Talk:Cold fusion

Nice rewrite, Moulton. I was just trying to get thoughts down on paper, and here we've already worked some wiki magic. Auggie 19:53, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks. What's really interesting here is how it can be that a small group of researchers (the so-called "fusioneers") can come to one conclusion (that Cold Fusion is real and proven) while mainstream scientists come to the opposite conclusion. My observation is that the "fusioneers" are systematically departing from the protocols of the scientific method, and thereby deluding themselves. Moulton 20:42, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the see alsos and categories, Wikademia.

As for the "fusioneers", I don't know. There are a lot of people down on the scientific method right now but I still think it's the best thing we have for problems like energy production. What's frustrating is how tantalizingly close we seem to be to having limitless energy, and how we've been stuck there for over sixty years now. Auggie 04:04, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

• Even if we solved the problems of taming fusion so that energy became too cheap to meter, we'd still have the problem of global warming. When you convert matter to energy (whether it be via fusion, fission, or burning fossil fuels), you unavoidably dump heat into the planet's atmosphere. We also need to design a planetary radiator to keep the planet from overheating. Moulton 11:44, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Global warming (assuming it exists) seems to a greenhouse gas thing, not a too much energy thing. If it becomes a problem you could always locate the fusion reactors at high altitude and operate them only at night, so that the heat radiates away. Auggie 14:52, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

• Global warming is a combination of increasing the thermal blanketing of the atmosphere (via elevated levels of CO₂) and dumping more heat into the atmosphere. The heat from the consumption of energy is released at the site where the energy is being consumed. (Note that your electric appliances all get warm.) Moulton 18:49, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Good point. Maybe we could have giant farms full of lasers we fire into space to get rid of energy. Added bonus: we'd attact aliens. Auggie 20:49, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

• Are we trying to attack or attract the aliens? Moulton 21:50, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

I meant to type attract, but it wouldn't hurt to have some deterrent capability, supposing that they get out of line. Auggie 22:08, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

• I'm guessing a banhammer ain't gonna do the job. Maybe we can negotiate with them for mutually agreeable terms of enjoyment. Moulton 23:55, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

What was that cartoon, where the whole ship was basically a giant laser? That was cool. Auggie 04:17, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

• Sorry. Dunno that reference. Moulton 12:57, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Phlogiston in the Mist

Cold Fusion has been compared to a long-forgotten episode from the early days of Chemistry, in which Antoine Lavoisier, who (along with Joseph Priestley) co-discovered Oxygen, and developed a successful model of combustion that overthrew the previous model of Phlogiston — an imaginary substance that literally "went up in smoke" when something burned.

The details can be found here. Suffice it to say that the Phlogiston Theory itself went up in smoke when (among other problems) the imaginary stuff was found to have negative mass.

Something similar is amiss with the analytical model of Cold Fusion, which similarly posits the existence of something that's not really there. But that begs the question of what's really going on.

It appears to me (and this is personal finding that I cannot find repeated in any of the literature), that Martin Fleischmann left out of his calorimetry model a term that evidently hadn't occurred to him, or anyone else. What he apparently left out of his model was the possibility of moisture leaving the cell not as water vapor, but as condensed mist. This inexplicable omission could easily account for the findings of anomalous "excess heat." The particulars of this hypothesis are briefly summarized here.

Moulton 21:05, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Did McKubre miss a slew of electrical power going into his cell?

All the CF cells used by researchers doing precision calorimetry operate with a constant-current DC power supply.

The advantage of using a constant current DC power supply is that the experimenter can control the DC drive current, which is the faradaic current that is either charging the electrodes or dissociating the electrolyte.

In all the models for input electrical power that I've looked at, the electrical input power is modeled as pure DC power, with no AC component. That is, the constant-current DC power supply is treated as an ideal constant current source, with no AC perturbations around the constant DC current.

However, all real constant current power supplies have a characteristic slew rate which specifies how fast they respond when the load impedance changes abruptly. The Kepco BOP 20-20M 400-watt power supply used by McKubre has a slew rate of 1.25 A/μsec in the constant-current mode and 1.0 V/μsec when operated in the constant-voltage mode.

The slew can be modeled as a linear ramp whenever the resistive load changes abruptly from one value to another. Instead of an ideal square wave (instantaneous adjustment), the rise and fall of the square wave is really a ramp, with slope given by the slew rate.

One can model AC power by using sawtooth or triangle waveforms, which are easy enough to integrate with simple calculus. Depending on the fluctuations in the resistive load, there will be corresponding fluctuations in the voltage which ramp up and down at the slew rate to maintain constant current. One can get an idea of how much AC power is going into the resistive load by computing the AC power of a simple triangle wave with a peak-to-peak voltage.

I did this for two examples, corresponding to a pair of experiments in McKubre's EPRI paper. McKubre doesn't say what the peak-to-peak voltage excursions are when his cells are bubbling, so I assumed a 2 V peak-to-peak around his reported DC values, to make the math easy to do. For the case of 2 A going into a nominal 2.5 Ω resistive load at 5 V for a DC power of 10 W, a 2-V peak-to-peak triangle wave riding on top of the DC comes out as 0.5 W of AC, for a total of 10.5 W electrical power. For the case of 7 A going into 6/7 Ω resistive load at 6 V for a DC power of 42 W, a 2-V peak-to-peak triangle wave riding on top of the DC comes out as 1.8 W of AC power, for a total of 43.8 W.

Thus a voltage excursion of the order of magnitude of 2 V peak-to-peak works out to about 4-5% of the electrical power being AC at a frequency related to the slew rate of the power supply.

The CBS News film crew that accompanied correspondent Scott Pelley to McKubre's lab at SRI may have missed an opportunity to measure the peak-to-peak AC (audio) power going into McKubre's cell. All they had to do was slap one of their audio VU meters across the terminals of McKubre's cells to see if there was any AC (audio) power that McKubre was leaving out of his calculations.

Interesting. Did you try to contact McKubre? Usually there's a mailing address or email on the paper. Auggie 14:13, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

• I'll let Abd do that. I left comments on the CBS 60 Minutes site, and also for one of the consultants that CBS brought in to help them assess McKubre's work. More details here and here. Moulton 22:07, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I did not take this to McKubre, because I don't waste the time of someone at his level of involvement. He would also be talking about Robert Duncan, who is the vice-president for research at Texas Tech University, but he was at that time Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Missouri. I have talked with Duncan, on the phone and in person, many times. Again, I would not take this BS to him. However, Dieter Britz, a skeptical electrochemist, very involved with cold fusion, did study Moulton's claims and rejected them. I intend to revisit the controversy and examine the ideas in more detail. I am not, as Moulton has often claimed, a "believer in cold fusion."

Bottom line, experimental data ignored by Moulton shows that while artifacts such as he imagines could be possible, they are not actually significant. If it were that simple, this whole issue would have been resolved many years ago. Duncan is leading a cold fusion research project in Texas that is working on the direct evidence that the heat effect is nuclear in nature. It is superlatively funded, and I'm told that they are approaching publication, but results cannot be revealed yet because of restrictions from the donor. Because Duncan is studying the heat/helium ratio in PdD experiments, replicating work that is already done and confirmed by many independent groups, it is very unlikely to find "no effect." But it will find a value, a number, a ratio, and a correlation coefficient, which will tell us with more precision what is happening. Cold fusion is a mystery, still. In 1989, and often still, those who knew nuclear physics would say that "it" is impossible, but those always imagine that "it" is deuterium-deuterium fusion. It probably is not that! In Moulton's work, it can be seen that he assumes impossibility, following Garwin. So then he looks for what it could be, and when he finds an "explanation" that satisfies him, even if it is preposterous to one who is familiar with the evidence, he's convinced he has proven that "they are wrong." Garwin would only say that ("must") if what is reported is impossible. Because that is an unverifiable claim, it is pseudoscientific, hence this kind of skepticism is called pseudoskepticism. Much "debunking" is like that. It is not skepticism at all, it is belief in common opinion. Common opinion is often right! But not always. --Abd (talk) 09:34, 21 May 2019 (CDT)

This morning I reviewed my correspondence with Rob Duncan. He wholeheartedly concurred with my analysis, which jibed with his own. Moulton (talk) 10:36, 21 May 2019 (CDT)

According to you. Unfortunately, Moulton, you are not a reliable source. What analysis? Duncan is a genial person, reflective, thoughtful, not argumentative. He knows the evidence that the anomalous heat effect is real, and has essentially turned his career to it. The funding for his heat/helium project (plus some exploding wire experiments that are used to characterize materials) was $6 million with another $6 million available from Texas state matching funds? And you think he agreed with you? --Abd (talk) 22:03, 21 May 2019 (CDT)

Horrible article at this point

I will look at putting together something better and more neutral. The current article was written highly idiosyncratic ideas that *seem* to be mainstream, but that actually are radically pseudoskeptical. The last major editor cites himself, self-published, nothing published under peer review, nor would his writings pass it with any knowledgeable reviewers. But that's ad hominem, here are the problems:

• Cold fusion is an hypothesized nuclear reaction that occurs at room temperature. Cold fusion is a popular name for a set of experimental results that appear to be nuclear in origin. It is not a specific hypothesized reaction.

• Current technology has not demonstrated any such phenomenon.. All modern reviews of the field (secondary sources) support that there is evidence for anomalous heat. As well, there exist multiple confirmations of helium (a possible nuclear product) correlated with heat, and these are adequate to estimate the heat as within about 20% of that expected from deuterium conversion to helium. (This is within experimental error, and the most precise experiment was within 5%.) Work has been funded and is under way to improve the precision of this measurement, but it being within an order of magnitude of that value (from the first measurements announced in 1991) was considered astonishing to John R. Huizenga, co-chair of the 1989 ERAB panel review of cold fusion.

• there is no satisfactory theory to suggest it's even possible. The reaction mechanism is not understood. It was announced as an unknown reaction, and it is impossible to calculate rates for an unknown reaction. There does exist theory that suggests possibility (actually calculates reaction rate), but that theory is incomplete and is not well-enough elaborated to predict the lack of gamma radiation. "Satisfactory theory" is not defined. There is a basic theory that is widely accepted, I state it this way: The Fleischmann-Pons Heat Effect is the result of the conversion of deuterium to helium, mechanism unknown, with only very low levels of radiation or other nuclear products." This is a testable theory (and has been tested and the basic prediction confirmed).

• The idea is to develop a power source that produces more energy than it consumes and is small, safe and portable. that's a possible application, but requires a level of reliability that is, as yet, unattained. Claims otherwise have proven fraudulent. At the present time, cold fusion is a scientific curiosity.

• Normally fusion reactions require enormously high temperatures similar to those found in the center of the sun. Not always. For example, muon-catalyzed fusion, well-accepted, takes place at close to absolute zero. It simply requires the presence of a catalyst (a muon). What is required for fusion is something that allows the nuclei to approach. High energy, i.e., high temperature, is only one way, though it is by far the most common way in nature.

• Temperatures that high are difficult to sustain because the energy dissipates quickly and also because thermonuclear temperatures instantly vaporize containment materialsThis is true, but is irrelevant to cold fusion.

• hence the quixotic quest for cold fusion, which wouldn't have those problems. No. Cold fusion was not discovered out of a quest for fusion energy, that's a common assumption, not based on the actual history. It was found because Pons and Fleischmann suspected that fusion reaction rates might be slightly different in condensed matter than expected from plasma (2-body) calculations, because of quantum field effects. They decided to test this, but expected they would find nothing, that any effect would be too small to measure. Instead, their experiment melted down. They scaled down and continued to work on the problem for almost five years before they announced -- prematurely, forced by legal issues. In many ways, they did not understand what they had found. But they did find a real effect, that's the consensus now, among those that have studied the experimental evidence.

• Steampunk Science and Technology This is a 2010 blog post by Moulton, who slanted the article previously put up (which had common problems, few people are expert on the field). It is snark and a personal attack.

Because Moulton referred to his writings on his Talk page here, I realized that the old discussions were never collected and analyzed (which had been my intention in 2010). So I have created a page with links to all the writings I could find by him on cold fusion. He raised, in the old discussions, certain possible artifacts that had not been clearly addressed, and there were productive discussions with the scientists. Kort ignored the results, and has been promoting his own interpretations ever since. My intention is to thoroughly review the actual ideas and the theoretical and experimental evidence. Meanwhile, this, my paper, was published under peer review in 2015:

• Replicable cold fusion experiment: heat/helium ratio]

That is one of 34 papers published in a special section on Low Energy Nuclear Reactions of Current Science. --Abd (talk) 16:27, 20 May 2019 (CDT)

There are some very obvious errors in Moulton's analysis, they were pointed out years ago. However, I'm not going to debate this here, it will just annoy everyone. I have copied what I found of Moulton's writings on this subject to http://coldfusioncommunity.net/barry-kort/. Skepticism is essential to science, but we must not apply it only to the ideas of others, but also to our own. I will come back when that study is ready for review. (Comment is welcome there.) --Abd (talk) 06:46, 21 May 2019 (CDT)

Since Robert Duncan has been mentioned

Robert Duncan was featured in the Sixty Minutes report on cold fusion in 2009. There is a followup video, a speech he gave shortly after that. His emphasis is on the scientific method, and that was my interest. I was not impressed by claims of free energy, which were clearly premature.

I have since had a number of lengthy conversations with Duncan, and it is always a pleasure, and we agree completely. In that later speech, Duncan was still very new to the field, and I winced at a few things he said. But he was on the right track, and whatever premature ideas he had would vanish with increased experience and understanding. Duncan is doing extremely valuable work, and this is really cool for me, personally. He is doing what I had been recommending for years, and I had found certain experimental evidence in published papers that had not been noticed, and, I'm told, they are using what I described, then, in my 2015 Current Science paper. So my study has made and is making a difference. This is not about arguing on the internet. It's about science and our relationship to reality. --Abd (talk) 10:30, 21 May 2019 (CDT)

Did Rob Duncan give you a green light to release your correspondence with him? What about your correspondence with McKubre? Moulton (talk) 10:40, 21 May 2019 (CDT)

I don't think I have had email communication with Duncan, only phone and in-person conversations. As to McKubre, no, explicitly not. But if I needed to release something for a scientific paper, I'm pretty sure he would consent. We have had extensive personal conversations over the years, face-to-face, and lots of email. It has been an amazing journey. Being banned on Wikipedia was one of the best things that ever happened to me. (The WMF Office Ban is another story, but, again, in the end, much good may come out of that.) --Abd (talk) 21:58, 21 May 2019 (CDT)

The most important documents to read to understand cold fusion

. . . are apparently a set of blog posts from someone far from expert on the topic. And then one article from a yellow journalist, a scandal-monger.

I have collected all of Moulton's writings on the subject that I could find, here: Barry Kort. I will analyze them and create summaries and then use this for what it was used for, back in 2011, to collect skeptical arguments and review them. This was all done then, but has not been organized well for publication. Kort could submit an article to a journal, if he actually has something more important to present than a few puns and snark. There is a journal that would readily publish a decent article, JCMNS. If he actually found something of major importance, he might be able to get a "mainstream journal" to publish. Shanahan did, until he wore out his welcome with increasingly obsessed garbage.

He could, for example, write a response to my 2015 Current Science paper, they might publish it. Or not. The peer review there was not easy, the reviewer was extremely skeptical and thought my paper was rubbish at first. So I rewrote it, and he ended up glowingly approving it, suggesting my conclusions. This is how real science works, with evidence and skilled presentation, not with self-satisfied blog snark. Comments on that page are welcome. --Abd (talk) 09:33, 23 May 2019 (CDT)

Major change to External Links, please review

I made a major change to the External Links section to deprecate the links to Moulton's blog, seriously undue weight, but possibly of interest. This is the present section, this is as edited by me, and this is the self-revert pending discussion. If there is no objection, I will undo the self-revert, or anyone may undo that reversion, or otherwise edit the page accordingly. If there is objection, please discuss here. Thanks. --Abd (talk) 07:53, 1 June 2019 (CDT)

New additions to external links

• Google revives controversial cold-fusion experiments, Nature, May 2019
• Google’s $10 Million Cold Fusion Project Has Failed, Futurism, May 2019
• Lessons from cold fusion, 30 years on, Nature, May 2019

Believers and pseudoskeptics (negative believers, not actually skeptical, believing others are wrong) share a trait: they interpret all evidence to confirm what they believe. These reports have attracted a lot of attention from the cold fusion research community, and it turns out there were communications with some of the researchers before this project started. The project developed no surprises. It is quite simply not news that an attempt to create a cold fusion effect fails. It is very difficult to set up, but what is remarkable about this publication is

1. Nature published it, when they declared many years ago that cold fusion was dead. The paper makes it clear it isn't dead.
2. They tried many NiH experiments. NiH is fringe within the field, there was fraud, etc. There are also reputable positive reports from NiH, but the Google team did not attempt to replicate those. Instead, they went after the shakiest claims.
3. With the original claim of excess heat from PdD (i.e., the Fleischmann-Pons Heat Effect) they acknowledged the difficulty that was long claimed by CF researchers, that the "negative replications" had not set up the necessary conditions and there are several. Google reported failure to reach the necessary loading ratio, and because of that, did not even report the heat results. They could be expected to be no-heat, or only error, disappearing with increased precision.
4. The Google team deliberately did not involve experts at creating the effect. Replicating the effect without that involvement will almost always fail. There is no reliable, simple recipe.
5. The only reliable effect reported in the field is helium production correlated with excess heat, at the theoretical ratio for the conversion of deuterium to helium.
6. As to theory, they focused on d+d -> 4He, which is almost certainly not the reaction. They found no radiation, totally expected. They did not report even looking for helium, but without heat, none would be expected.
7. Speculation in the field is that this was all deliberate, that they wanted to start with negative, to get a toe in the door, and then begins the search for excess heat in earnest. And then, because of the earlier paper, it becomes publishable.
8. Or not.
9. They did not "fail." The project is not over, by any means. But if they do lose funding (it's possible), there are plenty of other sources, and others will build on what they did.

My point here is that there is real news, and then there is interpretation of it. The Nature editorials are totally what would be expected of Nature, given their editorial history. Thinking of scientific research as a 'failure' because it accurately reports results that confirm existing understanding is common Fake News. Existing understanding from experts in the field is that, with what they did, they would find nothing of particular interest, as to excess heat. They confirmed existing understanding, but what they reported (failure to reach adequate loading) was never before reported in "negative replications." That is the real news here. --Abd (talk) 09:23, 6 June 2019 (CDT)

To quote Barsoom Tork, "Far be it from me to usufruct such tumid balderdash." Moulton (talk) 16:11, 8 June 2019 (CDT)

Suit yourself, Moulton. You have created a thoroughly misleading article, focusing on shallow BS. "Real fusion" is not necessarily hot fusion. Any condition which shields the coulomb repulsion can lead to fusion, such as muon-catalyzed fusion, which is "real," and which is experimentally demonstrated near absolute zero. And Google has not failed. Rather, their results were expectable and what was truly new about their "negative replication" was that they recognized it was not a replication, because they did not reach the necessary loading ratio, and that's the first time that the necessity of very high loading has been mentioned in Nature. Basically, your head is stuffed with undigested information. Nothing was surprising about the Google results except that Nature published them. I don't have time any more, I have a lawsuit to focus on and the International Conference on Cold Fusion in Italy in September to prep for, and I see no hope for this project. It doesn't have the vision. --Abd (talk) 05:43, 22 June 2019 (CDT)

There is a convincing narrative for every conceivable opinion or belief, and a convicting narrative for every skeptic, critic, or infidel. I conclude that the Method of Comparative Narratives (supplemented by the Method of Demonization) is not a reliable method for arriving at the ground truth. Moulton (talk) 07:45, 23 June 2019 (CDT)