Cold Fusion or Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions, U.S. Navy Researchers Reopen Case

I was surprised to find that there is a lot of theoretical justification for possible mechanisms of cold fusion, and a lot of experimental evidence that must either be suggestive of something interesting, or indicative of bold-faced and widespread fraud.<p>It was also interesting the discover that the original experiment was dismissed because other experimenters failed to replicate the Fleischmann and Pons result ... despite not actually trying to replicate the Fleischmann and Pons experimental setup accurately. For example, not meeting the same level of hydrogen loading in the metal matrix.<p>It could all absolutely be BS, but I was surprised that it wasn’t actually proven to be BS; it was just not proven to not be BS, and was then made “embarrassing”.

To quote the late Terry Pratchett:<p>&gt; Like a busy government which only passes expensive laws prohibiting some new and interesting thing when people have actually found a way of doing it, the universe relied a great deal on things not being tried at all. When something is tried, Ponder found, it often does turn out to be impossible very quickly, but it takes a little while for this to really be the case* – in effect, for the overworked laws of causality to hurry to the scene and pretend it has been impossible all along.<p>* In the case of cold fusion, this was longer than usual.

Confused to see so much talk of Fleischmann and Pons. The technique described in the linked article appears to be essentially <i>neutron-catalyzed</i> fusion. This is not too different conceptually from muon-catalyzed fusion, except instead of muons lowering the reaction energy barrier, neutrons provide the activation energy. The cold fusion claims from the &#x27;80s used an electrical process, which is not believable for quantum reasons (electron density can&#x27;t get high enough to pull protons together due to Pauli exclusion).<p>As to whether it works, who knows? It may have been conclusively disproven five years ago for all I know. Or maybe it works. But if they&#x27;re generating neutrons through X-ray bremsstrahlung, that&#x27;s horribly inefficient and unlikely to ever come close to net power.

Aneutronic fusion exists. Neutrons were expected by some because <i>normal</i> fusion produces them ... but if it is cold fusion, there&#x27;s no reason to believe that would happen. Indeed, you should throw out as many expectations as you possibly can if you&#x27;re dealing with a new process.<p>The first and best measurement to contemplate is the presence of helium. Of course, you have to worry about how much is in the atmosphere, and then how much might somehow be trapped in the bulk material of the apparatus itself. Still, a sudden surge of helium well beyond that of what might be found in the atmosphere would be telling.<p>We all remember calorimetry from high school and just how difficult it was to do proper measurements. And who knows what odd chemical reactions might release or subtract heat when you sit around cooking metal for a long period of time? No, calorimetry is error-prone and has too many miserable confounding factors.<p>Still, the only way to know you have fusion is to say &quot;I have less of this lighter element and more of this heavier element.&quot; Everything is is just hoping that the assumptions from stellar fusion carry over. I&#x27;ll believe it when I see it, but I also won&#x27;t believe it until the accompanying papers talk about helium, and lots of it (or lithium ...).

In Atomic Adventures, James Mahaffey (who I unreservedly recommend) outlines the history, claims and problems with Cold Fusion. He was a member of one of the first teams to try to replicate the results, and points out that (from the point of view of working atomic scientists at the time) it was very clear that whatever this was, it was <i>not</i> fusion, as it lacked features that would have to be present if it were. Notably, the scientists pictured standing next to it weren&#x27;t dead. It was also first announced in a press release, not a journal and the actual details of the experiment were initially kept secret (and not knowing the details was used as a reason that replication was failing) for commercial reasons. Whatever Pons and Fleischmann were doing, it pretty clearly wasn&#x27;t <i>science</i>. It had none of the features of scientific enquiry, but nearly all of the features of a grift, and that hasn&#x27;t changed in the intervening years.

Cold fusion is one of my favorite hypothetical technologies. The rationale makes so much sense, and it would be such a game-changer. (I&#x27;m guessing it doesn&#x27;t actually exist, but still... lovely idea...)

if cold fusion works, maybe we can get nuclear aircraft. The possibilities are so exciting it&#x27;s sad that our discovery that huge energy can be created by splitting the atom hasn&#x27;t helped humanity more. The fact that it helps prevent ww3 is a negative benefit.

&gt;&quot;Fusion is typically a high temperature, high pressure phenomenon. It requires a star, or, if you’re hellbent on making it happen on Earth, massive magnets and a lot of power.&quot;<p>Not true!<p>Well, &quot;true&quot; according to the popular current day understanding of what fusion is... let me elaborate, elucidate, and explain...<p>Fusion is a <i>fundamental process in nature</i>, which is <i>relative to scale</i>.<p>As is fission.<p>Which is also <i>relative to scale</i>.<p>There are two great patterns expressed by the Universe at different scales, and these can basically be thought of in such simple terms as &quot;cut&quot; and &quot;join&quot;.<p>You know, what we have scissors and duct tape for...<p>You go one way, you cut larger things into many smaller things; you go the other way, and you join many smaller things into larger things...<p>Cutting is Fission, joining is Fusion.<p>Now both of these patterns exist at all scales -- at all energy levels.<p>They exist in ALL chemical reactions.<p>In fact, I&#x27;ll make a wager that future scientists will be able to prove that endothermic (absorbs heat) and exothermic (generates heat) chemical reactions -- are either Fission or Fusion.<p>If I were to make a bet, I&#x27;d say that Fusion is the exothermic one, simply because Fusion reactions as are known popularly today (again, not relative to scale) -- are the hotter reaction of the two.<p>So then the question is, how can an endothermic (absorbs heat) chemical reaction be fission -- if fission generates heat?<p>Well, I don&#x27;t know the answer to that (yet!).<p>Perhaps all exothermic (heat generating) chemical reactions consist of fusion OR fission components, OR both...<p>Perhaps there are two other complimentary opposites to fusion and fission that remove energy...<p>But, here&#x27;s a good time to talk about <i>Implosion</i>.<p>Most people who have watched Hollywood movies -- know what explosions are...<p>But, not too many people outside of the Physics community, or people who understand Brown&#x27;s Gas or the works of Viktor Schauberger -- really understand <i>implosions</i>...<p>See, in Physics, there is always a two-way exchange of energy, that is, if something is expanding, then something else is contracting -- even though we might not see what that thing is -- even though we might need special equipment to detect it...<p>In an explosion, we see fire and hot gases expanding outward to fill space...<p>But, there must be something else -- equal-and-oppositely that&#x27;s contracting inward, even though Physics has yet to observe what it is...<p>We can think about Implosions (although in a different context) -- as Black Holes. We can also think about them as vortices... Basically they remove something from something else, they act to &quot;compress&quot; matter, objects, information, etc.<p>So, getting back to fusion and fission, join and cut, implosion and explosion, these phenomena exist on all scales, at all temperature ranges.<p>A future scientist will show that all of these things are parts of the same dualistic pattern, which repeats in nature at all scales, at all temperatures...<p>(PDS: Addendum: I almost forgot to add the obligatory &quot;And yes, I know, I&#x27;m a Crackpot!&quot; ending to this message! &lt;g&gt;<p>So, on that note: &quot;And yes, I know, I&#x27;m a Crackpot!&quot; &lt;g&gt;)

I thought for a moment this was going to be an article about Cold Fusion (Markup Language) making a comeback. NOOOOOOoooooooo<p>Oh, it&#x27;s just that scientific physics stuff again. I can breathe easily now!

It is almost certain that some unknown phenomenon is happening with palladium&#x2F;nickel and hydrogen&#x2F;deuterium.<p>I first heard of the 1989 pons and fleischmann experiment in late &#x27;90 but didn&#x27;t know what to think of it, I was in high-school, information was scarce. Then in 2008 or 2009&#x27; I found a memoir from a science historian about it. It spoke in great detail about the pressure to publish quickly before any rival the vested interest of the hugely influencal MIT in &quot;hot fusion&quot; (billions in funding). They they didn&#x27;t even try to half-ass an experiment, then dragged pons and fleischmann in the mud so deeply they had to quit academic life and anyone who tried to follow their track would have their funding cut. Because most other physicist ( Pons &amp; Fleischman were actualy electro-chemist) were not able to acheive the same results. Which was kind of to be expected: no peer review article was published they just &quot;announced&quot; their finding. Then everyone rush to blindly replicate months of hard work from a field they barely knew. Then it became a fraud, then fake science. Anyone trying the &quot;forbidden&quot; experiment would lose his reputation and any hope of a career. It doesn&#x27;t get more anti science then cold fusion. Only then I realised wikipedia was full of censorship and could not be relied upon for anything remontly controversal.<p>Then came 2011, andrea rossi and the e-cat. Andrea rossi has a ph in... philosphy, convicted frauster in italy and inventor of a new cold fusion device. Even then it sparked ton of interest in cold fusion (LENR for low energy nuclear reaction, because it&#x27;s not fusion that is happening: no hard radiation, no instant huge release of energy, etc.) and the next decade is a cycle of trying to debunk rossi, him promising a &quot;working plant&quot; next year, mistery client and feeding crumbs of evidence, proof and information over a decade. And it&#x27;s not finished yet.<p>You can follow most of it on <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;e-catworld.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;e-catworld.com&#x2F;</a> . People there are not quite QAnon level of crazy but they will mention ufo various free energy stuff of regular basis. I remember reading news about navy SPAWAR research on cold fusion there.<p>But yeah in a nutshell huge claims, little results (but SOME result that is the annoying part).

If cold fusion is possible, how are there still reactants around?

Would nuclear fusion open up new avenues to reverse climate change?

&gt; “Quite frankly, [to] other folks who have tried this over the years, it was considered a career ender,”<p>An astounding indictment across the whole scientific community that attempting to investigate an energy source that would advance human kind to essentially free energy would be... a career ender.<p>There is simply no reason for this.<p>Think how many resources has been put into anti-carbon messaging to transform the economies and the promotion of a global tax. Meanwhile a technology that can make the whole CO2 problem obsolete is taken to the back alley like this and figuratively murdered.<p>Why?