Cold fusion: two out of three

[nancylebov]

It works, they understand it, but it doesn't produce a net gain of energy.

http://www.christiansciencemonitor.com/2005/0606/p25s01-stss.html

Link from hughcasey

Comments

[mneme]

I didn't get that last -- based on the article, it seems like it's more "so far, the process needs more energy to start up than you can get out of it" -- not a technical problem that it's endothermic, but current constraints on the technology. The article doesn't express an opinion on whether they'll eventually be able to get more energy out than they're putting in, just notes that it -may- never be possible.

My quick random guess is that we'll know one way or another within 5 years.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I think you're right--ok, two and a half out of three. And I very much hope that it turns out to be a large-scale energy source.

I'm still interested in the early experiments which suggested weirder cold fusion--mistake, scam, new physical principle? And if there was nothing there, it's reminiscent of that golden age sf story about anti-gravity getting invented as the result of a faked film which made it look possible.

[bugsybanana.livejournal.com]

Did you find the writer as patronizing as I did? She really didn't need to include her aside about the strong and weak forces or the bit about her fine hair and the Van de Graaf generator unless she wanted to reassure her readers that it's OK to read about this boring goofy science stuff!

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I thought of her as way too chatty rather than patronizing, but I expect there's some connection between the two.

Meanwhile, I haven't seen any other lj mention of comprehensible cold fusion, and nothing at FuturePundit, nor on Google News either. I'd have thought it would be a bigger story.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

I'm also amazed that this hasn't gotten bigger coverage - perhaps it's a "fool me once"/"once bitten" thing. Or maybe {Lefty rant mode} the press, controlled by the minions of the Neoconservatives, don't want us to perceive that there's an alternative to raping the Alaskan wilderness.{/Lefty rant mode}

While I'd like to be optimistic, I don't see any way for this particular technology to produce positive net-Q. The logic: the number of fusings is going to be some fraction of the number of hydrogen nuclei accelerated to fast-enough, that fraction being based on a number of things like how dense the H medium is and so on. The number of H nuclei accelerated is in turn a function of the charge built up on the crystal, which is a function of the therbligs used to heat the crystal.

The actual ratio of Q-in to Q-out can probably be jiggered by adjusting the density of the H medium and so on, but I suspect that thermogoddamics will have its say.

Nonetheless, now that there's a principle, who knows? Engineers are mighty clever folks at times.