As I posted a couple weeks back, the recent announcements regarding what has been popularly described as cold fusion were game changers. An experiment was run that was able to show the existence of daughter neutrons in association with an unexplained increase in heat.
Having this all land on 60 minutes so quickly will neutralize the decades long bias working against cold fusion research and now spur an upsurge in new research. I for one would like to see dozens of programs launched.
Even if a working device is never made, the advance in knowledge will be awesome. Most of it will be cheap.
When the first announcements were made twenty years ago, the surplus heat production was small enough to allow for other alternative explanations including simple experimental error. Today we have deuterium, a metal powder and way too much heat and no chemistry. If we did not have a fusion pathway, this result would be a mystery for the ages and would turn over everything.
That we are looking at 2500 times input energy is a good sign that we will get a heat engine out of this yet.
Yes, maybe it is time to get excited again.
Try to catch the show tonight. With Robert Duncan doing an audit of the experimental protocols, I see little reason room for the deniers here although I am sure someone will attempt to toss a little skepticism into the stew.
I will also be doing an comment on the Bussard Polywell Fusion experiment update shortly.
Energetics Technologies and Other New Cold Fusion Research Will Be on CBS 60 Minutes April 19, 2009
COLD FUSION IS HOT AGAIN - Presented in 1989 as a revolutionary new source of energy, cold fusion was quickly dismissed as junk science. But today, the buzz among scientists is that these experiments produce a real physical effect that could lead to monumental breakthroughs in energy production. Scott Pelley reports. Denise Schrier Cetta is the producer.
Pamela Mosier-Boss and colleagues at Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) in San Diego, California, are claiming to have made a "significant" discovery – clear evidence of the products of cold fusion. Tracks of energetic Neutrons are being detected.
At the present time, using the approaches described above, and thanks in large part to these unique relationships, Energetics Technologies is able to produce excess heat in a significant percentage of the experiments. Extraordinary breakthroughs have been accomplished, backed by tested reproducibility through the multiple independent channels of SRI, and ENEA. With proof of principle, it is now time to accelerate the work, leading to the commercialization of this promising technology.
The Promise of SuperWave™ Fusion / Dr. Irving Dardik Is it Cold Fusion? / Dr. Irving Dardik [the fusion is motion]
CBS asked Robert Duncan, vice chancellor for research at the University of Missouri and an expert in low-temperature physics, to look into the LENR research. Duncan was referred to CBS by Allen Goldman, the head of the condensed matter physics group at the American Physical Society. Duncan spent several weeks (on his own time) investigating LENR in October. CBS paid his travel expenses to meet with researchers at Energetics' laboratory in Omer, Israel, and observe a working LENR excess-heat experiment. Duncan emphasized to New Energy Times his objectivity of and independence from the research. "‘60 Minutes’ asked the American Physical Society for a reference for someone like myself who’s done very careful measurements in related fields but not specifically in LENR," Duncan said. "I've never been involved in any 'cold fusion' research in the past, nor am I involved in any now."
Duncan also met with researchers at NRL in Washington, D.C., and the SPAWAR researchers when they were in Salt Lake City at the American Chemical Society meeting in March. He was skeptical of the LENR excess heat before his investigation. New Energy Times spoke with Duncan today. "Sam Hornblower of CBS asked me to read some papers and talk to some of the scientists, and it quickly became clear to me that it was a very interesting result. After I saw some of the hardware, I had a chance to ask about the experimental configurations and dig in deeper, and now I am convinced that this excess-heat effect is real." Duncan was particularly impressed with the SPAWAR research because of its clear evidence for nuclear reactions.
