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Zeev heats up the "cold fusion" fiasco

#msg-2385976
Free Zone / User's Groups / Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics
Posted by: From the East Bay
I remember the "cold fusion" fiasco.
But whoever it was who "discovered" this method of "free energy"
got the State of Utah to finance a demonstation "cold fusion"
apparatus. It never worked. (Simple physics, a Zeev would say).

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Posted by: Zeev Hed
In reply to: From the East Bay
It worked, but never reproducibly,
sometimes it did, sometimes it did not.
They are still working on it, but not in the US, in France.
If you are a conspirationalist, consider how many billions
Livermore gets on "hot fusion" over the years
(with, like ENER and AMSC, nothing to show for it) .
Do you think big physics is going to risk losing that pork
to a kitchen table experiment?
Pons and Fleishman were chemists, not physicists,
and surely not "big guns." They were scared out of town
with big words like "where are the neutrons?"
You don't need them if the reaction is D2+D2=He4,
but big physics is used to the old fact that the cross section
(probability) of that reaction is 10^5 smaller than D2+D2=Li3+n,
thus looking for the elusive, "n", forgetting to tell Pons/Fleischman
that they were talking "free space" cross section while Pons/Fleischman
were doing it on palladium. Even big physics should have known
that the He4 reaction is much more favored in the presence of Pd
which can absorb the excess momentum,
probably 10^5 more favored, and releases much more energy
than the D2+D2=Li3+n without the troubles associated
with neutrons (n) forming radioactive containment vessels....
... a little more complex physics, but really simple enough.
... usually, in free space very low probability of conserving momentum
in a reaction starting with two particles (D2) and ending with
a single particle (He4). But, when the reaction occurs
on the surface of a massive palladium nucleus,
all excess momentum to keep conservation of momentum
can easily be taken by the huge Pd nucleus.
It surely is simple enough physics for "big Livermore Physics"
to know, the fact they did not follow through points to simple
self interest in keeping on the tocomak pork, rather than
the national interest of energy independence.
Zeev