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So cold fusion is viable after all, you just have make sure you call it something else so you're not laughed at. They are very careful to avoid the label: "LCF

So cold fusion is viable after all, you just have make sure you call it something else so you're not laughed at. They are very careful to avoid the label: "LCF isn’t cold fusion—it still requires energetic deuterons and can use neutrons to heat them."

pdonis 5y ago
> So cold fusion is viable after all No, it isn't. There is more than just a change of name involved with LCF: the statement "it still requires energetic deuterons" means the deuterons still have to be hot. They can't be at room temperature.
- mpreda 5y ago
  From the article: Electron screening makes it seem as though the deuterons are fusing at a temperature of 11 million °C. In reality, the metal lattice remains much cooler than that, although it heats up somewhat from room temperature as the deuterons fuse. Sounds pretty much the same as room temperature to me. Also the pictures with the experimental setup suggest that the glass does not melt, which is pretty cool.
  - gus_massa 5y ago
    The part about "electron screening" makes no sense at all. The deuterium nuclei are in the slots between the erbium nuclei. Most of the electrons are very close to the erbium nuclei, so the slots where the deuterium nuclei are have a low electron density. Approximately the same density of an isolated deuterium atom, perhaps the double, but I doubt it's 10x higher. The orbitals of the electrons of deuterium are like 1000x bigger than the size of the nuclei. So once the incoming deuterium nuclei approach, it will be much closer to the target deuterium nuclei and it will not see the electrons. Note that most of the energy of the repulsion is when the nuclei are close, not when they are far away. The erbium are useful to keep a lot of deuterium together, but the electrons shelling is probably very small. The trick they use is to use a very energetic gamma rays that colides (indirectly) with one deuterium, and this deuterium is very fast that is the same effect you get when you have a very hot deuterium.
    - phkahler 5y ago
      >> The trick they use is to use a very energetic gamma rays that colides (indirectly) with one deuterium, and this deuterium is very fast that is the same effect you get when you have a very hot deuterium. That notion of "hot" is not the norm. Most of us think in terms of temperature, not "energy". Would you want to get an X-ray if it were described in a way that sounded like high temperatures going to fry you? No. When the original cold fusion work was published, physicists across the board declared it impossible, insisting that high temperatures (and/or pressures?) were absolutely required for fusion to happen. The notion of a desktop fusion reaction was categorically ridiculed. Now it's OK so long as we change our conventional definitions to make those earlier denials not seem ignorant. BTW I'm not saying the origial CF worked, just that those rejecting it used words that would also exclude the possibility of LCF (or LENR or whatever we call it now).
      - gus_massa 5y ago
        > The notion of a desktop fusion reaction was categorically ridiculed. The fusor was invented in 1964 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor
  - adrian_b 5y ago
    Much the same as room temperature is only the average temperature of the metal. The few irradiated deuterons and the products of their collisions have speeds (kinetic energies) many millions times higher than those corresponding to the room temperature. The average temperature remains low only because few nuclei take part in fusion. If they would succeed to make enough nuclei to take part in fusion reactions to produce more energy than consumed, it is not clear how great the average temperature of the metal would become. If the temperature of the metal would not increase excessively, that could happen only if most of the energy produced by fusion would be carried away by neutrons, which would be absorbed somewhere else, generating useful heat, but also creating undesirable radioactive waste. This approach is indeed very promising, but there are many problems that must be solved, so there is still no chance for a fusion reactor in only a few years.
    - zardo 5y ago
      >it is not clear how great the average temperature of the metal would become. Certainly not above the melting point of the metal if the lattice structure is required to sustain fusion.
- itslennysfault 5y ago
  How about we call it "Cool Fusion " as a compromise??
  - scrumbledober 5y ago
    it's really more of a tepid fusion
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      How about "Average Fusion"?
    - kingcharles 5y ago
      I can see why they might not want to use that name... Now, if we could just make tepid superconductors...
- trhway 5y ago
  > There is more than just a change of name involved with LCF: the statement "it still requires energetic deuterons" means the deuterons still have to be hot. the original cold fusion experiments explanation was lattice confinement in heavy metal (i.e. large electron clouds) like Pt/Pd plus energetic deuterons. What was very unclear is where those deuterons got their energy. It was theorized something along the lines that high electrostatic charges in the metal cracks accelerate the deuterons, etc. Unfortunately pseudo-scientificity got somehow attached to that research, and that for decades prevented any meaningful research into the source of those deuterons and how to efficiently increase their number and/or how to efficiently add another source. Only passage of time and the name change to LCF - marketing, yea! - has allowed to restart the research, though still without due credit to the original research.
  - pdonis 5y ago
    > What was very unclear is where those deuterons got their energy. Yes, and that was because no energy source was being used to start the reaction; the metal with deuterons in it was just sitting there. In these experiments, an energy source (gamma rays) is used to heat up the deuterons to start the reaction. That's a key difference, and it's why a different term from "cold fusion" is entirely appropriate.
    - drran 5y ago
      Cosmic gamma-rays and cosmic muons are energetic enough to start a reaction, so LENR devices are just boosters. IMHO, it explains why some labs in mountains are able to reproduce experiment, while other labs cannot. I had plans to put a charged LENR device on a plane, to test that. If this is true, then LENR can be used to power cosmic apparatus in deep space. Maybe, it can power airplanes on distant routes also, like solar panels, but 24x7.
    - trhway 5y ago
      strictly speaking there was an energy source doing water hydrolysis though of course there is no known machinery for that to result in such energetic deuterons.
- phkahler 5y ago
  But with neutron reflectors and such, they hope to make it self sustaining. Insisting that it's not cold fusion really is splitting hairs. I suspect a magnetic field will help reaction rates too, even though you'll have a hard time finding research supporting or refuting that. Even I had wondered if firing neutron into a cold fusion cell might be helpful. Turns out it probably is. But then it's not cold, its LCF.
rasz 5y ago
Speaking of cold fusion, what happened to that Italian scam from few years back? ah yes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer still a scam
- Throwthrowbob 5y ago
  It was called the SKLed: http://web.archive.org/web/20210716204751/https://ecat.com/ecat-skled http://web.archive.org/web/20210716204751/https://ecat.com/e... and now redirects to a 404: https://ecat.com/ecat-skled https://ecat.com/ecat-skled
- Throwthrowbob 5y ago
  https://ecat.com/ https://ecat.com/ I'm disappointed, because the Dec 9 event was previously a new LED light of some sort, and now I can't find it with a cursory search. $25 maybe for preorder at the time. Maybe I'll check wayback machine or something.

pdonis 5y ago

> So cold fusion is viable after all No, it isn't. There is more than just a change of name involved with LCF: the statement "it still requires energetic deuterons" means the deuterons still have to be hot. They can't be at room temperature.

mpreda 5y ago
From the article: Electron screening makes it seem as though the deuterons are fusing at a temperature of 11 million °C. In reality, the metal lattice remains much cooler than that, although it heats up somewhat from room temperature as the deuterons fuse. Sounds pretty much the same as room temperature to me. Also the pictures with the experimental setup suggest that the glass does not melt, which is pretty cool.
- gus_massa 5y ago
  The part about "electron screening" makes no sense at all. The deuterium nuclei are in the slots between the erbium nuclei. Most of the electrons are very close to the erbium nuclei, so the slots where the deuterium nuclei are have a low electron density. Approximately the same density of an isolated deuterium atom, perhaps the double, but I doubt it's 10x higher. The orbitals of the electrons of deuterium are like 1000x bigger than the size of the nuclei. So once the incoming deuterium nuclei approach, it will be much closer to the target deuterium nuclei and it will not see the electrons. Note that most of the energy of the repulsion is when the nuclei are close, not when they are far away. The erbium are useful to keep a lot of deuterium together, but the electrons shelling is probably very small. The trick they use is to use a very energetic gamma rays that colides (indirectly) with one deuterium, and this deuterium is very fast that is the same effect you get when you have a very hot deuterium.
  - phkahler 5y ago
    >> The trick they use is to use a very energetic gamma rays that colides (indirectly) with one deuterium, and this deuterium is very fast that is the same effect you get when you have a very hot deuterium. That notion of "hot" is not the norm. Most of us think in terms of temperature, not "energy". Would you want to get an X-ray if it were described in a way that sounded like high temperatures going to fry you? No. When the original cold fusion work was published, physicists across the board declared it impossible, insisting that high temperatures (and/or pressures?) were absolutely required for fusion to happen. The notion of a desktop fusion reaction was categorically ridiculed. Now it's OK so long as we change our conventional definitions to make those earlier denials not seem ignorant. BTW I'm not saying the origial CF worked, just that those rejecting it used words that would also exclude the possibility of LCF (or LENR or whatever we call it now).
    - gus_massa 5y ago
      > The notion of a desktop fusion reaction was categorically ridiculed. The fusor was invented in 1964 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor
- adrian_b 5y ago
  Much the same as room temperature is only the average temperature of the metal. The few irradiated deuterons and the products of their collisions have speeds (kinetic energies) many millions times higher than those corresponding to the room temperature. The average temperature remains low only because few nuclei take part in fusion. If they would succeed to make enough nuclei to take part in fusion reactions to produce more energy than consumed, it is not clear how great the average temperature of the metal would become. If the temperature of the metal would not increase excessively, that could happen only if most of the energy produced by fusion would be carried away by neutrons, which would be absorbed somewhere else, generating useful heat, but also creating undesirable radioactive waste. This approach is indeed very promising, but there are many problems that must be solved, so there is still no chance for a fusion reactor in only a few years.
  - zardo 5y ago
    >it is not clear how great the average temperature of the metal would become. Certainly not above the melting point of the metal if the lattice structure is required to sustain fusion.
itslennysfault 5y ago
How about we call it "Cool Fusion " as a compromise??
- scrumbledober 5y ago
  it's really more of a tepid fusion
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    How about "Average Fusion"?
  - kingcharles 5y ago
    I can see why they might not want to use that name... Now, if we could just make tepid superconductors...
trhway 5y ago
> There is more than just a change of name involved with LCF: the statement "it still requires energetic deuterons" means the deuterons still have to be hot. the original cold fusion experiments explanation was lattice confinement in heavy metal (i.e. large electron clouds) like Pt/Pd plus energetic deuterons. What was very unclear is where those deuterons got their energy. It was theorized something along the lines that high electrostatic charges in the metal cracks accelerate the deuterons, etc. Unfortunately pseudo-scientificity got somehow attached to that research, and that for decades prevented any meaningful research into the source of those deuterons and how to efficiently increase their number and/or how to efficiently add another source. Only passage of time and the name change to LCF - marketing, yea! - has allowed to restart the research, though still without due credit to the original research.
- pdonis 5y ago
  > What was very unclear is where those deuterons got their energy. Yes, and that was because no energy source was being used to start the reaction; the metal with deuterons in it was just sitting there. In these experiments, an energy source (gamma rays) is used to heat up the deuterons to start the reaction. That's a key difference, and it's why a different term from "cold fusion" is entirely appropriate.
  - drran 5y ago
    Cosmic gamma-rays and cosmic muons are energetic enough to start a reaction, so LENR devices are just boosters. IMHO, it explains why some labs in mountains are able to reproduce experiment, while other labs cannot. I had plans to put a charged LENR device on a plane, to test that. If this is true, then LENR can be used to power cosmic apparatus in deep space. Maybe, it can power airplanes on distant routes also, like solar panels, but 24x7.
  - trhway 5y ago
    strictly speaking there was an energy source doing water hydrolysis though of course there is no known machinery for that to result in such energetic deuterons.
phkahler 5y ago
But with neutron reflectors and such, they hope to make it self sustaining. Insisting that it's not cold fusion really is splitting hairs. I suspect a magnetic field will help reaction rates too, even though you'll have a hard time finding research supporting or refuting that. Even I had wondered if firing neutron into a cold fusion cell might be helpful. Turns out it probably is. But then it's not cold, its LCF.

rasz 5y ago

Speaking of cold fusion, what happened to that Italian scam from few years back? ah yes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer still a scam

Throwthrowbob 5y ago
It was called the SKLed: http://web.archive.org/web/20210716204751/https://ecat.com/ecat-skled http://web.archive.org/web/20210716204751/https://ecat.com/e... and now redirects to a 404: https://ecat.com/ecat-skled https://ecat.com/ecat-skled
Throwthrowbob 5y ago
https://ecat.com/ https://ecat.com/ I'm disappointed, because the Dec 9 event was previously a new LED light of some sort, and now I can't find it with a cursory search. $25 maybe for preorder at the time. Maybe I'll check wayback machine or something.