I thought it was son of fusion, too, and thought it was a joke. I read the entire article looking for the punchline. Then I looked at the word again. :)
What seems to strange about this cold fusion business is that though conditions need to be quite precise, they're also quite simple. This, if true, has been available to us for a long long time. Cold fusion could already have occurred in several labs and experiments without being recognized.
It's like walking through a thick forest gathering fallen branches, while ignoring the low hanging ones you bump into that snap off as you walk by.
Well, less simple than it seems, perhaps. Fleishman and Pons had the problem that there's some hidden variable --- sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn't, and it's not at all clear why. There's been an idea around for a long time that sonoluminescence was actually the result of some kind of high-energy event, but proving it to be fusion has been very tough. MHA's link is to someone with a clever way to make sure they were looking at fusion events.
4 comments:
Heh, for a moment there I thought you said son of fusion, the sequel.
Bubbles are interesting things, itty bitty little bombs that can eat away a boat propeller.
Lots of stuff happening with "desktop" or "cold" fusion: Christian Science Monitor from last June; New Scientist from last March; and Wikipedia has what looks to be a pretty decent article.
I thought it was son of fusion, too, and thought it was a joke. I read the entire article looking for the punchline. Then I looked at the word again. :)
What seems to strange about this cold fusion business is that though conditions need to be quite precise, they're also quite simple. This, if true, has been available to us for a long long time. Cold fusion could already have occurred in several labs and experiments without being recognized.
It's like walking through a thick forest gathering fallen branches, while ignoring the low hanging ones you bump into that snap off as you walk by.
Well, less simple than it seems, perhaps. Fleishman and Pons had the problem that there's some hidden variable --- sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn't, and it's not at all clear why. There's been an idea around for a long time that sonoluminescence was actually the result of some kind of high-energy event, but proving it to be fusion has been very tough. MHA's link is to someone with a clever way to make sure they were looking at fusion events.
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