Advances in cold fusion

I've been reading about cold fusion lately, and for those interested here's what I found. Apparently contrary to popular scientific belief, there may be a way of combining ordinary water with special crystals that allows a slow nuclear fusion process to take place at room temperature. I say slow, because the energy released per second is tiny compared to what comes out of a hydrogen bomb, but it may be plenty for 50 kW power generators for your house, or with some progress even megawatt power plants. The cool thing about this is that since there is so much nuclear energy in water, even if you could only extract energy very slowly (say 50 kW), you would have enough energy for your house to last thousands of years. You'd never have to pay another electric bill.

The reason this is controvercial is that the laws of physics say fusion CANNOT take place at room temperature, because it takes too much energy to bring 2 hydrogen atoms together -- you would need temperatures in the millions of degrees. However, cold fusion proponents (some of whom are former nobel prize winners) say the crystal stores and focuses energy in a special way that may allow for cold fusion. My understanding is that the crystal focuses the energy onto small amounts hydrogen, thus making their temperature extremely high, even though the average temperature never rises above a few hundred degrees. Experiments show large amounts of energy being released, but haven't seen enough nuclear by-products (neutrons, helium) to conclusively show that this is indeed fusion.

Well, several years ago, a small team of independent physicists claimed to have achieved cold water fusion, on a small scale, of course, in the lab. They submitted their findings, and were bebunked forthwith. I never read or saw or heard where there was any further attempt to re-create the environment and fusion (which is the test of its validity). Indeed, they sort of just disappeared...

Think of this: WHAT would happen to the power structure, the global economy IF there was ever a process by which energy could be generated, in mass quantities, with NO RADIOACTIVE waste! No need for Nuke plants, and even more sininster, NO NEED FOR OIL or any other FOSSIL FUELS...
So do you really THINK that cold fusion will be allowed to exist? Think on that one....

Yeah, it would. We could still use the gas for cars and such. Unless they find a way cold fussion would fix that. I hope they allow it. It would mean our earth might become a better place and also would mean that a lot of our attention could be diverted from engery with the earth to solving other problems.

Think, Very interesting. I would love to read the details. Where did you find them?

WildRover, Too True. In todays society though, 'information super highway' and all, I don't think such a discovery could be effectivly supressed though. The Fortune 500 better make plans for a quick conversion if such a thing ever does become a reality. Early on it would probably be a catastrophy, in the long run though I think it would be a shot in the arm for the doomed human race.

Sounds familiar, back in the days of hot rod fords they talked about how the big auto manufacturers bought up the copyrights of fuel efficient vehicles inovations to suppress them not produce them. Not much has come forward except for teflon to reduce friction, fuel injection and (4) front wheel drive has been around all along. Cars have down sized and redesigned to reduce drag but life time maintence free, fuel efficient cars still aren't mass produced. Actually applications of such technology to steam powered vehicles would be better than the internal combussion engine.

um... our cars would use the same tech... duh.. cept the moving parts.. combustion in general would prob be useless.....
I bet oil companys like that.. now they only supplying less refined stuff to make the moving parts less squeeky..

The steam engine was used both in the early automobles as well as trains, both of which technology turned to alternate ways.
At that time, they used thick (steel?) iron parts to withstand the pressure and heat. With the advent of moern metalurgic techniques would drastically reduce this factor safely.
Would we see a drastic reduction in oil consumption?
Just as I use anti-freeze in the radiator, I use synthetic oil.
While steam engines would reduce emission of hydrocarbons, etc.; the use of plastics would still represent a large dependency upon oil.
For Example, I would be walking around Manfred when I would hear the wind of gliders as they passed overhead. Watching the gliders, ultra lights, and hot air balloons over a period of time directed my thoughts toward building my own version using the 3 technology. More of an mental exercise than actually building, I did some reading on areodynamics and such. I even did some drawings, of course, the basic designed changed from a simple oval tri-winged motorized bicycle that could be driven on the road as well as flown.This grew into cross between a jet ski style, motorcycle and ultra-light. Now, one of the problems I faced was the < 8 ft. wingspan to meet motor vehicle standards. Then I remembered how when I was young man I had seen an old filler T.V. program from 1945. The piece had been a promotional for one of the big rubber manufactures documenting their efforts to produce an inflatable aircraft (similar to the inflatable life raft) in conjuction with the War Department.
Then it occurred to me that such technology would serve alternate energy generation. With it you could construct foils with greater surface area but with less mass.
Of course, I was working with the principles of an air conditioning style system using the heat exchange from a gas engine (drive) with a mixture of helium/ argon as the exchange medium. (heavier inert gas added to promote fluid flow)
Perhaps the best advances are in better use of the technology we have, not in developing in technology.

xseyes, I didn't hold on to the source of my findings, but the information I found is readily available on the web. If you do a search in google, you will find articles both for and against cold fusion.

The thing that struck me about all this is, dispite the fact that a Nobel Prize winning physicist thinks cold fusion may very well be possible, cold fusion research has slowed down dramatically in the last 10 years due to a lack of funding and a lot of stigma surrounding the subject. Scientists avoid the subject like a plague (I had no idea there was so much politics involved in SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH until I read about all this. I always thought science way about the pursuit of truth). The story of cold fusion seems remarkably similar to the development of the first airplane by the Wright brothers. Heavier than air flight was *impossible* to physicists. No one wanted to hear about it or read about it until enough people saw the plane fly that it was all over the news. If my memory serves me, the French government at the time hired an engineer to build a machine like the Wright brothers' plane. He didn't bother to read the Wright brothers' paper, and built something that looked like a plane to the untrained eye, but actually skipped over all the physics of an actual airplane. The plane couldn't possibly work (which it didn't). The whole project was a huge waste of money, and further supported the idea that such flight was impossible.

WildRover, I do agree with a lot of what you say about world politics getting in the way of cold fusion regardless of its technical feasibility, and in all likelihood a lot of good research is getting squashed for political reasons to slow things down further.

here's a question when a shuttle in space reenters the atmosphere the discharge and heat that come off it would that be cold fusion in a way if so then wouldnt the sped of water something to do with the fusion process i read what u had to write and it siad that it would take millions of deegre in temprature to create the fusion but if im correct in my assumtion then its already happened my question is is my simple view incorrect ?

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when a shuttle in space reenters the atmosphere the discharge and heat that come off it would that be cold fusion in a way

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Cold?
three (4) phases of mater: solid, liquid, gaseous {vapor} plasma

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my question is our simplitic view be incorrect?

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I think you are right.

It will never be allowed to exist because the greedy oil companies want us weak and sick so we are dependent on them giving them more power, they know they are destroying the world and the have to to stop oil use because the buy the inventions to prevent people from using them so they can have more power so you can now give up hopes for this to exist!!!

Oil companies will be the first to invest into cold fusion, when it is demonstrated to be real and profitable.

Fusion is the combining of light elements to form heavier nuclei. This requires:
a) Massive pressure.
b) Massive temperatures.
Fusion happens in the sun because it has the ideal conditions, and this is why the sun will last for another 4.5 Billion (British billion) years. I don't quite understand how a rocket re-entering the atmosphere could cause fusion. And, as has been stated before in this thread, anyone claiming cold fusion has been debunked. This is an interesting theory, which I will look into, but I would like to raise two points:
1. Fusion is impractical unless we can find a way to make the activation energy less than the energy produced, which at the moment we cant, and if we can keep it perpetual, which so far we cant.
2. A kilowatt is a measurement of power, not time. You're thinking of Kilowatt hours. Also, there are not 4 states of matter as there are 4 different types of plasma.

First kowalskil if one has a product to sell and you can sell a lot of it and it doesn't last for ever will you trade it in and sell people something that they will never need to pay you anything for again?

im sorry if you are offended but you made thats stupid comment. it all just a way to make more money at a constant rate then to get a hell load of money in a once of fashion!!! oh and one can get fusion when one concentrates energy into a very small space like over a few atoms or so. that is the idea of cold fusion. one concentrates energy with a crystal or something onto a few atoms causing only them to rise in temperature and fuse causing them to release energy into the surrounding water.

and to TheHollowMen275 i did not know about that four plasma states. can you please give more detail?