18 ms·
Google revives controversial cold-fusion experiments
- darkpuma 7y ago> "The Google team explored three experimental set-ups that have been proposed to generate cold fusion — two involving palladium and hydrogen, and one involving metallic powders and hydrogen. None found evidence of fusion. The results have been published across 12 papers over the past 2 years: 9 in peer-reviewed journals and 3 on the arXiv preprint server." It seems obvious to me that you can't achieve fusion using a catalyst. Catalysts are great if you're doing chemistry, but nuclear fusion is a lot different. You've got to force two positively charged nuclei to merge and I just don't see how a catalyst could accomplish that. That it didn't work for them seems to vindicate my casual dismissal, but I'm left wondering why they thought it worth trying in the first place. What were they thinking of that I haven't? > "Trevithick recruited 30 researchers who had no strong opinions on cold fusion." Surely 'having an open mind' about cold fusion is itself a "strong opinion" about cold fusion.
- xamuel 7y ago>Surely 'having an open mind' about cold fusion is itself a "strong opinion" about cold fusion. A cynical reading might be: "30 researchers whose opinions on cold fusion were not strong enough for them to speak up at the job interview and thus forfeit the job".
- jandrese 7y agoI think it's probably people who weren't expecting to achieve the impossible, but were willing to experiment in areas of science that aren't well understood to possibly learn something new. Maybe there is some previously unknown effect that was mistaken for fusion in the previous experiments? It could be an exciting find. But at the same time they have to know that the most likely scenario is a big null result and no new science discovered. Unfortunate, but if you knew where the next discovery was going to be you wouldn't have to hunt for it.
- delibes 7y agoIt's not a chemical catalyst, but the idea of muon-catalysed cold fusion has been around since the late 50s. I think I first read about it as a child in the appendix of Arthur C Clarke's "2061" novel. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion Is that an open mind or parallel thinking? It's an interesting idea anyway, but seems no way to efficiently create enough muons / u- mesons.
- whatshisface 7y agoMuon catalysed fusion is not comparable to chemical catalysts for one thing. Secondly, although enough muons can actually be created, too many are lost for the reaction to work out.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- astazangasta 7y agoThey were thinking of quantum tunneling, which could, along with a lattice, allow protons to tunnel close enough together to fuse without having to cross the coulomb barrier. Or something. Some guy from a Berkeley LENR startup named Bloomsomething told me this tale once. Sounds vaguely plausible in a "quantum stuff is zany" way.
- lostmyoldone 7y agoAs far as I understand, most of the ideas concerning how fusion at low temperatures, and their relationship with eg. Pd is not because of chemical catalysis, but because it readily dissociates and dissolves hydrogen (and isotopes) into it's crystal structure. This process brings the hydrogen atoms ( at ntp ) at least as close as hydrogen molecules at roughly 2000 atmospheres, and maybe much closer, if I punched in the correct numbers. I believe it was (when cold fusion was, ahem, hot) speculated that the process of hydrogen solution/diffusion within the metallic matrix had somehow forced the hydrogen much closer together, while possibly creating local heating because of changes in the metallic structure at high hydrogen saturation, and that this was somehow both hot enough and close enough to create fusion.
- darkpuma 7y agoThat makes a lot more sense, thanks. But if the metallic lattice is retaining the pressure of bringing hydrogen nuclei that close together, wouldn't the whole thing tear itself apart? Is that the instability they're talking about when they say "But at high concentrations the team was unable to create stable samples." ?
- trhway 7y ago>at least as close as hydrogen molecules at roughly 2000 atmospheres, and maybe much closer, it is just a liquid hydrogen density. If any cold fusion is there i would bet that it would be some play due to huge electron cloud of Pd. Pressure/atom distance wise - the high pressure experiments using diamond anvil compress hydrogen up to 1M+ atm . That is still well below the Jupiter core though, and so naturally no fusion, yet one can make things interesting say by zapping that pressurized hydrogen with laser. Should get NIF style results with much less power or alternatively much better results with the NIF power.
- tr33house 7y agoLooks like research has been going on from 2015. I wonder why Google decided to keep this a secret... and I wonder how many such long-term projects exist. Maybe it's the possible upside that motivated the secrecy
- hprotagonist 7y agoUnlikely. More probably, they kept it quiet because there’s still a stigma around the work.
- chkaloon 7y agoOne reason was probably the "taboo-ness" of the research. Reference Mr. Close's comments in the article. Attitudes like his hinder scientific advancement.
- xbmcuser 7y agoHave they if I recall correctly they were thought to be one of the investors in Rossi's Ecat machine
- nostrademons 7y agoThey often do early research in secrecy to keep the pressure off the team. If you announce "We're going to ship cold fusion in 2020" or even "We're looking into cold fusion approaches", then suddenly everybody's interested in the research team, there's a huge amount of pressure on them, and they no longer have the freedom to tinker with different approaches and critically look at the data. If you keep it secret then it's just a bunch of really smart guys being funded to look into some intriguing idea. In this case they got a negative result, so the secrecy was probably warranted - would they have had the courage to put out 9 peer-reviewed papers detailing a negative result if everybody had been asking them "So, when are we gonna be able to use cold fusion" since 2015? The cynic in me thinks that the project was just canceled, which is why Google is going to the press now - they have no more vested stake in the outcome, but it'd be beneficial if somebody else tried it and did manage to find an approach that works.
- microtherion 7y agoThis seems to be in keeping with Google's "Moon Shot" philosophy — investing in some projects with potentially high payoff, but low probability of success. If Tesla were pursuing a project like this, they'd probably announce that they were expecting all their cars to ship with cold fusion reactors by 2020 — and then start hiring a team ;-)
- vidarh 7y agoThere's an Iron Man story arc lone from a few years ago where Tony Stark starts a car company using his repulsor batteries as the energy supply..
- dwighttk 7y agosometimes it seems as if Elon thinks Iron Man is a prophesy about his life...
- vidarh 7y agoIn this case I think the arc is new enough that it likely was inspired directly by Elon.
- JulianMorrison 7y agoMusk and Stark are coroutines...
- chasd00 7y agoan ex-gf of mine use to say Elon was an alien and needs humans to help him develop the technology he needs to get back home.
- arethuza 7y ago"They are already here among us – they just call themselves Hungarians." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists)
- raverbashing 7y agoFair play to them It seems they really did their homework and tried pushing it as well as they could, with new techniques and studies. The chances of success were slim, but the chances of having missed something 30 years ago were also non-negligible And even if your main experiment failed, if you could still take out some new techniques and knowledge from it, the better it is
- dalbasal 7y agoFair play to them Hello neighbor... I assume.
- JulianMorrison 7y agoThey should do polywell fusors next.
- beders 7y agoWhile LENR and CANR research has seen a significant amount of charlatans, there's a large body of papers available and there's yearly meetings. More details here: https://lenr-canr.org/ https://lenr-canr.org/ I've yet to make up my mind about 'cold fusion' but since there are interesting results and research is still being funded, there's clearly something we don't understand yet.
- singularity2001 7y agoI invested two weeks with in-depth analysis of the available papers and came to the conclusion that there is no good evidence. Usually the produced quantities where below the error margins of the background noise, or they put in so much energy that the measured effects could have come from any reaction, or it was not reproducible by others.
- redmattred 7y agoI thought they meant the programming language for a moment
- sixothree 7y agoThat would be "controversial".
- maxxxxx 7y agoFine with me. Maybe this will put an end to the conspiracy theories about suppression of of cold fusion experiments.
- lucozade 7y agoYou may be underestimating the thought processes of conspiracy theorists. Google have admitted to spending multiple millions over a number of years on a cold fusion team yet the team are still only publishing negative results? No one does that unless there are results they're not publishing...etc etc.
- wtdata 7y agoIn the article it points out that although the results are negative when it comes to cold fusion, they had positive results about connected themes like materials research.
- MentallyRetired 7y agoThis is bad news for Macromedia.
- Tepix 7y agoI like it. I don't believe they will achieve cold fusion, but who knows? If there's even a slim chance for it to work it's worth looking into by respectable scientists that will enable other labs around the world to replicate their results, unlike the dubious experiments we've seen in the past.
- mdorazio 7y agoAnd even if they don't find a way to achieve cold fusion, the electrochemistry they're researching is still worthwhile to explore for other applications.
- pontifier 7y agoThis is the hope I have for the reactor I designed. Cursory exploration of the idea has shown promise, but it needs some real brainpower and equipment for an in-depth scientific analysis and prototype. I have a strong belief that it will work, but that's irrelevant. Eventually it will succeed or not based on reality.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ridewinter 7y agoThis kind of stuff makes me so happy to own Google stock. Even if it drives the stock analysts crazy.
- mikejulietbravo 7y agoIs there an ELI5 of why cold fusion is so difficult to achieve?
- analog31 7y agoIn a nutshell, the reactants (small nuclei such as from deuterium or tritium) have to be brought into intimate contact, against electrical forces that tend to push them apart. The primary effort to achieve fusion has been to overcome those forces and increase the sheer density of nuclei in a way that is not more costly in energy than the fusion energy that can be extracted and used, and without the experiment obliterating itself and its surroundings. Even on a small scale, lack of measurable excess heat is not necessarily a show stopper, because fusion should produce other signatures such as by shedding extra neutrons. The lack of neutron evidence is what generated strong doubts about early reports of CF.
- ars 7y agoThe simplest answer is: It's not real. There is no such thing as cold fusion. It's not a matter of "so difficult", it's not actually possible. Are you asking, why is there no such thing as cold fusion? If so then in the simplest way I can explain it: Atoms are like little magnets that repel each other. To get fusion you need to get the atoms to touch - but you can't, they repel. So you have to press them together really really hard, to force them. The only way we know to do that involves lots of temperature and pressure. Cold fusion simply doesn't press them together hard enough. The idea of cold fusion was that certain metals would act like magnet-shields, stopping the atoms from repelling. But all known science says that that is not actually a real thing.
- izend 7y agoThere does appear to be fair bit of research in LENRs going on right now, note this article claims its the fusion of hydrogen atoms producing the extra heat: https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/scientists-in-the-us-and-japan-get-serious-about-lowenergy-nuclear-reactions https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/scientists-in-the-u...
- 7y ago
- dfilppi 7y agoNext on the docket: turning lead into gold at room temperature.
- JudgeWapner 7y agoNo more far-fetched than turning matter into energy which has been done for decades.
- Asooka 7y agoBah, that's trivial with modern science. You just bombard the lead atom's core with a precise beam of electrons until you knock out two neutrons and a proton. I have the schematics for a very elegant apparatus to do that, but this text box is too small to contain them.
- jschwartzi 7y agoI have been wondering what to do with the bucket of free electrons I've been keeping from my other experiments.
- djmips 7y agoDoesn't that just give you Thallium?
- peterlk 7y agoThe cynicism in this threads hurts. > “This is not just a chase for cold fusion,” says Matthew Trevithick, a research programme manager at Google in Mountain View, California. “If it were, I don’t think we would have maintained an interest of this calibre of team for so long.” Here's what I see: fusion power would be a step function in human civilization. Such step functions are pathologically hard to achieve, because new modes of thinking are hard for humans to do. Calling it cold fusion is a calling card to scientists who are serious about researching novel approaches to fusion instead of playing the politics of the research paper game. Will it work? Probably not. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Also, from Google's perspective, if they're the company that owns the IP for fusion energy, that's a pretty massive win. Additionally, if they push just a few other companies into funding fusion research, then the odds that we see viable fusion energy production (not cold fusion) in our lifetimes probably increases. I would love to see a private industry race for fusion research, though, the financial requirements of such endeavors mean the game would only be open to a very small number of global megacorps. Still it would be better than not doing it.
- olooney 7y agoThe skepticism is not about fusion power, it's about cold fusion specifically, as well role of proprietary IP and patents in scientific research. Tokamak[1] (and other magnetic confinement) reactors seem much more promising and have seen slow but non-zero improvements for decades[2]. Some reactors like JT-60 have come close to being energy positive[3] but are not yet self sustaining. Large ongoing projects like like ITER[4] have the potential to break past limits and provide invaluable data. There are also advances in plasma physics which improve our ability to run computer simulations[5] of Tokamaks and suggest new hypotheses for how they can be improved[6]. If Google were serious about fusion, they would invest in this kind of mainstream research. Unfortunately, that's too big for them to own end-to-end; the most they could do would be to participate in the international process. But that wouldn't result in proprietary, patent-able technology, so they instead they put resources behind fringe science that they can control. This is reminiscent of the Lockheed-Martin CFR[7], which also chose an approach which was extremely unlikely to result in a scientific breakthrough but which did yield a few patents for Lockheed-Martin. Frankly, behavior which is only one step removed from straight-up patent trolling justifies a certain degree of cynicism. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_nuclear_fusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_nuclear_fusion [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JT-60 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JT-60 [4]: https://www.iter.org/ https://www.iter.org/ [5]: http://www.psfc.mit.edu/research/topics/plasma-fusion-theory-simulation http://www.psfc.mit.edu/research/topics/plasma-fusion-theory... [6]: https://phys.org/news/2019-01-scientists-stabilizes-fusion-plasmas.html https://phys.org/news/2019-01-scientists-stabilizes-fusion-p... [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_Compact_Fusion_Reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_Compact_Fusion...
- dmckeon 7y agoBack when Pons & Fleischmann made their claims, the best indicator of widespread acceptance was the commodities futures market for platinum (and perhaps palladium - don’t recall if there were Pd contracts then). It was interesting to compare news coverage from various media - science, serious, popular, and tabloid - with the markets.
- ChuckMcM 7y agoNot exactly a "cold case" as there are regular conferences on work in "LENR" (low energy nuclear reactions). Given the bulk of the work, and the results AFAICT it is slowly shedding some of the 'snake oil' reputation and developing a "definitely something here which is not explained by the current understanding" sort of vibe. As it points out in the article, this is a group effort to come up with a solid, reliably reproducible experiment, that demonstrates the effect. In that way everyone can baseline to a common phenomena and a common experimental setup for comparing notes.
- dumbfoundded 7y agoI'd love to learn more about the actual methods they're pursuing. One I like and related to cold fusion is muon-catalyzed fusion. Theoretically, it should be possible and dramatically lower the temperatures required for fusion. Muons are like electrons but much heavier and less stable. When a muon replaces an electron, it allows nuclei to get much closer together, lowering the energy requirement for fusion. The practical challenge is creating muons with less energy than you get from fusion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion
- tim333 7y agoThere are also fusors which you can make at home http://discovermagazine.com/2010/extreme-universe/18-do-it-yourself-basement-fusion http://discovermagazine.com/2010/extreme-universe/18-do-it-y...
- arxpoetica 7y agoOne of the most iconic images of my childhood is when my scientist-inventor dad attempted to reproduce in his own lab the Fleischmann–Pons experiments of the late 80s. He'd built (I think to spec) an exact replica according to the published designs. Of course, nothing ever came of it, but it still fascinates me to this day thinking of him laboring over that. (The long beard and unkempt hair lent well to my image of him as mad scientist.) I asked him later about the results of those experiments, and his sort of retort sounded like an embarrassing admission, something along the lines of "nothing will ever come of that." I still idol the awesomeness of those days though.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago> the Fleischmann–Pons experiments of the late 80s I recall a talk given at an MIT club a few years ago in which a researcher claimed loading was insufficiently controlled in follow-on experiments. I think cold fusion and F-P is probably a fraud, but it sowed enough doubt in my mind so as to make a follow-up, if not reasonable, also not unreasonable.
- dr_dshiv 7y agoThey didn't look at sonofusion, though, did they? That involves room temperature apparatus, but extremely high local temperatures -- due to collapsing bubbles. (Similar to sonoluminescence) I remember this from the late Robert Apfel's work at Yale -- because wouldn't it just be swell if bubbles could be the basis for fusion and clean energy? The problem was that bubbles need to be perfectly symmetrical for sufficient collapse power and that is only possible in zero gravity. Here is a paper from Oak Ridge National Laboratory. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0029549307002257 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002954930...
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago> The problem was that bubbles need to be perfectly symmetrical for sufficient collapse power and that is only possible in zero gravity. Then wouldn't that work to power a spacecraft?
- orbots 7y agohttps://brillouinenergy.com https://brillouinenergy.com These guys seem to have figured it out. Seems the problem with replicating cold fusion is that what most researchers do degrades the "lattice" that enables the reaction. So even if you do manage to get results, you won't be able to repeat it.
- ggggtez 7y agoMaybe it's a dead end, but the it sounds like they found some promising avenues for improved battery tech along the way. Something about hydrogen storage... Like anyone else, I'd love to see fusion harnessed for electricity. One step closer to post-scarcity, but I can settle for more compact phones.
- sudoaza 7y agoThis makes perfect sense: - 10 millon usd to Google is close to nothing. - payout if success would be huge and there is place for unexpected derivative technology. - there is still lots of wiggle place in physics, think for example superconductors or meta-materials.
- gnufx 7y agoI've only skimmed this thread, but I don't see this perspective, in case people are still reading. The common thread in practitioners of this stuff, and people attacking those who call it out as rubbish, seems to be rejecting nuclear physics while claiming to be observing (or supporting the possibility of) nuclear processes. I don't mean just established nuclear theory and experiment. Convincing evidence for reaction products is missing -- both nuclear and chemical ones -- and I'd expect detecting reaction products to be relatively easy compared with accurate calorimetry. People qualified to do make such measurements doubtless won't be considered sufficiently neutral, shall we say, about the physics. Anyhow, rather than say "it doesn't happen" they would be able to put a decent limit on the rate of such processes, whatever their a priori attitude. "Science doesn't care what you believe", as I recently saw on a T-shirt. I remember when the Fleischmann and Pons stuff first appeared. It was so obviously pathological science that it didn't seem worth devoting resources towards it. Did you know that palladium is a particularly useful target for nuclear physics? Then I was doing spectroscopy on fusion reactions with it (and we had probably the best gamma-ray, neutron, and recoil nuclei detectors). There was no evidence of any anomalies associated with palladium. Apropos possibly burying evidence against established physics: those measurements demonstrated that the conventional wisdom about aspects of the processes was wrong. In contrast, I studied fusion reactions for which actual nuclear physicists presented evidence against the basic compound nucleus model; better measurements and calculations supported the model. The work was peer reviewed in the usual nuclear physics journals, of course.
- pfdietz 7y agoWhat amazes me about cold fusion is that anyone, even the cranks, think it's plausible. I mean, look at it from a conditional probability point of view. Initially, before any of the furor, the chance of it being real would have been very low. Then P&F have their fiasco. Their results were wrong. But somehow this was taken as meaning Cold Fusion was more likely than it had been previously. But how could that be? Their results, properly interpreted, were negative. Negative results can only reduce the probability something is correct, not increase it.