From: jcliu@four-lab4.Berkeley.EDU (James C. Liu)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan
Subject: Re: Fusion (was RE:  Plutonium)
Date: 17 Nov 1992 03:04:14 GMT
Organization: UC Berkeley Dept. of Nuclear Engineering
NNTP-Posting-Host: four-lab4.berkeley.edu
Keywords: cold fusion?

In article <1e93foINNbpn@agate.berkeley.edu> robohen@ocf.berkeley.edu 
(Henry Robertson) writes:

  >OK, pretty good description of hot-fusion technology, James-san.  However,
  >I understand that the Japanese are continuing work on that cold fusion
  >topic...remember that "scam"?  Well, I did a report on it before when
  >I used to be a chem major, and there is a journal called Fusion Technology
  >which talks about plenty of ongoing research around the world on cold fusion.
  >The two fellows who discovered cold fusion have disappeared from the public
  >eye,

Yes, I'm familiar with the cold fusion "scam" and I too wrote a kinda
report on it which was subsequently published as a news article in the 
"California Engineer" magazine about 3 years or so ago; it's the quarterly
which is published by Engineers in our own college of Engineering.  

Anyway, my view at the time is that the method they used for calorimetry was
questionable.  I was skeptical then and I still am skeptical now.  Only
Fleischmann and Ponns have ever reported vast heat AND accompanying
neutrons, but not anywhere close to the required neutron flux to account
for the heat in fusion.  I remind you that fusion is a well studied and
well known phenomenon and is backed by many underground tests and
warheads which are a testament to that knowledge :-).

Other scientists have also either reported excess heat or less likely,
neutron radiation.  I believe the Japanese have also managed one
experiment where they claim to have observed small quantities of both.

Cold fusion, if true, would more than likely through out some pretty
fundamental theories we have on materials thermodynamics, nuclear
physics, fusion confinement, etc.  These have been tested over and over
and verified by countless experiments and they are consistent with our
present knowledge of the physical world.

I am skeptical of cold fusion because there is a huge amount of data
which backs up our present theories about physics...remember, this is
objective scientific data and not something like Sociology stats.  
However, there are a host of plausible reasons why you might observe
something like cold fusion.  The 3 I can think of right away are:
  1) uncalibrated neutron detectors (Georgia Tech snafu)
  2) uncertainty in calorimetric data (Stanford snafu)
  3) tritium tainted palladium source (half of all experiments in world)

  >i heard rumors that some Japanese company is paying their research.

I'm glad that Japan continues to fund cold-fusion research.  I truly
hope they find something, but my experience tells me it ain't probably
going to happen.  It made good press because the concept of two Utah
chemists with a small experiment outsmarting all the big budget, big-gun
physicists is the stuff that Nobel Prize legends are made of.  But in
the Science field, we learn the first law of Thermodynamics really
quickly -- There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. :-)

>FLAMETIME!!!!!!

No flames.  Just rational thought!

Jaa, James
=======================================================================
James C. Liu |  The meaning of Cold fusion:  Mix 2 Hakusan Mild Sake  |
             |  in blender with crushed ice.  Add lime juice and mix  |
             |  in 100 ml of 7-up and 100 ml of pineapple juice.      |
             |  Drink and then karaoke to "Kimi ga iru dake de" (K2C) |  
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Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan