4 ms·

I understand why a lot of people think this, but I don't think we can say that with confidence yet. Cold fusion "replicated successfully" multiple times in the

I understand why a lot of people think this, but I don't think we can say that with confidence yet. Cold fusion "replicated successfully" multiple times in the 80s too.

nwiswell 3y ago
There are now several authentic videos of bits of rock (lead apatite) appearing to do things around magnets that they have no business doing. Maybe there's a lot of smoke and no fire, but there's videographic evidence of something weird going on.
- wahern 3y ago
  Unfortunately, we live in the age of TikTok. Videos on their own bring no more credibility than written text; they no longer evince a substantively greater investment of resources. I'm more inclined toward the cheerleading section of the LK-99 audience, but watching the videos I realized now is a perfect opportunity to apply recalibrated B.S. detectors.
  - drexlspivey 3y ago
    This doesnt pass the smell test. Why would multiple independent labs fake their videos? What’s the conspiracy here? There is no upside, we will know in a couple of weeks if it’s real or not.
    - ekianjo 3y ago
      > Why would multiple independent labs fake their videos Why would different newspapers spread hoaxes? Yet it happens...
      - drexlspivey 3y ago
        newspapers get paid by the click
      - Larrikin 3y ago
        Which hoax specifically was completely fabricated by the newspapers and spread by multiple newspapers? State run media obviously doesn't count. Poor source checking and then issuing a retraction is not the same as a conspiracy among the papers to make something up completely.
      - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
        why would you respond to the question with an unrelated question instead of answering directly?
        ekianjo 3y ago
        because incentives are the same
        ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
        if that were true, you could have answered the question directly you couldn't, suggesting that it isn't true by the way, you forgot to respond to [0] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36984443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36984443
    - imtringued 3y ago
      If it takes X weeks to do research and someone publishes results before that time, then the conclusion that the results are suspect is warranted and is in no way a conspiracy theory.
    - wahern 3y ago
      I didn't mean to insinuate that anybody faked anything. Just that video evidence on its own isn't per se any more credible than if they unambiguously made the same claim in writing. The technology for making fake or misleading videos is easy to come by, so why mentally lean on the fact that they were videos at all? Our answers wrt likelihood of truthfulness simply lie in provenance and other indicia of credibility that would be shared with claims in any other trivially falsified medium, like writing. Why, indeed, would multiple seemingly non-cooperating supposed researchers make the set of claims that have been made? I don't think anything was faked, nor did I think anything was faked before videos began appearing. But that's precisely why this is an opportune time to exercise recalibrated judgment in not allowing the videographic character to inflate my cautious enthusiasm.
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
Wasn't the problem with Cold Fusion that it did NOT replicate, and thus got sullied with a bad reputation, so nobody wanted to touch it. Then decades later, it's still kind of open question. Aren't there some studies still going on, more on the down-low since it has such a bad reputation. Kind of like the super-conductor, have to keep it quiet and make really sure before publishing. Sabine did video on Cold Fusion that was pretty interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbzcYQVrTxQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbzcYQVrTxQ
- rrssh 3y ago
  There were positive and negative results, just like in this case.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  Some stuff replicated. It was clearly not cold fusion. Some people made a career studying the kinds of sonoluminescence needed to explain what that experiment saw. (And AFAIK, nobody found a use for the theory yet.)
dmarchand90 3y ago
The big difference is that standard theoretical techniques have indicated the compound to be promising from an electronic structure point of view and confirmed that it would be tricky to synthesize just right. Cold fusion always was dependent on new physics to be discovered
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
Thats because Cold Fusion does work, its just useless. It loses energy. You need Muons, a negatively charged particle that is 200 times heavier than an electron. They replace electron in the atom. Two Muon-replaced atoms of hydrogen can fuse at room temperature. The problem is that muons a very expensive to produce and decay quickly. So you spend more energy producing muons than you get from fusion. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion
gus_massa 3y ago
In the cold fusion experiments, they were measuring an exess of heat. That's very difficult to measure, and some noise or experimental error can confuse the people. No one measured a huge flow of neutrons, that were expected to be generated by the fusion and are more easy to distingish from noise.

I understand why a lot of people think this, but I don't think we can say that with confidence yet. Cold fusion "replicated successfully" multiple times in the 80s too.

nwiswell 3y ago

There are now several authentic videos of bits of rock (lead apatite) appearing to do things around magnets that they have no business doing. Maybe there's a lot of smoke and no fire, but there's videographic evidence of something weird going on.

wahern 3y ago
Unfortunately, we live in the age of TikTok. Videos on their own bring no more credibility than written text; they no longer evince a substantively greater investment of resources. I'm more inclined toward the cheerleading section of the LK-99 audience, but watching the videos I realized now is a perfect opportunity to apply recalibrated B.S. detectors.
- drexlspivey 3y ago
  This doesnt pass the smell test. Why would multiple independent labs fake their videos? What’s the conspiracy here? There is no upside, we will know in a couple of weeks if it’s real or not.
  - ekianjo 3y ago
    > Why would multiple independent labs fake their videos Why would different newspapers spread hoaxes? Yet it happens...
    - drexlspivey 3y ago
      newspapers get paid by the click
    - Larrikin 3y ago
      Which hoax specifically was completely fabricated by the newspapers and spread by multiple newspapers? State run media obviously doesn't count. Poor source checking and then issuing a retraction is not the same as a conspiracy among the papers to make something up completely.
    - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
      why would you respond to the question with an unrelated question instead of answering directly?
      - ekianjo 3y ago
        because incentives are the same
        ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
        if that were true, you could have answered the question directly you couldn't, suggesting that it isn't true by the way, you forgot to respond to [0] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36984443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36984443
  - imtringued 3y ago
    If it takes X weeks to do research and someone publishes results before that time, then the conclusion that the results are suspect is warranted and is in no way a conspiracy theory.
  - wahern 3y ago
    I didn't mean to insinuate that anybody faked anything. Just that video evidence on its own isn't per se any more credible than if they unambiguously made the same claim in writing. The technology for making fake or misleading videos is easy to come by, so why mentally lean on the fact that they were videos at all? Our answers wrt likelihood of truthfulness simply lie in provenance and other indicia of credibility that would be shared with claims in any other trivially falsified medium, like writing. Why, indeed, would multiple seemingly non-cooperating supposed researchers make the set of claims that have been made? I don't think anything was faked, nor did I think anything was faked before videos began appearing. But that's precisely why this is an opportune time to exercise recalibrated judgment in not allowing the videographic character to inflate my cautious enthusiasm.

FrustratedMonky 3y ago

Wasn't the problem with Cold Fusion that it did NOT replicate, and thus got sullied with a bad reputation, so nobody wanted to touch it. Then decades later, it's still kind of open question. Aren't there some studies still going on, more on the down-low since it has such a bad reputation. Kind of like the super-conductor, have to keep it quiet and make really sure before publishing. Sabine did video on Cold Fusion that was pretty interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbzcYQVrTxQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbzcYQVrTxQ

rrssh 3y ago
There were positive and negative results, just like in this case.
marcosdumay 3y ago
Some stuff replicated. It was clearly not cold fusion. Some people made a career studying the kinds of sonoluminescence needed to explain what that experiment saw. (And AFAIK, nobody found a use for the theory yet.)

dmarchand90 3y ago

The big difference is that standard theoretical techniques have indicated the compound to be promising from an electronic structure point of view and confirmed that it would be tricky to synthesize just right. Cold fusion always was dependent on new physics to be discovered

ClumsyPilot 3y ago

Thats because Cold Fusion does work, its just useless. It loses energy. You need Muons, a negatively charged particle that is 200 times heavier than an electron. They replace electron in the atom. Two Muon-replaced atoms of hydrogen can fuse at room temperature. The problem is that muons a very expensive to produce and decay quickly. So you spend more energy producing muons than you get from fusion. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion

gus_massa 3y ago

In the cold fusion experiments, they were measuring an exess of heat. That's very difficult to measure, and some noise or experimental error can confuse the people. No one measured a huge flow of neutrons, that were expected to be generated by the fusion and are more easy to distingish from noise.