Hello, Folks. I just finished a new book on cold fusion. I can give away free books to the first 10 people who contact me and mention SCISCOOP (Sorry, U.S. only.) My contact info and lots more here. I’ve spent the last few years getting to know about 70 researchers from all around the world (11 nations so far,) and most of them are pretty serious scientists. I also contacted nearly all of the leading critics of cold fusion and tried to get their opinions of current research, but none of them were up-to-date.
Those of you who have been following cold fusion lately know that the DOE took a second look at cold fusion last year. Half of the reviewers thought cold fusion was real; the others didn’t. DOE decided not to decide what it all means. That’s fine. They’re bureaucrats, not innovators. Full details, including a rebuttal by Ed Storms, are here.
We are going to give mainstream science another chance to learn about cold fusion this coming March at the APS meeting in Los Angeles. Come one, come all.
But probably won’t be able to make this session… nevertheless, I’m quite surprised and interested that it actually made it to a real session at an APS meeting – it’s the division of condensed matter physics, not nuclear physics, but maybe that’s the point. Not that I really think there’s anything to this…
So you know, the books got snagged already by Arthur (NC), Tim (KY), Ryan (MO), Andy (ND), Jared (but he has not sent his snail mail address yet), Josh (CA), Craig (OH), M.P.(NJ), Tatiana (AZ), Jay (NYC). An 11th is on deck if Jared doesn’t get back to me within 24hrs. It was fun meeting the 10 of you.
Who knows what press will attend the cold fusion sessions at APS, but you know I’ll certainly be there and have a report available for you within a week or two after the conference.
sk
OK. So, for 15 years scientists with good credentials at SRI, U.S. DoE, U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, etc. keep getting consistently inconsistent “excess heat”. They have definitely improved upon these results to get a higher percentage of successes by modifying the impurities in the palladium. But, it’s not lighting light bulbs YET. Is that any reason to call it “bad science”? Probably, if you are a bad scientist, and do not recognize that you have more to learn about the dynamics of the process. Learning more about the process is why there have been so many conferences on the subject for the past 12 years. A replacement for oil. Hmmm. Why would we need more information on that?
Hi Pogo,
I thought I might offer some response to your comments. You state something about modifying the impurities. This comment is partially correct, and partially misleading. The researchers know that impurities have something to do with successful experiments. For instance, Martin Fleischmann noted a Harwell experiment that used 99.999 percent pure palladium and failed, whereas he used a 99.99 sample and succeeded. This is old news, however, from many years ago. The exact nature of what impurities help/hinder the reaction are, to my knowledge, not well known, with one exception. Imam of the Naval Research Lab found that a palladium-boron alloy gave extremely reliable results. Mel Miles has written extensively on this.
Your comment about lighting light bulbs seems somewhat unscientific to me. I didn’t know that was a requirement and an integral part of the scientific method. Perhaps you are implying that if cold fusion was going to save the world it would have/could have done so already? If so, I question whether you are aware of other very difficult science problems that were either solved in the past or remain unsolved today.
You mentioned something about being a bad scientist. Are you so inconsiderate, and confident in your personal assessment of these people that you would say such a thing to their face? And can you back up such an assertion?
I thought I might offer some response to a previous posters’ comments.
The poster states something about modifying the impurities. This comment is partially correct, and partially misleading. The researchers know that impurities have something to do with successful experiments. For instance, Martin Fleischmann noted a Harwell experiment that used 99.999 percent pure palladium and failed, whereas he used a 99.99 percent pure sample and succeeded. This is old news, however, from many years ago.
The exact nature of what impurities help/hinder the reaction are, to my knowledge, not well known, with one exception. Imam of the Naval Research Lab found that a palladium-boron alloy gave extremely reliable results. Mel Miles, formerly of China Lake has written extensively on this.
The comment about lighting light bulbs seems to be unscientific itself. I didn’t know that lighting light bulbs was a requirement and an integral part of the scientific method. Perhaps the poster is implying that if cold fusion was going to save the world it would have/could have done so already? If so, I question whether the poster is aware of other very difficult science problems that were either solved in the past or remain unsolved today.
The poster implied that cold fusion researchers are bad scientists. I wonder whether this person is so inconsiderate, and confident in thier personal assessment of these people that they would make such a disgusting comment to their face? And can they back up such an assertion?
— sk
I’ve got $10 on Krivit. Assuming of course it’s a physical confrontation. Maybe 10 paces with dueling pipettes?