4 ms·

Looks 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. Mayb

• hprotagonist 7y ago
  Unlikely. More probably, they kept it quiet because there’s still a stigma around the work.
• chkaloon 7y ago
  One 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 ago
  Have they if I recall correctly they were thought to be one of the investors in Rossi's Ecat machine
• nostrademons 7y ago
  They 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.