5 ms·

“Cold fusion” moves closer to mainstream acceptance

32 points by limist 17y ago

hendler 17y ago
Mostly, I'm glad this isn't the Adobe technology.
- hackernews 17y ago
  Not sure why anyone would vote this backhanded comment up.
  - noodle 17y ago
    odds are because they've developed stuff with ColdFusion before.
    - rbanffy 17y ago
      Or had to keep a heavily used CF server running... By around 97, we (at UOL, a major ISP/portal in Brazil) had to develop a small program that automatically restarted it when cfserver (IIRC) locked up. During peak hours, it had to be restarted every minute or so. By 98, all applications were migrated to saner platforms.
      - lurkinggrue 17y ago
        Sighs I still have to support CF. Beats head against desk
        rbanffy 17y ago
        I am deeply sorry.
  - RevRal 17y ago
    I upvoted it because it was my exact sentiment. When I saw the submission title, I thought "oh no." And then I felt relief that it was not about the CF platform. Coldfusion was pretty bad when it was first introduced, and it hasn't improved much. I've been dodging it for years, but some of my friends haven't been so lucky. Each of them hates it, and one had even quit his job because his employer didn't want to give it up. Yes, I would be sad if CF became "mainstream" again and I had to learn it. If I recall correctly, everyone needed ColdFusion when it was first introduced, and it is only barely alive due to that initial boom.
    - erlanger 17y ago
      Few things are as ugly as <cfswitch expression="expr"> <cfcase value="val"> ...
      - hackernews 17y ago
        Isn't there a cfscript equivalent that is more pleasing to the eye? Something like: switch (expr) { case "val"....
      - elai 17y ago
        look at jsp!
    - JimBastard 17y ago
      CF was one of the nicer programming languages I've ever worked with. Circa 2002-2005 there wasn't anything close to a better alternative. The down-fall of CF was Rails since Rails is open-source, huge community, is free, and powered by Ruby. CF was closed sourced, small community, and powered by Java. Yuck.
      - ryanwaggoner 17y ago
        Umm..seriously? PHP? Python? 2005 wasn't that long ago.
        17y ago
  - maxharris 17y ago
    Normally, I don't like backhanded comments. But Adobe's recent products (post Macromedia merger) are so bad that it's OK to jab at them (because it's true!)
andrewcooke 17y ago
Not one of the listed papers was a successful reproduction of someone else's published work.
- Estragon 17y ago
  Well, very few published papers are. Reproduction of others' work is usually a foundational preliminary to original research.
  - andrewcooke 17y ago
    We're talking about cold fusion, right? Maybe things have changed, but I was under the impression that it was not yet possible to reliably reproduce the effects. In such a context, reproduction would be quite noteworthy.
    - Estragon 17y ago
      You're assuming that a replication of Pons and Fleischmann's original work is necessary for cold fusion to be an interesting research subject.
      - andrewcooke 17y ago
        No, I'm not. As I've said elsewhere, I can understand why this is interesting to researchers. But to be interesting to me (and, I suspect, at least some others) there needs to be some reliably repeatable demonstration of "new physics". I don't see any evidence for that here. There are lots of people investigating lots of exciting ideas out there. That's great. But there's a big difference between "wouldn't it be cool if..." and "hey, I can show that...". When I saw the conference details, I hoped cold fusion was at the "show that" phase. Disappointingly, it continues to not be. Hence my post.
thaumaturgy 17y ago
One of my clients is working somewhere in this field; they're having a much easier time recruiting new scientists and other personnel, and they are well funded. An NDA prevents me from saying much else, but I think I can say that the field is better developed than many people realize.
- mechanical_fish 17y ago
  There is also lots of money in homeopathy. It's a going concern. Then there's fundamentalist religious education. Plenty of funding there. Lots of impressively architected buildings. People with advanced degrees. Recruitment, funding, and NDAs are but one metric of success.
  - thaumaturgy 17y ago
    Sorry, I didn't mean to imply private funding.
rauljara 17y ago
"some describe cold fusion as the 'Fleishmann-Pons Effect' in honor of the pioneers, Marwan noted." Really? In honor of the possibly-crazy-but-much-more-likely-liars-and-con men whose experiments couldn't even come close to being replicated. The whole article acts like any current research is a vindication of Fleishmann and Pons, but honestly, if cold fusion ever does come to pass, it will be despite Fleishmann and Pons' fraudulent work. How much time and credibility was wasted trying to recreate that BS?
- randallsquared 17y ago
  liars-and-con men whose experiments couldn't even come close to being replicated. Well, in the first few weeks after the announcement, several labs said they had replicated the experiment, so if Fleishmann and Pons were liars or con men, I suppose we must assume a vast conspiracy of such across several notable institutions... well, that or some people were excited, mistaken, and desperately wanted to find evidence of something that apparently wasn't there. Bad results -- even replication of results ultimately found to be bad -- do not require liars, only error.
noodle 17y ago
cold fusion won't move any closer to mainstream acceptance until people can start to show any examples of positive net energy cold fusion, either in the lab or in nature. or, alternatively, show that it is possible to do coldER fusion. just, show that there's a process with the possibility of scaling down.
- domgblackwell 17y ago
  Exactly. Cold fusion is not necessarily 'junk science' but until someone uses it to generate net energy it is an interesting theoretical idea rather than solid science on which real world technology can be built.
limist 17y ago
Doubters and such should note several things about this press release: 1. It's from the American Chemical Society. While no one is infallible, they're not exactly flakes. 2. There are some serious names and institutions involved. Same caveat as 1. 3. Ask yourself if your doubts are based on hearsay of hearsay. Unless you are a nuclear chemist or physicist who has tried experimentally to produce low energy nuclear reactions without success, maybe there are reasons research has continued for so many years in the face of overwhelming public and professional ridicule.
- andrewcooke 17y ago
  Isn't the fact that it's interesting, and that the pay-off would be huge, reason enough? The idea that there is a confirmed, reliable, reproducible effect, but that people are hiding that, seems a little odd. You seem to be confusing being hopeful or popular with being (proven) right.
  - limist 17y ago
    If you are referring to my point 3, there are plenty of problems (cancer, biotech, AI, energy) that are both interesting, and have the possibility of a large pay-off, while NOT suffering ridicule from the mainstream - in fact, while enjoying some respect. Most researchers will (quite rationally) choose career options that are interesting, potentially valuable, and safe. Sure, cold fusion is interesting, and has the chance of a big pay-off, but it also presents enormous problems to a would-be researcher, including lack of funding, dismissive colleagues, and ignorant pseudo-skepticism from the public. For a professional scientist to pursue it in the face of such problems require more than faith and courage; it probably requires at least some evidence they've seen with their own eyes. If you're interested, lookup Francesco Scaramuzzi and Julian Schwinger along with keywords of "cold fusion."
    - andrewcooke 17y ago
      there's some strange emotional subtext to your posting that i don't quite get. these people can choose what they want to work on. i am not putting a gun to their heads forcing them to do this. nor am i laughing at them. if they're right - great. who wouldn't want a free lunch? but i don't see the point in painting them as heroes or presenting this work as something successful when, as far as i can see, it is not. i've done research. you do it because it's interesting, not because of what other people think. and everyone has problems with funding: it's a market; if there's more money in one area there are more people too. as i said, i'm not sure why you're so emotionally involved with this, but it doesn't seem healthy. if you're involved in cold fusion maybe you should look elsewhere, because science isn't really about being loved or acclaimed by the public...
tzs 17y ago
A few years ago, David Goodstein of Caltech wrote an interesting look back at cold fusion. It's available here: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/fusion_art.html http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/fusion_art.html Where the story left off, there were a few competent researchers with well-designed experiments that were getting indications that something was happening that was not covered by current theory. However, cold fusion research was by then out of fashion, and no one was interested in looking deeper into those results and confirming or refuting them. As Goodstein notes, "What all these experiments really need is critical examination by accomplished rivals intent on proving them wrong. That is part of the normal functioning of science. Unfortunately, in this area, science is not functioning normally. There is nobody out there listening."
rbanffy 17y ago
"the first inexpensive means of identifying the hallmark of cold fusion reactions: the production of excess heat" Shouldn't it be excess neutrons?
- curtis 17y ago
  If they can reliably produce excess heat from these experiments, I don't think we care if it's due to fusion or not. It would certainly be something we want to study.
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    It could be something worth of study, but, unless there is Helium or neutrons, it's not cold fusion. The Hagelstein explanation seems interesting, but, again, unless we see some nuclear fusion, those guys are studying something completely different. Not to say uninteresting, but not what we could call nuclear fusion.
ph0rque 17y ago
"The presentations describe... indications that cold fusion may occur naturally in certain bacteria." Are you serious? This boggles my mind more than anything about how bio systems work in nature in the last few years...

32 points by limist 17y ago

hendler 17y ago

Mostly, I'm glad this isn't the Adobe technology.

hackernews 17y ago
Not sure why anyone would vote this backhanded comment up.
- noodle 17y ago
  odds are because they've developed stuff with ColdFusion before.
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    Or had to keep a heavily used CF server running... By around 97, we (at UOL, a major ISP/portal in Brazil) had to develop a small program that automatically restarted it when cfserver (IIRC) locked up. During peak hours, it had to be restarted every minute or so. By 98, all applications were migrated to saner platforms.
    - lurkinggrue 17y ago
      Sighs I still have to support CF. Beats head against desk
      - rbanffy 17y ago
        I am deeply sorry.
- RevRal 17y ago
  I upvoted it because it was my exact sentiment. When I saw the submission title, I thought "oh no." And then I felt relief that it was not about the CF platform. Coldfusion was pretty bad when it was first introduced, and it hasn't improved much. I've been dodging it for years, but some of my friends haven't been so lucky. Each of them hates it, and one had even quit his job because his employer didn't want to give it up. Yes, I would be sad if CF became "mainstream" again and I had to learn it. If I recall correctly, everyone needed ColdFusion when it was first introduced, and it is only barely alive due to that initial boom.
  - erlanger 17y ago
    Few things are as ugly as <cfswitch expression="expr"> <cfcase value="val"> ...
    - hackernews 17y ago
      Isn't there a cfscript equivalent that is more pleasing to the eye? Something like: switch (expr) { case "val"....
    - elai 17y ago
      look at jsp!
  - JimBastard 17y ago
    CF was one of the nicer programming languages I've ever worked with. Circa 2002-2005 there wasn't anything close to a better alternative. The down-fall of CF was Rails since Rails is open-source, huge community, is free, and powered by Ruby. CF was closed sourced, small community, and powered by Java. Yuck.
    - ryanwaggoner 17y ago
      Umm..seriously? PHP? Python? 2005 wasn't that long ago.
      - 17y ago
- maxharris 17y ago
  Normally, I don't like backhanded comments. But Adobe's recent products (post Macromedia merger) are so bad that it's OK to jab at them (because it's true!)

andrewcooke 17y ago

Not one of the listed papers was a successful reproduction of someone else's published work.

Estragon 17y ago
Well, very few published papers are. Reproduction of others' work is usually a foundational preliminary to original research.
- andrewcooke 17y ago
  We're talking about cold fusion, right? Maybe things have changed, but I was under the impression that it was not yet possible to reliably reproduce the effects. In such a context, reproduction would be quite noteworthy.
  - Estragon 17y ago
    You're assuming that a replication of Pons and Fleischmann's original work is necessary for cold fusion to be an interesting research subject.
    - andrewcooke 17y ago
      No, I'm not. As I've said elsewhere, I can understand why this is interesting to researchers. But to be interesting to me (and, I suspect, at least some others) there needs to be some reliably repeatable demonstration of "new physics". I don't see any evidence for that here. There are lots of people investigating lots of exciting ideas out there. That's great. But there's a big difference between "wouldn't it be cool if..." and "hey, I can show that...". When I saw the conference details, I hoped cold fusion was at the "show that" phase. Disappointingly, it continues to not be. Hence my post.

thaumaturgy 17y ago

One of my clients is working somewhere in this field; they're having a much easier time recruiting new scientists and other personnel, and they are well funded. An NDA prevents me from saying much else, but I think I can say that the field is better developed than many people realize.

mechanical_fish 17y ago
There is also lots of money in homeopathy. It's a going concern. Then there's fundamentalist religious education. Plenty of funding there. Lots of impressively architected buildings. People with advanced degrees. Recruitment, funding, and NDAs are but one metric of success.
- thaumaturgy 17y ago
  Sorry, I didn't mean to imply private funding.

rauljara 17y ago

"some describe cold fusion as the 'Fleishmann-Pons Effect' in honor of the pioneers, Marwan noted." Really? In honor of the possibly-crazy-but-much-more-likely-liars-and-con men whose experiments couldn't even come close to being replicated. The whole article acts like any current research is a vindication of Fleishmann and Pons, but honestly, if cold fusion ever does come to pass, it will be despite Fleishmann and Pons' fraudulent work. How much time and credibility was wasted trying to recreate that BS?

randallsquared 17y ago
liars-and-con men whose experiments couldn't even come close to being replicated. Well, in the first few weeks after the announcement, several labs said they had replicated the experiment, so if Fleishmann and Pons were liars or con men, I suppose we must assume a vast conspiracy of such across several notable institutions... well, that or some people were excited, mistaken, and desperately wanted to find evidence of something that apparently wasn't there. Bad results -- even replication of results ultimately found to be bad -- do not require liars, only error.

noodle 17y ago

cold fusion won't move any closer to mainstream acceptance until people can start to show any examples of positive net energy cold fusion, either in the lab or in nature. or, alternatively, show that it is possible to do coldER fusion. just, show that there's a process with the possibility of scaling down.

domgblackwell 17y ago
Exactly. Cold fusion is not necessarily 'junk science' but until someone uses it to generate net energy it is an interesting theoretical idea rather than solid science on which real world technology can be built.

limist 17y ago

Doubters and such should note several things about this press release: 1. It's from the American Chemical Society. While no one is infallible, they're not exactly flakes. 2. There are some serious names and institutions involved. Same caveat as 1. 3. Ask yourself if your doubts are based on hearsay of hearsay. Unless you are a nuclear chemist or physicist who has tried experimentally to produce low energy nuclear reactions without success, maybe there are reasons research has continued for so many years in the face of overwhelming public and professional ridicule.

andrewcooke 17y ago
Isn't the fact that it's interesting, and that the pay-off would be huge, reason enough? The idea that there is a confirmed, reliable, reproducible effect, but that people are hiding that, seems a little odd. You seem to be confusing being hopeful or popular with being (proven) right.
- limist 17y ago
  If you are referring to my point 3, there are plenty of problems (cancer, biotech, AI, energy) that are both interesting, and have the possibility of a large pay-off, while NOT suffering ridicule from the mainstream - in fact, while enjoying some respect. Most researchers will (quite rationally) choose career options that are interesting, potentially valuable, and safe. Sure, cold fusion is interesting, and has the chance of a big pay-off, but it also presents enormous problems to a would-be researcher, including lack of funding, dismissive colleagues, and ignorant pseudo-skepticism from the public. For a professional scientist to pursue it in the face of such problems require more than faith and courage; it probably requires at least some evidence they've seen with their own eyes. If you're interested, lookup Francesco Scaramuzzi and Julian Schwinger along with keywords of "cold fusion."
  - andrewcooke 17y ago
    there's some strange emotional subtext to your posting that i don't quite get. these people can choose what they want to work on. i am not putting a gun to their heads forcing them to do this. nor am i laughing at them. if they're right - great. who wouldn't want a free lunch? but i don't see the point in painting them as heroes or presenting this work as something successful when, as far as i can see, it is not. i've done research. you do it because it's interesting, not because of what other people think. and everyone has problems with funding: it's a market; if there's more money in one area there are more people too. as i said, i'm not sure why you're so emotionally involved with this, but it doesn't seem healthy. if you're involved in cold fusion maybe you should look elsewhere, because science isn't really about being loved or acclaimed by the public...

tzs 17y ago

A few years ago, David Goodstein of Caltech wrote an interesting look back at cold fusion. It's available here: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/fusion_art.html http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/fusion_art.html Where the story left off, there were a few competent researchers with well-designed experiments that were getting indications that something was happening that was not covered by current theory. However, cold fusion research was by then out of fashion, and no one was interested in looking deeper into those results and confirming or refuting them. As Goodstein notes, "What all these experiments really need is critical examination by accomplished rivals intent on proving them wrong. That is part of the normal functioning of science. Unfortunately, in this area, science is not functioning normally. There is nobody out there listening."

rbanffy 17y ago

"the first inexpensive means of identifying the hallmark of cold fusion reactions: the production of excess heat" Shouldn't it be excess neutrons?

curtis 17y ago
If they can reliably produce excess heat from these experiments, I don't think we care if it's due to fusion or not. It would certainly be something we want to study.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  It could be something worth of study, but, unless there is Helium or neutrons, it's not cold fusion. The Hagelstein explanation seems interesting, but, again, unless we see some nuclear fusion, those guys are studying something completely different. Not to say uninteresting, but not what we could call nuclear fusion.

ph0rque 17y ago

"The presentations describe... indications that cold fusion may occur naturally in certain bacteria." Are you serious? This boggles my mind more than anything about how bio systems work in nature in the last few years...