@MosheFeder
I'm delighted to learn that some scientists were brave enough to continue working on Cold Fusion despite its poor reputation. I'm even happier that they've developed ideas that are worth further exploration. Eventual success would go a long way to helping me and many others recover from all the horrible things that have happened in recent years. The world is overdue for a big welcome surprise. Let it be this one.
@KoAkira-gm3lt
I am actually working on this project at my universities particle accelerator lab! I started watching the video and I jumped out of my chair, "THATS MY RESEARCH THATS ME" My mentor insists that we do not call it "cold fusion" though, because of the bad publicity. This is so cool!!!
@JK_Vermont
Oh wow, this brings back memories. In the summer of '89, right after the Pons and Fleischmann announcement, I was interning in a US military physics lab. Our PI (principal investigator) got a small grant to do cold fusion research. I remember two experiments, both involving a palladium metal disc infused with tritium (I think). In the first experiment, we tried to replicate the Pons and Fleischmann electrolysis experiment using a calorimeter. Every day I would check the heat output looking for anomalies. Of course, nothing happened. The other experiment was a bit more dramatic, if equally disappointing. Our PI's specialty was radiation detection and he had the though that maybe physical compression could start the cold fusion. So we set up an anvil surrounded by various radiation detectors, put another tritium-infused palladium pellet on it, and had the burliest research assistant smash it with a sledgehammer. Of course, nothing happened, but it was exciting to think for a moment that we might see a small fusion explosion in front of our faces.
@paulgracey4697
Reminds me of the mantra in the space satellite instrument group of the aerospace company that I once worked at. "Faster,Better,Cheaper" They said about our work there. It soon became obvious to me that the saying needed modification. "Faster,Better,Cheaper, ... Pick Two" was my response.
@brianboyle2681
I hope the analogy here can be to human flight - years and years trying unsuccessfully to closely mimic birds when an approximation that allows another route to a similar result was the genius of the aerofoil.
@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC
There's heated division over cold fusion.
@frankhoffman3566
I'm glad it's being studied. Even if we get no surplus energy, we will likely get some knowledge.
@MrBradWi
Albert in rainbow shades. Gotta love it!
I think this stuff shows that we don't quite understand the dynamics of nuclear interactions entirely and that poking around at stuff is still a good way to find stuff out, even within a budget!
I've always thought the repulsive force ("coulomb") as like approaching the speed of light: the closer you get to your anti-charge, the greater the energy it takes to get just that much closer. Kind of like an asymptotic singularity. But unlike the C limit for light, there is a finite energy, although still large value, at which gluon production happens. Like if matter got close enough to the speed of light, tachyon production would happen. That is, that matter would convert to a photon and some tachyons, to balance all the conservation theorems. We've just never got close enough to light speed to observe it, without ambient photons destroying the matter via blueshift.
But, I like science fiction. so I'm gonna invent an electrical di-pole that fools the big charges of the quarks and hadrons into thinking they're doing their jobs, but which really allows them to get close enough to hook into the gluon web. Which of course has velcro-like hooks, just waiting to snag unwitting quarks and hadrons. These are not strings, they're hooks and it's called Hook Theory!!
@hdufort
I remember the drama around cold fusion back then. It was the first time in my adult life that I got caught (with enthusiasm) into something that sent me dreaming about a super amazing future, only to see the balloon quickly deflate afterwards. We get used to that. Remember the EmDrive? And more recently the Schön scandal about room temperature superconductivity?
@andyrwebman
"Low cost small Lab experiments with a potentially huge payoff". It's refreshing to hear someone advocate for this. I've seen other, very subtle, lab experiments that could potentially help answer some fundamental theoretical questions. A breath of fresh air - when others are crying for gigantic particle accelerators to be built, with the justification of "hey, it's only 50 billion dollars, miniscule compared to the national debt". Yes, really - there are people who think one round of terribly ill-considered spending merits another.
@shishkabobby
I too was drafted in DOE experiments following the Fleshman and Pons publications. We had experts on neutron detection from Oak Ridge working with us. We, of course, discovered no excess neutron flux. We did observe that the BF3 detectors became more sensitive if they heated up. Since we were observing an exothermic chemical reaction, we did need to carefully track the temperature of our detectors. These were challenging experiments for DOE experts - Fleshman and Pons were certainly not expert in all the instruments they used. There was also a less-than-kind observation that the quality of the physics department doing the experiment was inversely proportional to detecting cold fusion. The bull***t level of anything 'cold fusion' is very high with me - I would be happy to be proven wrong, but my expectations for that are very low.
@JustXAshton
Cold fusion is back. Can't believe Sabine is making a video about this. Love it lmao!
@pauleveritt3388
One of your best videos in awhile. You were definitely playing to your strengths in this one.
@barrystockdoesnotexist
Anecdote: Way back in the early 1990s I was friends with a lovely woman named Charlotte, a bass player from Bridport, UK. Her dad was Martin Fleischmann. I’d love for his reputation to be salvaged, if only a little, one day. A brain tumor claimed Charlotte about ten years ago, but she never believed her father was a charlatan or a crook.
@gabrho
Exciting. Glad they're getting back to the fundamentals and focusing on what's testable.
@xlerb2286
I remember sitting in the student union eating lunch and watching TV. The news was all about the potential breakthroughs in cold fusion and the Berlin wall being torn down. For one brief moment it seemed like it was going to be a different world soon. I do still hope that cold fusion turns out to be something worthwhile.
@Gazman299
I remember an old joke that my father and his engineer buddies used to tell. 'Fusion is the energy of the future, and always will be'
@andyastrand
Muon catalyzed cold fusion has been around for ages, the late fifties, I remember reading about it as a teenager (I'm not that old), and the mechanism it exploits to fuse is I thought well understood. Sadly it's also in the more energy in than out part of the diagram, but still may be interesting to any who aren't aware of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion
@rainbowsally2001
Hi Sabine. The best, easiest results so far have been with the shielding concept, around 2:40 in the video. There are other methods such as cavitation (like the star in a jar) but it releases dangerous radiation. The the shielding is accomplished by simply swamping the nuclei with negative charge, hitting them with what's called a condensed plasmoid - miniature ball lightening which is more typical than anomalous occurring at the leading (negative) end of a lightning bolt. The challenges, besides producing consistent condensed plasmoids with sparks that won't pit and mar the electrodes is ultra energetic resistance from established science and the energy industries for which they stand. This has been a great year for +[SH]+ videos so far. Thanks! The Woo Crew, -rs
@SabineHossenfelder