Mass-scale Cold Fusion either becomes reality or proved a scam today

FWIW, it's not perpetual motion. This is not a claim of free energy, but a claim of matter being converted to energy in a way physicists deem exceedingly unlikely. I, too, would be incredulous of any positive result, but it's not claiming to violate thermodynamics.

They're claiming it can derive energy from nuclear fusion of hydrogen atoms. This has not been proven to be impossible. In fact, we know it's possible (albiet at much higher temperatures.)

Therefore, there is at least a logical possibility that it's legit, even if their behavior doesn't indicate that so far.

What's great is the empiricism of energy: we can measure the input and output precisely (given enough effort), and so its pretty easy (comparatively) to tell whether the box does what it says on the lid. Even this demo shows that: the consultants will only pay once the machine shows that the numbers add up.

So there has to be a clear result, where no amount of tweaking will fix the base principle if it's erroneous?

The reason for "not large enough" is calorimetry. When you hydrolyze water some reforms back into steam and escapes. So you subtract that energy as lost in your calculations of output - input. The error is in not correctly calculating how much energy is actually lost vs left in the experiment.

Good experiments don't allow any steam to be lost, they are perfectly insulated and keep everything inside the cell. Unfortunately it's extremely hard to do this accurately. (Or you can generate so much energy it's more than the input without subtracting the losses, but no one has ever been able to do that.)

The reason for not reliably, is that experiments look for signs of radiation. Palladium is sometimes sourced from refined nuclear waste. It's refined extremely well, it's perfectly safe. But it has just enough residual radiation to cause very strange data for the experimenters: One batch of palladium works great, the next batch doesn't work at all, and they can't figure out what's different.

Wake me up when I can buy Mr. Fusion at my local Wal-Mart. ;)

I'll believe it when I see it.

But you have to understand the nature of real prototype devices. Take it from someone who has built many semiconductor lasers that worked so badly that it took hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of specialized equipment to learn that they worked at all: The first transistor probably didn't work very well. The first laser didn't produce a lot of power or have a very long lifetime. Famously, the first several thousand Edison light bulbs didn't work well enough to be viable products. The difference between success and failure in an early-stage experiment is often small, and often statistical, and is often so ephemeral that you yourself have crises of faith in the results. And that's for the kind of phenomenon that eventually turns out to be tremendously important!

And this is the problem. On the frontier, the difference between a promising sign and a statistical fluke is small. It's a territory ripe for self-delusion and fraud.

You ask me to run a steam engine. Well, okay, suppose I can do that for five minutes. But then a piece of duct tape comes unstuck. You say: Replace that duct tape with something more durable. I reply, okay, sure, can you lend me the necessary $1500? (I was trying to save money with the duct tape. Half the parts are duct tape. Prototype device, remember?)

You ask me to run the test longer. Well, okay, I can run it until my special catalyst runs out. You say: Get more catalyst. I reply, okay, sure, can you lend me the necessary $10,000? (The catalyst is expensive in small quantities, you see, but in the future we'll have economies of scale.)

You ask me to open up my black box and submit every part to detailed analysis. We'll hire an independent laboratory and they'll handle all of it. I reply, okay, sure, can you pony up the necessary $10 million?

And then the independent laboratory finds a suspicious anomaly. Oh dear, I say, I didn't realize that was happening. Maybe I made a mistake. I'll have to go back to the drawing board. Can I have a $1m grant to go back to the drawing board?

Most of the issues with the experiment could be addressed very easily, e.g. A transparent pane to verify water level or absence thereof in the "chimney", simply showing the steam being output vs. sending it into a drain. The possibility that it's wet steam vs dry would more or less perfectly account for the 6x ratio.

Here's the thing: if this were real, Rossi wouldn't care about satisfying skeptics if it meant distracting him from meeting project goals. If it's a hoax, act like it's real.

Further, three scientists calculated that, based on the diameter of the hose, the steam should have an exit velocity of 67, 76, or 137 mph. When Krivit visited Rossi, he took a video of the steam exiting the hose, which he said appears to be flowing at around 10 mph - the expected velocity due to the amount of electrical input energy.

http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg52921.htm...

This nonsense is pure charlatanry and fraud. An "inventor" working alone and discovering new fundamental physics without published results or peer review needs to be viewed far more suspiciously.

One reason many people are unwilling to be patient and open-minded is that they've already done that in the past, and had their patience worn thin by said scam artists and loons. Another is that they respect (or have worked hard to become) actual scientists who put forth the extra time and effort to properly demonstrate and document novel findings.

That Rossi attempted this in the mid 70's is interesting to me, and gives him more credibility, not less.

EDIT: Looks like there supposedly is a patent: "a method and apparatus for carrying out nickel and hydrogen exothermal reactions," with production of copper, though I haven't found the patent itself.

http://www.nyteknik.se/incoming/article3080659.ece/BINARY/Ro...

Seems like someone would independently make one though.

1/You still need oil to make plastic 2/You're not going to go "all electric" any time soon