Sorry, another break from our study of quantum mechanics. I couldn't resist when I came across a very interesting story. A h/t to
Weird Things for posting
this about a month ago. Greg Fish's post discusses a pair of Italian experimental physicists that claim to have developed a reactor capable of creating power with very little energy input. Since a month ago, news has spread about this experiement, but is it real or are we looking at a repeat of the claims started Pons and Fleischmann's famous cold fusion experiment? This remains to be seen, but the idea is certainly interesting.
I would like to direct you to
this article from Popular Science. The claim is that Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi have successfully constructed a reactor capable of 12,400 kW from a 400 W input on a tabletop device. Instead of using palladium electrodes like Pons and Fleischmann's apparatus, this device supposedly fuses nickel with hydrogen and produces copper and energy.
A
translated interview with Andrea Rossi sheds a little light on the device, but they are keeping details quiet until they have a better understanding on the theory behind it. There still isn't much information about this out there, but I'm keeping my eyes open and will post an update as soon as I can. This is certainly intriguing. If anything positive comes out of this, it will certainly be exciting, but I for one remain extremely skeptical, and will remain skeptical until either we see these in action or the theory behind it is explained.
This is very interesting, but I too remain very skeptical. I am not a strong believer that fusion will ever be our power source. I mean, how did they get the energy out of it? That alone would be quite the feat since no one really has a feasible way to do it yet.
ReplyDeleteOh, man, thanks for posting. Fascinating that this made it to SA but they are "keeping it under wraps." Skepticism is definitely warranted on this one.
ReplyDeleteI meant Pop Sci, not Scientific American. The article is pretty tough on them, too, showing that the scientific community may have learned its lesson on jumping to endorsement...those two might be a bit shady.
ReplyDeleteIt's great that you bring this up but it seems that cold fusion is doomed to skepticism forever. However has society and the scientific community really evolved to not believe everything now? The cold fusion case was very well known but what if someone tomorrow invents a machine that achieves perpetual motion (just an example), would people jump on the bandwagon in your opinion? (It does not have to be perpetual motion just something very improbable).
ReplyDeleteActually, people make these claims every day, we usually don't hear about them. The US patent office rejects plenty of perpetual motion machines and other inventions that defy physical laws. This is actually one of the ideas that has made it to popular science. Their patent did get rejected though, so people aren't taking it too seriously. We'll see how this plays out.
ReplyDeleteSee, the problem with cold fusion (as opposed to, say, magnetic confinement fusion) is how difficult it is to reproduce. This is why it is primarily refuted by most physicists, from an experimental point of view.
ReplyDeleteThere certainly are theoretical considerations for its impossibility, but really the fact is that the inconsistencies of cold fusion experiments, coupled with a lack of theoretical foundation for why (or how) it should work, tend to keep the entire field outside mainstream physics.
Plasma-based approaches, however, are an entirely different matter. Here's hoping for ITER's success in attaining a Q-factor of ~10 in 2018! (then work can begin on DEMO, incorporating lithium liquid blankets and other forms of tritium-production, etc.)
At any rate, nothing can really get done without the funding, so let's not completely rule out cold fusion, but certainly not have it on the top of the priority list!!