Thursday, June 23, 2011

The Oil Drum: The return of cold fusion?

Warning to cold fusion believers: this is a skeptical piece and the comments are even more so. I got this link via Talk: Energy Catalyzer link on Wikipedia.

With my prior posts, I think I've covered both sides and there's no knock out punch of an argument on either side. I tend towards believing that it is possible, but have no training to judge it confidently for myself. I get the feeling that the skeptics are leaving something out, while the believers want and need to believe in it, but may not be looking at it objectively enough.

The link above seems to connect the dots the way I did with the other hot fusion methods- in this case, Focus Fusion. None of the skeptics seem to be acknowledging the role of energy in this process. I suspect that it gets planted in the popular mind that it is hot in the way we are accustomed to thinking of hot. But electricity isn't the same form of energy as infrared radiation. That's what we feel as heat. So, a given amount electricity can be equivalent to the temperature necessary to make fusion without the device "thermalizing". So, it isn't "hot". And it isn't "cold" either. As for electricity, it is, if I am not mistaken, the kinetic energy of electrons. Kinetic energy is the movement of mass, in which electrons have a slight mass- as opposed to photons of infrared radiation, which do not. This is the distinction that appears to be getting overlooked or left out.

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