“Cold fusion” moves closer to mainstream acceptance

http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/content?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PP_ARTICLEMAIN&node_id=222&content_id=CNBP_024353&use_sec=true&sec_url_var=region1&__uuid=

by limist • 16 years ago

32 40 16 years ago

portal.acs.org

hendler• 16 years ago

Mostly, I'm glad this isn't the Adobe technology.

hackernews2• 16 years ago

Not sure why anyone would vote this backhanded comment up.

noodle2• 16 years ago

odds are because they've developed stuff with ColdFusion before.

RevRal• 16 years ago

I upvoted it because it was my exact sentiment.

When I saw the submission title, I thought "oh no." And then I felt relief that it was not about the CF platform.

Coldfusion was pretty bad when it was first introduced, and it hasn't improved much. I've been dodging it for years, but some of my friends haven't been so lucky. Each of them hates it, and one had even quit his job because his employer didn't want to give it up.

Yes, I would be sad if CF became "mainstream" again and I had to learn it. If I recall correctly, everyone needed ColdFusion when it was first introduced, and it is only barely alive due to that initial boom.

maxharris• 16 years ago

Normally, I don't like backhanded comments. But Adobe's recent products (post Macromedia merger) are so bad that it's OK to jab at them (because it's true!)

andrewcooke5• 16 years ago

Not one of the listed papers was a successful reproduction of someone else's published work.

Estragon2• 16 years ago

Well, very few published papers are. Reproduction of others' work is usually a foundational preliminary to original research.

andrewcooke5• 16 years ago

We're talking about cold fusion, right? Maybe things have changed, but I was under the impression that it was not yet possible to reliably reproduce the effects. In such a context, reproduction would be quite noteworthy.

thaumaturgy2• 16 years ago

One of my clients is working somewhere in this field; they're having a much easier time recruiting new scientists and other personnel, and they are well funded.

An NDA prevents me from saying much else, but I think I can say that the field is better developed than many people realize.

mechanical_fish• 16 years ago

There is also lots of money in homeopathy. It's a going concern.

Then there's fundamentalist religious education. Plenty of funding there. Lots of impressively architected buildings. People with advanced degrees.

Recruitment, funding, and NDAs are but one metric of success.

thaumaturgy2• 16 years ago

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply private funding.

rauljara• 16 years ago

"some describe cold fusion as the 'Fleishmann-Pons Effect' in honor of the pioneers, Marwan noted."

Really? In honor of the possibly-crazy-but-much-more-likely-liars-and-con men whose experiments couldn't even come close to being replicated. The whole article acts like any current research is a vindication of Fleishmann and Pons, but honestly, if cold fusion ever does come to pass, it will be despite Fleishmann and Pons' fraudulent work. How much time and credibility was wasted trying to recreate that BS?

randallsquared• 16 years ago

liars-and-con men whose experiments couldn't even come close to being replicated.

Well, in the first few weeks after the announcement, several labs said they had replicated the experiment, so if Fleishmann and Pons were liars or con men, I suppose we must assume a vast conspiracy of such across several notable institutions... well, that or some people were excited, mistaken, and desperately wanted to find evidence of something that apparently wasn't there.

Bad results -- even replication of results ultimately found to be bad -- do not require liars, only error.

noodle2• 16 years ago

cold fusion won't move any closer to mainstream acceptance until people can start to show any examples of positive net energy cold fusion, either in the lab or in nature.

or, alternatively, show that it is possible to do coldER fusion. just, show that there's a process with the possibility of scaling down.

domgblackwell• 16 years ago

Exactly. Cold fusion is not necessarily 'junk science' but until someone uses it to generate net energy it is an interesting theoretical idea rather than solid science on which real world technology can be built.

limist3• 16 years ago

Doubters and such should note several things about this press release:

1. It's from the American Chemical Society. While no one is infallible, they're not exactly flakes.

2. There are some serious names and institutions involved. Same caveat as 1.

3. Ask yourself if your doubts are based on hearsay of hearsay. Unless you are a nuclear chemist or physicist who has tried experimentally to produce low energy nuclear reactions without success, maybe there are reasons research has continued for so many years in the face of overwhelming public and professional ridicule.

andrewcooke5• 16 years ago

Isn't the fact that it's interesting, and that the pay-off would be huge, reason enough? The idea that there is a confirmed, reliable, reproducible effect, but that people are hiding that, seems a little odd.

You seem to be confusing being hopeful or popular with being (proven) right.

limist3• 16 years ago

If you are referring to my point 3, there are plenty of problems (cancer, biotech, AI, energy) that are both interesting, and have the possibility of a large pay-off, while NOT suffering ridicule from the mainstream - in fact, while enjoying some respect. Most researchers will (quite rationally) choose career options that are interesting, potentially valuable, and safe.

Sure, cold fusion is interesting, and has the chance of a big pay-off, but it also presents enormous problems to a would-be researcher, including lack of funding, dismissive colleagues, and ignorant pseudo-skepticism from the public. For a professional scientist to pursue it in the face of such problems require more than faith and courage; it probably requires at least some evidence they've seen with their own eyes. If you're interested, lookup Francesco Scaramuzzi and Julian Schwinger along with keywords of "cold fusion."

ars• 16 years ago

> Ask yourself if your doubts are based on hearsay of hearsay. Unless you are a nuclear chemist or physicist who has tried experimentally to produce low energy nuclear reactions without success

And what if my doubts are based on my fathers work, who did actually try to reproduce this experimentally? And published the failure in Fusion Technology? And I went to the lab and saw the equipment too.

Basically the problem with the experiments is that no one does the calorimetry correctly. And especially that people do not calculate the Faraday Efficiency of the electrolysis, and so show excess heat when there is none.

tzs• 16 years ago

A few years ago, David Goodstein of Caltech wrote an interesting look back at cold fusion. It's available here: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/fusion_art.html

Where the story left off, there were a few competent researchers with well-designed experiments that were getting indications that something was happening that was not covered by current theory. However, cold fusion research was by then out of fashion, and no one was interested in looking deeper into those results and confirming or refuting them.

As Goodstein notes, "What all these experiments really need is critical examination by accomplished rivals intent on proving them wrong. That is part of the normal functioning of science. Unfortunately, in this area, science is not functioning normally. There is nobody out there listening."

rbanffy6• 16 years ago

"the first inexpensive means of identifying the hallmark of cold fusion reactions: the production of excess heat"

Shouldn't it be excess neutrons?

curtis• 16 years ago

If they can reliably produce excess heat from these experiments, I don't think we care if it's due to fusion or not. It would certainly be something we want to study.

rbanffy6• 16 years ago

It could be something worth of study, but, unless there is Helium or neutrons, it's not cold fusion.

The Hagelstein explanation seems interesting, but, again, unless we see some nuclear fusion, those guys are studying something completely different. Not to say uninteresting, but not what we could call nuclear fusion.

ph0rque• 16 years ago

"The presentations describe... indications that cold fusion may occur naturally in certain bacteria."

Are you serious? This boggles my mind more than anything about how bio systems work in nature in the last few years...

“Cold fusion” moves closer to mainstream acceptance

Related Stories