Cold Fusion again?

there are a number of unexplained phenomenon, but you will never get funding to study it unless you can show a workable theory for it, that is entirely within currently accepted science. With something new you would just be labeled a quack, and your career would be over.

I saw the fusion cells, they were simple devices, a glass beaker with a two strips of lithium with low voltage wires coming from each one, and the cell was filled with heavy water. I seem to remember they added an electrolyte to the cell to get a low voltage field across the heavy water.

There was speculation that somehow the lithium structure was like a catalyst in the reaction, fusing the deuterium to give off heat. I personally suspect that there is a random defect or alternative structure within the lithium matrix that allowed the reaction. If true it would mean to make reliable fusion cells we would have to be able to build the electrodes one atom at a time to get the correct structure. Not sure if even now we have the technology to accomplish that, but if it can be done than the devises would not have to be large. you could likely power an automobile with a gallon of deuterium for 100 years. Consider the implication for all transportation, portable power generators, etc.

One of the most interesting unrelated and unexplained phenomenon is known as the "double slot experiment", where you have two slots that will give you an interference wave pattern when light is shown through the slots and projected on to a screen behind the slots. It demonstrates that light travels in waves and the photons interact like particles in a wave. But if the photon flow is slowed to allow only one photon at a time to travel through the slots, you get the same wave pattern projection as if the other photons were present. It is really strange, no explanation, and frankly kind of creepy that a single photon will act like it is interacting with other photons even though they are not present. Not likely there is much money to study this either, who knows what kind of inventions could be built if the forces involved with that phenomenon were understood and could be controlled.

 

There is probably more money being spent on dieting systems and hair-restorers

There are some fascinating phenomena that are starting to be better understood, such as
sonoluminescence; xrays made by slowly unrolling durex tape, etc.
Turbulence is one that still causes furrowed brows.

 

Take a look at that second link that I posted, the qualitative introduction.
Catalyst is an ok description because the metal does not participate in the reaction as product or reagent; however, it is not a typical metal catalyst in that it is not a surface reaction. This reaction is occurring inside the metal lattice. The double slot experiment demonstrates the dual behavior of matter as both particles and waves. There is another way this concept is often conceptualized as Schrödinger’s cat. Which is a colloquial name for a quantum particle in a small enough box that quantum mechanical properties become important. Again, the description is of the wave-particle duality of mass.

The first concept to explain in cold fusion is the coulomb barrier. This refers to how can you get two particles of the same charge to come close enough together and with enough energy to participate in a nuclear reaction. If you wanted to shoot two particles of the same charge at each other to accomplish a nuclear reaction, the required energy is enormous. The way around this with cold fusion, is a trick. You sneak up on the problem. The idea is that you put so many particles in the same box, that even if they don’t want to do so, there will a small number which do collide. The box in this case is the spaces between the nuclei of the metal lattice. The deuterium is a very small ion, which can move through certain metals under certain conditions.

In industry, platinum and palladium can be used as a kind of filter, where gases mixed with hydrogen are at a high pressure on one side of a metal film, and only hydrogen will go through the metal and can be recovered on the other side. So the metals are permeable to hydrogen.

In cold fusion, electro-chemistry is used to create the effective high pressure of the deuterium on the surface of the metal. If you have a high concentration of the deuterium on the surface, you will get a higher rate of it diffusing into the metal. Now, it gets a bit complicated after that. The diffusion rate of the deuterium into the lattice depends on a number of things. The vibrational states of the metal affect the rate that the deuterium can diffuse. The concentration required in the lattice for the fusion reaction is not known for certain. You can expect trade-offs. Things which increase the diffusion rate might also reduce the conditions for the desired high concentration. However, once the nuclear reactions begin, it is expected that a type of chain reaction or at least the necessary energy is available to initiate additional nuclear reactions, provided the necessary deuterium concentration is maintained in the lattice.

This is where nuclear chemistry comes into play. Most of nuclear chemistry research has been performed for experiments in vacuum, not inside solid-state lattices. So, there is room for speculation on the nuclear chemistry reactions which might be occurring. Another point which allows room for speculation has to do with the dual nature of mater as mentioned above, which is directly related to the structure of space itself.

If you read on super-string theory and other sub-atomic physics theories, you will find that most theories which are developed to explain those experiments require more than three dimensions of space. The three dimensions of space, depth, width, and breadth are the only dimensions needed for classical physics and engineering applications such as boat building. However, it is not unreasonable to speculate that the universe is constructed of additional dimensions, because we see evidence in sub-atomic particle experiments. There is a common mathematical technique which every electrical engineer and many others use which adds another dimension to the mathematical space they work in, just to make it easy to solve common problems such as finding the voltage and current in a circuit. The technique is seen in many forms such as application of Laplace transforms, more generally can be called ergodic transforms. I suspect many people use these mathematical techniques without contemplating their physical implications.

If you want to design a boat, you will draw three different perspectives, the three orthographic perspectives. Well, to consider any model for nuclear reactions, one must consider more than three perspectives. There are many perspectives which have been considered, and exactly which ones are most important in describing the cold fusion phenomenon is not known. I speculate that at a minimum, one must consider the quantum mechanical duality of particles, and the ergodic description of the lattice.

 

Interesting story, wouldn't be the first time.

As you said, getting scientific data reported accurately by mainstream media is difficult at best. Not only "hard" science, either. The ignorance displayed by some of the highly paid TV news folks can be astonishing. A friend of mine is a top exec at a company that rolls aluminum sheet. He was interviewed last year on a national show on one of the cable business channels. At one point the interviewer asked, quite sincerely, "Is aluminum able to be recycled?"

 

it is much more involved than just getting deuterium atoms into the crystal matrix of the palladium. One of the failed experiments were to place palladium foil in a very high pressure chamber filled with deuterium. At 30,000 kilobars there was no reaction. The scientist I talked with who did this test said there was no question the deuterium atoms were well infused within the metal matrix, if it was just forcing the deuterium into the palladium they would have detected a fusion reaction. He said apparently the use of a low voltage current through the cell was part of what would trigger the reaction, and there was something far more complex going on than just getting the palladium to cause deuterium to fuse.

Apparently it is still a mystery as to what conditions create the fusion to occur within the low temperature cells.

 

I agree that the conditions for reaction are still a big mystery. I am not surprised that palladium foil did not produce a reaction. Years ago, I saw a compilation of data on cell configurations, and run time. It is seemed that rod size was important. Too small of rods seemed less likely to get a reaction. Also, there were fewer experiments with larger rods, and the larger rods were not positive either. The time required to load the lattice with deuterium is expected to be greater with the larger rods, and that was a potential cause in the lack of postive results in the larger rods in that data of many years ago. If you find recent papers, I'd be very interested to read them.

The phonons or vibrational modes seems to be critical. There are a number of parameters which would affect the vibrational modes in the metal. The geometry of the metal rod or device, the temperature, and ...? Most metals are capable of forming different phases or lattice structures, even at the same temperature. Different size of grains or domains depend on the history of the metal. So, controlling the metal lattice structure (metallurgy) would be necessary to get reproducibility or even understand what does or does not work.

There was even speculation that cosmic rays (background) might be a variable which would initiate some cells and not others.

 

The geometry and surface area of the metal is significant. The electric potential creates a pressure only on the surface, so the surface area relative to the volume is going to effect the loading time and probably the internal pressure.

Last that I heard, no one had found an experimental way to determine the internal pressure or concentration of the deuterium. Have you heard of a method for that?

 

I have not kept up on any of the latest experiments, all that I wrote was from memory and personal experience back when it was a relatively new discovery.

Right now I am just worried about earning enough money to stay ahead of my expenses, which I do not do every month. No time to entertain myself with geeky science stuff since so far it does not look like a practical way to power anything.