Italian cold fusion machine passes another test

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45153076/ns/technology_and_science-science/

Italian cold fusion machine passes another test

Despite a world of skepticism about E-Cat and other devices, proof is adding up

By Natalie Wolchover

Italian physicist and inventor Andrea Rossi has conducted a public demonstration of his "cold fusion" machine, the E-Cat, at the University of Bologna, showing that a small amount of input energy drives an unexplained reaction between atoms of hydrogen and nickel that leads to a large outpouring of energy, more than 10 times what was put in.

…

But the experimentalists who have seemingly demonstrated cold fusion over the years have been unable to explain the underlying mechanism that drives the miraculous reaction they claim to observe, and so the scientific community has largely turned its back on this line of research. Most physicists — as well as the United States Department of Energy (DoE), academic journals, and the U.S. Patent Office — consider cold fusion machines to be hoaxes, because they say physics rules out the possibility of room-temperature nuclear fusion.

Life's Little Mysteries http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/newest-cold-fusion-machine-does-impossible-1584/">reported on the E-Cat machine in April, when Rossi and fellow physicist Sergio Focardi successfully demonstrated the device for a group of Swedish physicists. At the time, we explained that the Italian physicists are two of a handful of researchers around the world who have kept the cold fusion fire burning. These cold fusion devotees believe that there is a little-understood physical process occurring in their machines that produces a safe, clean and endlessly renewable form of energy.

The physicists who were invited to the demonstration in April gave the E-Cat a solid thumbs-up. It produced too much excess heat to have been originating from a chemical process, they wrote in http://www.nyteknik.se/incoming/article3144960.ece/BINARY/Download+the+report+by+Kullander+and+Ess">their report, adding that, "The only alternative explanation is that there is some kind of a nuclear process that gives rise to the measured energy production."

…

[customerserviceguy]

1. Sure hope it works perfectly

Because if it doesn't, I'm sure the scientists involved will be dragged into an Italian court to face charges of getting everybody's hopes up.

[frazzled]

2. Have you ever driven a Fiat?

Nuff said. ;)

[customerserviceguy]

4. Yeah!

"Fix It Again, Tony!" we used to call them in the Seventies.

In any case, my reference was to the court case against the seismologists, in case anybody missed it.

[Gregorian]

5. Not very far.

They like to do what this experiment claims. Get hot. As in, burn up.

[Warren Stupidity]

7. actually that new mini fiat is a blast to drive.

[Starboard Tack]

19. As was the original Fiat 500. Cheap, economical and disposable.

I bought a used one in Rome in 1971 for $20, drove it all over Europe for a year. 60+mpg and 60mph cruising speed. Never had to see Tony with it.

[PuffedMica]

15. Ever shot a Benelli

[jberryhill]

18. No, but I shot one of their cousins

[RC]

3. Horse Puckie

Italian scientists Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi of the University of Bologna announced that they developed a cold fusion device capable of producing 12,400 W of heat power with an input of just 400 W. Last Friday, the scientists held a private invitation press conference in Bologna, attended by about 50 people, where they demonstrated what they claim is a nickel-hydrogen fusion reactor. Further, the scientists say that the reactor is well beyond the research phase; they plan to start shipping commercial devices within the next three months and start mass production by the end of 2011.

If this all sounds fishy to you, it should.

The Italian scientists, like Pons and Fleischmann, skipped the typical route of publishing their study and results in a peer-reviewed science journal, instead taking it directly to the press and public. This is a strong sign of pseudoscience, and smacks of a mistake, if not an outright hoax.

In many ways cold fusion is similar to http://www.skepdic.com/perpetual.html">perpetual motion machines. The principles defy the laws of physics, but that doesn’t stop people from periodically claiming to have invented or discovered one.

http://news.discovery.com/tech/cold-fusion-claims-resurface.html

[OKIsItJustMe]

8. This is not completely true

They have published in a peer reviewed journal (their own) ;-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion#Publications
http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/

[madokie]

16. One thing I've learned from reading here in the E/E forum is if it isn't fission RC don't like it

would you say I'm correct on that RC?

[RC]

21. Apparently you haven't read most of my posts.

My main interest are the sciences, as they have to do with Facts and Truth. I try to look at the big picture, what causes the effect. Doing 'What If' to better understand why things happen the way they do.
You, on the other hand seem to have a problem with that, as you take one result, one time, that fit into your mind set, that only applied to one thing due to special circumstances and try to apply it to everything else, whether it fits or not, while ignoring everything that does not fit your mind set.
Nuclear is a danger is only because it is relatively new and so much energy is involved in such small space. Plus we have only started to learned how to harness that energy. Give us another hundred years. For instance, look at the last hundred hears in electronics, for comparison. We could find even our airplanes nuclear powered in the next hundred years.
Most of us learn from our mistakes. That is how we learn, to advance. Nuclear power is here to stay, whether you like it or not. We need it. Nothing else can come close to supplying our energy needs when the oil runs out. Not Wind. Not Solar, Not Renewable's. In the long run they will only be niche energy sources.

Now stop following me around.

[Warren Stupidity]

6. I'm tired of playing 'find the bulshit', can somebody else do it this time please?

[wtmusic]

11. "Proof is adding up."

Possibly not invalidating the research, but showing the writer is a moron, and anything goes.

[buddysmellgood]

9. Try unplugging it.

[OKIsItJustMe]

10. Actually, they reportedly did just that

i.e. the device supposedly ran in “self-sustaining” mode:
http://pesn.com/2011/10/28/9501940_1_MW_E-Cat_Test_Successful/
http://pesn.com/2011/10/31/9501942_After_the_E-Cat_Test--Report_and_Q-A_with_Rossi/

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/29/rossi-success

[exboyfil]

13. John Galt's machine has been found

Civilization is saved.

[wtmusic]

12. From the University of Bologna - how appropriate. nt

[pscot]

25. They've been doing business at the same stand

for 900 years, so it's not exactly Phoenix University.

[NickB79]

14. "Some kind of nuclear process". Hope they wore their lead-lined boxer shorts

If a nuclear reaction of some sort is taking place, shouldn't it be relatively easy to verify by simply measuring for radiation spikes?

Also, wasn't that one of the arguments that destroyed the first cold fusion reports, that the researchers would have been killed by radiation if their device had operated as they claimed?

[madokie]

17. Aren't you getting things mixed up

fission and fusion is two different animals best I can figure out.

[NickB79]

20. Both are nuclear reactions, and both release radiation

Fusion, while it doesn't leave behind much of any radioactive waste compared to fission, releases massive amounts of radiation as the atoms fuse together.

Even Pons, in his initial cold fusion experiment, claimed to have detected some radiation release (mainly in the form of neutrons, IIRC). One argument I've read to debunk the claim of cold fusion is that to generate the amount of energy required to melt a hole in the floor of Pon's lab (which he claimed his device did overnight), you'd need so much energy radiating out of the apparatus that you'd kill anyone who came into the room.

[madokie]

22. 'One argument I've read' is the basis for this claim

:rofl:

[NickB79]

23. What do you find funny?

http://www.wesleyan.edu/synthesis/GROUP4/FINALVERSIONS/fusion.html

"Many holes have been found in Pons' and Fleischmann's experiment which shows that they probably did not achieve fusion, not commercially viable fusion in any event. First, the amount of heat measured in their experiment was billions of times greater than would be accounted for by Deuterium fusion. If the heat that they recorded was produced by Deuterium fusion, so many neutrons would also have been produced that they would both have been killed."

[muriel_volestrangler]

24. I blame the faster-than-light neutrinos (nt)