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The cold fusion race just heated up
- eloff 12y agoThis smells like a con in so many ways. I'm less curious about how it supposedly works than I am about how he managed to trick those researchers. He was on site, so presumably he could of had the opportunity for meddling with the experiment.
- joezydeco 12y ago"The total net energy obtained during the 32 days run was about 1.5 MWh" If Rossi has found a way to hide that much energy in his rod and/or materials, then let's just go with that and skip researching all the fusion stuff.
- gizmo686 12y agoIf he hid 1.5 MWh within the materials, then it is an impressive invention regardless of if it is cold fusion. If he manipulated the sensors to show a higher energy output then was actually the case, it is considerably less impressive.
- rpcope1 12y agoThe claims of cold fusion still seem quite dubious. I remember having a lot of doubts about that paper claiming "verification" of cold fusion, and given the behavior of a number of members of academic community, it isn't too surprising that you might find some academic somewhere that would be willing write sketchy papers just to get published. Until a big national lab gets behind this you may as well file this with N-rays: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N_ray http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N_ray
- zalzane 12y ago>Scientists have never been allowed to examine the E-Cat, details of the supposed physics have never been revealed, and even the identities of his US business partners were only discovered by online sleuthing. for fucks sake, why even publish such a bogus article
- DennisP 12y agoBecause it's not all about the E-Cat. "Parkhomov has openly revealed his reactor design, ingredients used and experimental process, which is not terribly complex, and this allows for further experimentation to take place in the public domain, not under a cloak of secrecy" I'm still a skeptic until plenty other people replicate it, but it's nice to see that some cold fusion researchers are acting like scientists now.
- pknight 12y agoOn the face of it, it does sound really bad, yes. However, the E-Cat is a longstanding project and whatever the nature of the process behind the anomolous results, it is gaining an increased amount of attention from groups working around the world, including NASA. If the independent replication attempt is the real deal any group of scientists will be able to investigate and verify it now, because the details are provided out in the open. And the implications are enormous. If the process is real and robust it will mark the start of a new era in energy generation. It's a total game changer. I have been following the E-Cat for a while and it has all the hallmarks of a scam, an incredibly elaborate scam if it proves the case. But it also could be a real revolution in the making. I think that makes it worth reporting on. Especially if this replication turns out to be valid.
- tlb 12y agoI'm on record [1] as skeptical of the heat measurement techniques, especially on the output side. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8435322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8435322
- loblollyboy 12y agothis whole [0],[1] thing is so retarded
- thegeek112 12y agoEverybody says it's a fraud. But you have to admit it's a very long fraud (5 years?) and nobody complained about loses yet. It's not a fullfilled fraud therefore it's not a fraud yet. To me Rossi looks more like a good entertainer performing a magic routine: he pretends to pull energy out of nowhere, the energy seems to appear, nobody loses money and nobody can use that energy (at least not yet) and the enthusiastic public screams "it's a fraud !!!"
- ChuckMcM 12y agoThree words "Moeller Air Car" The point being that longevity of a fraud doesn't make it less likely to be a fraud. Rossi as been pushing this thing for a long time but his inability to actually use it to make excess energy he could use to sell to the grid is a huge red flag for anyone who has looked at it.
- msie 12y agoHeh, is there some internet rule about the mention of that car in any discussion?
- simondelacourt 12y agoWell, the attention it generates and the amount of people fooled make it something that shouldn't be there. When people who do not know the e-cat is a fraud read this and get interested they could have spent their energy on something more useful. Plus, nobody might have complained, but damage can be done without complaining.
- powera 12y agoIt doesn't matter if it's a fraud, a con, or even real; this article is terrible and should never have been published in any reputable news source. These claims of being "verified" or "replicated" are completely false, not least of which because there aren't any claims as to what is going on the first place. The claim "I have a magic box" isn't science, it's ... well, magic.
- pknight 12y agoAny new discovery should not be mentioned in the press before it is fully understood then?
- EpicEng 12y agoWhy are you assuming that this is in fact a new discovery? We don't know what the hell it is because the inventor won't tell us. Until someone can attempt to replicate the results it should be viewed as a scan.
- pknight 12y agoI'm merely responding the parent comment who is basically saying don't report anything that hasn't been fully understood yet. It's bizarre. In this case, if the effect involved is real, it is real without being understood. Just like electricity was not understood. Just because all the answers aren't there doesn't make the effect any less valid or newsworthy. It's a narrow view to take. And as far as what the inventor won't tell us, sure. But the story is that someone else has recreated similar measurements using what is known about the setup. Potentially a big deal.
- EpicEng 12y agoexcept he didn't quite say that. What he said was: "this article is terrible and should never have been published in any reputable news source. These claims of being "verified" or "replicated" are completely false, not least of which because there aren't any claims as to what is going on the first place." Now, that last bit could be interpreted as you interpreted it, but I think he was commenting specifically on this claim. This claim which has been out there for years. This is not like electricity or some other phenomenon which is not yet understand, but whose effects can be replicated in laboratories around this globe. This is a snake oil peddler with a secret black box. No one can replicate it, no one can study it.
- kstrauser 12y agoWhy isn't this bootstrapping itself? That is, if it's generating a substantial amount of excess heat, why can't that heat be used to drive a generator to power the device? I'd love to see a long-running E-Cat that's plugged into itself.
- jccooper 12y agoThat would convince me. The fact that it isn't done is telling. I'm sure steam-turbine generators are neither cheap nor easy, so up to a certain point I can see skipping the expense and the hassle. But were I strongly suspected of being a fraud, I'd put a self-sustaining setup high on my list. I think the (incredibly high) interest in the device after such a demonstration would make the effort worthwhile.
- Animats 12y agoOh, the E-Cat again. The E-cat takes in electric power, and supposedly puts out more heat than would be expected. The electric power to resistance heaters is input in a "proprietary waveform", and is measured with a wattmeter. This is a typical thing with "free energy" scams. The same thing was tried back in the "piezos" era, when putting resonant piezoelectric devices in an oscillating tank circuit was supposed to produce more power than went in. (But it did not, of course, run self-sustaining, without outside power). Measuring wattage of unusual waveforms is hard. W = E*I, or watts equals current times voltage, but you have to integrate the instantaneous product over time. Many wattmeters don't do a full integration; they're mostly for sine waves, and may have frequency limitations. The E-Cat guy won't let observers use a scope to see that "proprietary waveform". All it's doing is driving a resistance heater, so the waveform should not matter to the heater. A simple RF wattmeter, which has a resistor whose heat output is measured, would clear this up.
- dnautics 12y agoA better experiment is a double blind trial. Fill one hydrogen tank with standard hydrogen and another tank with deuterium. Code both of them with a scramble. The e-cat should fail with deuterium and should work with hydrogen. This does not require any access to internals, and could even be done on the sly without alerting rossi.
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- MiguelHudnandez 12y agoHere's the one true test for any new generator: If there's a working prototype, they could be selling power to the grid. There is no need for publicity, investments, or shows. It doesn't matter if someone can replicate your device. If it works, sell the power and build more of them. If it doesn't work, I guess just keep on trying to get money from other people.
- TheCraiggers 12y agoYour measurement for "what is true cold fusion" only works for devices that are extremely showy and easy to put together (aka, Hollywood cold-fusion reactors). For everything else, I see three problems with your statement: Firstly, is it only cold fusion if you can build and operate your reactor for cheaper than the price of your local utility? Would it not be a scientific breakthrough if it were not immediately economically viable? Hard to make money to build money for your proof when it costs you money to sell to the grid. Or, if it does manage to output energy cheaper than the local utility can produce it, you have to factor in return on investment as well. If your device costs $100,000 to create (which I think could easily be a low-ball estimate) and generates $1 of energy a day for the grid, you're looking at a long time for your return on investment, and your proof. And the above is only for devices that just magically output AC/DC power with no extra infrastructure. If your device only generates waste heat, then you're looking at building steam turbines, high pressure pipes, holding tanks, and all the other expensive stuff a traditional energy plant takes. In order to do that, you need a large investment.
- sandworm 12y agoThe con is not on us. He is not conning the public. He is not trying to get a science foundation grant. The targets are aging millionaires who lack science education. The US (Florida) is full of people who made millions on the rise real estate and are looking for a new investment. They are old enough to have seen the rise of the internet and think they can get in on the ground floor of the next big thing. They can believe in magic boxes because, for people who haven't seen a classroom in 40 years, Google looks like magic. Who knows how many "investors" this guy has fooled into handing over their retirement savings. No doubt they are bound by scary non-disclosure agreements and are afraid of speak out. The best person to con is one who, upon realizing they are conned, will not have the resources to fight back. This guy doesn't want Elon Musk's money. He wants you grandmother's.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y agoI remember another jackass from the 1990s who made outrageous video compression claims. He would give demos of his super-secret technology showing wonderfully high def video... Turns out he was running a coax cable underground to the table on which the monitor sat. Scientists are often good at determining what flaws of logic are causing anomalous results, or teasing out subtle unknown processes. However, they do poorly at debunking conmen because conmen are quite literally trying to game all the tools that scientists use. Unless they slept in the lab in sleeping bags, who is to say that there wasn't someone coming in the middle of the night to give it a little boost? All we have now is one crank from some backwater university in Russia who claims to have reproduced the effect.