Author Topic: Dr. Rossi' cold fusion generator...clean and cheap power possible (Read 1303 times)

TM7 · « **on:** May 17, 2011, 07:54:07 AM »

Well, here is yet another clean, green, and cheap power technique....97 operating in 4 countries. Is America loosing the energy race...because it supports the TPTB??

fyi....TM7

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Andrea_Rossi%27s_Cold_Fusion_Energy_Catalyzer_%28E-Cat%29:_Frequently_Asked_Questions

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billy_56081 · « **Reply #1 on:** May 17, 2011, 08:12:37 AM »

Cold fusion is fake.

billy_56081 · « **Reply #2 on:** May 17, 2011, 09:29:49 AM »

Why do you go around promoting things you do not know to be true. Cold fusion is a pipe dream they have been trying for years. It doesn't work and no one has figured out how to make it work. Trust me TM if someone discovered how to make cold fusion work it would be headlines in every news outlet around the world. They have made advances in super conductors but they are still not viable or useful outside the lab.

Every few years the cold fusion story come out and every time it is something you know well fertilizer.

Conan The Librarian · « **Reply #3 on:** May 17, 2011, 11:36:38 AM »

No need to explain the science. This is just another variation of a recurring hoax that surfaces in the mainstream attention every ten years or so. The best one was back in the late 80s, and it got international news coverage and attention. If you look up "cold fusion hoax" you'll get a lot of hits on it.

billy_56081 · « **Reply #4 on:** May 17, 2011, 12:58:43 PM »

Yeah Conan the cold fusion hoax catches a lot of the misinformed. It is pretty common for the story to add that evil big energy is keeping this under wraps to give it credibility with the tinfoil hat crowd.

Hooker · « **Reply #5 on:** May 17, 2011, 06:04:22 PM »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion

magooch · « **Reply #6 on:** May 18, 2011, 04:25:34 AM »

Well, I for one support the TPTB. What's the TPTB?

Conan The Librarian · « **Reply #7 on:** May 18, 2011, 05:03:08 AM »

It's all about grantsmanship. If you can get the money to study something, you can make a career out of it. I work with math and can tell you that most research mathematics is just busy work that nobody ever refers to after the papers are published. This is partially because of specialization but also because of bad writing. The authors don't introduce their work or explain the ideas in summary form, so nobody bothers to read past the first paragraph.

Pot-Bellied Stallion · « **Reply #8 on:** May 18, 2011, 05:05:53 AM »

I'm probably cutting my own throat by saying this, but there is such a process of isotopal interaction, not only between isotopes of the same element, but isotopes of elements with closely related properties. I have personally been researching this for the past ten or twelve years and have seen for myself the elemental shifts. With shifts such as these, energy, usually in the form of x-rays, is emitted and capable of being collected. This usually occurs in the presence of a radioactive element such as uranium or thorium, or the presence of certain rare earth elements. However, and there is always a 'however', the amount of energy realized from the isotopal or 'cold fusion' process pales in comparison to the energy involved in producing it. For example, the compression and heating needed to produce the energy from Dr. Rossi's process must consume a tremendous amount of energy. Sure, the energy could come from solar or wind, but at what cost, not only in money but also in the real estate that must be dedicated to such methods of production.
I expect my grandchildren might see such forms of energy in the remote future, but research on these things goes against the established way of scientific thinking and will be held back much as the scientific thought and research of folks like Galileo and Newton.

Conan The Librarian · « **Reply #9 on:** May 18, 2011, 05:11:50 AM »

What do you think of liquid thorium reactors? Do they have a future?

billy_56081 · « **Reply #10 on:** May 18, 2011, 05:25:26 AM »

What we have here is the pipe dream of producing energy from nothing. Energy sources only have a finite amount of energy that can be released. Without having even a basic understanding of energy many folks are fooled into believing in this silliness. We get the 100 mpg per gallon 1973 v8 station wagon folks and 4000 watt death ray that runs on AA batteries promoting this stuff when they no idea about the total amount of energy available in the source. It comes from a lack of knowledge in the field of energy and a paranoia of some super secret cabal trying to get them.

Pot-Bellied Stallion · « **Reply #11 on:** May 18, 2011, 05:50:39 AM »

Not from nothing, Billy. Who, a hundred years ago, would have imagined the energy that could be released from the nucleus of a uranium atom, or a hydrogen atom? Only a few people of vision. The only thing we had to do was determine how to control such energy, which we did with nuclear reactors. If you had told Teddy Roosevelt that he could sail his 'Great White Fleet' around the world without a refueling stop, he would have had you committed to a mental hospital. Things that were poo-pooed when I was a child are a part of our everyday lives now. I can remember how awestruck I felt when I saw my first t.v. set at work. Your iPhone or Droid is many times more powerful and faster than the best IBM mainframes of the 1950's.
All I'm saying is don't rule out the possibilities. I told my students that, even with all the innovations and inventions of the 20th century, scientific progress has just begun, and they will see things in their lifetimes that they can't imagine today.

Conan, I don't know enough about the liquid thorium reactor to comment intelligently, but I will definitely enlighten myself. I have considered the thullium/platinum battery, however. Theoretically, once activated it will produce power for hundreds of years with no drain or radioactive leakage. Of course, theoretical and practical are rarely the same.

Conan The Librarian · « **Reply #12 on:** May 18, 2011, 06:35:46 AM »

Stallion:

I'd appreciate that. I don't know enough about physics to understand whether the thorium reactors are a viable alternative to what we have now. On the one hand, it sounds sensationally promising, but as with most things like this, the negatives are not discussed by their advocates. I know that there are working reactors and it's not hoax material like this cold fusion stuff. It is really known to work, but I don't know what the drawbacks and practical limits are.

Back to the original topic. Cold fusion or not, the amazing thing is how poorly we use the science and technology that we already have. There have been huge advancements in nuclear power during the past 40 years yet our mindset here in the US is this 1960s post-war model. Very outdated. Waste handling and storage is refined and well understood, but here there are political barriers to the intelligent handling of waste. Meanwhile we have our nuclear waste just sitting in places like Prairie Island on the Mississippi river - a geologically active area. Dumb!

Meanwhile we see true advances in alternative fuels like bio-diesel that scarcely gets mentioned because the government has espoused hybrid technology instead. Partly this is understandable because there's a real future in electric vehicles. Lots of breakthroughs can be expected. However, we turn our backs on things that have practical value today and for the next 20+ years. But all that electricity has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is eventually going to be something like nuclear.

Pot-Bellied Stallion · « **Reply #13 on:** May 18, 2011, 06:58:45 AM »

TM7, alchemy is no longer a dirty word. As I previously stated, I see it every time I subject certain elements to a high energy electron beam. There are groups of elements whose isotopes are so close that they overlap each other's energy levels. I was so intrigued with this process that I devised my own 'Periodic Table of the Isotopes' so I could plot what I was seeing on the instruments. Radioactive decay is nature's own process of alchemy, and just speeding that up with inputs of energy is like putting fertilizer on your lawn to facilitate the grass growing. Another form of energy that we are considering is the natural resonance frequency of the elements, much like the frequency of Si in quartz that powers the watch movement. The frequencies can be initiated with something as simple and plentiful as UV radiation from sunlight.

Conan, you're correct in you statement that we don't utilize what discoveries have been made in science and technology. One of the principle reasons for this is the competition for research funds and the "publish or perish" mindset with our university systems. If we could somehow convince our best minds to work together toward a common goal without bias or jealousy, think of the strides we could have made. A very wise professor of mine once made the statement that colleges are for learning and universities are for research. I disagreed at the time, but as I progressed (very slowly, I might add) through the academic jungle, I came to see the truth in this statement. However, this day and age finds that universities have become mainly farm clubs for the NFL. If we spent only half the money on research that we spend on athletic programs, science and technology would be decades ahead. But, that's another topic and another soapbox for venting my frustration.

BUGEYE · « **Reply #14 on:** May 19, 2011, 03:30:21 AM »

not to worry. obama is going to free up a lot of energy when he gets us switched from encadescent to florescent lights.

Bear Rider · « **Reply #15 on:** May 19, 2011, 05:18:27 PM »

Quote from: BUGEYE on May 19, 2011, 03:30:21 AM

not to worry. obama is going to free up a lot of energy when he gets us switched from encadescent to florescent lights.

Good! That means that we'll have some energy available to recycle all the mercury and other hazmats found in those burnt-out fluorescent lights.

Pot-Bellied Stallion · « **Reply #16 on:** May 20, 2011, 04:42:05 AM »

Well, this had been a very good discussion, but, as usual, it has turned political. Too bad, I was starting to think that members of this board actually cared about something other than politics every once in a great while.

billy_56081 · « **Reply #17 on:** May 20, 2011, 05:06:16 AM »

All completely false.

Smokin Joe · « **Reply #18 on:** May 20, 2011, 06:04:00 AM »

The three basic laws of thermodynamics and energy transfer/creation:

1. You can't win

2. You can't break even

3. You can't leave the game

Conan The Librarian · « **Reply #19 on:** May 20, 2011, 07:00:24 AM »

I'm always suspicious when unnecessary mumbo jumbo is used instead of plain language to describe something new and potentially important. I believe it is a funny coincidence that the scientific work was done at University of Bologna, Italy. After reading other articles on this I see that the description is basically that of a perpetual motion machine.

Let's see some good science on this one. Everything out there up to now looks very, very bogus. to me.

Bear Rider · « **Reply #20 on:** May 20, 2011, 07:29:59 PM »

Quote from: Pot-Bellied Stallion on May 20, 2011, 04:42:05 AM

Well, this had been a very good discussion, but, as usual, it has turned political. Too bad, I was starting to think that members of this board actually cared about something other than politics every once in a great while.

It's difficult to take a traveling medicine show seriously. The cold fusion generator bears more resemblance to James Flood's Milking Machine than to a serious scientific project.

Hooker · « **Reply #21 on:** May 21, 2011, 06:44:44 AM »

Quote from: Conan The Librarian on May 20, 2011, 07:00:24 AM

Let's see some good science on this one. Everything out there up to now looks very, very bogus. to me.

I had a very wise and and talented teacher who told me that "A true scientist never seeks to discover anything other than the unknown facts".
He also said that "When there is money to be made from the searching for these facts then the science will tainted . When the money is made from the finding of the facts we have true science." He had a real problem with grant money and publicly funded so called science projects.
He allowed that if there is a true need to know something or to have a process developed that the value of that thing will determine whether it will come in to being. That science for the sake of knowing was a hobby and public funding should not be for supporting hobbies.
He should have been teaching science at a college instead of ninth grade , but I really think enjoyed his job. I know he made a very big impression on the kids in his class especially me. Anyway back on subject.

We can not get reliable development of energy resources by using the current welfare system. As long as we continue to fund searching we will be paying for studies of hairbrained ideas. If a renewable clean energy source is found and it is efficient those that discover it will become wealthy beyond belief. I believe that the science is out there but it has to compete with the crackpots and con men for recognition. We need to end public funding before we can have good science. If the science has value the private sector will fund it, if has no value then it wont get funding.
Which strengthens the argument to end public funding ,because if there one thing our government lacks and knows nothing about it's value.

Pat

Shu · « **Reply #22 on:** May 22, 2011, 08:10:48 AM »

I am kind of skeptical on "new" energy sources. I am not saying they aren't out there but I think a "show me" type attitude is best for me anyway.
I read a great article on solar power cells, one that would use infrared light to create electricty. The principal investigators thought this technology might be 10 years off at best. Since there is always infrared light they would work all the time.

I hope there is some type of new energy sources being developed. Big oil will only control things for so long. Eventually people will tire of high prices.