🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov20.070621.26629@athena.mit.edu> dwalton@athena.mit.edu (Dave Walton) writes:
>Hi there.  I was in my quantum class today and my professor, Keith Johnson,
>started talking about Cold Fusion, or at least, what was thought to be
>cold fusion.  He said that what was actually being witnessed wasn't a nuclear
>reaction at all (big surprise) but a new type of phase transformation of
>hydrogen in the paladium.
>
>  [some stuff deleted] 
>
>I am interested in this topic and would like to hear some more detailed 
>explanations of the mechanisms going on (speculation is fine since the exact\
>mechanisms are still not completely understood) along with some response to
>why the United States thought that this was a technology unworthy of attention,
>whereas Japan realized that something was there and followed it.

I have not followed the cold fusion stuff recently, but unless something very 
recent has come out, the phenomena has been rather discredited.  In either
case, I am under the impression that there is still no consensus on whether
excess energy is being produced, chemical or otherwise.  There was a cold
fusion conference a few weeks ago, seems to me that someone or another made
yet another claim for excess heat, but at this point the world is wise to be
exceedingly cautious in accepting such claims.  I am particularly skeptical
that anyone is making industrial use of this phenomena, I rather expect this
is more rumor than fact.  I have heard that some Japanese companies have
backed some cold fusion research, but that is a bit different than saying they
are working on prototype industrial applications.  If they are, someone is
missing out on a Nobel prize by not announcing their results.  Take it all
with a megaton of salt :-) .

If you are interested in this subject of cold fusion, you might want to check
out sci.physics.fusion (I think this is the right name).  I am pretty sure
it is still active.  There is an unusually low signal to noise ratio in that
newsgroup, but it can be fun to read.


>P.S.  1) This is my first posting, so sorry if it doesn't meet some standard
>            or another.

Your disclaimer is unnecessary, this is what UseNet is all about.   As for
not meeting some standard or another, your posting was alot more interesting
than alot of them :-) .  Keep on posting!

John
-- 
Dr. John K. Prentice                      
Quetzal Computational Associates    
3200 Carlisle N.E., Albuquerque, NM   87110-1664  USA
Phone: 505-889-4543  E-mail: quetzal@pinet.aip.org -or- jkprent@cs.sandia.gov

In article <1992Nov20.070621.26629@athena.mit.edu> dwalton@athena.mit.edu (Dave Walton) writes:
>Apparantly, Toyota has cought on to this new type of energy (well, not new, 
>just mis-understood) and is currently funding Pons and Fleishman (sp?) at
>a lab in France.
> [etc...]

This may be of interest, this is from "What's New", a weekly announcement
of interesting (mostly political) physics news from the American Physical
Society:

   IS COLD FUSION PRACTICAL?  IT IS IF YOU OWNED STOCK IN NTT
   prior to the Third International Cold Fusion Conference in Nagoya
   on 21 Sept.  Two scientists from Nippon Telephone and Telegraph
   held a press conference to announce that they had detected excess
   heat and helium in a reproducible cold fusion experiment.  NTT
   stock rose 11% on the news. NTT is one of the biggest stock
   capitalization companies in the world. The paper profits after
   the cold fusion announcement were nearly $8 billion.

The phenomena might well be imaginary, but the profits evidently
aren't !

John
-- 
Dr. John K. Prentice                      
Quetzal Computational Associates    
3200 Carlisle N.E., Albuquerque, NM   87110-1664  USA
Phone: 505-889-4543  E-mail: quetzal@pinet.aip.org -or- jkprent@cs.sandia.gov