Cold fusion reasearch should be conducted

[Science Geek]

I think that the problems throughout Ca. and the rest of the world reguarding energy could be conquered by cold fusion. It has already been proven to work in electrolysis experamentation, and I think that particle exelerators could be a way to go. It may work in a similar way, as the positive and negetive particles collide they explode realesing energy. If the same acceloration was attempted on a smaller sized machine I believe that the particles could fuse and cause a similar type of energy. I know that it has never been proven that cold fusion exists, but on the other hand there is little evidence that says there isn't either. Many scientists of high accord have attempted to duplicate the experament, some were successful, others failed. Still there should be attempts to further research to find a definate answer.

[fsbriggs]

one major research group working on cold fusion right now claims that it has achieved it, but needs to build a larger machine to do it reliably. sadly, the government has dropped funding for the project, claiming that if they haven't succeded in 50 years, they never will.

[Quanta]

Scientists may actually be probing into Zero Point energy. Zero point energy is energy that exists in free space due to quantum fluctuations out of nothing. There is enough Zero Point energy in a coffee cup to evaporate all the oceans on Earth. During one experiment where scientists claim to achieved cold fusion by compressing substances (I forget what it was). The reason why they probably achieved energy from doing this is because the substance was compressed so much that the electrons were forced to a lower energy level, releasing some of their energy (electrons are believed to absorb quantum fluctuations to keep their energy from being lost as they revolve around the nucleus). The electrolysis experiment is a mystery to me and may possibly be cold fusion. But if scientists attempting to achieve cold fusion actually probe into Zero Point energy, I think they should stick with that instead, for it is a source of unimaginable energy.

[Turbine]

And this leads to todays thought for the day. "What goes on in a lightning bugs butt ?":D

[knocker81]

Does anybody remember a research team claiming to have perfected cold fusion? I cant remember much about it , all i remember was that an american team claimed to have produced surplus energy from cold fusion, but then couldnt duplicate the experiment.I'm sure this happened in the early '80s, and BNFL (British Nuclear Fuels Limited) bought the team to Britain and then denounced their work when the experiment couldnt be duplicated. I remember it as front page news , but I was very young at the time and so my memory is hazy. Does anybody know anymore about this 'breakthrough'? I'd be very interested to research this event , but basically I dont know where to start!
Thanx in advance for your help! :)

[ProtoManXI]

Actually I did my case in debate over Cold fusion a couple years ago. You may say oh well that's just crap, it's just a case you did for debate. But I did hearty research and came up with actualy data for my case. An actual team claimed to creat cold fusion in 1992 in arizona. They actually had a plant built that had ran for approximatly 5 minutes.

A couple weeks later the government mysteriously shut them down for now reason saying that it was too dangerous to have something we know so little about running. It was later released that the government was scared that an inexpendable energy resource was about to be discovered and given out. Think what this would had did to our economy. If any of you are intrested in the facts on Cold Fusion email me at protomanxi@paradoxi.com or post here on this site and I'll get back to you. I have tons of dates for cold fusion and all its research all over the globe. It is carefully documented with the names of the scientist and the dates that the break throughs were made.

Most Cold Fusion research is being done in China and over in those areas.

[rde]

Originally posted by knocker81
Does anybody remember a research team claiming to have perfected cold fusion?
Their names were Pons and Fleischman. A search on google will reveal more than you ever wanted to know.

[ProtoManXI]

Yeah they were the leading scientist in the study for Cold Fusion. There was more than one time they had claimed to creat cold fusion. The 1992 occurance of Cold Fusion it was Pons Fleischman I believe.

[Boris2]

"It was later released that the government was scared that an inexpendable energy resource was about to be discovered and given out. Think what this would had did to our economy."

I would have thought it would have been good for the economy. Sure oil stocks would have taken a dive but when everyone realised that this new technology wasn't going to happen overnight they would have gone up again. Plus all the investment in the new tech.

I realise you have researched this topic but to me the above quote sounds a tad "conspiracy theoryish".

[kmguru]

Cold fusion did work, the theory looked sound. I think there are several patents on it so that if anyone develops it, they have to pay royalty to the patent holder.

The problem is that, it was a fluke to get the energy due to the configuration of the metal electrode (platinum/palladium). Copying the configuration does not work verywell. What is needed is a way to create an electrode using molecular deposition and bonding at the molecule level. The atomic lattice has to be proper to have the tunnel effect where fusion takes place.

Someday, when we develop nanotechnology and learn to modify metals at one atom at a time, we may be able to produce large quantities of the electrode surface area to get enough energy out of it. Until then, you have to wait...

BTW, as long as patents are there, somebody thinks it works....

[ProtoManXI]

Okay lets go and introduce a new inexpendable energy resource to the economy. Who wouldn't want to be using an inexpendable energy resource. A cheap reliable resource that is clean and pure. It would not only hurt the stocks but would devastate the natural oil market. Putting many oil companies out of business, within an alloted amount of time. This is given that The technology was released and was in a working order. The government and many large companies would have LOTS to worry about if this technology was secured.

[Boris2]

Ok. Years ago horses were the mode of transport and power. Thousands of people were employed to keep them running. Along comes the ICE. All those people no longer had horses to earn their living from.

Why is it any different now?

Oil is going to run out some time.

This new technology will employ people to manufacture and maintain .

These new energy sources will not be free, the government, shareholders etc will still make money.

[James R]

Nobody has yet managed to invent a device which puts out more energy than it takes in. If any such device could be created we'd need to rewrite the laws of Thermodynamics, along with much of the rest of physics.

The supposed results obtained by Pons and Fleishman have never been duplicated, although many research groups have tried.

At this stage, nobody has discovered a way of tapping into the zero-point quantum vacuum energy, and this may well turn out to be impossible (never say never, though). The universe is pretty careful about energy conservation on the whole.

[kmguru]

Nobody has yet managed to invent a device which puts out more energy than it takes in. If any such device could be created we'd need to rewrite the laws of Thermodynamics, along with much of the rest of physics.

A nuclear bomb does exactly that....

A nuclear power plant can produce a lot more energy that you put in, otherwise you will be running at a loss and will go broke the first day...

Natural gas produces more energy than the energy required to get it out of the ground.

Now...start rewriting the laws....:D

[James R]

Originally posted by kmguru
A nuclear bomb does exactly that....

A nuclear power plant can produce a lot more energy that you put in, otherwise you will be running at a loss and will go broke the first day...Perhaps we have a misunderstanding. A nuclear power plant produces more energy than we, as humans, put into it. But it does not produce more energy than went into binding the uranium (or whatever) atoms together in the first place. That required energy input from a star.
Natural gas produces more energy than the energy required to get it out of the ground.Again, the energy in natural gas ultimately comes from a star - in this case our sun, with some help from living creatures along the way.
Now...start rewriting the laws....:D Not just yet! :D

[ProtoManXI]

Yeah I'm not saying that it isn't good to advance or that the government was trying to hold us back. It was just that We wouldn't had been ready to introduce another mass energy that is just as efficient or better than conventional sources.

[Gunner]

If something came out that would hurt the lobbyist's, the government would suppress it. ya know all those UFO sitings? Over half were classified reasearch,which has recently been declissafied. They were testing an HMD system. Nuclear power plant heats magnessium, magnessium heats MHD, MHD powers electrostatic drive. it was workin fine,almost. just a few tweaks woulda been fine. What ever happened to the test pilots anyway?

[Reign_of_Error]

For cold fusion would we be using hydrogen as the fuel?

If so, then I assume we would get it from our water.

Would the hydrogen that we get from out water supply be enough to deliver energy for the lifetime of the human race on the planet, or would we run out of water for creating the energy in a similar way that we will run out of fossil fuels?

All of this assumes that hydrogen would be the source of energy for the cold fusion reactions..

Thanks for any replies :)

[Gunner]

The ideal system would be hydrogen dirived from water, and, no, we wouldn't run out of water. if you set up an electolisis experiment, you'll see that the hydrgen and water recombine. hydrogen burns cleanly, that is, it doesn't combine with another material, like carbon combining with oxygen to form carbon-dioxide,whe burning a fire. the hydrogen would waft throught the atmosphere, and recombine with free oxygen. or, you could recycle it. electrolisis is how you would get the hydrogen out of the water, leaving the oxygen. you could,after you burn the hydrogen, capture it, then recombine it with the oxygen,then start the proccess back over again. It would be quite efficient.

[Reign_of_Error]

But we would be fusing hydrogen, which creates an entirely different element.. so you can't get the hydrogen back again( as far as I know).

Hydrogen fueled engines would be a great, clean way to replace petrol engines, but that is different than nuclear fusion by a long way..

[thed]

When Pons and Fleischman announced cold fusion in 1988/89 the scientific community called for the evidence. That is, they wanted the specific details on how this works.

Simply put, cold fusion flies in the face of accepted wisdom and if it where true would be a major breakthrough. So, the scientists wanted the details in order to reproduce the experiments. This is a cornerstone of science, reproducibility. Anything published in scientific journals is public domain, open to all.

Pons and Fleischman refused to publish the details. They, and they alone, had the option to give cold fusion to the world and make it free of charge, in the public domain. They refused.

In the mean time cold fusion researchers make lots of money from private grants to make it work. No one, has yet published a paper describing the method or a working patent. Pons and Fleischman, the last I heard, where outside the US. So they can publish without fear of the US government/oil cartels silencing them.

Using their data and experiments as evidence that big business/governments are scared then becomes a non sequitor.

This becomes a simple case of people making lots of money to conduct research without producing results.

Can we say, gravy train for life?

BTW, in 1989 my next door neighbour and friend was a Ph.D physcs student in a low-energy physics lab at http://www.rhbnc.ac.uk. His lab was one of the many who tied to reproduce cold fusion. They could not despite 10 of them pulling 10, 18 hour days. They wanted it to work as well.

Dave "perpetuum mobile" Barlow

[Big Hairy Jimbo]

Hmmm the Cold Fusion Confusion!!!

How did the Universe get here. Did it explode from nothing?
How is it the Universe is expanding, creating space from nothing?
How does the double slit experiment work?

All of the above questions still baffle science, so lets not can cold fusion just yet. Some of the most interesting parts of science have come from mistakes, and have been hard to reproduce. Recently experiments have taken place that show superluminal velocities can happen, ie faster than the speed of light. In fact some labs have made light go at 300x the speed of light. Weren't we all told this was impossible once???

I believe cold fusion or zero point energy is real, its just a matter of time before someone nuts it out. The universe is stranger than we think, so lets keep at the free energy idea. Scientific laws, or theories, are constantly modified and updated. I'm sure the energy laws, and thermodynamics will eventually fall to more upto date theories. If we stop trying we are doomed, so lets see more energy contraptions in sheds being built. The only part of this whole free energy stuff I cant stand, is when people introduce conspiracy crap. Come on people, leave the conspiracy crap alone, its got nothing to do with real science. If I could make a box today that could pump out "free" energy, I'd be an instant millionaire, I would demonstrate the machine all over TV and magazines etc, the whole world would know I had done it. As for the US trying to keep an oil economy going, I think the US would love to stop being dependant on the middle east for oil supplies. We could achieve so much with an unlimited energy supply, the world really would be changed. Hmmmm, if we could get enough people interested, then everyone donate $10 to a bank account/trust fund (I dont know how we would do it without the fear of being ripped off), we could donate money towards fusion research. Now this would be worth while, all investors would reap the rewards of whatever is discovered. But how do we set up such a scheme without people thinking its a big con job? Any ideas? We would need millions of people to participate & donate in order to fund worth while experiments.

[James R]

Hi Big Hairy Jimbo,

<i>How did the Universe get here. Did it explode from nothing?
How is it the Universe is expanding, creating space from nothing?
How does the double slit experiment work?
All of the above questions still baffle science...</i>

We know the answer to the first question, at least in its broad details. As for the second, various cosmological general relativistic models describe the process very well. The third question is amply addressed by quantum mechanics.

<i>In fact some labs have made light go at 300x the speed of light. Weren't we all told this was impossible once???</i>

That's a popular misconception. Some things regularly go faster than light. The 300x thing involved a pulse of light, and is in accordance with the theory of relativity. The things which can't go faster than light are massive objects and information.

<i>I believe cold fusion or zero point energy is real, its just a matter of time before someone nuts it out.</i>

Zero point energy is a well defined concept in quantum physics. It is real and there is experimental evidence for it. In contrast, there is absolutely no evidence for cold fusion, and therefore no reason to believe in it aside from blind faith.

<i>...Any ideas? We would need millions of people to participate & donate in order to fund worth while experiments.</i>

Governments and industry already fund worthwhile research of many types, though scientists could always use more money. Taxpayers contribute to research indirectly.

[Xelios]

I think much more money should be allocated to research projects and science in general. If it weren't for science we'd still be living in caves trying to break open turtles for food.

Science has the potential to get us to other stars and planets, cure some of the most ravaging diseases of the present day, provide almost limitless energy, explain how our world works, discover new dimensions and ways to exploit them... the list is literally endless.

Suppose the US spent even 1/10 of it's military budget (~$3 trillion from what I understand) more on science, imagine how much we could discover in just a year. Universities should also be free to attend, or at least a lot less.

Military is a stupid waste of money, if the entire world dispensed with it's military after WW2 and replaced that spending with science we might already be utilizing cold fusion.