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grufty jim
grufty jim
1978 posts

Re: cold fusion
Jul 14, 2004, 17:57
Tom,

Firstly; we should note that NOT all important scientific discoveries have come from "beyond the fringes". At least not in the same way that cold fusion would be. A great deal - if not most - scientific discoveries were made whilst trying to explain certain behaviours, or apparent behaviours.

There's no real evidence that cold fusion is even possible. It doesn't occur in nature, and the theoretical justifications for our being able to create it in a lab are precarious to say the least. The experiments you mentioned have not proved repeatable by the vast majority of those who have attempted verification.

And when you talk about the Japanese government spending 25 million dollars on research? Tom, when it comes to scientific research, 25 million dollars worth of grants over 3 years is a *tiny* amount of money. Particularly given the potential rewards. The half billion spent globally on magnetic fusion research two years ago was considered scandalously low by a lot of people. And the pay-off from cold fusion would be immeasurably higher.

I don't dismiss cold fusion out of hand. I accept that now and then something really does come in from beyond the fringes. And you can point at a few historical examples. Though I suspect not as many as you'd imagine (even something as "far out" as relativity in 1905 had its ancestry in the work of Mach, Gauss and others... and was developed by Einstein to explain the *observable properties* of light).

But just because a handful of apparently crazy ideas have since become scientific "fact", doesn't truly add weight to the thousands of crazy ideas that remain just crazy ideas.

If I was a betting man, I'd put money on cold fusion being more likely than, say, zero-point energy. But that's really not saying much. And whilst the seriousness of the energy problem means we must never just dismiss an idea out of hand; that very seriousness also means we can't squander time, resources and faith on every crazy idea that promises to render our profligate consumption sustainable.
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cold fusion (TomBo)		 Replies:
Thomas Bearden (Ether)
Re: cold fusion (PS) (grufty jim)
Re: cold fusion (TomBo)
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