Cold Fusion

Scruff

There was an interesting article on the back page of yesterdays Sunday Times about researchers in the states who are about to announce that they have found signs of Cold Fusion in their experiments.

found online version of the article article Need to register though and i couldn't be bothered
anyone else read it or be able to post up a link or a scanned in version?



The research is being verified by two other groups.
From what i remember of the article, they pass sound waves trhough a deuterium soultion to generate the reaction.
(i was hung over reading it so wait till someone else can explain clearer )

bonkey

I'd be interested in reading about it, but I have a moral dislike of "registration required" news sites

Anyone care to cut n paste, or find an alternate reference?

jc

bonkey

GHood ol' slashdot reported it, so I've now read up on it a bit.

Its not cold fusion, but allegedly "proper" or "hot" fusion!!!!

As expected, the nay-sayers are already out in force, and the reproduction of the experiment by other groups has not (yet) resulted in the same findings.

The "reproducers" used better quality neutron detectors, and claim that they claims are orders of magnitude too high, whereas the original scientists claim that said reproduction was carried out with incorrectly calibrated sono-equipment.

Regardless, it would appear that sono-luminescence does not scale, and thus, even if this were fusion, it is not likely to be scalable to any meaningful size.

jc

Scruff

Originally posted by bonkey

Its not cold fusion, but allegedly "proper" or "hot" fusion!!!!

Cold Fusion is where you don't have to superheat plasma to a couple of million degrees in order for a fusion reaction occur, so yes, it is cold fusion they're talking about. Naturally if you were to achive this, things would become pretty hot pretty quickly due to the energy released but it wouldn't be "normal" fusion just because it got hot as a result.

Regardless, it would appear that sono-luminescence does not scale, and thus, even if this were fusion, it is not likely to be scalable to any meaningful size.

thats the problem.

Anywho, if yer interested ye can find a good write up about the fuss caused by this reported "discovery" here