US Navy Laboratory Scientists: Possible cold fusion breakthrough | Hacker News Reader

US Navy Laboratory Scientists: Possible cold fusion breakthrough

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18 pointsnickb13 comments

1. Like almost anyone who remembers the cold fusion craze and fallout (hehe) of the late 80s and early 90s, I'm extremely skeptical.

2. The fact that this comes from researchers from the US Navy does lend it some credence, but I'm still very skeptical.

3. The reporting in this article is a good example of how the whole "fair and balanced" approach to reporting sometimes backfires when it comes to science reporting.

Paul Padley, a physicist at Rice University who reviewed Mosier-Boss's published work, said the study did not provide a plausible explanation of how cold fusion could take place in the conditions described.

...

But Steven Krivit, editor of the New Energy Times, said the study was "big" and could open a new scientific field.

The neutrons produced in the experiments "may not be caused by fusion but perhaps some new, unknown nuclear process," added Krivit, who has monitored cold fusion studies for the past 20 years.

So in most people's mind, there's this struggle and controversy within the scientific community about this topic, but one of these sources is quite a bit more credible than the other, at least to me.

This has been a primary tactic of the "Intelligent Design" and the anti-climate-change groups for quite some time.

It's interesting that in New Scientist's article on the same thing (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16820-roomtemperature-...) Krivit's views seem rather less optimistic than presented here, while they have an expert to seemingly confirm what has been shown.

I'm optimistic about practical fusion in the near future, which is unusual for me because I'm pessimistic about most new technologies. There is almost certainly a way to initiate fusion reactions with much less equipment than the NIF (which is still a worthwhile project). I don't know how soon it'll happen, but long before our 200-year supply of coal runs out. And then lots of people will feel silly for working on electrical energy conservation, which turned out to be pointless. I think I'll turn on some more lights.

It is a risk management thing. What is the probability that humanity figures out a way to cheaply and safely generate enough energy that we can afford to pull global warming gasses out of the air and stop burning fossil fuels? It seems to me that unless you peg that north of 95% you'd want to manage the risk that it doesn't work out.

Bah, you're being too pessimistic. If we don't invent a new, cheap and safe fuel source I'm sure we'll have invented cheap and safe space travel so we don't have to worry about that crap. Then all we have to do is use untried and untested techniques to change the atmosphere on Mars or Venus to make the planets habitable.

Didn't you ever read a sci-fi novel? Geeze, you're such a Buzz Killington :p

We have been able to produce neutrons from fusion reactions for a while now, this is nothing new. The real breakthrough will be when someone finds a way to make a net positive energy reaction (where you produce more than you consume). Another problem with this article is that its anemic on details, especially that tidbit at the bottom.

What's the experiment? Does anyone have a link to the paper?

http://www.springerlink.com/content/022501181p3h764l/

Wow. Triple alpha tracks are a discovery. My first thought is that they might have some unusual radioactivity in their sample or lab, so a replication of this experiment is (obviously) in order.

One wonders why they haven't measured the neutron flux more, directly, though. They could locate a carbon sample further away, and look for the same track patterns there: some of the neutrons should go across.

Is this at all related to the Polywell fusion generator? I see no mention. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell

Am I missing something? Why would you expect a connection?

This is why:

"...In January 2009 The Naval Air Warfare Center pre-solicited another contract for "modification and testing of plasma wiffleball 7"..."

> "We're talking about a new field of science that's a hybrid between chemistry and physics."

I already saw articles about that in Russian magazine "Technic for youngers" ("Техника - молодёжи"/"Tehnika - molodeji") about 20 years ago. A man (I cannot find article) experimented with middle energy range (around 0.1MeV) nuclear reactions. He used modified welding machine to generate high power, which he used to fuse alloy of metals. Then he analysed results and found new metals and non-metals in alloy. He created theory about stable nuclear fractions, similar to chemistry, which can be transmitted between nucleus at much lower energies than typical nuclear reaction without damaging of nucleus.

However, magazine was very popular due to science fiction. ;-)

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