RE: Credibility for cold fusion?

I wonder if this is the same approach as I mentioned in
http://www.calvin.edu/archive/asa/200403/0146.html ?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
> Behalf Of Al Koop
> Sent: Friday, March 26, 2004 9:38 AM
> To: asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: Credibility for cold fusion?
>
>
> It looks like some influential people think cold fusion may have some
> credibility.
>
>
> U.S. Will Give Cold Fusion Second Look, After 15 Years
> By KENNETH CHANG
>
> Published: March 25, 2004
>
> Cold fusion, briefly hailed as the silver-bullet solution to the
> world's energy problems and since discarded to the same bin of
> quackery as paranormal phenomena and perpetual motion machines, will
> soon get a new hearing from Washington.
>
> Despite being pushed to the fringes of physics, cold fusion has
> continued to be worked on by a small group of scientists, and they
> say their figures unambiguously verify the original report, that
> energy can be generated simply by running an electrical current
> through a jar of water.
>
> Last fall, cold fusion scientists asked the Energy Department to
> take a second look at the process, and last week, the department
> agreed.
>
> No public announcement was made. A British magazine, New Scientist,
> first reported the news this week, and Dr. James F. Decker, deputy
> director of the science office in the Energy Department, confirmed
> it in an e-mail interview.
>
> "It was my personal judgment that their request for a review was
> reasonable," Dr. Decker said.
>
> For advocates of cold fusion, the new review brings them to the cusp
> of vindication after years of dismissive ridicule.
>
> "I am absolutely delighted that the D.O.E. is finally going to do
> the right thing," Dr. Eugene F. Mallove, editor of Infinite Energy
> magazine, said. "There can be no other conclusion than a major new
> window has opened on physics."
>
> The research is too preliminary to determine whether cold fusion,
> even if real, will live up to its initial billing as a cheap,
> bountiful source of energy, said Dr. Peter Hagelstein, a professor
> of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts
> Institute of Technology who has been working on a theory to explain
> how the process works. Experiments have generated small amounts of
> energy, from a fraction of a watt to a few watts.
>
> Still, Dr. Hagelstein added, "I definitely think it has potential
> for commercial energy production."
>
> Dr. Decker said the scientists, not yet chosen, would probably spend
> a few days listening to presentations and then offer their thoughts
> individually. The review panel will not conduct experiments, he said.
>
> "What's on the table is a fairly straightforward question, is there
> science here or not?" Dr. Hagelstein said. "Most fundamental to this
> is to get the taint associated with the field hopefully removed."
>
> Fusion, the process that powers the Sun, combines hydrogen atoms,
> releasing energy as a byproduct. In March 1989, Drs. B. Stanley Pons
> and Martin Fleischmann, two chemists at the University of Utah, said
> they had generated fusion in a tabletop experiment using a jar of
> heavy water, where the water molecules contain a heavier version of
> hydrogen, deuterium, and two palladium electrodes. A current running
> through the electrodes pulled deuterium atoms into the electrodes,
> which somehow generated heat, the scientists said. Dr. Fleischmann
> speculated that the heat was coming from fusion of the deuterium
> atoms.
>
> Other scientists trying to reproduce the seemingly simple experiment
> found the effects fickle and inconsistent. Because cold fusion, if
> real, cannot be explained by current theories, the inconsistent
> results convinced most scientists that it had not occurred. The
> signs of extra heat, critics said, were experimental mistakes or
> generated by the current or, perhaps, chemical reactions in the
> water, but not fusion.
>
> Critics also pointed out that to produce the amount of heat
> reported, conventional fusion reactions would throw out lethal
> amounts of radiation, and they argued that the continued health of
> Drs. Pons and Fleischmann, as well as other experimenters, was proof
> that no fusion occurred.
>
> Some cold fusion scientists now say they can produce as much as two
> to three times more energy than in the electric current. The results
> are also more reproducible, they say. They add that they have
> definitely seen fusion byproducts, particularly helium in quantities
> proportional to the heat generated.
>
> After a conference in August, Dr. Hagelstein wrote to Energy
> Secretary Spencer Abraham, asking for a meeting. Dr. Hagelstein; Dr.
> Michael McKubre of SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif.; and Dr.
> David J. Nagel of George Washington University met Dr. Decker on
> Nov. 6.
>
> "They presented some data and asked for a review of the scientific
> research that has been conducted," Dr. Decker said. "The scientists
> who came to see me are from excellent scientific institutions and
> have excellent credentials."
>
> Scientists working on conventional fusion said cold fusion research
> had fallen off their radar screens.
>
> "I'm surprised," Dr. Stewart C. Prager, a professor of physics at
> the University of Wisconsin, said. "I thought most of the cold
> fusion effort had phased out. I'm just not aware of any physics
> results that motivated this."
>
>
>
>
>
Received on Fri Mar 26 16:25:09 2004