'Cold fusion' rebirth? New evidence for existence of controversial energy source
March 23, 2009
An experimental "cold fusion" device produced this pattern of "triple tracks" (shown at right), which scientists say is caused by high-energy nuclear particles resulting from a nuclear reaction Credit: Pam Boss, Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR)
Researchers are reporting compelling new scientific evidence for the existence of low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR), the process once called "cold fusion" that may promise a new source of energy. One group of scientists, for instance, describes what it terms the first clear visual evidence that LENR devices can produce neutrons, subatomic particles that scientists view as tell-tale signs that nuclear reactions are occurring.
Low-energy nuclear reactions could potentially provide 21st Century society a limitless and environmentally-clean energy source for generating electricity, researchers say. The report, which injects new life into this controversial field, will be presented here today at the American Chemical Society's 237th National Meeting. It is among 30 papers on the topic that will be presented during a four-day symposium, "New Energy Technology," March 22-25, in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the first description of cold fusion.
"Our finding is very significant," says study co-author and analytical chemist Pamela Mosier-Boss, Ph.D., of the U.S. Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) in San Diego, Calif. "To our knowledge, this is the first scientific report of the production of highly energetic neutrons from an LENR device."
The first report on "cold fusion," presented in 1989 by Martin Fleishmann and Stanley Pons, was a global scientific sensation. Fusion is the energy source of the sun and the stars. Scientists had been striving for years to tap that power on Earth to produce electricity from an abundant fuel called deuterium that can be extracted from seawater. Everyone thought that it would require a sophisticated new genre of nuclear reactors able to withstand temperatures of tens of millions of degrees Fahrenheit.
Pons and Fleishmann, however, claimed achieving nuclear fusion at comparatively "cold" room temperatures — in a simple tabletop laboratory device termed an electrolytic cell.
But other scientists could not reproduce their results, and the whole field of research declined. A stalwart cadre of scientists persisted, however, seeking solid evidence that nuclear reactions can occur at low temperatures. One of their problems involved extreme difficulty in using conventional electronic instruments to detect the small number of neutrons produced in the process, researchers say.
In the new study, Mosier-Boss and colleagues inserted an electrode composed of nickel or gold wire into a solution of palladium chloride mixed with deuterium or "heavy water" in a process called co-deposition. A single atom of deuterium contains one neutron and one proton in its nucleus.
Researchers passed electric current through the solution, causing a reaction within seconds. The scientists then used a special plastic, CR-39, to capture and track any high-energy particles that may have been emitted during reactions, including any neutrons emitted during the fusion of deuterium atoms.
At the end of the experiment, they examined the plastic with a microscope and discovered patterns of "triple tracks," tiny-clusters of three adjacent pits that appear to split apart from a single point. The researchers say that the track marks were made by subatomic particles released when neutrons smashed into the plastic. Importantly, Mosier-Boss and colleagues believe that the neutrons originated in nuclear reactions, perhaps from the combining or fusing deuterium nuclei.
"People have always asked 'Where's the neutrons?'" Mosier-Boss says. "If you have fusion going on, then you have to have neutrons. We now have evidence that there are neutrons present in these LENR reactions."
They cited other evidence for nuclear reactions including X-rays, tritium (another form of hydrogen), and excess heat. Meanwhile, Mosier-Boss and colleagues are continuing to explore the phenomenon to get a better understanding of exactly how LENR works, which is key to being able to control it for practical purposes.
Mosier-Boss points out that the field currently gets very little funding and, despite its promise, researchers can't predict when, or if, LENR may emerge from the lab with practical applications. The U.S. Department of the Navy and JWK International Corporation in Annandale, Va., funded the study.
Source: American Chemical Society (news : web)
Jan 12, 2006 |
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"One of their problems involved extreme difficulty in using conventional electronic instruments to detect the small number of neutrons produced in the process" I would like to find out if they took background readings first. Also, Gold, palladium and deuterium are all extremely expensive elements and wouldn't be practical on a large scale.
We should ask, why is it so. Why for example Arata's tabletop coldfusion experiments weren't attempted to replicate after one year?
http://physicswor...p_1.html
Should we stop ITER project, because deuterium is an "extremely expensive element"? Palladium is cheaper than platinum, for example - which is used in every car.
How much exactly of science is a matter of belief? lol
(might just be the phrasing)
Hydrinos rule. OK?
I found it interesting that this is old news; why havn't they made progress?
I could show you Popular Science magazines, decades old, talking about the same thing!
http://www.ground...e-energy
It's difficult to make progress in a field where funding is almost non-existent, where patent offices refuse to patent and where the best journals refuse to publish. Regardless of one's opinions of where the science is headed, science should be a process of open communication.
In all of these cases, very small effects are observed that cannot be made stronger. It's a common hallmark of an experimental problem.
Don't get me wrong, if someone did figure this out, it would be amazing, but I'm going to remain skeptical until I see some confirmation that includes a better description for error control.
It also would be nice, once in a while, if someone mentioned the circumstances under which the original cold fusion research was killed. Hundreds of labs around the world found that there was no effect (at a cost of $100 million), and Pons and Fleishmann themselves never actually managed to produce any energy from the thing, in spite of numerous claims that they could make a water boiler from their device. It was a fraud, plain and simple.
"Hundreds of labs around the world found that there was no effect (at a cost of $100 million), and Pons and Fleishmann themselves never actually managed to produce any energy from the thing . . ."
This is complete nonsense. Hundreds of major labs such as Los Alamos and BARC replicated thousands of times. They published 3,000 papers, including several hundred in mainstream, peer-reviewed journals such as J. Electroanal. Chem. You can read these papers in any university library.
Assertions about science should be based on peer-reviewed journal papers and other reliable sources, not rumors or the writer's imagination.
You can read hundreds of papers about cold fusion here: lenr-canr.org
It's all fairly well summed up in the ERAB report, here:
http://www.ncas.org/erab/
Again, if there is an effect, why has noone improved on it substantially in 20 years? If this really was producing energy, what possible reason would there be to cover it up or ignore it?
If this (cold fusion, not necessarily the particular research done in this article) is an effect that is real, any lab should be able to take one of these devices, hook it up, and measure the results. Instead it only seems to work when the true believers try it. That's more than a little fishy.
Note that this is a minimum bar.
IMHO viable fusion power will come from radio frequency induced plasma reactions. Cold fusion apparently does not occur in nature. We should therefore focus research on hot fusions. Once we have mastered that then we should start looking for cold fusion (if it even exists).
He has the answer to how to pry money out of the gullible. There is nothing on the Blacklight claiming cold fusion. They are claiming the favorite of con-artists everywhere. Energy from water and with a magic chemical process.
Ethelred
It is also true that the Offices of the US Naval Academy of Research have been supporting and showing that 'cold fusion' worked back then...and still works..and showing how and why... for twenty years.
Now, you folks go out and think about that for a while..and then you might understand that when about 50-200 trillion dollars and more of global control, direction of humanity..and 'who gets to be in charge'..why there might be a large amount of infighting and hidden knives between the various branches of the differing groups who hold the greatest sway in the world today.
CNN, wall street and World News reporting agencies (who owns them, anyway-a bunch of rich men?), and public announcements from government offices really don't count for much in comparison to that whole hidden world (when it comes to the general public being informed).
As for the previous poster...... the alchemists have been working with simple chemical processes at the nano scale level for over 12,000 years and to this day-have bested everything you know of, with regards to chemical transmutation, nanoscale, and alloy works involving chemistry.
Get a brain son, the world does not revolve around what is in textbooks-it revolves around what is NOT. For you own health and future-you should spend some time growing up real soon.
"Cui Bono?", as they say in Latin..'Who Benefits?"
Follow the money...follow the technology..follow who owns what in today's world ---and there you find your answers.
You are not looking closely enough, and you are allowing your emotional impressions of potentials in logic --to dictate realities to your mind.
It really is as simple as that.
The government was interested in it as a source of tritium since that stuff is expensive. No one ever had clear signs of heat production. It was all dependent on very sketchy calculations. There were some experiments with very low levels of tritium production. Very, very low as in barely detectable.
Or maybe you could ease up on the conspiracy theories and get in touch with the physical evidence. The political realities wouldn't hurt either. The US is pissing away billions on foreign every year if its all a conspiracy. The AEC could have the tritium for the Fusion bombs cheap. The Navy could have an all fusion powered fleet. There wouldn't be Americans dying in Iraq.
It would be nice if Cold Fusion worked at a more than trivial level. There is no evidence to support it ever having done so.
Heck if it worked the French wouldn't have blocked it. They don't have oil. They have to buy it all.
Ethelred
http://www.physor...157.html
Pons and Flieshmann went to France as they were CHASED OUT of the US under threat. Toyota tried to help them, and the situation was crushed out of existence by the powers that be.
Where are you getting your news and stories? from the same folks who perpetrate the crimes?
No.
France is a bordered area, with government offices...that's about it. they are 'Fences of recognition' for cattle within the bordered area.
Other than that, it's controlled by about 20 or so men...who have stakes/ownership in other areas and places.
Same for the USA.
Borders and boxes are for cattle..the people who don't want to look at how the world really works.
Like I said - grow up. Look around. Look deeper.
No actual explosives were harmed in the experiment.
Its was a simulation. Till tested in reality its interesting but that's it.
No they got paid by the French. That is not being chased. The French wanted them and they got them. What they didn't get was any Cold Fusion or the French would be happily energy independent.
A better question is where are you getting your conspiracy nonsense from? The Lyndon LaRouche organization? Which published the most recent stuff I have seen on Cold Fusion. Even it couldn't pretend there was anything really exciting.
Ethelred
Well 50 million Frenchmen have been known to think so.
Are you aware that The DaVinci Code was fiction? That France has a long history of being independent even to its own detriment? Of being so incompetent politically that the idea of a SUCCESSFUL conspiracy involving the French is laughable? They couldn't even manage to stop Greenpeace without committing murder thereby embarrassing all of France.
Look deep into my eyes. There is no conspiracy. These aren't the droids you are looking for. There isn't a 12,000 year old history of alchemy.
No wait there really isn't a 12,000 year old history of alchemy. You made that up. Heck there isn't a single sign of a single city anywhere near that old. No towns no alchemists. Anyone claiming there was such a thing is seriously out of touch with reality.
And you posted that nonsense.
Again just where do you get this stuff from? Theosophy? Atlanteans whispering in your ear?
Ethelred
If it is choice one or choice two.. no matter. I'm done talking with psychological inbreds who can't challenge or negotiate the illiteracy of their minds.
Have a nice day.
False dichotomy.
The world simply didn't have any alchemists 12,000 years ago. Anyone claiming such is either trolling or short on contact reality.
Tell you what, post a link to some evidence instead running away and hiding when you get called out for shenanigans.
No links or evidence of any kind and you call ME a moron.
Have a nice delusion. Or post some proof.
Ethelred
Looking at all the hot gas recorded on this page, I would believe that Cold Fusion is already producing a lot of energy! Let us at least continue searching, and bicker less, so that some funding might be found.
As for the frauds, only reliably-repeatable phenomenon requires investigation. The rest can remain in the 'parlour room'.
http://nextbigfut...eat.html
Usage of CR-39 detector is nothing new in cold fusion research. The formation of alpha particle track was observed in 2006 already.
http://newenergyt...ET19.htm
Till now, nobody has attempted to replicate this effect again and San Diego is the only base, which is publishing some reports about it. While tokamak, stellarator or laser fusion devices are quite common in the world and they producing a number of publications every year. Money aren't apparently missing here.
Here's a video of hot spots, created by fusion nuclei, as observed in thermocamera.
http://www.lenr-c...Navy.htm
Again, no attempt to replicate these apparent observations was reported over last ten years. Whether is it more expensive to buy a thermocamera, then to build a tokamak? Has someone explanation for this anomaly?
If here's need to produce a nuclear weapons for example, no problem in organizing of trillion research in few years period occurs. Is search for elusive Higgs boson cheaper and more useful for human civilization, then the replacement of fossil fuels, which can lead to nuclear conflict and unrecoverable global warming and life environment pollution. What we have scientists for, after all? For writing of publications or for research?
Is someone responsible for these general priorities?
Try reading the latest publications first. It's the current level in thinking and the papers have up to date experimental results. Calling something fringe isn't really real science, it's name calling. What would be a well conceived experiment in your view? When Las Alamos has replicated the experiments, when Shell and Amoco replicated the experiments, when MIT, Stanford, Texas A&M, NRL, etc. have all had success, isn't it a little much to claim that the whole thing is fringe? Maybe not well understood, maybe a developing area, but fringe?
The energy isn't being released in a vacuum, it's being released in a crystal lattice. Phonons have be shown to play a role. Nuclear byproducts have been repeatedly detected, using standard methods. Energy release is detected in Plasmas, fluids, and solids.
If you don't want to or can't try to replicate the experiments, then just ignore the whole thing. Reality is independent of what we think of it, and I'm sure that good science will prevail in the end.
Yes but at barely detectable levels. Nothing that would point to significant quantities of heat being generated from fusion. A few or even a few dozen tritium atoms is not going to end world poverty. Or even light up a watch.
The catch is that large amounts of energy had been put into the system, far more than was ever released.
There are several people on this site that would disagree with you on that. As for the good science cold fusion has never produced sufficient signs of fusion to get anyone remotely realistic excited.
Sure was exiting a long time ago though. That was first time I ever read anything that was from the Internet. Someone with an internet connection was posting alt.cold.fusion(I think that was the usenet group name anyway) on his Amiga bulletin board.
Unfortunately no one has ever shown a sign of fusion at anything approaching dangerous levels much less useful. Yes, dangerous would come first. One of statistics being kept was the DGS number which remained at zero. Even after someone killed himself when he tried to release pressure from a cell that had just begun to rapidly heat up. That wasn't a Dead Grad Student so the DGS number remained at zero. And it was shrapnel not neutrons that killed him.
Since no one had ever used shielding in the early experiments if levels of fusion that matched the heat being claimed was caused by fusion there would have been Dead Grad Students. Maybe a lot other people as well.
Ethelred
Perhaps Edward Teller got it right - "I can understand how fusion could occur at the interface".
Explaining why some materials (catalysts) whether "Raney Nickel" or "pitted palladium" allow this process is neither here nor there.
Maybe its time to let Engineers build devices and leave the physicists to argue the finer points in ivory towers.
That is the problem. It IS explainable by means other than fusion. One guess is that the absorption of the hydrogen by the palladium stores a lot of the energy that is really pumped into the system. When the lattice reaches its physical limits the energy is released, sometimes fast enough to damage equipment.
Only if you believe that the energy that was pumped in was somehow dissipated instead of stored.
Well there has been some signs. Just at very low levels. Much lower than that claimed for the energy which has never exceeded the amount of electricity used in the experiment.
Well it will be darn hard to improve the process without an explanation. The alternative is basically to throw darts or roll dice.
Devices have been made. They haven't produced enough energy to excite anyone that had enough money. Money was spent on this early on. The results just didn't give anyone enough of a thrill.
If String tinkering wasn't so cheap to support it would have similar monetary support. Nearly none which is pretty much what it has beyond the cost of the teachers salary.
Ethelred
The only reason we never managed to prove the existance of invisible pink unicorns is the lack of funding?
It's even harder to make progress in a field where there is nothing to make progress in, nothing that demands an explanation.
It's a question of scientific priorities: the finding of Higgs boson would prove large group of theorists right, while the confirmation of could fusion would make a idiots from them. AWT explains the negativistic stance as an emergent phenomena, because it's cumulative: when every person in large crowd of people makes a tiny step against wall, the people near wall will become crashed with no mercy.
Aparently, scientific community isn't competent to lead scientific research in such case. Even if the negativism of every scientist remains infinitesimal, as a whole they're forming a rigid wall, which is prohibiting further progress in this area.
Most of the statements about "more power in than generated" hold equally well for hot fusion. In fact, one replicated Italian LENR experiment generated more excess power than all of the hot fusion experiments combined. Granted, the total output was less than 20 Watt hours, but still, compared to the hot fusion outputs, it's a monster.
As I said before, if a person isn't interested in replicating the experiments, then "no comment" would be in order, rather than attacking what isn't understood.
LENR stands today about where we were when the discussion of the "plum pudding model" of nuclear configurations was real science. They didn't have the theory right either, but the research went on. Models of fuzzy neutrons, fermi surface shielding, etc. may be postulated, after all, no one really understands what goes on in the lattice in terms of fields, or orbitals, or even modes of oscillation.
I expect that now that we know that a 1-0-0 crystal orientation with large domains is necessary for excess heat, that progress will be faster. Understanding the role contaminates play in damping reactions is also important. The DGS alluded to above is a real possibility if runaway fusion is possible. We don't know that it is, but building the demo in the stands below Soldier Field with a couple of grad students with liquid heavy metals in buckets for damping, isn't anything I'd propose, even though it worked for one pioneering experiment.
The upshot, since LENR is now viewed as Science, "driveby Physics" should be out.
Every cold fusion experiment that shows positive results has always been found to be flawed or unrepeatable.
It wasn't such as always, I admit - but this is a predictable evolution of every overgrown group.
http://tinyurl.com/cv9uno
Or do you really believe, a Nobel laureate may be so silly, he could forget these trivial checks and blind experiments? After all, even if we could admit for a moment, you're right - why nobody did even attempt to replicate this noise?
Now the only aspect of the current cold fusion experiments that intrigue me are the cr-34 experiments where they're finding evidence of gamma residue, problem is, no one has filtered the possible sources of noise entirely. Once they replicate this experiment and can account for all sources of excess noise then I'll be more willing to listen to the announcements of "cold fusion".
The nuclear chemist Mitch Andre Garcia showed by very easy calculations that cold fusion occurrence is theoretically impossible, from the laws of Quantum Mechanics, in a Chemistry Blog where he is the administrator.
However cold fusion is theoretically impossible because Quantum Mechanics does not consider the zitterbewegung (zbw) as a helical trajectory of the electron (the zitterbewegung appears in the Dirac equation of the electron, but the quantum physicists did not interpret the zbw as a helical trajectory).
By interpreting the zitterbewegung from a new viewpoint, by considering it as a helical trajectory of the electron, cold fusion becomes theoreticall possible, as Guglinski has shown to Mitch Andre Garcia, along a discussion in the topic %u201CTHE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COLD FUSION AND COLD FUSION%u201D, which can be seen in the link:
http://www.chemic...=17140.0
Look at the Guglinski%u2019s « Reply #8 on: September 24, 2007 ».
So the chemists are now getting knowledge that cold fusion is theoretically possible thanks to the adoption of the new interpretation for the zitterbewegung, and they are undertaking the performance of cold fusion experiments, because it seems that they dont trust in the viewpoint of the physicists.
Clearly, there is a dispute %u201CCHEMISTS vs PHYSICISTS%u201D, and it seems that the controversy on cold fusion will be finally resolved, but not by the physicists.
The new duel chemists vs physicists has ideological origin. The physicits keep their loyalty to Quantum Mechanics, because they dont accept to change their interpretation on the zitterbewegung, since such a changing requires a very deep modification in the foundations of Modern Physics (the zbw cannot be considered as a helical trajetory in Quantum Field Theory, which is the successor of Quantum Mechanics).
Unlike, the chemists keep their loyalty to the scientific method, according to which any experiment cannot be neglected only because it defies the principles of a theory, as happens now in this duel between Quantum Mechanics and cold fusion.
Such new participation of chemists is healthy to science%u2019s develolpment. Because as the physicists have some dogmas which they consider unsourmantable (as for instance their interpretation of the zitterbewegung in Quantum Field Theory), the development of cold fusion requires scientists free of dogmas of Physics, as the chemists.
In few words, we have to consider the following situation:
1- as cold fusion is impossible by considering the interpretation of zitterbewegung in Quantum Field Theory...
2- ... but as the experiments prove that cold fusion really occurs, as confirmed now by the experiments made in the US Navy...
3- ... then there is need to change the interpretation on the zitterbewegung (a new alternative that chemists probably will take in consideration starting from now)...
4- ... instead of neglecting the cold fusion experiments (as the physicists insist to do).
The nuclear chemist Mitch Andre Garcia showed by very easy calculations that cold fusion occurrence is theoretically impossible, from the laws of Quantum Mechanics, in a Chemistry Blog where he is the administrator.
However cold fusion is theoretically impossible because Quantum Mechanics does not consider the zitterbewegung (zbw) as a helical trajectory of the electron (the zitterbewegung appears in the Dirac equation of the electron, but the quantum physicists did not interpret the zbw as a helical trajectory).
By interpreting the zitterbewegung from a new viewpoint, by considering it as a helical trajectory of the electron, cold fusion becomes theoreticall possible, as Guglinski has shown to Mitch Andre Garcia, along a discussion in the topic %u201CTHE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COLD FUSION AND COLD FUSION%u201D, which can be seen in the link:
http://www.chemic...=17140.0
Look at the Guglinski%u2019s « Reply #8 on: September 24, 2007 ».
So the chemists are now getting knowledge that cold fusion is theoretically possible thanks to the adoption of the new interpretation for the zitterbewegung, and they are undertaking the performance of cold fusion experiments, because it seems that they dont trust in the viewpoint of the physicists.
Clearly, there is a dispute %u201CCHEMISTS vs PHYSICISTS%u201D, and it seems that the controversy on cold fusion will be finally resolved, but not by the physicists.
The new duel chemists vs physicists has ideological origin. The physicits keep their loyalty to Quantum Mechanics, because they dont accept to change their interpretation on the zitterbewegung, since such a changing requires a very deep modification in the foundations of Modern Physics (the zbw cannot be considered as a helical trajetory in Quantum Field Theory, which is the successor of Quantum Mechanics).
Unlike, the chemists keep their loyalty to the scientific method, according to which any experiment cannot be neglected only because it defies the principles of a theory, as happens now in this duel between Quantum Mechanics and cold fusion.
Such new participation of chemists is healthy to science%u2019s develolpment. Because as the physicists have some dogmas which they consider unsourmantable (as for instance their interpretation of the zitterbewegung in Quantum Field Theory), the development of cold fusion requires scientists free of dogmas of Physics, as the chemists.
In few words, we have to consider the following situation:
1- as cold fusion is impossible by considering the interpretation of zitterbewegung in Quantum Field Theory...
2- ... but as the experiments prove that cold fusion really occurs, as confirmed now by the experiments made in the US Navy...
3- ... then there is need to change the interpretation on the zitterbewegung (a new alternative that chemists probably will take in consideration starting from now)...
4- ... instead of neglecting the cold fusion experiments (as the physicists insist to do).
Another comment says that numerous experiements have been done underground to show that noise was the basis of the "excess heat." I'd be delighted to see the published papers. Are any of them done in the last two years?
When a simple diffusion of D2 through a nano-particle matrix yields 100 mW of excess power for over 10 hours, with an excellent experimental configuration, there's not much room for argument. Replication of the experiment is required to show a null result, lip flapping doesn't cut it.
Oh, and the experiment was a replication of Arata's demonstration last May. So it was in quantitative fact proof that Arata's demonstration worked as stated.
I'd like to see a hot fusion experiment shown which has yielded 1 watt-hour of energy.
No, excess Gamma Ray intrusion. One product of any fusion reaction is gamma radiation. That is the foot print of whether the end resultants of fusion are actually being created or not.
And as for 1 watt hour of energy, you should do some current reading on the GE Fusion pattern plant in Seoul.
nice to hear!
car industry on the Huffington Post. Interesting
opinion, here is a link.
http://www.huffin...315.html