Cold Fusion

[Sionyn]

At the recent “Atom Unexplored” conference in Torino Italy, Dr. Peter Hagelstein of MIT gave a presentation about some of his work in the field of low energy nuclear reaction research, concentrating on the work of his colleague Dr. Mitchell Swartz. Swartz has invented a palladium-based device he names a NANOR. When an electric current is passed through the palladium, excess energy in the form of heat is produced which, according to Hagelstein, is over 14 times the input energy

part one
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part two


part three

[IanB]

I'll watch them later when I have time.

There are huge arguments over whether this is real science or quackery. I'm surprised to see a mention of MIT here.

As I understand it the major issue is over the lack of a plausible mechanism. It's not enough to claim results, there needs to be a way of explaining those results. I have the impression the claimed results are marginal and unverifiable, which combined with lack of a mechanism leads to the current level of skepticism.

[A-sic Enginerd]

Hehe, I still remember the last time something like this was let loose.
I was working at LLNL at the time and every group on site did a little spin-off on the side to try and replicate the claimed results.

As a mechanical tech (at the time), it did make for some fun times on the job not to mention crap loads of OT pay. Definitely one of the most fun times I've ever had on the job.

Then the boys in Utah figured out they weren't reading their equip correctly or it was a calibration problem.

[Psi]

As I understand it the major issue is over the lack of a plausible mechanism. It's not enough to claim results, there needs to be a way of explaining those results.

Yeah, this is one place were science fails.  The tendency to ridicule something only because there is no mechanism for it to function. As if science knows all mechanisms in existence.

[IanB]

Yeah, this is one place were science fails.  The tendency to disbelieve something only because there is no mechanism for it to function. As if science knows all mechanisms already.

I don't know that this means science fails. But if you have observations that seem to go against existing theory, then you need those observations to be repeatable by different workers and to have strong statistical significance. Once different people are sure they can observe the same thing at different times by following the same recipe, then everyone can start looking for a mechanism. Without good evidence, it would be like looking for a ghost in the dark.

[Psi]

I don't know that this means science fails.

yeah, maybe fails was the wrong word.  But it's something that annoys me about science. It should be more open to the unknown, including the unknown unknown

Once different people are sure they can observe the same thing at different times by following the same recipe, then everyone can start looking for a mechanism.

That kind of limits discoveries to things that are the "next logical step", were mechanisms are understandable.
It makes it very hard to make large jumps in science. Situations where reproducing the experiment somewhere else requires knowledge we don't yet have. For example, maybe something only works due to some yet unknown environmental factor in the location. Then repeating it in other locations without understanding this will result in failure 99% of the time.

There's an almost infinite number of variables which will be different when someone reproduces something.
And there's an assumption that control over all these variables is possible, which it isn't.
There is only ever control over the variables which are known and deemed important based on current knowledge.

[Kremmen]

I don't know that this means science fails.

yeah, maybe fails was the wrong word.  But it's something that annoys me about science. It should be more open to the unknown, including the unknown unknown

Please don't confuse "science" with individuals. The guiding principle of science is to increase knowledge by exploring the unknown. That some people have their fixed ideas and opinions does not change this basic tenet in any way. On the other hand you must be familiar with the concept of "scientific rigor". Making claims that remain unsubstantiated by the scientific community is worthless to science because knowledge is an open common resource and one of the critical signs is that results are repeatable. There is no way around this principle.

Once different people are sure they can observe the same thing at different times by following the same recipe, then everyone can start looking for a mechanism.

That kind of limits discoveries to things that are the "next logical step", were mechanisms are understandable.
It makes it very hard to make large jumps in science. Situations where reproducing the experiment somewhere else requires knowledge we don't yet have. For example, maybe something only works due to some yet unknown environmental factor in the location. Then repeating it in other locations without understanding this will result in failure 99% of the time.

No. IanB is exactly right. You _must_ be able to repeat an experiment and get the same result. If you read carefully, he specifically did not suggest that a mechamism must be known already when demonstrating a phenomenon. That principle places no limitations to what kind of discoveries may be made, only that they must be repeatable. Anything else is alchemy. If other scientists cannot repeat the results of one group even after they have the description of the test arrangement there are only 2 options: even the original group does not understand what they are doing, or they are committing fraud. Putting deception aside for a moment, in the first case failure to repeat the test is a good thing. It either shows that understanding of the test is incomplete or that the phenomenon under test is not real. Either case provides a way forward to understanding the case better.

There's an almost infinite number of variables which will be different when someone reproduces something.
And there's an assumption that control over all these variables is possible, which it isn't.
There is only ever control over the variables which are known and deemed important based on current knowledge.

Freely quoting Einstein: Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler. It turns out time after time that out of the near infinite ways you can arrange an experiment, only a tiny subset is actually significant. If someone makes discovery using a test arrangement, and nobody else get anything then Occam's razor favors the assumption that there isn't anything there. It is always possible that the discovery is real after all, but exactly for that reason other guns are brought to bear. The main one of these is the body of scientific theory. When scientists use this word they don't mean "hypothesis" or assumption, they mean an explanation of a part of nature confirmed by observation and what's more, an explanation that permits prediction of future outcomes of experiments. The familiar Ohm's law is one trivial example. If an experimental result contradicts a theory it automatically means that one or the other is wrong or incomplete; there is no other alternative. Certain physical theories have more solid experimental confirmation than others. In some cases the theory is more like a framework where future results may very well cause adjustments in the more hazy areas. An example of this is the theory of the nature and dimensionality of the cosmos, i.e. whether the universe is convex, flat or concave and in how many dimensions.
One of the scientific theories with the best experimental confirmation is QED and the associated "standard model" of subatomic particles. The theory and measurements agree to a ridiculous number of decimal places (say 9 out of memory). Posting a result that grossly contradicts this model is tantamount to scientific suicide. And not because everybody is close minded and doesn't want to listen, but because it is _known_ how the world works in this area. Contradicting it is like trying to prove that 1+1=3.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. So far nothing like that has emerged and it would be a personal shock if it did. There are other experiments of cold fusion where copper-nickel transmutation effect was claimed as the source of the excess energy. Typically, science does not know a mechanism for such reaction and even if it was forced, it is trivially easy to see from the long established tables of nuclear binding energies that if you succeeded, the reaction would be endothermic i.e. the energy would go the other way. But then the guys were not scientists, more like stage magicians relying on tricks to make it look so. Another giveaway was that their process fluids kept getting contaminated by copper ions. Anyone understanding even a bit of electrochemistry could make an instant guess that somewhere they were electrolysing something to get excess energy to appear somewhere else.
I believe in cold fusion when somebody inputs a megawatt into a box on a stand and gets 14 megawatts out. Playing with microwatts or something makes errors and tricks far too easy.

[ejeffrey]

As I understand it the major issue is over the lack of a plausible mechanism. It's not enough to claim results, there needs to be a way of explaining those results. I have the impression the claimed results are marginal and unverifiable, which combined with lack of a mechanism leads to the current level of skepticism.

I haven't read up on this particular result, but I have read several other cold fusion papers, most recently the series by Andrea Rossi (which in my opinion are most likely fraud, not simply ignorance or honest error).

The problem is both lack of a claimed mechanism and negligently bad methodology.  The results are usually not marginal: the excess energy claims are often 200% or more (although they are rarely too far beyond what could be explained by chemical reactions).  They are just completely untrustworthy.  Every time someone claims 'excess heat' from a system like this, they use very poor calorimetry, poor enough that their heat measurements are completely useless.  Other scientists point this out, and they steadfastly ignore the point or claim that "calorimetry is hard, we need $$$ to do it differently, and besides this is only a minor point"

So the a common way for LENR researchers to measure excess heat is by steam generation.  They have a vessel of water, they do their reaction, they see that steam is generated, and they see what mass of water is turned into steam in a given period of time.  They then multiply by the heat of vaporization of water, and they get an energy.  They divide that by the electrical input (current * voltate) to find the excess power.

This sounds great at the freshman physics level, but in practice it is really inaccurate.  The problem is that the steam contains water mist.  Because steam is so much less dense than water, if 10% of the mass turns into steam and 90% is in water droplets, it still looks like steam but the amount of energy will be wrong by nearly 90%.  The proper way to measure heat output is to use a heat exchanger that recondenses the steam to water and measure the temperature rise of the coolant flowing through the heat exchanger.  This is an added complication, but it is at the level of a 4 month bachelor student project or a long weekend for an experienced scientist/engineer with a well equipped laboratory.  The cost and complexity to get a reliable number for the heat output that is accurate to a few % is simply not that much, but LENR/cold fusion community doesn't seem to want to do this -- the charitable explanation is that they are stupid and the cynical explanation is that they know it would kill their results.  Generally their response to questions about calorimetry is something along the lines of recalibrating their multimeters or temeprature sensors -- completely missing the point.

A quick alternative to proper calorimetry that would demonstrate that their system is flawed is simply to do a proper control experiment.  Run the current through their setup without their magic fusion catalyst and measure the heat output.  In this case, the heat output should match the electrical input.  If they still show excess energy, it is proof that their calorimetry is faulty.  None of the papers I have read on the subject do this properly.

Believe me, if someone came out with substantial excess heat measurements using good methodology and in a reproducible way, most scientists would be skeptical but they would come around pretty quickly.

It is instructive to remember that the first report of cold fusion and the first report of high Tc superconductivity came out at nearly the same time.  Both were considered to be "impossible" at the time according to what we understood of physics.  High Tc superconductivity was quickly reproduced and became a major research area, while cold fusion was exposed as a fraud.  It isn't like the scientific community is unable to accept new ideas.

[Time]

I have not yet watched these videos but what always gets me about cold fusion is how they all just inexplicably over come the coulomb barrier.   As a qualified plasma physicists I feel its safe to say almost all cold fusion concepts are worthless or fraudulent.

[Kremmen]

I have not yet watched these videos but what always gets me about cold fusion is how they all just inexplicably over come the coulomb barrier.   As a qualified plasma physicists I feel its safe to say almost all cold fusion concepts are worthless or fraudulent.

I did watch the first linked video now. That left me wondering about that exact same issue. The presentation was just words spoken into a mic and very repetitive so it is a bit difficult to judge exactly what the key point was. However, at one point he clearly spoke about turning deuterium or tritium into helium. Now that would be classical hot fusion. In cold fusion one is not supposed to have the kinetic energy to overcome the Coulomb barrier so how are they supposed to get the particles together? By pushing?

[ejeffrey]

I have not yet watched these videos but what always gets me about cold fusion is how they all just inexplicably over come the coulomb barrier.

Some of them are just frauds.  They don't care because they can scam investors who don't understand physics and are too greedy to approach the matter objectively.

Some of them don't understand the coulomb barrier.  They envision themselves as inventors in the style of Edison.  They don't have a strong grasp of physics, and they believe they can make up for it by exhaustive experimentation.  This would be fine if they were experimentally rigorous, but they aren't.  At least the experimentally rigorous ones never have cold fusion results.

Some of them have methods in mind but don't have the hard calculations that would show it won't work.  This would be like electrostatic screening by the host electrode or by taking momentum from the lattice in some kind of inverse mossbauer effect.  Without examining the energy, size, and length scales involved, these mechanisms are at least plausible, but if you actually calculate it they won't work.

[MikeK]

That reminds me...I wonder how the spray-on antenna guy is doing.  And if he's gotten to the point yet of "Everybody's conspiring against me to kill this revolutionary technology!"

[G7PSK]

Surely there is one big test for all this, If it worked somewhere someone would have a mushroom cloud over their garage.
Cold fusion would not stay cold for very long as the amount of energy released would soon heat every thing up and there would come a point of thermal runaway without the facility to remove vast quantity of energy.

[siliconmix]

That reminds me...I wonder how the spray-on antenna guy is doing.  And if he's gotten to the point yet of "Everybody's conspiring against me to kill this revolutionary technology!"

i think he has become a graffiti artist in the wake of government suppresion of his idea.plus he had to find a use for all those aerosol cans.

[Gall]

The generation of energy does not proof anything at all. There are many other effects that are not related to nuclear fusion. Even a thermocouple may produce some energy.

The one and only proof of nuclear fusion is neutron radiation originating from the reactor. If no neutrons are registered, it's not a fusion.

[G7PSK]

Or a higher percentage of helium in you hydrogen than you started with, no helium no fusion unless you are trying to get fusion in heavier elements.

[ejeffrey]

The generation of energy does not proof anything at all. There are many other effects that are not related to nuclear fusion. Even a thermocouple may produce some energy.

The one and only proof of nuclear fusion is neutron radiation originating from the reactor. If no neutrons are registered, it's not a fusion.

Sufficient excess energy would be good enough for me, although neutrons would be clear and easy to detect signal.  Typical cold fusion reports have fictional energy output that is above what you could reasonably get from a chemical reaction, although not by a huge margin.  Since their energy measurements are worthless, we are saved from having to figure out where they energy comes from.

Or a higher percentage of helium in you hydrogen than you started with, no helium no fusion unless you are trying to get fusion in heavier elements.

The amount of helium notionally produced is tiny.  I wouldn't trust helium measurements simply because they would be too prone to contamination.

[Gall]

Sufficient excess energy would be good enough for me, although neutrons would be clear and easy to detect signal.  Typical cold fusion reports have fictional energy output that is above what you could reasonably get from a chemical reaction, although not by a huge margin.  Since their energy measurements are worthless, we are saved from having to figure out where they energy comes from.

The biggest problem in energy measurements is that it IS possible to "violate" the conservation energy law for a short time. Many physical systems may act as some sort of capacitor releasing stored energy. There are "perpetuum mobile"-like systems that use this principle.

It is important to find from where the energy originates. The chemical reaction is out of our interest since we already know how to make energy from a chemical reaction. Other sources of energy are not really sources, they are just capacitors releasing what we pumped in during the warm-up stage.

There is a experiment well-known between physicists regarding superconductivity. It was claimed that under a very high pressure polyethilene turns into a superconductor at room temperature. Polyethylene was used for a source of hydrogen atoms, and existence of crystallic hydrogen in superconductive metal state was expected. Some sceptic found that if a fried potato is installed in place of polyethylene it shows superconductivity as well. later it turned out that there was no effect at all, just the wires of the ohmmeter have been shorted by the high pressure.

This illustrates that no observation of any single effect is enough to prove anything. One always has to use at least two different methods of measurements since any single method may give false positive effect under certain circumstances. Thus observation of resistance loss is not enough to prove superconductivity, Meissner effect measurement is mandatory. In case of nuclear fusion, observation of "excess energy" is not enough, observation of radiation is mandatory. Or at least two completely different methods should be used to observe excess energy. Usually it is easier to observe radiation.