Friday, April 3, 2009

Cold Fusion Vindication Heralded

This article is beating the cold fusion drum a little more loudly in light of the recent news that we posted a few days ago.

Fleishman and Pons were debunked unmercifully in North America and it was wrong. A scientist must be allowed to become enthusiastic when a new line of research proves enticing. Their curious results, however interpreted, have since triggered thousands of hours of good scientific lab work that needed to be done.

We are obviously gaining on the problem and we are possibly inching toward a working device that can be used.

Rather more importantly, we are slowly succeeding in the task of seeing the related particles and this leads to opportunities to do clever things.

Cold fusion when announced revealed our profound ignorance regarding atomic structure and more pertinently the nature of atomic curvature in and about the atom. All this plays a part in any prospective reaction. Cold fusion was the apple falling from the tree that signaled the need to take a long hard look.

Research Vindicates Cold Fusion
Cold Fusion Proven True by U.S. Navy Researchers - by Mike Adams, NaturalNews
Editor

http://www.westender.com.au/news/466

(NaturalNews) The world owes Fleischmann and Pons a huge apology: The cold fusion technology they announced in 1989 -- which was blasted by arrogant hot fusion scientists as a fraud -- has been proven true once again by U.S. Navy Researchers. In papers presented at this year's American Chemical Society meeting, scientist Pamela Mosier-Boss presented data supporting the reality of cold fusion, declaring the report, "the first scientific report of highly energetic neutrons from low-energy nuclear reactions."

Technically, it's not the first report at all, however. It might be the five-hundredth report, given how many people have been working on cold fusion since 1989 in laboratories across the world. Following the politically-motivated assassination of cold fusion credibility in 1989, the cold fusion movement went underground, renaming itself to LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions). As LENR, cold fusion has been proven true in literally thousands of experiments conducted over the past two decades.

I first went public with the true story about the conspiracy against cold fusion in 1998. It described this classic conspiracy against a new technology, schemed up by desperate defenders of old technology -- hot fusion researchers who, after hundreds of billions of dollars in research money, have yet to produce a single sustainable hot fusion reaction that produces more energy than it consumes. The arrogant hot fusion researchers have the same snooty attitude as cancer researchers: "Just give us another billion dollars," they say, "and we'll find a cure!"

It's been the same story for nearly three decades now, and hot fusion still doesn't work. A working cold fusion unit, however, can be built on a kitchen countertop for less than $2,000, and it doesn't require a doctorate in physics to pull it off, either. It is precisely this simplicity that offends the arrogant hot fusion pushers who act much like medical doctors in the vicious defense of their territory.

Cold fusion applications

Cold fusion isn't some magical free energy machine. It produces excess heat, but slowly. So don't go thinking this is some kind of Mr. Fusion device that you can feed some banana peels and expect to get clean electricity out the other end.

Rather, cold fusion converts mass to heat energy, slowly losing a bit of mass through very low-energy nuclear reactions (hence the LENR name) that generate excess heat. In practical terms, cold fusion produces hot water.

And why is hot water useful? Because with hot water, you can produce steam. Steam turns turbines that generate electricity. This is how coal power plants work, too, except they're burning coal to heat water instead of using cold fusion. Conventional nuke plants work the same way, too, using much higher-energy nuclear reactions to heat vast amounts of water that drive electricity-generating turbines.

So heating water with cold fusion is a big deal. If the technology can be scaled up and applied properly, it could spell an end to the era of dirty coal power plants.

And that, friends, could mean a very big deal for reducing CO2 emissions and avoiding a worsening of global warming. It will even help global warming skeptics, too, because even if you don't believe global warming is real, the climate still changes on you. Mother Nature can't be debated. It just reacts.

Whether you recognize the reality of global warming or not, cold fusion technology could reduce air pollution due to coal power plant emissions. Coal power plants are the No. 1 source of mercury pollution on our planet, in case you didn't know. That's because burning coal spews mercury into the air, which then contaminates oceans and land masses, contaminating the world with mercury.

(Perhaps there are mercury skeptics who do not believe coal power plants spew mercury at all, or that mercury is safe for human consumption. The mercury skeptics are probably dentists, come to think of it...)

No radioactive waste

Cold fusion, by the way, does not produce radioactive waste. So it's not like a world full of cold fusion power plants would create yet another radioactive waste problem. It might cause a shortage of palladium, though, which is one of the metals typically used in cold fusion devices.

Some of the more astute readers of this website will probably figure out that investing in palladium futures ahead of any widespread production of cold fusion devices would no doubt be extremely profitable. But that kind of product rollout is likely years away, at best.

And that's assuming that this latest round of cold fusion announcements won't get clobbered yet again by the hot fusion conspirators. I'm half expecting an updated news announcement in a day or two, with a headline like, "U.S. Navy Retracts Cold Fusion Announcement, Scientists Accused of Fraud" or some such nonsense. If you see such a headline, remember what you're reading here, and you'll know it's all been manipulated to erase the reality of cold fusion from the sphere of public knowledge.

Cold fusion, after all, could revolutionize the energy industry and spell doom for coal and natural gas. I know a bunch of executives in Wyoming who are shaking in their (insulated) boots right now at the thought of cold fusion sidelining natural gas.

Authors' Quotes on Cold Fusion

Below, you'll find selected quotes from noted authors on the subject of Cold Fusion. Feel free to quote these in your own work provided you give proper credit to both the original author quoted here and this NaturalNews page.

Nowhere are the resistance to and promise of a new energy technology more dramatically revealed than those of the case of cold fusion. This well-researched approach has the potential of reversing much of the pollution while turning the interests of the energy monopolies upside down. Unfortunately, even the environmentalists haven't yet given new energy alternatives a fair look. The cold fusion Revolution: The unfolding cold fusion saga has provided us with an illustrious thirteen year history that would make the suppression of Tesla seem like a school exercise.

- Reinheriting the Earth: Awakening to Sustainable Solutions and Greater Truths by Brian O'Leary - Available on Amazon.com

The coup de grace was delivered to cold fusion when the US House committee formed to examine the claims for cold fusion came down on the side of the skeptics. 'Evidence for the discovery of a new nuclear process termed cold fusion is not persuasive,' said its report. 'No special programmes to establish cold fusion research centers or to support new efforts to find cold fusion are justified.'

- Alternative Science: Challenging the Myths of the Scientific Establishment by Richard Milton - Available on Amazon.com

Cold fusion The fusion of hydrogen atoms into helium at room temperature. In 1989 two scientists announced that they had produced cold fusion in their laboratory, an achievement that if true would have meant a virtually unlimited cheap energy supply for humanity. When other scientists were unable to reproduce their results, the scientific community concluded that the original experiment had been flawed.

- The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know by E. D. Hirsch, Joseph F. Kett, James Trefil - Available on Amazon.com

Thus within two months of its original announcement, cold fusion had been dealt a fatal blow by two of the world's most prestigious nuclear research centres, each receiving millions of pounds a year to fund atomic research. The measure of MIT's success in killing off cold fusion is that still today, the US Department of Energy refuses to fund any research into it while the US Patent Office relies on the MIT report to refuse any patents based on or relating to cold fusion processes even though hundreds have been submitted.

- Alternative Science: Challenging the Myths of the Scientific Establishment by Richard Milton - Available on Amazon.com

Patent Office of any application mentioning cold fusion; 3) Suppression of research on the phenomenon in government laboratories; 4) Citation of cold fusion as "pathological science" or "fraud" in numerous books and articles critical of cold fusion in general, and of Fleischmann and Pons in particular." One of the DOE panel members, Prof. Steven Koonin of Caltech (and now Provost there), said, "My conclusion is that the experiments are just wrong and that we are suffering from the incompetence and delusion of Doctors Pons and Fleischmann...

- Reinheriting the Earth: Awakening to Sustainable Solutions and Greater Truths by Brian O'Leary - Available on Amazon.com

Six months after cold fusion was announced, the American Department of Energy denounced it. In Japan, the people who are considered authorities blindly emulated the attitude of the Americans, as they invariably do, and they too pontificated against cold fusion. Perhaps it was inevitable that most people would assume the claims are cock and bull nonsense. In keeping with the tide of the times, countless books and articles have been published attacking cold fusion. The very act of researching cold fusion has become scandalous.

- Alternative Science: Challenging the Myths of the Scientific Establishment by Richard Milton - Available on Amazon.com

Equally illuminating were the remarks of Professor John Huizenga, who was co-chairman of the US Department of Energy's panel on cold fusion and who came down against the reality of the process. In a recent book on the subject, Professor Huizenga observed that 'The world's scientific institutions have probably now squandered between $50 and $100 million on an idea that was absurd to begin with.' The question is, what were his principal reasons for rejecting cold fusion.

- Alternative Science: Challenging the Myths of the Scientific Establishment by Richard Milton - Available on Amazon.com

This was perhaps the high-water mark of cold fusion. Scores of organisations over the world were actively working to replicate cold fusion in their laboratories, and although many reported difficulties a decent number reported success. And by the end of April, Fleischmann and Pons were standing before the US House Science, Space and Technology committee asking for a cool $25 million to fund a centre for cold fusion research at Utah University. Then things began to go wrong.

6 comments:

Jed Rothwell said...

Cold fusion has been replicated thousands of time in hundreds of major laboratories. Roughly 3,000 papers have been published describing these replications. There is no chance all of the experiments are in error. See:

http://lenr-canr.org

It remains to be seen whether cold fusion can be made into a practical source of energy, but if it can, it has the potential to stop global warming. It may even help reverse it, with equipment that removes carbon from the atmosphere faster than plant growth alone. I wrote an e-book with a chapter on this subject. It was recommended by Arthur C. Clarke and many distinguished professors. You can read it here:

http://lenr-canr.org/BookBlurb.htm

arclein said...

This recent work finally identified neutron production which was the long established stumbling block preventing scientific acceptance of the phenomena been cold fusion

Jed Rothwell said...

arclein said...

"This recent work finally identified neutron production which was the long established stumbling block preventing scientific acceptance of the phenomena been cold fusion."

I am sorry to say that is not the case, for several reasons --

This work is not new. It was announced years ago and it has been replicated at two other labs. The recent paper describes improvements.

The neutrons are still detected at levels many orders of magnitude smaller than they are with plasma fusion (per joule of energy). Only helium is detected at rates commensurate with plasma fusion.

Dozens of other studies have reported neutrons using other methods, also at rates lower than plasma fusion. These other studies have been more widely replicated than the Navy technique. (There are not many studies on this topic; hundreds of studies have have been published on excess heat and tritium.)

Previous observations of neutrons did not produce widespread acceptance of the phenomena. The scientists who do not accept the results generally have not read any research papers and they know nothing about the subject. Many of them claim that the effect was never replicated. People who do not read about an experiment will not be convinced by it.

Glen Litsinger said...

The vicious suppression of cold fusion theory and research follows a familiar pattern: an orthodox theory or technology garners political favor, a government bureaucracy subsumes and grows fatter by protecting and nurturing it, and forever after competing ideas which threaten that bureaucracy are mercilessly attacked. The politicization of science is the culprit. The same type of attack is evident whenever any scientist raises serious questions about AGW, HIV causation of AIDS, the details of Darwinian evolution, and the biotic genesis of petroleum, to name a few controversial and politically incorrect ideas. The bitter opposition they invoke speak volumes about the greed and fear of the attackers, which is true regardless of the ultimate rightness or wrongness of their own theories.

Moral: science takes government money in peril of its objectivity.

arclein said...

I wish that I could naysay your comments on the politicization of science. I unfortunately understand human nature far too well and know that stupid men grasping at power will use the media to supress threats.

The answer is that the internet and blogging is allowing better men to create viable lobby groups to confront such nonsense. We perhaps have not reached critical mass yet, but we are apporoaching the day when such behavior will be quickly challenged and put right. the media will find itself been held up to a very high standard of truth and will be brought into line.

Jed Rothwell said...

Glen Litsinger wrote:

"The vicious suppression of cold fusion theory and research follows a familiar pattern: an orthodox theory or technology garners political favor, a government bureaucracy subsumes and grows fatter by protecting and nurturing it, and forever after competing ideas which threaten that bureaucracy are mercilessly attacked."

Actually, this pattern was just as common before the rise of modern governments. Furthermore, to give credit where it is due, in the U.S. the Federal government has given more support to cold fusion than all other institutions combined. The DoE has attacked the research, but the Navy, Army and DARPA have supported it. There has been virtually no support from corporations. After 1990 very few public or private universities have allowed research.

Opposition to cold fusion has been led by the American Physical Society (a private, non-governmental organization), and by the mass media, especially the Scientific American, the Washington Post, the New York Times and Time magazine.

The politicization of science is the culprit.

This is true, but it has been true since ancient times. Academic politics are fierce because, as Prof. Woodrow Wilson put it, the stakes are so small. In the case of cold fusion the stakes are high but the politics the same as ever.

Breakthroughs in science and technology have been suppressed throughout history. There are dozens of examples in modern times. This seems to be a function of human nature. So is rape and murder for that matter -- I am not excusing it for that reason! My point is that you should not assume that modern governmental institutions are necessarily more prone to this problem than other institutions, or even that free-market competitive the institutions will respond better. As I said, there has been no corporate research in the U.S. With regard to cold fusion the capitalist system has utterly failed.