Thread: Seriousness Cold Fusion - To Be Or Not To Be
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Old 04-17-2009, 06:02 PM   #34
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wodin View Post
I also remember reports of workers duplicating those results, but as the controversy swung to “that’s impossible” those reports seemed to disappear.
The problem isn't that no-one can duplicate the results, the article at the top of the thread covers that quiet nicely. Nor is it the lack of fusion byproducts, again, read the first post in the thread. The problem is that no-one can explain what's going on, or if it doesn't work for someone, explain why and how to fix the problem. So there's a common reaction of "if you can't reproduce it it's not science".

Thing is, much of what we call science now started in exactly this way - someone going "hey, that's odd" and trying to work out what's going on. Astronomy is the cliche example, the epicycle period consisted of revising the theory for each new observation until finally someone said "you know, this would be easier if we went heliocentric". Suddenly not only did new observations tend to fit the existing theory, but they could make predictions and they'd generally work out. These days the same thing is happening in particle physics, albeit more expensively.

Personally I'm willing to believe that there's something funny going on, and IMO that's all that is needed to justify further research.

Oh, and the energy output to date suggests that an AA battery is a much more dangerous weapon than a cold fusion rig. Well, unless you drop it on someone.
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