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Fusion Coming Out of the Cold?
Jeff gets a no-prize in a cup of water for bringing us this NY Times piece about the Energy Department taking a second look at cold fusion:
Despite being pushed to the fringes of physics, cold fusion has continued to be worked on by a small group of scientists, and they say their figures unambiguously verify the original report, that energy can be generated simply by running an electrical current through a jar of water.
It'll be interesting to see what, if anything, comes of this. From the little I've read, I'd be leaning more toward some bizzare chemical process than fusion itself. But you never know!
I think they may be talking about experiments derived from those in sonoluminescence (sending a circuits-type wave through a spherical flask of water that has a tiny bubble in the middle...bubble expands and contracts on something like the 17-60 ps scale...light comes out).
Around the time we studied (and attemted to recreate) the phenomenon in lab a 2-3 years ago the press started talking about fusion in similar experiments. Our profs dismissed it as nonsense. Though it's true that some good ideas take a while too get recognition, I'll believe this when I see it.
I'll believe it when some scientists outside of that small, secretive group can duplicate the results.
Until then, cold fusion is bunk.
Posted by: Tatterdemalian on March 26, 2004 12:44 PMAgreed. From reading between the lines on this, I'm leaning towards bunk. Basically, they're having a review of the data to see if it's science - but no expirements or true peer review. That's just bad science. If they've gotten these sorts of results, they should attempt to replicate them until they get consistency, then bother the DOE.
Posted by: Ron on March 26, 2004 03:56 PM