# The Return of Cold Fusion

1. Sep 5, 2004

### marcus

you decide

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/sep04/0904nfus.html [Broken]

Last edited by a moderator: May 1, 2017
2. Sep 5, 2004

### wasteofo2

Whoppee!!!
I always loved cold fusion, no one believed me when I explained it was real though :(

3. Sep 5, 2004

### Tide

I think is shows just how desperate some people are for funding these days! :-)

4. Sep 5, 2004

### Ivan Seeking

Staff Emeritus
Why do you leap to that conclusion?

Last edited: Sep 5, 2004
5. Sep 5, 2004

### Ivan Seeking

Staff Emeritus
Why did you leap to that conclusion?

6. Sep 5, 2004

### Tom McCurdy

Cold Fusion was one of the first things that facinated me about science. I remeber hearing the story about the high schooll science fair that accidently created cold fusion but no one was able to reproduce it.

7. Sep 5, 2004

### Tide

I didn't leap to that conclusion. Cold fusion would require a complete rewrite of everything we know about nuclear and electromagnetic forces and there are NO compelling explanations of how the repulsive Coulomb force between nuclei can be overcome without the expenditure of a commensurate amount of energy. That's simply not available at room temperature. More telling is the fact that not one neutron or other signature of nuclear reactions has ever been observed in any so-called cold fusion experiment.

That the "phenomenon" hasn't been adequately explained is not sufficient reason to toss out more than a century of physics.

8. Sep 5, 2004

### Ivan Seeking

Staff Emeritus
Who says we need to toss out anything? As I read the article, the anomalies observed by the Navy Dept deserve further investigation. Now, I'm not saying that they do but you seem to be asssigning an awful lot to this with very little to go on.

9. Sep 5, 2004

### Tide

I don't disagree that something interesting is going nor do I disagree that additional study would be worthwhile. However, you overlook the glaringly obvious implication that it's cold fusion - they refer to it as cold fusion!.

Also, don't presume that I have little to go on. There's a lot of history here!

10. Sep 5, 2004

### Ivan Seeking

Staff Emeritus
I know the history fairly well; in fact I was there when Pons and Fleischmann gave their original presentation to the AES. I think it is more accurate to say that cold fusion research has revealed potential anomolies that appear to be worthy of further investigation.

11. Sep 5, 2004

### Tide

And having been part of the fusion community I'm quite familiar with the history and physics of fusion. I've already said there is ample reason for continued investigation but I do object to calling it fusion in the absence of nuclear signatures in any of the experiments and particularly considering that it runs counter to firmly established principles.

12. Sep 5, 2004

### Orion1

N_a = 6.022*10^23 atm*mol^-1

$$N_n = N_a \left( \frac{\rho_{Pd}}{M_{Pd}} \right)$$
$$N_n = N_a \left( \frac{12.02 g*cc^{-1}}{106.42 g*mol^{-1}} \right)$$
$$N_n = 6.802*10^{22} atm*cc^-1$$ Pd/D (1/1)

Hydrogen Mass: 1.00794 g*mol^-1
Hydrogen Mass: 2.0141 g*mol^-1

$$\rho_D = \frac{N_n M_D}{N_a} = \rho_{Pd} \left( \frac{M_D}{M_{Pd}} \right)$$

$$\rho_D = \frac{6.802*10^{22} atm*cc^{-1}*2.0141 g*mol^{-1}}{6.022*10^{23} atm*mol^{-1}}$$

$$\rho_D = \rho_{Pd} \left( \frac{M_D}{M_{Pd}} \right)$$
$$\rho_D = .227 g*cc^{-1}$$

Hydrogen ignites with Palladium as a form of catalytic combustion reaction, however this is not nuclear, it is chemical. The reaction itself is exorthermic with the catalysts for the reaction being the applied electrical current (electrochemical) and the Palladium metal itself.

The Pd/D ratio itself (1/1) and the excess drop in thermo production is fairly conclusive that the reaction is an exorthermic electrochemical ignition reaction between Deuterium and the metallic catalyst surface Palladium atoms. With detected byproducts such as He4 or radiation as attributable to naturally occuring laboratory contamination and background radiation emissions. The 'excess heat' itself is attibutable to the release of potential energy of reaction products released by the electrolytic exorthermic system.

However, the Deuterium density produced during this type of electrolysis is impressively high.

Reference:
www.lenr-canr.org/detailonly.htm[/URL]

Last edited by a moderator: Apr 21, 2017
13. Sep 6, 2004

### Staff: Mentor

The DOE is going to review a paper. The usual catch-22 applies: by the DOE getting involved, the cold fusion community has a temporary appearance of credibility. Temporary because the DOE will eventually release their findings on the validity of the cold fusion "research"...and "appearance" because there is no real gain in credibility until a positive finding is released.

To stave off Ivan's inevitable conclusion jumping about me, I'm not concluding anything, I'm predicting the DOE will find nothing that merrits further study. Indeed, printing a report on this that suggests cold fusion is back from the dead is unwarranted conclusion jumping.

Ivan, frankly, you're going too far with demands of open mindedness here.
Ok, so what exactly does that mean? Do you think fusion has been observed or not? IMO, if there are phenomena worthy of study they should be studied (that's kinda self-evident). But calling the research "cold fusion" research is inaccurate if the research isn't leading toward cold fusion.

My problem with this, Ivan, is that people have made a lot of money by duping the public and the government with cold fusion claims. Their burden of proof is therefore extremely heavy - and rightly so.

Also, the fact that the Navy continues to work on this disheartens me as a former sailor. I can't believe they are funding known frauds.

Last edited: Sep 6, 2004
14. Sep 6, 2004

### Ivan Seeking

Staff Emeritus
Obviously the DOE feels that this deserves another look. My only argument is that no one here is qualified to dispute this decision. I expect that they will find nothing.

15. Sep 7, 2004

### K.J.Healey

I work at the DOE, Sandia Labs, but obviously not on cold fusion. But I have talked to a few physicists here who worked on the project back in the 80s. They all claim that they never really saw any evidence of the process working beyond the error bars for enviromental effects. I'll have to ask them what they think of this.

16. Sep 28, 2004

### polyb

Cold Fusion Back From the Dead ???

I came across this one from the IEEE Spectrum online site. It seems that the USN has been carrying on with the research that was debunked 15 years ago. Apparently they have produced results consistent with the claims made by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann. Here is the link:

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/sep04/0904nfus.html [Broken]

Also, here is the paper presented at the Tenth International Conference on Cold Fusion, who would have guessed that there were any conferences on this topic! The link:

Thermal behavior of polarized Pd/D electrodes prepared

What do you guys think? Is the Navy trying to justify more funding for a dead-end research program or are they really onto something. It does seem plausible that they do have a motivated interest in the cold fusion claim considering it would be useful in military transport with a much lower risk than current nuclear propulsion devices.

Last edited by a moderator: May 1, 2017
17. Sep 28, 2004

### Staff: Mentor

This has been discussed before, so I'll be brief. You need to be a little careful that you don't read into this more than they actually say. For example:
Where in the article does it say that?
Why not? There are conferences on everything else - ET, perpetual motion machines, ghosts, ESP, etc. Just having a conference doesn't say anything at all about who is there or the legitimacy of what goes on there.
The article says the Navy is doing some research, but it doesn't say the Navy is behind the "panel of experts" making a presentation to the DOE.

The DOE may well say there is an electrochemical process at work that's worth studying, but I'd be extremely surprised if it has any connection with actual fusion. About the only thing we can be sure of from P&F's incident a decade ago is that they did not see any fusion take place.

18. Sep 28, 2004

### Ivan Seeking

Staff Emeritus
Note that I merged polyb's new post with this thread.

19. Sep 28, 2004

### polyb

Sorry about that guys, I didnt see the other posting.

20. Sep 28, 2004

### Ivan Seeking

Staff Emeritus
No problem.