Cold Fusion Proven True by U.S. Navy Researchers

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ravingdave
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Post by ravingdave »

Science starts as heresy, becomes common knowledge and ends as Dogma. ( with apologies. )

Josh Cryer
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Post by Josh Cryer »

Man you guys are willing to be open to cold fusion, which has a sordid history and next to no evidence... but not other things which have copious amounts of evidence... it never ceases to amaze me.
Science is what we have learned about how not to fool ourselves about the way the world is.

DeltaV
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Post by DeltaV »


MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

Josh Cryer wrote:Man you guys are willing to be open to cold fusion, which has a sordid history and next to no evidence... but not other things which have copious amounts of evidence... it never ceases to amaze me.
Josh,

There is new evidence in Cold Fusion.

As there is in climate science. Hide The Decline.

Which of course doesn't invalidate climate science. And Watergate was just a third rate burglary.

====

I'm still waiting for you to explain why a gain of greater than one doesn't lead to a runaway situation. And if it does lead to that why we haven't seen it.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

djolds1
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Post by djolds1 »

MSimon wrote:Ever since I saw the Navy work a while back and heard Dr. B's explanation on the Space Show I thought there might be something to it.

The fact that nickel as well as palladium seem to work is also another positive sign relative to current theory (sketchy as it is).

What chaps my @$$ is that suppression of alternate views seems so common in science.

For instance: not enough time for microbes to evolve on earth. So why not in space? Or other planets. Then chunks get torn off and the seeds get scattered. Kind of like ID with out the I or the D.
To be fair, science is a human enterprise and Pons/Felischman utterly fumbled the academic politics of LENR early on. As a result CF/LENR became not just initially unsuccessful, but an outright pariah pursuit.

As to microbes evolving in space; unlikely. Aqueous environments are required and nature can sort through the mathematical hyperspace of all options more rapidly than is commonly supposed. See Life's Solution by Simon Conway Morris.
Vae Victis

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

djolds1 wrote:
MSimon wrote:Ever since I saw the Navy work a while back and heard Dr. B's explanation on the Space Show I thought there might be something to it.

The fact that nickel as well as palladium seem to work is also another positive sign relative to current theory (sketchy as it is).

What chaps my @$$ is that suppression of alternate views seems so common in science.

For instance: not enough time for microbes to evolve on earth. So why not in space? Or other planets. Then chunks get torn off and the seeds get scattered. Kind of like ID with out the I or the D.
To be fair, science is a human enterprise and Pons/Felischman utterly fumbled the academic politics of LENR early on. As a result CF/LENR became not just initially unsuccessful, but an outright pariah pursuit.

As to microbes evolving in space; unlikely. Aqueous environments are required and nature can sort through the mathematical hyperspace of all options more rapidly than is commonly supposed. See Life's Solution by Simon Conway Morris.
By space I didn't necessarily mean space. Planets and moons will do.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

djolds1
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Post by djolds1 »

MSimon wrote:
djolds1 wrote:
MSimon wrote:What chaps my @$$ is that suppression of alternate views seems so common in science.

For instance: not enough time for microbes to evolve on earth. So why not in space? Or other planets. Then chunks get torn off and the seeds get scattered. Kind of like ID with out the I or the D.
As to microbes evolving in space; unlikely. Aqueous environments are required and nature can sort through the mathematical hyperspace of all options more rapidly than is commonly supposed. See Life's Solution by Simon Conway Morris.
By space I didn't necessarily mean space. Planets and moons will do.
In which case supposing the synthesis of life off-Earth is unnecessary. Earth had a large gravity well to pull in primordial ices and amino acids early on, and natural processes sort the available hyperspace of molecular configurations to find those that "work" far more rapidly than is commonly supposed. Planetoids further out had lower g fields thus pulling in less mass, and were colder than the Earth thus providing less energy for the synthesis of life to work with. Further in from Earth things get unpleasant for the opposite reason - similar g fields (Venus), but hotter. High g field means that in any case it is difficult for that locally synthesized life to get off-world.
Vae Victis

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

djolds1 wrote:
MSimon wrote:
djolds1 wrote:As to microbes evolving in space; unlikely. Aqueous environments are required and nature can sort through the mathematical hyperspace of all options more rapidly than is commonly supposed. See Life's Solution by Simon Conway Morris.
By space I didn't necessarily mean space. Planets and moons will do.
In which case supposing the synthesis of life off-Earth is unnecessary. Earth had a large gravity well to pull in primordial ices and amino acids early on, and natural processes sort the available hyperspace of molecular configurations to find those that "work" far more rapidly than is commonly supposed. Planetoids further out had lower g fields thus pulling in less mass, and were colder than the Earth thus providing less energy for the synthesis of life to work with. Further in from Earth things get unpleasant for the opposite reason - similar g fields (Venus), but hotter. High g field means that in any case it is difficult for that locally synthesized life to get off-world.
Maybe. The problem is time.

According to the latest there was not enough time on earth to go from soup to nuts.

So multiply the planets and go farther back in time and suddenly you have 10 or 20 more orders of magnitude of effort. Colliding galaxies and chunks knocked off bodies spread life. At least that is my current theory.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

djolds1
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Post by djolds1 »

MSimon wrote:Maybe. The problem is time.

According to the latest there was not enough time on earth to go from soup to nuts.

So multiply the planets and go farther back in time and suddenly you have 10 or 20 more orders of magnitude of effort. Colliding galaxies and chunks knocked off bodies spread life. At least that is my current theory.
Which is precisely the point I've been trying to make. See the early chapters in the reference I cited. The problem of time is massively overstated. Nature sorts through the options (geometrical configurations in the mathematical hyperspace of all possibilities) to arrive at "good enough" functionality much faster than the standard math says it should.
Vae Victis

taniwha
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Post by taniwha »

First, are aqueous solutions actually required, or is that just the prevalent assumption?

Second, amino acids have been found in nebulae. Might it be possible for certain amino acids (or more likely proteins) to "collect" water molecules they bump into, forming their own local supplies of aqueous solutions.

Third: as far as I know, there's nothing stopping an icy comet from having a solid core, particularly one with enough radio-actives to melt some of the ice.

I'm sure there are many other ways life can evolve in space, but we'll probably never know.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

I'm sure there are many other ways life can evolve in space, but we'll probably never know any time soon.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

taniwha
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Post by taniwha »

Ah, well, yeah, that's true. Depends on who "we" is, I guess: us here in the forum (probably won't know), or us humans (any time soon).

However, that's just covering my ass. I was sloppy.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

taniwha wrote:Ah, well, yeah, that's true. Depends on who "we" is, I guess: us here in the forum (probably won't know), or us humans (any time soon).

However, that's just covering my ass. I was sloppy.
You should have been here when I was arguing a really bad position for a week or ten days. I did it so good that I nearly had some of my opposition convinced.

Then I saw the light.

It was so notorious that not only did I apologize here but I put notices in my blogs.

A little crow every now and then keeps you humble (hah). But one never acquires a taste for it.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

KitemanSA
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Post by KitemanSA »

djolds1 wrote: To be fair, science is a human enterprise and Pons/Felischman utterly fumbled the academic politics of LENR early on.
Don't blame P&F, blame their admin overloads who wanted good press. Idiots.

kurt9
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Post by kurt9 »

I attended a conference on particle beam modification of materials in fall of '97. It turned out that most of the attendees were ex-fusion people (who had quit the fusion scene because of the bureaucracy and the lack of progress). The few that I actually got up the balls to ask them what they thought about "cold fusion" told me that they thought there was a real phenomenon, but that it was unlikely to be a fusion process. One guy told me he thought it was a new quantum mechanical process.

I have followed cold fusion since around '93 or so. I consider myself to be a CF skeptic. However, in the last few years, I have become convinced that there is a real phenomenon to all of these and that all of these people cannot just deluding themselves. It is not clear what the phenomemon is or if it can be scaled up into anything that is industrially useful.

The best explanation I have heard for the CF phenomenon is that it is an electro-weak reaction rather than the "strong" reaction that both fusion and fission are. This is called the Widom-Larson Theory:

http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/WL/WLTheory.shtml

This is the only theory I have run across that seems to explain the most believable demonstrations and does not require any "new" physics. Its the only plausible theory that I know of.

P&F did not want to make their announcement when they did. They wanted to do another 2-3 years experiments before saying anything. It was the administrators at the university that they were working at that forced them to make the announcement that they did. I think the announcement was incredibly destructive to the field. Extraordinary theories require extraordinary evidence and it was clear to me in subsequent interviews that P&F understood this intuitively.

Yes, I agree the the way that George Miley was cast out of the physics community was sleazy and reprehensible. Everything I have read about George Miley is that he is a first-class researcher and that his work is second to none. This suggests a certain paranoia in the physics community. Perhaps its because they have received billions of dollars in research funds over the past 4 decades and have developed essentially nothing of commercial value, whatsoever, with that money.

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