Cold Fusion?

[Patricinus Scriblerus]

I remember reading in Discover magazine back in the 80's that a couple of guy's pulled off cold fusion. I am guessing that since I can't remember their names they are not household names and that their version of cold fusion never really worked. Has any one been able to do it yet? and how close have we come?

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You sound reasonable....it must be time to up my medication

[BigRoryG]

Cold fusion is a topic close to my heart. The two gentlemen that you speak of, whose names escape me, were perpetrating a rather foolish hoax. Unfortunatley, they were totally unable to reproduce their results.

The problem with cold fusion is thatit is very close to theoretically impossible, or as my favourite author would say, infinitely improbable. A more likely source of unlimited energy is, in actual fact, hot fusion.

The problem with hot fusion is how to contain it, well contain it with magnets, but the ions line up on the magnetic lines, well make it a torus, but then they bunch up in north poles and south poles and don't go anywhere etc etc etc..... but you didn't ask about hot fusion did you?

The answer to your question was they were nutbars, and no one has yet come even close.

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Sincerely, SDStaff hopeful

[Cowboy Greg]

The two people were Pons and Fleischmann, at the time with the University of Utah, and the conventional view is that they were either lunatics, con men, or excessively prone to believing what they wanted to believe. For an interesting alternate view of the matter, surf on over to this Wired article (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.11/coldfusion.html). It's interesting, even if some of these folks sound as if they pick up Radio Venus with the fillings in their teeth...

[Undead Dude]

It remains contraversial, but the bulk of the scientific community don't believe in it. Pons & Fleischmann created quite a stir with the idea, but one of the critical parts of an idea taking hold is the ability of others to reproduce results. Claims of success in reproducing the results claimed for cold fusion have been very few and far between. In addition, a lot of the claims of reproduction have been criticized.

IMHO, if this phenomenon were real, by now it would be readily reproduced.


http://www.sciam.com/askexpert/physics/physics6.html
There is one point on which all true believers in cold fusion agree: their results are not reproducible. To most scientists, this implies that cold fusion results are not believable, but true believers suggest that this unpredictability makes them more interesting!

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Cold fusion' resembles the alchemy of the middle ages. The search for truth suffers now, in the quest to convert hydrogen into energy, just as it did 1,000 years ago in the quest to convert lead into gold. The allure of fame and wealth and the natural desire to believe in good news have been corrupting influences on scientific skepticism

[Lumpy]

Someone said something to the effect of "I'll believe it when they drive a car to New Jersey on it". Sounds like good advice to me.

[Nickrz]

blah blah blah test

[Boris B]

So what ever happened to Pons and Fleischmann? (I doubt I spelled them right but I'll keep my fingers crossed.) I like to think that they are in exile in Greenland living on boiled seal blubber, but I bet they're just sheepishly continuing their academic careers.

[BigRoryG]

Actually, the two of them live in my backyard. Their cold fusion system works and is lighting my house, or so they tell me, but i have reason to believe it's just the two of them taking twelve hour shifts on that treadmill.....

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Sincerely, SDStaff hopeful