Reply With QuoteDogs and cats, LIVING TOGETHER!
Really after reading it the only thing I can say is fucking wow....
http://www.christiansciencemonitor.c...5s01-stss.html
Yeah its on /. as well but wow these are amazing times. Apple switches to intel yadda yadda its like bizzaro world.
Dogs and cats, LIVING TOGETHER!
This just proves that crystals really are magic.
That is the coolest link of the year.
In other news...
" The russian police are looking to question a man they are calling The Saint. There is no word as to why yet. Stay tuned for more on this late breaking story."
:arrow: http://www.lalovin.com/paparazzi/jessica_alba_seethru/Originally Posted by TheSelfishGene
Umm.. yeah.. when they demonstrate that it's viable as an energy generation device, then I'll care.
I mean, it's nifty and all, and maybe it will go somewhere, but cold fusion has generally been synonymous with "unlimited energy", and since they go on to say that the net energy delta is negative (i.e. it takes more energy to get it going than it produces, much less than is harvestable) it's a nifty trick, nothing else. (It's also about 2 months old at this point, but, hey...)
I'd take cold fusion producing 20% increase over the input power, in all honesty. Holy shit that's awesome.
[size=2]edit: clarified "efficiency"[/size]
I assume you mean 20% of peak theoretical efficiency. Right now it's running at output energy < input energy. That's not exactly a stellar method of increasing our power production in general.
Its a start.
The internet wasnt invented over night ya know!
Heh.. could take far less if it's cheap enough materials and small enough equipment. 1% compounded enough adds up. ;) Just imagine a series of 1 meeelion mini fusion generators at 1% net efficiency increase. (1.01)^(10^6) is a nice number. :)
Doesn't work that way. They all take in X amount of power and put out X * 1.01 amount of power, more or less, for a net increase of 10,000 * X.
Otherwise the last one would have to be 1.01^(10^6) times larger than the first, more or less. And if we had one of those in this "small enough" package, then we could just line up a million of those instead and get all the power we needed.
Well, okay, yeah. But I like my idea better! (In my defense, I've been running car payment calculations for the last week, so compounding is a natural state of affairs.)Doesn't work that way. They all take in X amount of power and put out X * 1.01 amount of power, more or less, for a net increase of 10,000 * X.
Otherwise the last one would have to be 1.01^(10^6) times larger than the first, more or less. And if we had one of those in this "small enough" package, then we could just line up a million of those instead and get all the power we needed.
(And I think just one of those in the "small enough" package would be all the power we need. Try actually taking 1.01^1M. It might prove problematic to keep a small sun in a box, however. :) )
I must be really out of practice with exponentials to have forgotten that. And almost regardless of what the original small box looks like, I think you're dealing with a large galaxy, not a small sun. ;)
Skepticism is healthy, ya'll.
Why be skeptical? This experiment has apparently been peer reviewed, and cold fusion really isn't that impressive or novel. The hard part is getting output energy > input energy, and that hasn't happened yet, even in this process.
Next, it needs to be independently repeated.
Errr.. why?
Most peer review science doesn't work that way. The only reason it did for the original cold fusion stuff was because nobody, including the people who did it, could adequately promote a theory for why it was working. Nobody seems to have much of a problem with this approach, so I assume it's a completely plausible one to utilize.
Again, it's not like these folks just solved the world's energy crisis. It's still a net losing proposition for energy production.
Because that's the next step. It's been repeated in house, explained, and peer-reviewed, the next step, as in any scientific experiment, is to have it independently reproduced.Errr.. why?
Although after setting up an experiment that's not especially contraversial, reproducing it in-house, explaining what's happening, and having all of that reviewed, I'm not sure what reason there is to be skeptical.
Heh.. not much would get done if everyone spent time running around reproducing other people's experiments. There's no reason to independently reproduce it unless someone has a use for the process or a need to understand it better. Since it has no practical applications at the moment, I suspect that'll be a while. When it happens, it will happen organically as a "prior work" step to some larger goal. Since it's not making claims about boosting energy production and removing dependence on foreign oil, it shouldn't be controversial enough to need to be independantly verified. It's just that folks see the words "cold fusion" and get all worked up.Because that's the next step. It's been repeated in house, explained, and peer-reviewed, the next step, as in any scientific experiment, is to have it independently reproduced.Errr.. why?
Although after setting up an experiment that's not especially contraversial, reproducing it in-house, explaining what's happening, and having all of that reviewed, I'm not sure what reason there is to be skeptical.
Yes, that's exactly what I meant... quick everyone, drop what you're doing and re-test and re-test and re-test Mendel's pea experiments! Geez. You have someone independently reproduce the experiment to ensure that the orignal experiments weren't corrupted by some sort of unseen agent. Even if the results match what is expected. That's the scientific method. Don't like it, take it up with the ancient Greeks.
That said, Midnight Son's paranoia over cold fusion is a little overblown.
What paranoia? You guys have no clue how the scientific process works. Every theory will be tested again and again until the preponderance of the evidence is such that the theory can be called "fact." If it fails, it's no good.
Noticing that there's an increased release of neutrons under a process isn't a theory. There is no "theory" of cold fusion, and I doubt that we're really asking whether or not the theory of fusion is applicable; it's rather challenging to explain the presence of, say, iron without it.
So the only thing that you could be wanting to challenge is whether it's "cold" fusion. Which seems a bit silly since it matches all the earmarks of fusion, and has been peer reviewed to say it does so, and the "cold" bit is self evident since they didn't heat the sample up to the temperature of the sun. They just squeezed the ever-lovin bajeezus out of it. It's a novel approach, but not exactly establishing a new theory or anything.
(It is amusing to be told that I don't know anything about the scientific process, though. I'm rather dismayed to learn that this is the case, and should probably get right on that seeing as I defend in a couple of months and it might be good to know something along those lines before they give me that fancy piece of paper and all.)
Talk to me when a commercial product using cold fusion is produced. Byeeeee! (And you can find a PHD to support just about every hare-brained idea you want.)
My point was that part of the scientific method is that you need to independently verify results when you said "not much would get done if everyone spent time running around reproducing other people's experiments." If you really think that independent verification is so useless, maybe the institution that you'll be getting that fancy piece of paper from should challenge you a little harder.
Wow....
I mean really man they just did it a little while ago. Its like saying "Hey I invented this circle thing"
" Well thats worthless you let me know when you can actually use it in something!"
Ummm.. what does that have to do with anything? You're claiming that because an energy inefficient process isn't independantly verified by external sources, it's not good science?
*sigh*My point was that part of the scientific method is that you need to independently verify results when you said "not much would get done if everyone spent time running around reproducing other people's experiments." If you really think that independent verification is so useless, maybe the institution that you'll be getting that fancy piece of paper from should challenge you a little harder.
Independent verification comes about in this day and age when you go to apply the last cycle of work to this cycle's. If you come out with a momentous, stupendous, earth-shattering discovery then, yes, perhaps it's worthwhile to independently verify for the sake of said verification. However, I'm not seeing this as being so. My guess is it will eventually get picked up as a tech for exactly what's been proposed: Small, compact thrust generators for spacecraft and satellites. At some point it will get tested, but in the meantime it's one of those interesting but essentially meaningless blurbs that comes out of the scientific pikeway reasonably often.
Generally experimental verification is reserved for experiments that have profound implications; for everything else there's peer review, because most scientists have better things to do with their time than repeat someone else's results. (There's also the implied assumption that if it's an honest mistake the scientist will self-correct, and if it's a dishonest mistake, well, who tries to publish dishonest mistakes that are of moderate scientific importance?)
I guess my point isn't that verification shouldn't happen, but that explicit verification for the sake of verification alone shouldn't happen because, really, it's not all that interesting yet. If it becomes so, or has the opportunity to become so, you can rest assured that the people tripping over themselves to do research in the newly opened field will be the first to cry out loud and strong if they can't reproduce the results. Science is far too specialized these days, however, to stop at every semi-interesting discovery and verify it for correctness as an act intrinsic to itself.
So what you're saying is that the final step in the scientific process is independent verification? Well that was a lot of drama just to agree with me.
Hmm.. I see where I got sidetracked. Do you mean independent as in "Run another experiment to make sure" or independent as in "Hey, Mr. Physicist over there in another school, want to do this so people don't think I'm making up this whole cold fusion thing again?" The former to me implies verifiable results, which is kind of part and parcel of expectations before even attempting to publish (at least in my field). The latter seems particularly paranoid for a non-earth-shattering discovery. I took MS as discussing the latter.So what you're saying is that the final step in the scientific process is independent verification? Well that was a lot of drama just to agree with me.
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