Cold fusion experimentally confirmed

[FarCenter]

EE Times - R. Colin Johnson (03/23/2009 8:43 PM EDT)

PORTLAND, Ore. — U.S. Navy researchers claimed to have experimentally confirmed cold fusion in a presentation at the American Chemical Society's annual meeting.

"We have compelling evidence that fusion reactions are occurring" at room temperature, said Pamela Mosier-Boss, a scientist with the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (San Diego). The results are "the first scientific report of highly energetic neutrons from low-energy nuclear reactions," she added.

<snip>

The theoretical underpinnings of cold fusion have yet to be adequately explained. The hypothesis is that when electrolysis is performed on deuteron, molecules are fused into helium, releasing a high-energy neutron. While excess heat has been detected by researchers, no group had yet been able to detect the missing neutrons.

Now, the Naval researchers claim that the problem was instrumentation, which was not up to the task of detecting such small numbers of neutrons. To sense such small quantities, Mosier-Boss used a special plastic detector called CR-39. Using co-deposition with nickel and gold wire electrodes, which were inserted into a mixture of palladium chloride and deutrium, the detector was able to capture and track the high-energy neutrons. The plastic detector captured a pattern of tiny clusters of adjacent pits, called triple tracks, which the researchers claim is evidence of the telltale neutrons.

Other presenters at the conference also presented evidence supporting cold fusion, including Antonella De Ninno, a scientist with New Technologies Energy and Environment (Rome), who reported both excess heat and helium gas. "We now have very convincing experimental evidence," De Ninno claimed.

Tadahiko Mizuno of Japan's Hokkaido University also reported excess heat generation and gamma-ray emissions.

<snip>

http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=216200272&cid=NL_eet

[Teaser]

1. I'll wait for the peer reviewed article.

.

[FarCenter]

4. Probably wise

I was thinking that it is getting close to April 1.

But it seems like a legitimate report of a paper at the American Chemical Society meeting.

"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."

Excerpt from http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-03/acs-fr031709.php

[Teaser]

6. I'd love it to be true.

I love stuff that upsets the scientific apple cart. And this would really do that.
Aside from the potential energy boon, it'd just be good, new physics.

[goforit]

32. What will the Coal/Oil/Wind energies do??? Completely shut out.

[originalpckelly]

8. I think it makes sense, in light of all the weird shit that goes on at the atomic level.

If particles can come out of fucking nowhere:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particles

Electrolysis is something that causes actions on that level where weird shit happens, perhaps this is a side effect of the quantum physics weirdness? Maybe fusion is a probability thing, and there's always a very tiny and insignificant chance something will fuse, and maybe the electrolysis causes this very tiny probability to increase?

[FarCenter]

10. Apparently some of the work has been published in peer reviewed jornals

From http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6333164.html

If such experiments did produce fusion reactions, they would generate highly energetic neutrons as a byproduct. These are what Mosier-Boss says her San Diego-based group has found.

“If you have fusion going on, then you have to have neutrons,” she said. “But we do not know if fusion is actually occurring. It could be some other nuclear reaction.”

Today’s announcement is based partly on research published by Mosier-Boss’ group last year in the journal Naturwissenschaften. In this sense, she has not repeated the mistake of Pons and Fleischmann, who announced their findings before they had been tested by the peer-review process and published in a scientific journal.

[Are_grits_groceries]

2. Uh huh... nt

[Lance_Boyle]

3. that's a TERRIBLE headline - misleading in the extreme.

For a more realistic view, here's a link to yesterday's slashdot discussion of this report:

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/23/1853219

[pnwmom]

30. Hagelstein at MIT thinks there might be something there.

Interesting.

[originalpckelly]

5. Perhaps it's related to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particles

There are such things as virtual particles created out of nowhere. If something like that, creating a whole particle of nothing is possible, perhaps there's a random chance that there will be a fusion reaction, and somehow this process causes that probability to rise? What does electrolysis do? Separates out crap from one thing and another. Perhaps moving shit closer together increases this random probability of fusion reaction enough that it's detectable?

How many people have experimented on this idea? Perhaps they've discovered something that produces statistically significant occurrences of the randomness at the atomic and lower levels.

[Teaser]

7. creating a free neutron ex nihilo would take much more energy

than could be created in this little experiment. Think, like, a supercollider.

[originalpckelly]

11. What you don't understand is that there's a probility, however small...

that particles at that level have enough energy to do this, even in a "cool" setting. You assume that heat is perfectly distributed among the particles, but it's possible to have a few that are highly energetic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%E2%80%93Boltzmann_distribution

I'm stunned at the lack of consideration of uncertainty. We humans presume to have it all figured out, but we will always be ignorant compared the wonderful possibilities of the universe.

[Teaser]

12. being a practicing physicist, I do understand that quite well.

However, even using Maxwell Boltzman statistics, my statement is true. The probability of observing created neutrons is infinitesimally small. If neutrons were observed, they are certainly (as certain as one can be given the distribution) from another source.

[originalpckelly]

14. I wonder what would happen if you made a bose einstein condensate of deuterium?

Would you happen to know offhand why Cornell and Wieman at CU used rubidium-87? Is it easier to do it with?

It would be cool, but couldn't you collapse something on itself so that they'd fuse? Maybe the fact that you're cooling something off so much to get the atoms to collapse down on one another means that there's just not enough energy.

That's sort of like condensing the probability that an atom is at a certain point. What happens if two particles are at the same point at the same time? If you have the many worlds interpretation, doesn't that mean that every path has to be taken for every particle? Wouldn't that include paths that cross?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation

[Teaser]

16. "What would happen if you made a bose einstein condensate of deuterium"

to do what? Act as the matrix for the potential cold fusion reaction? I don't know, but I don't think you'd be able to keep the condensate at the temperature necessary for the collapse down to the lowest energy level of the system. All those free neutrons whizzing around would heat the condensate up and drive it away from this energy level to a distribution across a number of excited states.

As for rubidium, it's a group I element, so it's a very regular crystal. It's also largish atomic diameter. The ions sit on a lattice, floating in an electron gas...I suppose they were looking for an atom with an optimal packing density, so that interstitial hydrogen would be "pushed" together?

Not really an expert on cold fusion, though.

[originalpckelly]

19. If there is a random probability that fusion will happen...

wouldn't this be THE way to figure it out? If you kept the condensate for a long enough period of time, it would stand to reason that whatever happens (in theory) to cause the random fusion would occur, and the condensate would blow up, and you would have a real hard piece of data to prove it.

I'm thinking perhaps something is hitting the atoms to cause them to get randomly energetic.

One could then easily determine if there is something external hitting them, or whether there's something else going on to cause this fusion.

^^^Jump in logic, it stands to reason that if it's the particles themselves, they'd have too little energy to do this in a condensate. So the probability they'd do this all on their own would be lower.

Right now, as I see it, these people probably don't have sensitive instruments to figure this stuff out, but the people who do condensate work do.

Electrolysis might cause things to get close enough, because it acts on an atomicish level, and then this random thing that's hitting them causes the close proximity deuterium atoms to fuse. It's all about being in the right place at the right time.

[Teaser]

21. it would be a sensitive "energy detector" to be sure

but I think it would not be able to "prove" fusion per se.

I'm much more adept at speculating about Bose Einstein condensation analogues in neural networks (which I've looked for) than I am talking about BE condensation in real boson paradigms, so at this point I can't answer the question. Suffice it to say that I don't think we can prove "fusion" but only can show it as a limiting probability (can we think of another mechanism that can do all this? no...then fusion it is until we find a better hypothesis).

[originalpckelly]

24. My thought is that it's proximity + random external stuff hitting them...

then they fuse. In a star fusion is supposed to happen because of the close proximity that gravity causes. The energy density of the particles is higher because they're all so close. So if you have proximity in a different way, through a bose-einstein condensate, then something adding a little spark energy, they'd be energetic just long enough to produce the desired reaction, in theory.

Sorry I keep editing everything, I'm thinking about this as I type it. :P

I'm going to try some math and I'll get back to you!

[originalpckelly]

27. What if it's not just energy density in space, but time as well?

I mean, they ARE supposed to be the same thing, one spacetime continuum. If you hit something all at once to increase it's energy level, the energy density of a 4 dimensional area would become much higher than say if you had heat in a fusion reactor over a longer period of time. The probability of fusion then would be dependent upon not only the energy density of a X, Y, Z area, but a T, X, Y, Z region.

Hmmm...

A better example would be like two lasers. There is a method of using a laser to heat up a little pellet to cause fusion.

You can shoot an x megawatt laser at something for length of time b, and it's enough to cause fusion.
If you shoot an x/10 megawatt laser at something for length of time 10b, it's not enough to cause fusion, even if you shoot it for a longer period of time. The pellet would vaporize before enough heat could build up.

See what I mean, this is totally common sense stuff. My brain still hurts though...I think I need to stop. :P

[Teaser]

31. every energy density already exists in 4 dimensions.

The four dimensional equivalent of energy (or momentum) for that matter is the energy momentum four vector. The first three components are derived from the x,y,and z components of the momentum. The zeroth (or fourth, depending on how you label your spacetime components) component of the four vector is the energy. In the right rest frame, all of the momentum is read out as the energy term.

Now as for energy density, there is a 4x4 matrix quantity, the energy-momentum tensor which has energy and momentum on its main diagonal, and "strain terms" or "cross terms" off the main diagonal of the matrix that mix up momentum and Energy. It's this quantity that "warps space" in general relativity and that we perceive as gravity.

So whenever you set up an "energy density" you are explicitly creating that density in 4 dimensions.

Are you studying physics? You sound as brash, excited and hopeful as I was when I started.

Don't worry. It'll pass. :)

[SpiralHawk]

9. "Beware when the Big Heads get into the secrets of the Sun" - Grandmother Twylah Nitsch

"As passed down in our oral tradition, that's when the Earth Changes will begin in earnest - they don't have the moral grounding or the spiritual insight to deal with the forces they will unleash"

- The late Grandmother Twylah Nitsch (Seneca)

[DiverDave]

13. So, big deal, the power company's

will figure out a way to have it cost us MORE for our power bills.
God, but I'm getting cynical...

But I just can't help it, the rich bastards will find a way to steal more of my meager income, always do, always will.

[Kansas Wyatt]

23. That's the expensive new technology part of it....

Figuring out a way to monopolize it and repackage it to consumers as a revolutionary high tech energy source.

[relayerbob]

15. Thank you

Interesting results. Also good that three independent teams have found separate results that seem consistent. Long way to go, but fingers stay crossed!

[originalpckelly]

17. This sounds like a relatively easy thing to set up...

they need to get more people playing with this and thinking about it. It's so stupid that only three teams are doing it. If this is true, it's going to have be one of those things where tons and tons of teams have to figure it out. Like 20-30. It has to be duplicated.

[acmavm]

18. They've been writing more and more about cold fusion for a while...

posted June 06, 2005

Coming in out of the cold: Cold fusion, for real
By Michelle Thaller | csmonitor.com

PASADENA, CALIF. –
For the last few years, mentioning cold fusion around scientists (myself included) has been a little like mentioning Bigfoot or UFO sightings.
After the 1989 announcement of fusion in a bottle, so to speak, and the subsequent retraction, the whole idea of cold fusion seemed a bit beyond the pale. But that's all about to change.

A very reputable, very careful group of scientists at the University of California at Los Angeles (Brian Naranjo, Jim Gimzewski, Seth Putterman) has initiated a fusion reaction using a laboratory device that's not much bigger than a breadbox, and works at roughly room temperature. This time, it looks like the real thing. < Editor's note: The original version misnamed the scientists' institution.>


Before going into their specific experiment, it's probably a good idea to define exactly what nuclear fusion is, and why we're so interested in understanding the process. This also gives me an excuse to talk about how things work deep inside the nuclei of atoms, a topic near and dear to most astronomers (more on that later).

Simply put, nuclear fusion means ramming protons and neutrons together so hard that they stick, and form a single, larger nucleus. When this happens with small nuclei (like hydrogen, which has only one proton or helium, which has two), you get a lot of energy out of the reaction. This specific reaction, fusing two hydrogen nuclei together to get helium, famously powers our sun (good), as well as hydrogen bombs (bad).

Fusion is a tremendous source of energy; the reason we're not using it to meet our everyday energy needs is that it's very hard to get a fusion reaction going. The reason is simple: protons don't want to get close to other protons.

-MORE-
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0606/p25s01-stss.html

[JohnWxy]

20. I just wonder how many free neutrons were supposed to be released. This generates a hell of a lot

energy. I would think if any appreciable number of free neutrons were produced you'd get super-heated water very quickly. Assuming you could actually force hydrogen atoms together to form helium without the input of very large quantities of energy.

fusion reactions at room temperature! sorry, it's ridiculous.

[Teaser]

22. _results_ are not ridiculous. They're just results.

The reports seem to indicate that they are conducting this research more or less responsibly. Until I see the article, I can't say more. But it appears that, at worst, they are wrong. And it's as important to be wrong in science as it is to be right.

[originalpckelly]

25. Scientific understanding is derived from experimental results and relating those together.

How many people have tried this crap with the kind of equipment to detect it?

Never say anything is impossible, the universe will make a fool out of you. Never say something definitely happens a certain way or doesn't. Just what we think based upon the current evidence.

Until you get to a real significant fraction of light, this equation models kinetic energy well:


After a certain point, that equation predicts too much energy, and this one is more accurate:


And that one may be wrong when more experimental evidence is collected (and IIRC it is at very small levels.)

[zipplewrath]

29. Depends upon the details

As others are suggesting, there's a certain probabilistic context to the basic hypothesis. "Electrolysis of deuteron produces helium" is a fairly general statement. Yes, it will produce free hydrogen molecules. How those become helium instead of H2 is one of the details. HOW MANY become HE would seem important too. And how/why that process produces the free neutron will be critical. The "room temperature" part has always suggested that whatever is going on, it may consume roughly all the free energy it produces just to sustain whatever is going on.

[alcibiades_mystery]

26. Aaaaaachoooobullshit

Gezundheit.

[Teaser]

28. again...

it may be wrong. It does not *appear* to be bullshit.

There is an important distinction.

[Wilber_Stool]

33. Try this article from New Scientist.

Not too long and easy to understand.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16820-roomtempera...