JustinLevy said:
The only cold fusion I know of that is well agreed on is muon catalyzed fusion.
Yes. However, cold fusion isn't muon-catalyzed fusion. There were some original ideas that maybe the lattice somehow caused a muon-conservation effect that allowed cosmic ray muons to catalyze many more reactions before becoming stuck, but this was contrary to experimental observations.
"Cold fusion" is not "well-agreed on," among scientists in general. Among those familiar with the evidence, though, and peer-reviewers of articles need to become familiar, it flips. There are still journals with blanket policies against considering any article relating to cold fusion, and it's a multidisciplinary field (the experiments are chemistry experiments, but sometimes add techniques to measure radiation), but among journals that do consider papers in the field, publication is increasing, and negative papers are completely absent of late, the last five years. This has gone on long enough, with enough positive reports in the literature, to not be merely some quirk.
There was a famous "conversion" last year, where CBS Sixty Minutes engaged a prominent physicist to investigate the field. He claims he was skeptical, and he probably was, most physicists are, to this day. He came away convinced that there was something real involved, and he's been promoting cold fusion research at his university. Robert Duncan.
Muon-catalyzed fusion is not relevant to what's called cold fusion, though it is indeed a form of cold fusion. (Very cold!) What MCF does show is that blanket statements about impossibility, if you have not considered all the possibilities, are generally foolish.
MCF, though, is the same reaction as hot fusion, it has the same branching ratio, it produces the same products.
The main reaction in cold fusion, by contrast, produces helium, that's known and effectively certain. But no gamma ray. This is not d-d fusion, almost certainly. (But there is still the possibility that someone will pull a rabbit out of a hat, i.e., figure out some way that d-d fusion is catalyzed but produces different branching and suppresses the gamma by transferring the momentum to the lattice. I doubt it, and so do many in the field. Cluster fusion is currently the favorite theory, I'd say, with lots of experimental work focusing on how to enhance it.)
I doubt a "lattice" in a condensed matter approach or whatever will somehow shield protons or deuterons from each other well enough to provide a similar effect as from muons. This doesn't mean I am close minded, or not "open" as you word it, but it means I'd want proof that is as extraordinary as the claim.
Good. The reaction is not a "similar effect from muons."
How about looking at the proof? (I.e., "strong evidence.") You'll have to do more than make armchair, off-the-cuff criticisms, you'll have to actually stretch yourself to read the literature. Start with Storms (2010).
No one here is close minded on the subject. They are just requesting the same level of proof as the claim.
That is a starry-eyed delusion. I'm not making accusations about any individual, but it is quite common that pseudoskeptics demand far higher evidence for cold fusion than exists for the theory they believe predicts impossibility.
What is the theory? Everything I have seen is theoretical reason to expect that d-d fusion does not explain the cold fusion phenomena.
How do we know that fusion is impossible at low temperatures, by any reaction? Theory predicts reaction rates of a proposed reaction, under proposed conditions. What's the proposed reaction? If you imagine that it is two deuterons being smashed together, overcoming the Coulomb barrier by brute force, of course, that's a simple problem in two-body physics, where theory is very accurate. If you can keep the pesky additional bodies away!
This is what I was taught by Feynman in 1962, and it's still true. The math of quantum field theory, applied to multibody problems, is horrific. But believing that 2-body quantum mechanical theory prohibits any sort of fusion in the complex environment of highly loaded palladium deuteride is believing that an unconfirmed theory is true. It's not science! And this is why the initial reaction from at least three Nobel-prize winners to cold fusion was not "Impossible!" but rather, "How could this happen?" And they put effort into that.
There is an error involved here. Among the real scientists, experiment comes first. Is there excess heat? Is there helium? Are there other signs associated with nuclear reactions? The answers to those questions is not related to theory. That experimental evidence seems to contradict theory is no concern of experimental scientists, though sometimes they mention it.
Sure there may be results that are not very effected by statistical noise ... but you can take all the measurements you want and if you don't have a hold on your systematic errors (as bcrowell mentioned), it is not very convincing of a result.
The work has been done, by experts. The assertion of "systematic error" is simply a claim without evidence. Show the errors, if they are there!
What pseudoskeptics essentially assert is that unless every made-up scenario for "artifact" can be conclusively refuted, no positive operating hypothesis can be asserted. Many times, these people, when experimental evidence is asserted, retreat into the trump card: "Fraud." Or perhaps more charitably, "Delusion!"
In this case, Storms notes that there is no accepted theory that explains all the results. There are plausible explanations, he says, by which he means that there are partial explanations. At least one of these works with standard quantum field theory and predicts fusion from what might be a possible physical configuration that could occur in palladium deuteride, probably at the surface. It has been widely published under peer review. There has been no refutation. True theory? Not known, and experimental verification, to the degree to which the theory has been elaborated, will be difficult.
The proposed reaction (which is just one of a family of proposed multibody reactions) is that of two deuterium molecules, or four deuterons with their electrons, confined to a single lattice cell -- this is very unusual at best! -- predicted to collapse under the right conditions to a Bose-Einstein condensate, which then fuses, he calculates, with 100% cross-section within a femtosecond. The Be-8 radiates photons at frequencies which would be absorbed in the cell, until the Be-8 fissions to two helium nuclei.
The theory is not complete, but if this is the reaction, that state (called the Tetrahedral Symmetric Condensate) only lasts for a femtosecond. It is not known how such a phenomenon occurring withing a BEC would behave. This is new physics, not overturning old physics. It's an extension into previously unexplored territory.
Cold fusion does not contradict established theory, but only certain approximations that were assumed to be accurate but never adequately verified.
But there is heat and there is helium, correlated. Get over it!
