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Technology, Science & Alt Science / Cold Fusion
« on: July 15, 2006, 03:50:14 PM »
For those of you who haven't heard of cold fusion, or who have and don't quite know what it is, cold fusion is the ability to create nuclear fusion (like what happens in the sun or the second stage of the Hydrogen (thermonuclear) bomb) at room temperature.
Fusion itself is simply forcing two nucleii together to form a larger nucleii, giving out energy. To do this they need to overcome a large repulsion from the charges in the nucleus. This is done by either giving the nucleii more energy (heating them up) or increasing the density (like what happens in the sun due to gravity), the longer a combination of these two are kept at the right amount, the more energy you get out of the system.
So as you can see, things need to get pretty hot or pretty big to get fusion. So if you want to make a fusion power plant it is going to be expensive. But if you can do it at room temperature it is going to be a lot cheaper. therefore Cold Fusion.
almost 20 years ago two scientest said that they had done exactly this (Fleischmann and Pons). However instead of releasing there paper to a science journal they went straight to the press (the reasons for doing so i'll talk about later). The two scientists were about to receive a quarter of a million dollars research grant, but When the paper was reviewed independently (by princeton) cited certain errors (such as the neutrons emitted by the process could have been caused elsewhere - very energetic neutrons are a sign of a nuclear interaction) and several other things being omitted.
Now the controversial parts. The reason that Fleischmann and Pons released their findings to the press instead of to a journal (where it would be checked by there peers for factual errors) was because at the time they had no peers. All other Fusion research done on a large scale was in "hot" fusion - specifically in princeton. Therefore the "hot" fusion experts could not truely comment on cold fusion.
You may have noticed that i said that princeton was the leading light in fusion research at the time. when princeton was reviewing the papers, many key scientist from there fusion department had already denounced the work before considering it. and instead of being impartial they were more vindictive (whether it was because they felt insulted because Fleischmann and Pons went to the press without consulting the science world, or because they may have felt there research grants being threatened).
There are still several labs that undergo cold fusion research, however none of them have anywhere near adequate funding.
Here are some websites about it:
first the habitiual wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion
here is something that talks about the reoccurence of Cold fusion as a research topic http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.11/coldfusion.html
and some more in depth websites if you have a science back ground:
http://www.lenr-canr.org/
http://blake.montclair.edu/~kowalskil/cf/
http://www.ncas.org/erab/contents.htmhttp://www.ncas.org/erab/contents.htm
http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/papers/storms/review8.html
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEastudentsg.pdf
Fusion itself is simply forcing two nucleii together to form a larger nucleii, giving out energy. To do this they need to overcome a large repulsion from the charges in the nucleus. This is done by either giving the nucleii more energy (heating them up) or increasing the density (like what happens in the sun due to gravity), the longer a combination of these two are kept at the right amount, the more energy you get out of the system.
So as you can see, things need to get pretty hot or pretty big to get fusion. So if you want to make a fusion power plant it is going to be expensive. But if you can do it at room temperature it is going to be a lot cheaper. therefore Cold Fusion.
almost 20 years ago two scientest said that they had done exactly this (Fleischmann and Pons). However instead of releasing there paper to a science journal they went straight to the press (the reasons for doing so i'll talk about later). The two scientists were about to receive a quarter of a million dollars research grant, but When the paper was reviewed independently (by princeton) cited certain errors (such as the neutrons emitted by the process could have been caused elsewhere - very energetic neutrons are a sign of a nuclear interaction) and several other things being omitted.
Now the controversial parts. The reason that Fleischmann and Pons released their findings to the press instead of to a journal (where it would be checked by there peers for factual errors) was because at the time they had no peers. All other Fusion research done on a large scale was in "hot" fusion - specifically in princeton. Therefore the "hot" fusion experts could not truely comment on cold fusion.
You may have noticed that i said that princeton was the leading light in fusion research at the time. when princeton was reviewing the papers, many key scientist from there fusion department had already denounced the work before considering it. and instead of being impartial they were more vindictive (whether it was because they felt insulted because Fleischmann and Pons went to the press without consulting the science world, or because they may have felt there research grants being threatened).
There are still several labs that undergo cold fusion research, however none of them have anywhere near adequate funding.
Here are some websites about it:
first the habitiual wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion
here is something that talks about the reoccurence of Cold fusion as a research topic http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.11/coldfusion.html
and some more in depth websites if you have a science back ground:
http://www.lenr-canr.org/
http://blake.montclair.edu/~kowalskil/cf/
http://www.ncas.org/erab/contents.htmhttp://www.ncas.org/erab/contents.htm
http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/papers/storms/review8.html
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEastudentsg.pdf