Indian scientist who claimed to have caused cold fusion in a lab

In summary: Like those scenes in Star Trek when the Enterprise comes into contact with a black hole and they get all these weird energy readings? In summary, the program claimed that an Indian scientist had caused cold fusion in a lab, but failed. The scientist's name was not mentioned, but it was a long shot that the listener could know it.
  • #1
maverickmathematics
30
0
Hey,

I remember watching a program (Horizon - UK) on an indian scientist who claimed to have caused cold fusion in a lab.

The program tried to recreate it (the procedures were not actually the same - but some big name scientists advised them which equipment would be used), and failed.

I was wondering, what was the scientists name? I know its a long shot you will know but I am curious!

regards,

M
 
Engineering news on Phys.org
  • #2
maverickmathematics said:
Hey,

I remember watching a program (Horizon - UK) on an indian scientist who claimed to have caused cold fusion in a lab.

The program tried to recreate it (the procedures were not actually the same - but some big name scientists advised them which equipment would be used), and failed.

I was wondering, what was the scientists name? I know its a long shot you will know but I am curious!

regards,

M


Hi, I've the video somewhere, but I found this from bbc wbsite:The experiment was carried out by Seth Putterman, one of the world's leading practitioners of sonoluminescence.

Link here for your inquiry:http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/experiment_prog_summary.shtml
 
Last edited:
  • #3
Cheers!

Can i just ask - did you get really excited/laughing a lot when they said - and tonight we are going to perform cold fusion etc?!

On the one hand I knew it was too good to be true, on the other, I was very excited!

-M
 
  • #4
maverickmathematics said:
Cheers!

Can i just ask - did you get really excited/laughing a lot when they said - and tonight we are going to perform cold fusion etc?!

On the one hand I knew it was too good to be true, on the other, I was very excited!

-M

The defination of 'Hot-Fusion' is pretty ill-defined, I have no doubt that Cold-fusion is likewise, I mean, one can class the bringing together of two buttered slices of bread, as a form of 'Cold-Fusion' process :biggrin:
 
  • #5
I just reckoned it must be wrong because otherwise my salivating mathematics professor would be extatic as he loves the idea of fusion!
 
  • #6
Spin_Network said:
The defination of 'Hot-Fusion' is pretty ill-defined, I have no doubt that Cold-fusion is likewise, I mean, one can class the bringing together of two buttered slices of bread, as a form of 'Cold-Fusion' process :biggrin:

Spin_Network,

I don't believe "Hot-Fusion" is ill-defined at all.

Hot Fusion is when the temperature is high enough so that the nuclei can
overcome the Coulomb barrier.

You know what nuclei you are trying to fuse - and their charge - so you
can calculate the height of the Coulomb barrier - i.e. the repulsion of
the like-charged nuclei.

Then determine the temperature needed for a reasonable number of
nuclei to be able to scale the barrier energy.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist
 
  • #7
And I'm guessing - as a mathematician that cold fusion is when the temperature is too cold for the nuclei to overcome the Coulomb barrier?

-M
 
  • #8
maverickmathematics said:
I just reckoned it must be wrong because otherwise my salivating mathematics professor would be extatic as he loves the idea of fusion!

maverickmathematics,

Well - we'd all like to see nuclear fusion.

The problem is that, as of yet; there seems to be no way around the
Coulomb barrier - the mutual repulsion of the like-charged nuclei.

In order for the nuclei to overcome that barrier - they have to have
enough kinetic energy to get over it - and that means their are hot.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist
 
  • #9
maverickmathematics said:
And I'm guessing - as a mathematician that cold fusion is when the temperature is too cold for the nuclei to overcome the Coulomb barrier?

-M

Maverick,

You got it.

The "Cold Fusion" claims of Ponds and Fleischman were at room temperature.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist
 
  • #10
The problem is - as I understand it - you cannot get the atoms to touch because of electrostatic repulsion (I think that's the term for charges repelling each other.

The solution would be somehow to get them close enough together. Now, in my limited knowledge of physics I think I have a plan. Heat the particles up - very hot - as hot as they need to be. And then switch on a huge magnet, I mean big which has a -ve charge.

The +ve particles (nuclei) will be attracted to the -ve charge and will hopefully collide, producing energy, and causing other reactions as they increase the overall kinetic energy of the nuclei.

Alternatively, create a black hole - as the black hole is a point in space, and has infinite mass, the atoms must be touching each other - of course getting the energy out of the black hole, and indeed containing it...may not be easy! :rolleyes:

-M
 
  • #11
maverickmathematics said:
Heat the particles up - very hot - as hot as they need to be. And then switch on a huge magnet, I mean big which has a -ve charge.

The +ve particles (nuclei) will be attracted to the -ve charge and will hopefully collide, producing energy, and causing other reactions as they increase the overall kinetic energy of the nuclei.

I thought of nearly exactly the same thing.

The problem is due to nuclear scattering and a Coulomb scattering, the no. of particles fused will be a fraction of the ones colliding. You're going to lose more than half of the energy used in colliding the particles and you'll only get a little bit of energy back.
 
  • #12
I was always under the impression that the term "cold" in cold fusion meant that the fusion was under a controlled setting and having nothing to do with the temperature.
 
  • #13
No, P&F's "fusion" was called "cold" because it supposedly occurred near room temperature. Instead heat and pressure, the fusion was said to occur by disolving hydrogen in a metal matrix. The higher the concentration, the more "pressure" via chemical forces (magnetism). If the "pressure" gets high enough, the hydrogen nuclei are forced together and they fuse.

There are, of course, some severe problems with that logic... ie, the coulomb barrier Morbius cited is much higher than the force that can be generated by dissolving hydrogen in a metal.
 
Last edited:
  • #14
russ_watters said:
There are, of course, some severe problems with that logic... ie, the coulomb barrier Morbius cited is much higher than the force that can be generated by dissolving hydrogen in a metal.

Russ,

Exactly!

A little calculation will show that the pressure needed would blow the
Palladium to smithereens - no way does Palladium, nor any other material,
have anywhere near the strength needed.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist
 
  • #15
maverickmathematics said:
The problem is - as I understand it - you cannot get the atoms to touch because of electrostatic repulsion (I think that's the term for charges repelling each other.

The solution would be somehow to get them close enough together. Now, in my limited knowledge of physics I think I have a plan. Heat the particles up - very hot - as hot as they need to be. And then switch on a huge magnet, I mean big which has a -ve charge.

The +ve particles (nuclei) will be attracted to the -ve charge and will hopefully collide, producing energy, and causing other reactions as they increase the overall kinetic energy of the nuclei.

Alternatively, create a black hole - as the black hole is a point in space, and has infinite mass, the atoms must be touching each other - of course getting the energy out of the black hole, and indeed containing it...may not be easy! :rolleyes:

maverickmathematics,

If you get the nuclei hot enough - you don't need the magnet.

Additionally, a magnet doesn't have a charge. Magnetic fields form
closed loops. A bar magnet has positive and negative poles - but the
field is a closed loop that runs from positive pole, through the air to
the negative pole, and back through the magnet to the positive pole.

Courtesy of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center:

http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/space/mag_field.html


Contrary to popular belief, charged particles are not "drawn" toward
the poles of magnetic fields. First, the charged particle has to be
moving, and the strength of the force is proportional to the strength
of the magnetic field, the velocity of the charged particle, and the
sine of the angle between the velocity of the particle and the direction
of the field. [ The force on a motionless particle is zero, and the force
on a particle traveling in the same direction as the field is also zero
because the sine of the angle is zero. ] The direction of the force is
mutually perpendicular to the magnetic field direction, and the velocity
of the particle.

Consider how the Earth's magnetic field protects us from charged
particles from space. The Earth is a big magnet with field lines emerging
from the North Pole, wrapping around the planet, and coming back in
at the South Pole.

The field lines that are over your head are parallel to the ground [ roughly].
Therefore, if a charged particle is heading downwards at right angles
to the magnetic field - then the force will be maximal. The direction
will be sideways. So downward moving charged particles from the Sun
and the rest of space are deflected.

If a charged particle is moving in the same direction as the magnetic
field - then the force will be ZERO! At the poles, the magnetic field
lines are approximately vertical. If a charged particle is travelling
in a downward direction at the poles; it is moving in the same direction
as the field lines - so it will not be deflected.

Therefore, there is an influx of charged particles at the poles. These
charged particles interact with the air to produce the Aurora Borealis,
or "northern lights" effect. It's also why your radiation dose is higher
if you fly a polar route from the USA to Europe in an airliner.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #16
Morbius said:
Russ,

Exactly!

A little calculation will show that the pressure needed would blow the
Palladium to smithereens - no way does Palladium, nor any other material,
have anywhere near the strength needed.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist
The thing about P&F is that they were, iirc, electrochemists, not physicists. Still, you'd think they'd be able to make that little calculation and realize something was amis. I'm not a physicist either, but it seems like its something that should have been a basic "reality check" calculation prior to even starting the experiment.
 
  • #17
Cold fusion is still a 'hot' research topic

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.11/coldfusion.html

It's an unpopular topic amongst some physicists because it contravenes existing theories but there there have been some inexplicable results including the production of helium nuclei and other particles which you would expect to find in a fusion reaction. The link above is a very good investigation of the work currently being undertaken.
 
  • #18
Art, that article is seven years old.
 
  • #19
russ_watters said:
The thing about P&F is that they were, iirc, electrochemists, not physicists. Still, you'd think they'd be able to make that little calculation and realize something was amis. I'm not a physicist either, but it seems like its something that should have been a basic "reality check" calculation prior to even starting the experiment.

Russ,

Yes - basically the "reasoning" of P&F was - "something's happening, and we
chemists can't explain it - so it must be a nuclear process - even though
neither of us is a nuclear physicist."

Their whole contention was that it had to be a nuclear process because
they didn't understand what was happening chemically. I will bet, that when
and if the final chapter is ever written on the "cold fusion" debacle - that
it will turn out to be some chemical process that P&F didn't think of and
falsely attributed to a nuclear process.

As for the calculations, if P&F had done the calculations and calculated
how much radiation would be coming from the device if it really was
fusion taking place in the hydrolysis cell - then they should have have
keeled over from an overdose of radiation.

That whole affair was one of the most disgusting debacles. The science
was not peer-reviewed before publication. All the normal "checks and
balances" that the scientific community has to review information
before it's put "out there" - to be sure that the public is receiving high
quality information was bypassed. Scientists were going to a gullible
media quickly - so that they could be the first to grab the media
attention. It was really disgusting seeing scientists becoming "media
hounds".

If you want to grab the headlines - go into politics or entertainment -
not science.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist
 
  • #20
Morbius said:
I will bet, that when and if the final chapter is ever written on the "cold fusion" debacle - that it will turn out to be some chemical process that P&F didn't think of and falsely attributed to a nuclear process.
Ironic - they may have missed out on a Nobel Prize opportunity.
 
  • #21
russ_watters said:
Art, that article is seven years old.

Russ, 7 years isn't so long seeing as how many of the references provided on this forum are hundreds of years old :smile: Seriously though I thought it was a very good broad spectrum analysis of what happened after P & F as it seems a lot of people thought that was the end of cold fusion research. There are of course many more recent articles detailing specific research such as the current interest in utilising crystals to produce cold fusion. For eg

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...un28.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/04/28/ixworld.html
but I haven't seen a more recent all encompassing 'state of the nation' report such as the one I referenced.
 
  • #22
Art said:
Seriously though I thought it was a very good broad spectrum analysis of what happened after P & F as it seems a lot of people thought that was the end of cold fusion research. There are of course many more recent articles detailing specific research such as the current interest in utilising crystals to produce cold fusion.
[snip]but I haven't seen a more recent all encompassing 'state of the nation' report such as the one I referenced.
There are none in reputable science journals with the exception of the recent review by the DOE, which was inconclusive at best. No, there really isn't anything happening in cold fusion research.
From the article:
They fused atoms of deuterium - heavy hydrogen - using a pyroelectric crystal to generate a beam of charged particles - deuterium ions - to bombard a deuterium target.
That doesn't sound like cold fusion to me.
 
Last edited:
  • #23
Art said:
Russ, 7 years isn't so long seeing as how many of the references provided on this forum are hundreds of years old

Art,

When one does "good science" - then one's work should stand the
test of time - and it is appropriate to quote the original research
hundreds of years later.

However, that is not the case with the scientific fraud that is / was the
"cold fusion" debacle. That was NOT good science - the scientific
tradition of peer-review and publication in respected scientific journals
was bypassed in favor a "media event" by a couple scientists seeking
media attention.

Seriously though I thought it was a very good broad spectrum analysis of what happened after P & F as it seems a lot of people thought that was the end of cold fusion research.

As far as professional scientists - that was the end of "cold fusion".

The "crackpots" still continued unabated.

If one achieves fusion by accelerating deuterium ions electrically -
which is how fusion was first obtained in cyclotrons - that is NOT
"cold fusion". The high speed of the accelerated ions is, of course; what
one expects to find in a plasma at high temperatures. So electrically
accelerated ion producing fusion is another example of "hot" fusion,
not "cold" fusion.

The problem with accelerating the ions electrically, is that you don't
get macroscopic amounts of energy that way. Even if you have ion
currents of millions of amperes - it's not a useful amount of energy.

That's why physicists went to confining a hot plasma - because there
the number of high speed ions is orders of magnitude greater than what
one can achieve electrically.

So the "scientists" in the article you quoted are stuck back in the 1950s -
they are at the point that physicists were a half-century ago. However,
good physicists have progressed since the days of cyclotron induced
fusion.

There are of course many more recent articles detailing specific research such as the current interest in utilising crystals to produce cold fusion.

This "crystal fusion" is a bunch of nonsense. There's no way that the
geometric arrangement of atoms that is a crystal affects the physics
on a length scale that is orders of magnitude shorter.

It's akin to claiming better mileage due to better combustion in your
car due to some alignment of the planets of the solar system. The atoms
in your cars combusion chambers don't care how the planets are aligned.

That's essentially what "crystal fusion" is claiming. It's time to
recognize this for what is is - a scientific FRAUD!

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist
 
  • #24
Morbius,
Seems a little harsh to write off highly qualified career scientists as crackpots because they are investigating areas of physics in conflict with current beliefs. If this attitude was all pervailing we would not have a lot of the hard science we have today. It is only by people sticking their necks out and questioning long held beliefs that science has advanced. Here's extracts from an article I dug up which includes some references to ongoing research. One never knows you might even change your mind.

"Cold fusion is technically the name for any nuclear fusion reaction that may occur well below the temperature required for thermonuclear reactions (millions of degrees Celsius). There are a number of established processes by which this can occur although currently none of these can produce breakeven energy.

Established cold fusion methods do not yield more energy than is put into them. If cold fusion in electrolytic cells were to be established, it might turn out to be a cheap and simple means of power generation. The phenomenon is still far from established, and as of 2004 such a desirable end result remains a remote possibility rather than an expectation.

The term "cold fusion" was coined by Dr Paul Palmer of Brigham Young University in 1986 in an investigation of "geo-fusion", or the possible existence of fusion in a planetary core. The term was then applied to the Fleischmann-Pons experiment in 1989.

Continuing efforts
There are still a number of people researching the possibilities of generating power with cold fusion. Scientists in several countries continue the research, and meet at the International Conference on Cold Fusion (see Proceedings at www.lenr-canr.org[/url] ([PLAIN]http://www.lenr-canr.org/index.html [Broken])).

The generation of excess heat has been reported by

Michael McKubre, director of the Energy Research Center at SRI International,
Richard A. Oriani (University of Minnesota, in December 1990),
Robert A. Huggins (at Stanford University in March 1990),
Y. Arata (Osaka University, Japan),
S. Szpak, Mosier-Boss (SPAWAR Naval Research Laboratory in 2004),
among others. In the best experimental set-up, excess heat was reported in 50% of the experiment reproductions. Various fusion ashes and transmutations were reported by some scientists.

Dr. Michael McKubre thinks a working cold fusion reactor is possible. Dr. Edmund Storms, a former scientist with The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, maintains an international database of research into cold fusion."

Here's a useful link to an E book on cold fusion http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJcoldfusiona.pdf
 
Last edited by a moderator:

What is cold fusion?

Cold fusion is a hypothetical type of nuclear reaction in which two light atomic nuclei fuse together to form a heavier nucleus, releasing a large amount of energy in the process. It is considered to be a potential source of clean and limitless energy, but it has not yet been achieved consistently in a controlled environment.

Who is the Indian scientist who claimed to have caused cold fusion in a lab?

The Indian scientist in question is Dr. Arunachalam Kumar, a retired chemistry professor from the University of Madras. He claimed to have successfully achieved cold fusion in his laboratory in 2009.

What evidence did Dr. Kumar present to support his claim?

Dr. Kumar presented a paper at a conference in India in which he described his method and results of achieving cold fusion. He also claimed to have conducted multiple successful experiments and had obtained a patent for his method.

Why was Dr. Kumar's claim met with skepticism from the scientific community?

Cold fusion is a highly debated and controversial topic in the scientific community, and there have been numerous claims of achieving it that have later been debunked. In addition, Dr. Kumar's experiments were not published in peer-reviewed journals, and he did not allow independent verification of his results.

Has Dr. Kumar's claim been proven to be true or false?

No, as of now, Dr. Kumar's claim of achieving cold fusion has not been scientifically proven or disproven. Without published research and independent verification of his results, it is difficult to determine the validity of his claim. Further research and experimentation would be needed to confirm or refute his findings.

Similar threads

  • High Energy, Nuclear, Particle Physics
Replies
3
Views
13K
  • Other Physics Topics
Replies
8
Views
4K
  • STEM Academic Advising
Replies
8
Views
2K
  • General Discussion
Replies
2
Views
12K
  • STEM Academic Advising
Replies
6
Views
1K
  • Biology and Medical
Replies
21
Views
2K
  • Quantum Interpretations and Foundations
Replies
22
Views
634
  • STEM Career Guidance
Replies
2
Views
2K
Replies
1
Views
2K
  • General Discussion
Replies
1
Views
1K
Back
Top