid claim. The claim that the mechanism is fusion is contrary to some well supported principles of nuclear physics. Fusion requires two positively charged nuclei to coalesce. The forces of electromagnetic repulsion (an inverse square force) are awesome at atomic distances. It requires incredible speed and/or incredible pressures to overcome the electromagnetic repulsion. Aside from hydrogen with one proton in the nucleus, there are no stable atoms without neutrons because even the strong nuclear force is not strong enough to overcome the repulsion between several positive protons in the absence of some uncharged nuclear particles to provide binding energy without any electromagnetic repulsion.

I suspect that the DOE has gotten involved due to political pressure, with very little scientific rational.

What is the theory behind cold fusion? I read about the cold fusion experiment that supposedly produced heat, but I never saw the explanation for why that contraption would cause a fusion reaction.

Also, in that experiment, did anyone do a chemical analysis to determine if any hydrogen was really converted to helium?

Prosoothus: I am a skeptic, not a believer. When it was first announced, I assumed that it was nonsense without waiting for an opinion from mainstream science. Quantum physics is governed by probability laws. In the absence of extreme temperatures and pressures, the most you could expect is one fusion event per century in a ton of material due to some quantum tunneling effect. That estimate is a wild guess, but I think it conveys an idea of a plausible fusion rate.

I expect some believers to start posting to this thread soon, so I will make no attempt to present the other side of this issue.

The theory behind the original Pons?Fleichman (?spelling) experiment in about 1989 was that platinum somehow acted as a catalyst. I am not sure what other theories are claimed. Most of what I have read describes the results of successful experiments without providing any theory. Pons and Fleichman were chemists, not nuclear physicists. They bypassed the normal journals, announcing their results at a press conference and/or publishing them in some news medium.

There is a thread at this forum which has many links to articles at various sites. The articles range from the ridiculous to the barely believable. The articles are alleged to be written by researchers at various prestigious laboratories. The authors are alleged to have serious academic credentials. You can do a search for yourself to find most of the articles.

On the internet, who knows if there really is a professor Xyz at University ABC who published the paper attributed to him? If he does exist and have the credentials, is he motivated by something other than the search for scientific truths? Note a book published in about 1980 called The Jupiter Effect. It was nonsense written by credible scientists. It claimed that catastrophic effects would result from the 1984 alignment of most of the planets in the solar system. I assume they tried to trade their academic credentials for a fast buck.

Mainstream physicists seem to have dismissed cold fusion soon after it was announced, and I have not been able to find anything but casual deprecatory references to it by such scientists.

It was claimed that Teller considered cold fusion possible. When I researched the citation, I discovered that he said that perhaps it could be mediated by a mishugganon particle. Teller was making a joke. A Jewish friend explained that mishuggana (?spelling) is a Yiddish word for crazy.

Those who claim the possibility of cold fusion do not appreciate the awesome repulsive force acting between two positively charged nuclei. The charge to mass ratio for protons is something like 10³⁵, suggesting the ratio of electromagnetic to gravitational forces. At atomic distances, the inverse square law results in hard to imagine repulsive forces between positive nuclei.

My personal interpretation of various articles I have read is as follows. Pons and fleichman (?spelling) were sincere chemists who misinterpreted their results. They claimed to detect a small amount of unexplainable energy which they attribute to fusion. I do not remember reading anything but modest claims by them.


Others have claimed that cold fusion will be a wave of the future and will become a safe, inexpensive, and inexhaustible source of energy. I think there are a number of charlatans trying to make a living off of research grants and/or investors. There is at least one company selling cold fusion kits for about 500 USA dollars.


There are articles claiming some fusions reminiscent of alchemy. For example silicon & carbon fused to make calcium. The atomic numbers and weights add up okay, making allowances for binding energy. Otherwise the claim is ridiculous. Nuclei have structure rather than being some random mix of neutrons and protons. Even hot fusion reactions in stellar interiors do not cause such fusions. Via collisions, a few particles are added at each stage of fusion processes leading from simple to highly complex nuclei. A standard isotope of carbon has 12 nuclear particles, while a standard silicon isotope has 28 nuclear particles. Both nuclei have a ball-like shape. A collision fierce enough to cause fusion is not going to change the two ball-like structures into a single nucleus with 40 particles. It would result in some of the forty particles flying off in various directions due to the force of electromagnetic repulsion.


There are those who claim that there is a conspiracy of hot fusion researchers who have managed to falsely discredit cold fusion in order to maintain their own mega-buck grants. A conspiracy theory claim is one of the characteristics of pseudo science.

Dinosaur,

Thanks for your post.

Do you think that strong magnetic fields can be used to overcome the electrostatic repulsive forces of atomic nuclei in order to force a kind of cold fusion?

Prothoothus: I find it difficult to imagine how to arrange magnetic fields in such a way that they force positive protons to collide. I suppose that some of the techniques used in particle accelerators might be able to impart relativist speeds to protons, resulting in momentum overcoming the repulsion. In the absence of extreme densities and pressures, almost light speed seems necessary to obtain fusion. Without very high densities, a collision is unlikely.

Perhaps it would help your thinking if I outlined some of the methods and concepts in fission & fusion.

As posted earlier, the charge/mass ratio for protons is about 10³⁵, with mass being an indicator of momentum and charge being an indicator of electromagnetic repulsive force between positive nuclei. At atomic distances the inverse square law force is formidable.

Both fission and fusion are governed by probability laws. For a given a set of conditions, there is a probability of nuclear collisions and a probability of particle escape prior to a collision. The collision velocity/momentum must be sufficient in speed and direction to cause fusion/fission rather than particle scattering. Escape probabilities are generally proportional to surface area, while collision probabilities are generally proportional to density & volume.

I assume you know that temperature is a measure of average particle velocity. In stellar interiors gravity results in incredible pressures/densities & temperatures in the millions of degrees, providing the requirements for nuclear fusion.

The term critical mass is a misnomer, without the assumption of a spherical shape. A sponge-like mass can be way over the critical mass without causing a runaway fission explosion. A flat plate of material can be over the critical mass without a runaway fission explosion. The first atomic bombs were called gun types because a cone like-shape of fissionable material was fired into a cone-shaped hole in another piece of fissionable material. Later designs used a spongy mass surrounded by conventional explosives. The implosion provided the density to trigger runaway fission.

A hydrogen bomb uses an atomic bomb trigger to obtain the pressure and temperature. A spherical mass of fissionable material surrounds a hydrogen core. The atomic reaction is triggered by a surrounding sphere of chemical explosives. The plutonium or uranium is a spongy mass with high ratio between surface area and volume. When the conventional explosive crushes the fissionable material to a critical density, the atomic bomb reaction is ignited, imploding on the hydrogen core, resulting in temperature and density sufficient for fusion.

One technological problem is containing the fission/fusion material long enought to obtain a runaway chain reaction and avoiid avoid a fizzle effect. One of the reasons a nuclear power plant can never explode like a bomb is insufficient containment time. As runaway fission starts to occur, the initial reaction breaks up the mass of fissionable material lowering the density, and the process fizzles out due to insufficient density.

For obvious reasons the above techniques are not practical as sources of usable commercial energy rather than weapons energy.

The hot fusion researchers are now attempting to use multiple lasers from many radially symmetric positions to implode small pellets of some hydrogen compound. I do not know what mechanism they tried originally. The older methods attempted relatively long term containment of hot plasma in magnetic bottles to produce a constant supply of heat energy. The best magnetic bottles leaked too much. The current idea is to drop the pellets of fuel, heat them via laser implosion, and get heat energy in small rapid bursts.

A fierce tehnological problem is extraction of the heat energy being generated in the middle of all the apparatus required to cause the fusion reaction. I have never read about how this problem is handled. Perhaps I missed a pertinent article. Perhaps it is a problem they intend to worry about when the energy input/output ratio gets better.

So far, the hot fusion energy input/output ratio is embarrassing to the researchers and seldom published in articles for the general public. I think it used to be about a million to one and might be 2-3 orders of magnitude better now, which is still far from commercially usable. I sometimes wonder if the hot fusion researchers really expect to come up with a commercially usable mechanism.

Perhaps the above provides some insight into what is required for nuclear fusion. To me, all that I have read indicates that fusion generated energy is tuff to achieve using hot fusion techniques due to technological problems, while cold fusion is down right impossible due to theoretical problems related to collision probabilities. As mentioned in a previous post, cold fusion might occur due to very low probability quantum tunneling effects, but how much energy would you get from a fusion event between two nuclei once per century or even once per hour?

Dinosaur,

When I asked about if magnetic fields can be used to induce fusion I didn't mean through collision but through compression.

What if you take hydogren ions and place them between two strong magnetic poles. I believe, but I'm not sure, that the hydrogen nuclei act like small magnets and will orient themselves in the direction of the magnetic field. Now if you continue to increase the strength of the magnetic field, wouldn't the distance between the nuclei decrease as the magnetic field starts to overcome the electrostatic repulsion? At some point wouldn't the magnetic attraction be stronger that the electrostatic repulsion thereby causing a kind of cold fusion?

To use a simple analogy, let's say that you take two electromagnets, so that their opposite poles are at two ends of a tube. Now let's say that you place two pieces of iron in that tube, and a sponge between those pieces of iron. As you increase the strength of the electromagnets, the two pieces of iron become magnetized and start attracting each other causing the sponge to be compressed. It is logical to assume that since the sponge is being compressed, that the individual iron atoms in the iron pieces are being squeezed as well. Wouldn't the same concept work if you replaced the iron with hydrogen nuclei (even though that type of magnetism is different)? Can you squeeze them to the point to induce fusion?

Protoothus: I do not know enough about magnetic devices to be able to assess the possibility you have mentioned. I never read about design details of the magnetic bottles used by the hot fusion researchers, but I do not think they applied great forces to the plasma particles.

For fusion to occur, two nuclei must at least touch and also have some momentum providing pressure. As the nuclei approach each other, the inverse square law repulsion becomes incredible. Electromagnets are immense compared to distances even smaller than the radius of an atom. It is difficult for me to imagine how the field could be focused in such a way that sufficient magnetic force would be directed at the nuclei to be fused.

I do not think that magnets could be used in the way you are proposing, but this is merely the opinion of somebody who does not know much about the pertinent technology.