Talk:Cold fusion/Archive 6

message: Happy New Year everyone.
At the top of this article there is a notice: "This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject."
I think this is true. Fortunately, I was able to persuade Edmund Storms (Los Alamos, ret.) to write a revised version of this article. Storms is widely regarded as one of the world's leading experts in this field, and he has written a number of reviews including two peer-reviewed journal articles. Storms prepared a draft incorporating most of the statements and issues raised in the current article, except for the early history. It is shorter than the present article (4,300 words versus 7,800) and it is written in the style of a formal scientific paper or encyclopedia entry, much like the Wikipedia article on plasma fusion.
The draft is written in Microsoft Word, and the footnotes are in EndNote format. Before I upload it, I will have to convert these formats to the Wikipedia format. (Is this basically HTML?) This will take some time. I also have to insert some last-minute changes from the main article that people made after Storms began editing.
The skeptics may or may not be happy with this draft. I would not want to do all this work only to have them undo it. So before I upload, let me post it here. I am not sure how to proceed and I would appreciate advice, especially from the skeptics. I would also appreciate advice on how to deal with the footnotes. If the article is changed in the future we will have to manually renumber them. Is there some way to make them automatically numbered? Some of them can be hyperlinked to online papers, but most of these references are not on line.
If the skeptics object to this version, I suggest we split the article down the middle. The skeptics can write the first 3,200 words, then we insert Storms' 3,200 words, and then 1,100 in common, starting with "Cold fusion in fiction." I realize this is not how Wikipedia articles are formatted, but I see no reason why they all have to be formatted the same way. What harm would there be in making an exception for this subject?
In the first section, the skeptics would be welcome to delete all references to the literature, all of the rebuttals to their claims, quotes from Schwinger and so on, and they can say that the "vast majority of scientists" think that cold fusion is pseudoscience. They can even quote Robert Park, who says it is fraud.
Anyway, the unformatted draft is here.
--JedRothwell 16:51, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New version of this article by E. Storms is available 

message: Why don't we adopt the Wikipedia:Summary style, and create spin-off articles on Cold fusion controversy and Continuing efforts on cold fusion ?  The controversy could be discussed in full (eg. discuss each criteria of pathological science), and other chemically assisted nuclear reactions could be discussed in more details in "continuing work". Pcarbonn 09:44, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adopt a summary style ?

message: I moved Sound waves induce nuclear fusion Physorg.com (January 2006) to the bubble fusion page because that is where it belongs.  Not trying to be a jerk or anything, but there is an established page for bubble fusion and there is no reason to post an off-topic article like this one on the cold fusion page.  Rock nj 03:15, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moved Sound waves induce nuclear fusion  

message: With all due respect, and interest in your expertise on the subject matter, I must point out several problems with your contribution.
1. Your post seems to be more of a "chat" type discussion rather than something to be considered as part of an encyclopedic reference.
2. Your post is highly technical, somewhat speculative, and your point is not clear. These aspectcs too, are not a good fit of your post for this article as it is written.
3. This is a minor point, and I respect that English is probably not your first language, but the English that you used here is unnacceptable for Wiki. Don't let this be a barrier for you however.
My suggestions:
1. Make use of the TALK page to engage in a dialogue with others to help develop your contribution so it is more appropriate to Wiki.
2. Refine your content on the TALK page and ask for help to improve the English - I'm sure there are numerous people who would be glad to help you out.
STemplar 17:56, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plasma, liquid or solid: what phase is better? 

message: I would like to see a specific source or otherwise some validation for the claim that "thousands of peer-reviewed cold fusion papers have been published." The link in the article does not provide any information for this claim. MrDarwin 15:11, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That should be "hundreds" or "about a thousand." The LENR-CANR database lists 3,300 papers. Roughly a third are in peer-reviewed journals. See: lenr-canr.org/DetailOnly.htm There are probably several hundred more we have not heard about, especially in Chinese, Japanese and Italian. --JedRothwell 18:45, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "thousands" of articles published???

message: I'm a bit concerned about the link to PowerPedia, which seems to have content regarding, for example, companies claiming to have systems which violate the laws of thermodynamics (permanent magnet motors, etc).  For better or worse, it seems very likely that such systems are scams.  Should we put a disclaimer on the link that material at that wiki (and particularly non-CF material) should be taken with a large pile of salt?  -- Pakaran 19:23, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "the same people claiming cold electrolytic fusion works are claiming methods to obtain energy from ether..." - and your source for this is?  (e.g. please quote any such statement by Fleischmann, Bockris, Oriani, Miley, McCubre, Szpak, Iwamura, Mizuno, Mallove, Storms, ...  or in fact any other prominent CF researcher).  If you cannot back up your statement, please kindly retract it. ObsidianOrder 01:03, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Certainly.  [Here's] a letter written by Eugene Mallove proclaiming immenent 'breakthroughs' in the fields of 1. Cold Fusion, 2. "Vacuum energy, Zero Point Energy or "ZPE" for short, aether energy, or space energy." and 3. "Environmental energy, i.e. energy from sensible thermal energy (in particular, energy of molecular motion), through significant extensions to the Second Law of Thermodynamics." --Noren 07:28, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Heh, touche.  However Mallove can only very loosely be described as a researcher - he was fairly well known, but more on the popular-science side of things.  Also, to nitpick, he didn't actually say you can do those right now as you imply.  What anyone thinks may be discovered in the future is necessarily extremely speculative.  ObsidianOrder 14:54, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is inconsistent for you to argue the legitimacy of Mallove as a CF researcher immediately after you listed 10 "prominent CF researcher"s including his name.  If your position is so poorly thought out yet so firmly held that you must retract your own description of people on your own list, I wonder if any argument or evidence would suffice to sway your position or if any conflicting fact would be dismissed similarly.   Also, your nitpick is factually incorrect. In the letter under 2. Mallove claimed of a ZPE experiment "In its several embodiments, it already produces kilowatt-level electrical, thermal, and mechanical output power."  To use your phrasing, if you cannot back up your statement, please kindly retract it. --Noren 00:21, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

text: As ObsidianOrder said, Touche. You have listed one person, and you might be able to find a few others. For that matter, if you look closely at plasma fusion researchers, or people working on wind power, or Members of Congress, you might find a few. You can also find some plasma fusion researchers who believe in magic, faith healing and creationism. (I have met one or two like that.) However, that would not justify the statement: "the same people claiming plasma fusion works are claiming that creationism works." That would be an unfair generalization. You should say: "some of the same people" or "at least one or two of the same people" That does not have much impact, does it? --JedRothwell 15:51, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Powerpedia 

message: Last thing I remember is that temperature is related to the average energy of a large number of particles -- thus talking about the "atomic temperature" doesn't make sense -- it does make sense to talk about atomic energies, and one can even use K, but it's still energy.  I've thuse removed references to "atomic" temperature from the first paragraph.
Keithdunwoody 18:46, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A single atom can indeed have an equivalent temperature, which is simply the would-be temperature of a bunch of identical atoms with the same kinetic energy.  Assuming  classical Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics, a single atom with velocity v has a temperature T = (8*m*v^2)/(pi*k).  In some of the "macroscopically" cold fusion (e.g. pyroelectric) there are certainly small numbers of atoms with an very high equivalent temperature.  However, there is pretty much no basis for the claim that there must be atoms at near-thermonuclear-fusion temperatures in CF (e.g. compare with muon-catalyzed fusion), so that's a different reason to remove those references.  ObsidianOrder 00:54, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Atomic temperatures 

message: The introduction to this article is linked to muon-catalyzed fusion. This article began by saying that Jones and Rafelski "initiated" muon-catalyzed fusion, but as you see from the link, they did not. Sakharov, Frank and Alvarez initiated it. (See the article here and Mallove, p. 108). So I removed Jones and Rafelski from the first paragraph. They did contribute to muon research, however. Perhaps someone should patch up the muon-catalyzed fusion article to include them. I am not familiar with their work, so I cannot do this. --JedRothwell 15:34, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maybe add Jones and Rafelski to muon article 

message: Since this article has grown large and unwieldy, it has been agreed [1] that a new article should be established to address a subset of issues relating to cold fusion. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion_controversy
This is the only way to keep this article within 30 to 50 kB which is approved size. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_size
Since the skeptics do not seem inclinded to express their own views in writing, and since I know their arguments better than they themselves do, I went ahead and added several of their main arguments. I may have left out a few, so skeptics should check. --JedRothwell 20:15, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Cold fusion controversy" article expanded 

message: I'm creating this heading to try and split this particular discussion from other topics. Please present the allegation and citations here. Jefffire 13:19, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks to Pcarbonn for his reword. This section is looking a world of difference now. We may manage NPOV eventually :) Jefffire 13:32, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Allegations of Suppression